The Global Prosumer Alliance
Draft Excerpts 2/1/17
In The Beginning
In the beginning, say before the age of industrialization, consumers had a big influence over the production of goods and where they wanted to shop. The family unit was front and center and was responsible for self-production, along with specialists such as craftsmen and metalsmiths and the like. There was no separation between the consumer and the production, and relationships dominated the producer and consumer chain. With the advent of industrialization this was lost, and the power shifted to the producers. As large producers took over many markets, they formed corporations and attracted investment from consumers through organized investment markets, like the public stock exchanges, but by and large there was no accountability for the corporations as long as they followed the laws of the land, which many times they helped write through third party channels.
As long as the corporations produced returns for their investors, they were able to grow and increase their profits according to the rules of supply and demand and there was no relationship between consumers and producers, except for what was portrayed through advertising. Advertising is a one-way communication from the company to the consumer at the public level, with no reverse form of communication except through private channels controlled by the companies and corporations. The global advertising budget, at about $562 billion dollars in 2016 and averaging about 8% of company net profits, is by and large the consumer/producer relationship.
With the arrival of the internet things began to slowly change because consumers could now pool their buying power and affect prices. This was predicted in advance and has been documented in the literature, although it has not occurred at the rate that many had predicted. At the same time, and to a much lesser effect, some investment has been influenced by consumer sentiment and values through “social” investment firms that include consumer values as a metric in investments. However, social investment has yet to really benefit from the internet in the way that consumer pricing has through online groups (aka shopbots) such as shopping.com and dealtime.com as well as virtual advisors like MyProductAdvisor.com and many others.
The internet has created a paradigm change whereas consumers can now access information easier, overcome geographic barriers that once prevented communication and the formation of networks, and create the critical mass of customers that can exert power via the internet and help influence and shape prices. So what’s next? The logical extension of this is to pool consumer and institutional purchasing power and investment potential and to align these with political values: The internet revolution is going to bring back true democracy for everyone, regardless of political preference, because even though your vote counts for very little, how you spend your money counts a whole lot more! It’s really the only power you have, and now you can use it with a global alliance no matter what your political preference.
Yes indeed, we are going to witness the greatest transition of power in recent history, one that will balance the power from the mightiest corporations and give it back to consumers and value-based institutions through global online pooling of both consumer and institutional preferential spending and investment. The proactive consumer, aka the “prosumer”, at both the individual level and the institutional level, coupled with the power of the internet and global scaling, will change politics as we know it!
The Global Prosumer Alliance
Well it’s not going to happen overnight and without work and communication, and that’s why we have created the Global Prosumer Alliance, or GPA. The GPA is an alliance of individuals and institutions that have varying political preferences but are unified in a common belief: True democracy happens through exercising your right to have your spending and investment represent your political values! That’s right – put your money where your mouth is! And now, thanks to the internet and big data analytics, we can organize on a global scale as an alliance with a common belief. Forget about politics folks, this is for everyone and is about true global democracy! The multi-national corporations have done their thing, and now it is our time to add balance with the next step.
Mission Statement
- Fact: The only real political power prosumers have is how they spend their money.
- Mission Statement: “Create a platform that aggregates different prosumer political values and integrates them with expenditure apps and investment/reinvestment through flexible political investment indexes“
- Problem: Consumer preferences under valued in local and global marketplace
- How: We have created a Global Prosumer Challenge where individuals and institutions pool their preferential spending and investment through political indexes, kind of like a political stock market crossed with a computer game (like fantasy football!), to demonstrate the concept and global magnitude and impact.
- Result: The Global Prosumer Challenge will lead to an actual Global Prosumer Marketplace and bring in creative apps, alliances with different political investment firms, and be expanded to a real "digital" marketplace where the indexes have real monetary value and dynamically move on a day to day basis depending on the participants and the politic indexes. Global corporations will feel the impact and respond according to a true democratic marketplace, and the one way communication of advertising from corporation to consumer will be balanced. The Global Prosumer Marketplace will run on a single digital currency thereby creating a true global democracy with participation from willing prosumers, and corporations will alter their behavior accordingly so as to maximize their profits within the Global Prosumer Marketplace.