From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Fri Mar 17 2000 - 12:47:53 MST
I was watching C-span this morning, killing time till I left for a
routine physical. The featured story was about independant truck
drivers and their attempts to get some government action going over
the recent dramatic oil price hikes.
Thinking of our own EvMick I was pondering what kind of things we
could come up with that could help, besides some sort of
legislation.
One of my forte's are electronic commerce networks. I envision
something like this:
"EvMick is cruising down the road in his new hypertruck, one of the
things going is his new GPS based ECN. (electronic commerce
network) As he drives along he not only gets route info, but every
fuel stop is displayed along with it's real time prices. The
display is colorcoded (red,yellow,green) so EvMick can see at a
glance which stations are in range. Noting that he's going to need
a fillup, Mick spots a likely vendor on his screen, with a few
quick keystrokes he submits a bid for a hundred or so gallons at a
price a few cents below his posted price.
Before the hapless station owner can even reply, another station
owner nearby spots EvMicks bid and based on Micks location, knows
he's within range, and offers to fill Micks bid. A bit of hageling
later, Mick accepts the bid from the second owner for a bit less
than he originally bid."
A number of questioners on the show were after the Govt to crack
the strategic oil reserve over this. I thought rather than do this,
and rather than open their own oil reserve, they might insure their
most precious commodity by futures contracts.
Ideas, comments?
Brian
Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
Adler Planetarium www.adlerplanetarium.org
Life Extension Foundation, www.lef.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
Mars Society, www.marssociety.org
Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:27:28 MST