An important
“Long Tail” feature of markets is that, besides the dominant products serving the bulk of the market, diverse products also develop that serve increasingly specialized markets. A few dominant products serve a significant share of the consumers but there may be many, many more providers offering specialized forms of the product that appeal only to a very few consumers, specialty niches. So if the various products are ordered along a scale according to the number of consumers each serves, the “main” products appear to serve far more consumers than do providers down the line in popularity. The first place provider serves a large chunk of consumers, the second place provider also serves a large number of providers, but as we move down the list, the number of consumers that providers serve appear to decrease to almost miniscule volume in comparison to the first few providers.
Markets as Complex Ecologies of Human ExchangeWhat is interesting and important is that the products in the Long Tail serving very small niche markets are not necessarily of poorer quality nor are they necessarily financially less successful. They often are of high quality and well established in serving their particular specialized niche in the market. A simple notion of markets is that it is a competition among providers in which a few providers with good products chosen by consumers are rewarded and others are put out of business, the idea of economic survival of the fittest. But this idea of markets as competition is misleading. A more objective way of understanding markets is to see it as an ecology in which various producers find and adapt to their specialized niches. There are some dominant species but there are many, many more very successful but smaller species. The diversity of species arises as species cooperate by finding available niches. They tend to avoid direct competition. For example, Michael Rothschild showed how various bee species, rather than directly competing, cooperate with each other by specializing in certain times of the day and certain kinds of flowers that do not compete with other bees. The idea of ruthless competition to sort out the weak and unfit is a horrible misconception of the market. It is true providers try to protect their market share but a far more remarkable feature of the market is the extensive elaboration of cooperative relationships that constantly develop and grow. Providers cooperate with each other to buy materials and ideas to develop their products they exchange with things of value from other providers or from consumers. Relationships among providers cooperating in supply chains often remain quite stable over time. They help producers increase their efficiency and quality but buying things they can’t produce as well themselves. The market is actually a huge network of inter-related producers, an ecology of organizations that also, as a whole sell, products to end users. This huge, complex network of producers buying and selling among themselves to develop end products is matched in the most intricate and precise manner to a correspondingly complex and diverse environment of consumers. The remarkable fit between the producers products and the consumers needs is only achieved by a staggering number of individual choices governed by each individual’s values and available comparisons whether acting as either a consumer or producer.
The Mono-Culture of Centrally Planned SystemsThe immense complexity that arises in a healthy market of voluntary and mutually beneficial exchanges is far beyond the capabilities of any system of central planning. Neither product development nor consumer choices can be made by some central authority since the amount of information that would be required is staggering. And when these intricate needs are subordinated to some centrally imposed plan, it blocks the huge possibilities of human productive activity. A central plan forces activities to serve a single end sometimes using a single means, and this subordination of human activity to a central plan can do no more than block the limitless initiatives and creative acts by free individuals acting as producers and consumers. This restriction results from the inability by design of central planning to create opportunities for creation of new products and it limits complex needs by consumers to being served by a single product. In short central planning guts the system of research and development that creates specialized products that can serve more diverse consumer needs. But when the human exchanges are free, a rich market creates a vast system of discovery that central planning can only inhibit to the degree it attempts to impose its dictates. The more central planning that is imposed, the more it inhibits and represses the creation of alternatives. Since it cannot solve problems by allowing diverse initiatives of research and development of new products and choices by consumers, central planning tends to respond to problems by increasing control, not freeing up the system. The more problems there are, the more the response is to generate more centrally planned details of how to do things, and the more central planning prevents and subverts the natural free activity of the creation, construction, and exchange of value among people. A mono-culture is artificial, and by design it is an attempt to stamp out diversity. It sprays the weeds and bugs just as bureaucratic regulations and alwas kill the diverse educational delivery methods that might arise in the public schooling mono-culture. Central planning works to limit human potential; the more it tries, the more it suppresses human development. Central planning is not growth producing as are the free exchanges of humans. This difference between free systems and centrally planned ones is stunning when the amazing developments produced by societies with free markets and free thought are compared to centrally planned and controlled societies.
