There needs to be a decentralized marketplace that gets out of the way and doesn't have everyone at the mercy of its platform.
But that's hard to build. Once it's built, the two sides can compete on reputation, cost, or whatever else, crafting their own strategy and the overall wealth of the system will go up. The gatekeepers often hold the system back - even the ones who built the system.
I believe that platforms should be decentralized and free, enabling wealth creation at smaller scales more in touch with the individual.
You're talking about the wrong level of abstraction.
Think about the problem as this: A worker sets up a website offering services. A potential customer is looking for a local purveyor of that service to hire. How does the customer find the website? If there are 25 local workers willing to do the job, how does the customer choose between them? If the customer wants to pay with a credit card, how does the worker get the money?
That's the role that Uber et al are playing. It's possible to decentralize that but it's not trivial.
> Think about the problem as this: A worker sets up a website offering services. A potential customer is looking for a local purveyor of that service to hire. How does the customer find the website? If there are 25 local workers willing to do the job, how does the customer choose between them?
Right, but these issues that the Web currently faces (discovery, signal-to-noise ratio for example) will plague any given open marketplace after a critical mass is reached as well.
> If the customer wants to pay with a credit card, how does the worker get the money?
There are numerous payment systems that aren't terribly difficult to implement for small transactions (PayPal, Stripe, et al). Sure, a little HTML, JS knowledge might be needed, but that is really nothing difficult to do after a small amount of reading.
I feel like this problem has been solved before, by small businesses. It's gotten even easier with some recent tech solutions but the premise hasn't changed much. I guess the main thing is that the customers are lazy and want a one-stop app?
Looking for a cleaner? Google "cleaning service <city>". Choose from the top 5 results.
Want to offer your cleaning services? Set up a simple website, read some SEO articles or get a friend to help with that. Maybe go in with a friend or a family member (like the sisters the article described) to share those costs. Get a square reader for taking credit cards, lose 2-3% instead of 15-20%. After each job ask for a review that you can put on your website.
Getting to the top few results for local services can be extraordinarily difficult. And CPC to advertise for those keywords can be >$15.
Small business don't have a unified marketplace and reputation tracking system. In fact nothing is unified. People like these marketplaces because of the single meta layer above the individual workers.
But that's hard to build. Once it's built, the two sides can compete on reputation, cost, or whatever else, crafting their own strategy and the overall wealth of the system will go up. The gatekeepers often hold the system back - even the ones who built the system.
I believe that platforms should be decentralized and free, enabling wealth creation at smaller scales more in touch with the individual.