Still, the means are mostly provided by sellers, and in many different ways. There are few tools, other than cash and third party conveniences such as payment systems (e.g. credit cards and paypal) that provide customers with simple and consistent means of relating to many vendors.

One way of simplifying the problem is to imagine that every vendor has its own form of cash, its own credit system, its own contained ways of “owning” (and that’s the term they use) the customer. Actually, we don’t have to imagine that. It’s already here in the form of coupons (a form of private currency) and loyalty cards.

Wouldn’t it be better if each of us had, say, our own loyalty system? Rather than carrying around a pile of cards and keychain accessories for every grocery and book store that calls us a “member,” we would have one way of expressing our “loyalty” (and keeping track of our interactions) with many of these outfits.

That’s what VRM will do. It will provide customers with means to become independent of vendor control yet better able to engage with vendors on terms better than the “take it or leave it” system in place now.

My reasoning is slightly negative, but – VRM isn’t just a process for you to adopt, its a wider reflection of how society is changing. You may just have to adopt VRM practices whether you want to or not, to avoid losing out.

To play out your metaphor much farther: I can see the benefit to a lesser noble looking to move up in ranks. By allying himself with knights (by being responsive to their unmet demands as expressed through VRM), he is able to expand into territories occupied by less responsive lords. But to the king? It seems like a net loss of control.

Here’s the Ebbsfleet link. (Sorry, I mistakenly marked your corrective post in haste as spam and don’t know how to retrieve it. Hope this does the correction you wanted.)

Agreed about the participative stuff, and about the role VRM (or fill-in-the-blankRM) will play in governance, with nonprofits, and in other noncommercial contexts.

What I wish to avoid is starting with the collective: with aggregated power, with group buying, and so on. Those are good things, and VRM will play a role in them. But to start with the collective risks missing the need to equip the individual. And it’s with the individual that I want us to start.

The designer Ivo Gormley just made a wonderful film here in the UK called “Us Now” about participative, user-driven decision making with examples like Ebbfleet Utd, a football (that’s “soccer” to you, dear cousins) club owned by the fans who select the team online. Like Championship Manager for real. The killer moment is when a government Minister is enthusing about all this, but is then flummoxed about how to put into words the effect this has on the role of government.

So do bear in mind, as you pioneer this great change, that it affects participative society as much as it affects buying and selling.

(I know you know that Doc, because you told them when you came over here! It was great to meet you!)