CapitalismWithoutCapital

ThoughtStorms Wiki

ArnoldKling's take on TheLongTail : http://www.techcentralstation.com/010305A.html

Basically says that trying new ideas required less capital investment due to the efficiencies provided by the internet and InternetCulture.

When a new project can be hatched in a basement on a small budget, fast failure is more efficient than organized planning. Galbraith, writing in an era when the economy was dominated by heavy industry and oligopolies, saw entrepreneurship as little more than a quaint myth. Bhide, writing more recently, sees the entrepreneur as thriving in circumstances of high ambiguity and low capital intensity – situations that have become increasingly prevalent in the computer age, particularly with the advent of the Internet.

On government :

Our government is much more at home in the industrial age. It is familiar with taxing and regulating concentrated industries. It is not at all used to dealing with the "long tail."

The philosophical and technical differences between regulating a concentrated industry and a long-tail industry are enormous.

The ability of companies to care for their employees will decrease. So therefore a choice of a greater WelfareState or smaller government and more individualistic self-help.

Kling, of course, will have none of the first alternative.

yet most indicators of economic well-being, such as the home ownership rate, suggest that prosperity remains broad-based

Hmmm. Home ownership rate? What about hours worked? Hourly salary? Risk? Stress?

Compare :

Contrast :