Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Imagine each consumer having to maintain relationships with ... tens of farmers Farmers' markets are great.
>Farmers' markets are great. Fyi if you didn't already know... the farmers' markets are themselves a type of middlemen. (At least every one I've shopped at in the USA.) The farmers' market rents out the booth spaces to vendors (farmers). It's a real-world "platform" to bring together buyers and sellers. The farmers' cost to rent the space is embedded into the prices the consumers pay. A true individual relationship w…
From a "commercial marketplace" POV, it's basically a farce. There's no security -- it's literally just a folding table full of food on someone's porch with a clipboard to mark that you've taken your share for the week -- and the supply varies with the weather, crop conditions, and even mundane things like "the delivery truck broke down this week; shares will be small and/or late."
And yet: everyone gets fed, the farmer gets paid, and it all ends up being price-competitive with a grocery store (much less a farmer's market).
We also patronize a farmer's market for the "showcase" products that succeed there: big pretty loaves of bread, flats of fruit, etc. It's still cheaper than any high-end grocery store, the shelf life is amazing b/c it hasn't traveled 1000 miles on a truck, and we get to interact directly with the folks who make the food.
The catch -- and it's a big one, in terms of classic microeconomic indicators -- is that we can't get an arbitrary amount of any chosen good at a competitive price right on the spot. Want peaches, but the stall sold out or bugs got this week's share? Sorry; hope cherries are okay this week. Don't like turnips or beets? Well, you might need to trade with someone who does, or find a new way to prepare 'em.
There's also no "economy of scale" to speak of; the largest vendors are probably a couple of bakers who make O(thousands) of loaves per day, or the ranchers and fishermen who show up with coolers full of frozen steaks and fillets (b/c one cow or fishing boat load actually feeds a lot of people).
Oh, and basically every farmer's market is also a localized barter economy. If you watch you can see the vendors roaming between stalls, offering trades and samples with other purveyors. After-hours, there are a _lot_ of boxes of food moving from one stall to another just before the left-overs get loaded back into the truck.
So yes, strictly speaking these are all "marketplaces". It's a far cry though from Amazon swooping in to undercut the successful products on their own platform, or any major store chain selling shelf space to the highest bidder to create -- rather than respond to -- consumer demand.
Obviously it doesn't work for every product or service, but there's definitely a space to accept a little less efficiency in favor of community-level resilience.