Our Vice President mistakenly shot his friend while quail hunting and has received a lot of attention for it. A colleague of mine from Texas tells me that hunting is a big social event there – “it’s like playing golf where I come from,” she said. Last month I went skeet shooting with a friend here. It was a first for me (at least on land – I tried it on a cruise ship once before), and as I think of it, it actually did feel a little like golf (there were 18 ‘stations’ on the course). In keeping with the analogy, some might think of Cheney’s incident in the same spirit as if he swung his club with his friend ahead on the fairway, didn’t call “four” and hit him with his ball. But that probably wouldn’t have made the news.

All this talk about guns reminds me of an early commentary on my book that I came across in this blog. The blog was posted on, of all places, a second amendment website. The blogger argued that if eBay will be a big part of our future of shopping (as I predict in my book), then it could ultimately affect our right to bear arms. Why? Because eBay doesn’t allow the sale of guns on its site. As eBay gets bigger and becomes mainstream, the blogger argues it could eventually control what we buy and sell.

Perhaps his argument has some merit.

This week, a government agency forced Wal-Mart to carry emergency contraception in response to a complaint filed by three women who were refused the ‘morning after’ pill. Why? Wal-Mart’s decision not to carry the product (except in Illinois where it is required to by law) had the potential to affect a large amount of the population. “Wal-Mart is not only the world’s largest company; it is also the largest company in the history of the world,” according to Charles Fishman, author of The Wal-Mart Effect.

Ebay facilitated the sale of $44 billion last year. Over 180 million people have registered to transact on their site. As it grows and becomes mainstream, its influence on consumers will match, or perhaps exceed, that of Wal-Mart’s.

Like Wal-Mart, we may soon see the day where, for better or worse, our government limits eBay from restricting the sale of certain goods because of their massive influence as well.

Globalization is a big word that offers a big promise. eBay is building marketplaces around the world or acquiring them where they already exist - companies with names like Bazee.com, Alando and MercadoLibre. These businesses operate independently, serving their local markets. Presumably, the endgame is to interconnect them, creating one massive exchange that renders consumer supply and demand completely transparent on a global level.

Cultural and language barriers may need to be bridged, but for the most part, eBay has the technological means to wire up the world today into one giant trading platform. The real challenge is logistics. In this global marketplace of the future, how do goods move from one corner of the world to another at a cost that makes one-off transactions between individuals feasible?

Built into the price of everything we buy is the cost of transportation across every point on the supply chain – all the way down to the retailer where we incur a direct and more easily measurable cost when we either consume fuel as we drive to the store to pick up the products we purchase, or pay separately for them to be shipped to us. The most significant influences of this cost are energy and efficiency.

Efficiencies resulting from technologies and economies of scale have shrunk the world – even in the face of skyrocketing energy costs. The Internet economy exists because the added cost of transporting goods is offset by the savings driven by a competitive and transparent market. But the big question remains whether there will come a day soon when someone in Bombay can purchase a computer from an apartment dweller in New York City in a transaction that makes economic sense to both parties.

The promise of a global exchange seems within reach. Will the increased market size alone create sufficient competitiveness to offset the relative high cost of international shipments? Competitiveness can only drive lower prices to the point where they hit floors created by raw materials and labor costs. Additionally, energy is intimately tied to eBay. With no short term expectations for significant reductions in energy costs, we must look to new and innovative businesses to develop novel and efficient methods to move goods across borders.

Will these services be offered by the dominant logistics players or will new companies emerge to connect the dots and reap the big rewards? How will governments respond to these transactions if at scale they threaten their local economies?

While it may seem like a flip of a switch for eBay to connect the world, there are many pieces to this puzzle that still need to be solved.

Stay tuned.