Share a bike, find a babysitter, make a home wireless and other  needs for ad hoc services to find, rent, sell and hire could be made safer and easier for buyers and sellers with National E-Markets (NEMs). “Think Ebay writ large and better regulated.”

With more opportunities for short-term work more people gain at least slivers of employment. And slivers mean lot when people don’t have enough money for food and a place to live. 

Also many people can help each other as they help themselves with this approach, especially in this bad economy. What’s needed say experts is government mandated tighter/safer regulations so we can trust the online systems that private companies create to support this collective activity.  

British-based Connected Community: “How can such a system we brought into being? The private sector would fund these markets if Government could put the conditions in place…The Government needs to work much more with the natural behaviour of people. Selling time and possessions, rather than products as such, is very difficult to regulate, tax etc, but it can and should be done. The technology is not the problem, the problem is political will.”

Net Benefit author Wingham Rowan goes further and dubs such systems guaranteed electronic markets (GEMs).  In academic language he cites this ultimate public benefit: GEMs would run alongside ordinary electronic commerce, but disintermediation would mean that they would be less expensive. They would abolish the dominant position of large businesses, with all participants having to reach minimum quality and reliability standards.”

This is not a new idea – just an easier and cheaper one with the advent of online innovations. Better than the black market or unregulated bartering this approach enables the government to set standards for a system to be created by private firms in the public interest, making it safer for us to exchange goods and services – especially for short periods of time. 

Done right it leverages the efficient, people-serving strengths of democracy and capitalism.

Imagine if our local governments had a system like some British municipalities have to match people with limited free time with individuals and firms needing part-time or temporary staff. 

Currently, for some local and national e-markets we can gain some of the benefits of a NEM but not a GEM.  Usually these are group-regulated online services, often dependent on a dedicated, volunteer community manager as at my Marin freecycle chapter.

Encourage your neighbors to vote. Download an unusual yard sign. Over 24,000 people voted for 50 artist-designed signs at My Yard. Our Message. Thank you Bri Bigaouette for my favorite, and Dave Brynestad and DK Lockhart for my follow-up choices.  As Chip and Dan Heath suggest in Made to Stick, the unexpected message grabs the most attention. (Where do you stand on voting?)

Then read the Twin Cities-based backstory on this crowdsourcing contest.   Most any local city, club or cause could adapt this contest to raise involvement and awareness for their key message.

As in this contest, use Facebook and CafePress to build buzz and sell signs. For example, a city could host a contest for fire prevention-related yard sign messages.  Local civic clubs and businesses could co-sponsor it and offer to post winning signs on their sites – and honor the winners.

The time has come. The Jeff Skolls, Larry Brilliants and Melinda and Bill Gates of the social entrepreneur movement feel they’ve reached the tipping point. Sidestepping traditional charity, business or government “models” they’ve crafted systems for doing good that are data-driven and replicable – so they can scale, to use the geek term for “keep growing.”

Now they are determined to re-write Uncle Sam’s role and think Americans are ready for change. They formed an alliance, dubbed it America Forward and went to Washington, to ask for fresh, more accountable social and education programs. As New York Times columnist, David Brooks describes it, “to expand national service (to produce more social entrepreneurs) and to create a network of semipublic social investment funds. These funds would be administered locally to invest in community-run programs that produce proven results. The government would not operate these social welfare programs, but it would, in essence, create a network of semipublic Gates Foundations that would pick winners based on stiff competition.”

As Bill Drayton famously said, “Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish, or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.

By now we know that money alone doesn’t lead to fundamental social change. I especially like their underlying approach of offering incentives for proposing new approaches and for meeting goals. For example, former advisor to Reagan and Clinton, David Gergen suggested a grant system for social change ideas.

What do you think? Is this a SmartPartnership for the federal government, local not-for-profits, social entrepreneurial agencies and American citizens who may to start or work in such organizations? Is it a smarter way to invest our government and “charity” funds? Or will such an alliance get bogged down by government bureaucracy? Brooks seems more hopeful than not.