Brad has a great post up on the USV blog. My favorite part:

Is there a basis for competition beyond the governance systems underlying these services? If pressed, I would guess it will be values. It might be possible for two equally effective governance systems to compete by internalizing different values.

Values as the competitive element in the governance layer of the stack… what a hot concept.

We are starting to see companies compete on values already. Think about companies emphasizing their double bottom lines in both profits and community benefit, like craigslist or Google. Or the competing values of ReviewMe vs PayPerPost as they walk the line of journalistic ethics. Or the recently released Do The Right Thing, a platform for people to converse about competing company values. I am glad to see competition in values, and I hope this recent rise in ethics is more than a trend. We would all be better for it.

Anyway, this comment only scratches the tip of the iceberg. Give Brad’s post a read.