Salida Book Review

FutureShop: How the New Auction Culture Will Revolutionize the Way We Buy, Sell, and Get theThings We Really Want, by Daniel Nissanoff. Visionary Internet entrepreneur Daniel Nissanoff breaks the news that the eBay auction phenomenon is about to explode in a big new way, fundamentally revolutionizing the way all consumers--not just Internet mavens--do their shopping both online and offline. As huge as eBay has become--it is now the tenth largest retailer in America--it has only scratched the surface of the potential for online buying and selling: by 2004 only 5 percent of all eBayers had ever sold anything on the site. But that is about to change, dramatically, and the whole world of buying and selling will be transformed.

Nissanoff reveals that a massive growth of new online auction "facilitators," called drop shops, is under way--thousands have opened around the world just this year. As these shops become as pervasive as Starbucks, they will make buying and selling online so hassle free that the masses of consumers who have stayed away thus far will jump aboard. As we do so, a great deal of money will be made. As Nissanoff cites, the closets of the average American household are cluttered with thousands of dollars of value waiting to be found.

With resale so easy and lucrative, we will transform from an "accumulation nation" into an "auction culture" of temporary ownership, in which we buy the goods we most want, even at prices we haven't been able to afford, and then sell them for optimal resale value when we are ready to trade up to the next best thing. We will, in effect, be able to lease the good life.