Bill Gates' book The Road Ahead predicted that computers and communication would remove many of the barriers to doing business. Yet once you place an order in the virtual world, the proceedure for sending you the physical goods would be recognizable to a 20th- or 19th- or even 18th-century merchant. Warehouses box an order, and huge trucks pick it up and roar around suburban neighborhoods or industrial parks to deliver it to its destination. Japanese factories that implement "Just In Time" lean production are often surrounded by a traffic jam of vendor delivery trucks delivering ten chips for this assembly and five metal racks for that one.
What if frictionless information transfer were coupled with SkyTranFreightDelivery -- literally frictionless physical delivery? Not only energy but economic efficiency could skyrocket. You ain't SEEN outsourcing yet! Electronics and information technology such as Amazon's provides the means to orchestrate a single business process from the activities of many vendors today. However once an enterprise can effortlessly distribute its physical facilities throughout a metropolitan area (see SkyTranEqualsElevator), there is far less reason for an enterprise to have its own employees doing other than core business functions. The idea of a company having its own cafeteria, HR department, or maintenance crew will seem as out-of-date as a Soviet collective farm or pre-Civil-War plantation in the American South manufacturing its own farm equipment. The pace of today's manufacturing will seem glacially slow compared to ExtremeJustInTime; mass-produced clothing or household products or industrial equipment will seem soo twentieth-century compared with ExtremeCustomization.