E-bay lets you rate a seller after you buy something from them. This concept could be used in many more areas letting peers-to-peer networks replace current institutions. For instance, instead of having the government or a single business provide a city's transportation needs, people could organize rides on the web. All you would need to do is let people pick where they are and where they need to go, and up would pop a list of people who are going the same way and are looking to car pool, charge a small fee, or who are just looking for the company.

After each ride people could evaluate the other person. Of course people could choose to only ride with people of the same sex, and luckily for us, we live in an age of very little online privacy. Maybe you could have links to sites that do criminal checks or other things. In a perfect society this would be the way to go. It might also work in small towns, where everyone already knows each other, but they might not know the travel plans of their friends.

This might not work among the larger population, but if you were able to enter in people that you already know it may just work. For instance, I know about 30 people at work, and about 30 people at church, and about 30 people from school that I could catch rides to places with. If I wanted to go into town on any given Saturday, there is a chance I could catch a ride with one of them.

Reasons to agree:

We ought to e-bay everything, or in other words rate those that we have bought things from. We should be able to evaluate the interactions we have with any business, individual, corporation, government agency, etc.
-- myclob, Mar 12 2005

Evaluating Hitchhikers Hitch-hiking
You ould expand on this. [DrCurry, Mar 12 2005]

Lift Share http://www.liftshare.org/
[Kevan, Oct 08 2005]

Timeline of Uber https://en.wikipedi...ki/Timeline_of_Uber
Timeline of Uber [myclob, Apr 02 2020]

frood = someone who really knows where their towel is
-- DesertFox, Mar 12 2005


Aw, dang, I was hoping I could buy a nice young hitchhiker...

Someone proposed online evaluation of hitchhikers before.
-- DrCurry, Mar 12 2005


Yes, but what about the insane axe-murderer who takes his/her customers/clients(?) to the middle of nowhere, then murders them after they've paid for the ride, I mean, since they're dead, I seriously doubt that they could say 'this guy is a psychopathic loony, STAY AWAY!'...
-- froglet, Mar 12 2005


If everyone who received a lift had to respond on the site, only those who received a response could be allowed to stay on it. The problem is then how to prevent fraudulent responses.
-- nineteenthly, Mar 12 2005


I like it. you would need to access it from your cell phone obviously.

psycopaths killing people and avoiding bad ratings wouldn't be a problem because there would be a computer record of the victim getting into their car.
-- RBStimers, Mar 12 2005


There used to be a pen and paper message-board at my university that encouraged people to share lifts whenever they were travelling home for the holidays - I think there are a couple of American road-buddy movies that start off on this premise - 'When Harry Met Sally' I think starts off like this. Of course, there was no internet then, and communication within communities had to rely on people talking to one another. Reccomendations about a person's character took the form of 'gossip' or 'hearsay' and was about as accurate a measure of someone's reliability as the fact that someone managed to complete x number of transactions on ebay.
-- zen_tom, Mar 12 2005


// We aught to e-bay everything //

What you really mean is "we ought to be able to rate everything"; the main purpose of eBay is "sell junk to strangers", not "rate interactions".

Unless of course you're still on your Randian "money is the only true measure" kick.

Anyway, It seems to me that "rating interactions" is pretty much baked in a lot of fields: take for example bizrate.com, epinions.com.
-- JKew, Mar 14 2005


[Desert fox]

Frood= really together guy

Hoopy frood= really amazingly together guy

No mention of towels is made, sorry
-- zeno, Mar 15 2005


(For those who don't know "Frood" is a refernce to the book, Hitchhicker's guide to the galaxy" by Douglas Adams.
-- myclob, Mar 16 2005



random, halfbakery