The Sub-Utopianism of the Market

"That sounds like bad news for me, because I'm a member of an extremely small group (membership=1), and my preferences are far outside the norm. Yet I'm regularly delighted by how well the market serves me. In fact, whenever I make a mental note of a product I want but can't get, it usually only takes a year or two for the market to see to my needs."

Shocking as this might Bryan, perhaps this means you aren't as special as you think. If the market is really getting out products that you want within 1 year, then it seems intuitively obvious that you aren't a member of a group of 1. Rather, you are a member of a series of sub-groups with membership far > 1. Perhaps the intersection of all these subgroups leads to a group of 1. Or maybe not.

I think you've missed the mark with your commentary on this topic.

The set of people who want to buy Bernard Haitink's 1988 performance of Die Walküre may not equal one, but it's still pretty darn small. Markets may not service everyone down at the tip of the long tail, but I'm not sure who Waldfogel thinks would do a better job.

Presumably, small groups with preferences outside the norm would be better served under socialism.

"Comrade! After the Revolution, you WILL like strawberries!"

Tyranny of course can only come from the government. Not from spontaneous orders like the market. In Europe for instance there are such tyrannical things like shopping hours. If I want to buy a book on a sunday afternoon I can't because shops cannot open their doors. Now it of course isn't certain that there will be bookshops open on Sunday when there are no restrictions. Only one customer will probably not be enough to make a profit. But if there are the market will have found another niche, in a spontanous way, and my needs will be met, which isn't possible with legal restrictions. I think we call somethink like that evolution, not tyranny.

Try being gluten-intolerant in 1988.

Please forgive this shameless self-promotion. I tried to get to Dr. Waldfogel to cite me in his book, since we both stumbled upon this theoretical result independently and simultaneously. He wouldn't, so for those economists researching this area, my paper and theoretical derivations were published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Industrial Organization in 2006, under the title, "Less Choice is Better, Sometimes." Volume 4, Issue 1.

I don't focus on the tyranny of the market, but the tyranny of choice, but my model provides the same implications as Dr. Waldfogel.

The group of people who truly find the market fails to deliver heavily intersects with those who find reality unsatisfying.

Bryan, I would go further. If you're in the tails of the distribution, collective choice is terrifying. At least with a market, there is always some incentive to serve niche groups. But if the median voter decides, she will pick something that appeals to her, which is by assumption not something that appeals to people in the tails.