Every morning I listen to the radio while I’m getting ready for work. Today was kind of interesting in that there were several sound bites from the president and would be presidents about various ideas to solve the “energy crisis.” While I have chosen a specific candidate for whom I am rooting, I have to say that my candidate’s response did not impress me. In fact, none of the proposed suggestions impressed me. Each seemed to be a half assed suggestion designed to get votes that would end up costing us more money in the long run and would not present a real solution to the problem.

After the politicians got done railing about things government could do to solve the problems, there was another story that caught my attention. It seems the Rockefeller family is demanding that Exxon Mobil invest more money into research on alternate fuels sources. You see, the Rockefeller family has a $4 billion stake in Exxon Mobil and they have this crazy idea that maybe the company should do a little work to develop potential revenue streams in case the public has actually gotten the notion that dependence on a finite resource for all of their energy needs is sort of a bad idea, or in case that finite resource reaches the ultimate fruition of its finiteness. While this is obviously an instance of the Rockefellers wanting to remain rich (and who can blame them?), it is refreshing to see someone stepping up and saying “Hey, you know what, we have a few billion dollars in record breaking profits this year, let’s get ahead of the curve, stop waiting for government subsidies to support this research and let’s just knuckle down and build something.” In other words: getting America back to the business of doing business, instead of hiding in a corner bitching about foreign competition, waiting for someone to hand them a subsidy, a tax break, and a tariff to cover their ass…

By now you are sitting there thinking, “What the hell does this have to do with electronic retailing?” Well, hearing about the Rockefellers take action made me wonder: Although I don’t have $4 billion invested in a single chunk with a company I can influence, let alone $4 billion, I started wondering if there was stuff I could be doing that would make a little dent in the fuel situation. The consensus seems to be that fuel prices are being driven higher by demand. So, the solution would be to stop buying gas. Well that’s all well and good, but I already use public transportation to get to work (a luxury we have in DC), so the only reason I ever really use my car is to go shopping.

That was when it occurred to me that shopping online or over the phone is the equivalent of carpooling to buy stuff. Here’s the scenario: on my street there is never a parking space… (more…)

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