The Rational Optimist (P.S.)

by Matt Ridley

Commerce is good for minorities, too. If you don’t like the outcome of an election you have to lump it; if you don’t like your hairdresser, you can find another. Political decisions are by definition monopolistic, disenfranchising and despotically majoritarian; markets are good at supplying minority needs. The other day I bought a device for attaching a fly-fishing rod to my car. How long would I have had to wait in 1970s Leningrad before some central planner had the bright idea of supplying such a trivial need? The market found it. Moreover, thanks to the internet, the economy is getting better and better at meeting the desires of minorities. Because the very few people in the world who need fishing rod attachments or books on fourteenth-century suicide can now find suppliers on the web, niches are thriving. The ‘long tail’ of the distribution – the very many products that are each wanted by very few, rather than vice versa – can be serviced more and more easily.