Long Tail Dead?

Matt Stoller — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:50:55 GMT

One of the key concepts behind libertarian techno-utopianism and the lack of social awareness in Silicon Valley is the 'Long Tail', this notion that while there is a bunch of economic activity concentrated in 'hits', there is a huge amount of activity located in millions of non-hit products. For instance, Britney Spears sells five million copies of her record, but 5000 cool independent artists will also sell 1000 copies of their record. This will lead to a wonderful sprouting of innovation and social justice for all, along with the cool inequality that neoliberals love because they can still become billionaires and keep their companies safe from anti-trust investigations.

Tom Slee has been pointing out for years that the Long Tail concept is not supported by data, and it seems like he's finally won the debate. I don't know what public policy consequences this entails, but the Long Tail concept was part of the set of ideas suggestive that the internet and transparency and its rich-friendly cousins would solve all social ills without the need for unions and government action and other stupid things progressives tend to like. The internet's very nifty and transformative, but public policies premised on utopian liberatarian concepts probably won't work.

Exciting News About Tom Slee

Matt Stoller — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:18:52 GMT

Tom Slee, who none of you probably know, has a blog called Whimsley. Why is this cool news? Because Slee wrote the best book I've read all year about liberal politics, called No One Makes You Shop at Walmart. Slee is a programmer and an activist who has used behavioral economics and/or game theory to make a case against free market fundamentalism, or as he calls it 'MarketThink'.

Slee's blog is also excellent and a welcome liberal critique of a lot of the techno-utopianism coming from the Boing Boing/Malcolm Gladwell crowd. The debates Slee has framed are going to become more important over the next few years, as the Obama administration is going to lean heavily on people like Cass Sunstein and his fashionable phrase 'libertarian paternalism' in his new best-seller Nudge, which basically argue that the government should nibble around the edges of our social problems using openness and defaults and opt-ins and opt-outs and better displays of information. Don't worry, the long tail and the internet will make everything better!

Slee is discussing the hard realities of power, really going after this centrist theory of the world with an elegance and force I haven't seen anywhere else.

I suppose it's not really news, since Slee has had the blog since June, 2007. But it is news for me.

Open Left - Tom Slee

Long Tail Dead?

Exciting News About Tom Slee