EWOT 11/04

It strikes me that the internet markets of craigslist and ebay are an interesting market effect of the information age, and a creative interpretation of the middle man. In this day and age where it is possible for anyone with basic network connection to be in contact with anyone else in the same boat, we have opened up global markets not on a corporate scale, but on an individual scale (granted, craigslist's intent is to strengthen local communities, not act as a global market, but it still performs this roll across the whole world) These services have eliminated the more literal middleman. Their job is to bring these people together, and they do it mostly for free (entirely so in the case of craigslist). It's just interesting to see the middleman bringing people together without collecting a profit via markup.