Incremental Adjustments of Individual ActivityWe can never fully predict the outcomes of our actions until we act. We constantly adjust and improve our plans if we can operate freely. The market is a huge opportunity to create, to act, and to try out our actions. It is an environment that offers us a rich ecology in which to create things of value to others. It is an environment for discovery. Contrary to some notions of market “competition”, we are not restricted to a single action with life or death consequences in the ruthless pursuit of survival. We can try many actions, create many incremental improvements and make constant adjustments to gradually improve our success in fitting into the ecology of values of the marketplace. Individual intelligence is a problem solving mechanism that constantly adjusts and regulates individual behavior. Humans are not designed to be obedient instruments of the directives and control of a planners. They do not need nor naturally want an external authority controlling their behaviors. Intelligence is a complex process of self-regulation and adjustment to the environment. A big central plan imposed on the many runs the almost sure risk of big failure but big plans envisioned by free individuals and organizations begin small to then grow and develop as constant improvements due to intelligence at work make them more successful. People and organizations almost never go out of business through a single act in a single stroke. Things are incremental as is success or failure; each is composed of many tiny steps moving in directions which allow humans to respond and change if they are free and not under central control.
It is true that some actions such as opening a restaurant consume larger resources and entail greater risks of cost due to failure since it requires an initial leap toward capturing a sufficient customer base, but even the closing of a restaurant doesn’t mark the demise of the owner. The restaurant is not a static thing but from the point of view of free market exchanges another series of incremental steps the owner is taking to create and develop something of value; the owner will continue to adjust his actions, perhaps to quit the current business and offer his services in another way, as a baker or cook, or perhaps he may move the location of his restaurant or change its menu or type of service. But it is not a one-shot survival issue for the owner since things are incremental and merely one of how to successively respond to the results of previous actions in current situations. The owner has neither perfect information nor do his customers but they both are constantly seeking to improve their actions and situations. The essential idea is that the owner has certain value to others, value that he will attempt to improve by refining, developing, and marketing his product. The market does not decide the fate of the owner. The market is simply the ecology that the owner more or less chooses, explores, and attempts to fit into. It is owners who all possess the problem solving intelligence who make the important choices, not the market. And it is consumers who all also possess problem solving intelligence who make important choices, not the market. The “market” is simply the idea of the totality of all the individual choices that are governing free human interactions. The more advanced the market, the more diversity and opportunity it provides to people. Thus to allow a market to develop creates more opportunities, more diverse consumer needs, and more diverse products. The market, that is the development of free, mutually beneficial human interactions creates the Long Tail of increasing specialization and choices.
Healthy, Developing Systems Produce Long TailsIt is the development over time of these kinds of healthy economic ecologies among producers matched to consumers that account for the amazing economic growth of free nations compared to those with repressive governments. The economic health of people must be judged by the overall results the society has produced because those results mean that the underlying conditions exist that produce constructive, productive development. It means various areas of the market will exhibit the Long Tail phenomenon.
The Long Tail phenomenon has a pattern; it follows a distribution curve so we can recognize it in different fields. A Long Tail means a market has advanced in its development, in the complexity of its ecology, to create such a rich economic environment that highly specialized products can then exist successfully. In short, we might judge how well a field is currently responding to diverse needs of consumers by the length of its Long Tail. In a free market many fields appear to have diverse options of products offered to consumers but in some fields these distributions of products serving specialized niches are not sufficiently developed to produce a Long Tail distribution. There are only a few dominant providers’ products that are serving most of the consumers.
Public Education—No TailA relatively new field will have only a few—initially perhaps just one—products and a few—often only rich—consumers. Over time, producers “learn” to adjust, improve, and increase the efficiency in producing the product. The costs go down and the quality goes up. When many fields develop better products at cheaper costs, consumers can buy more. They can “indulge” in more speciality products serving their more unique needs. The field along with other fields develops a Long Tail of specialized products and diverse consumers.
But it is painfully evident that some fields, some very important fields, have existed for quite some time and have not developed a Long Tail. And in fact these fields often do not develop increasing efficiencies nor improved products; they may even have increasing costs and exhibit poor, archaic, or undifferentiated products that result in an inability to serve all consumers. These fields have factors operating that limit development. Public education is one such field. The factor at work in public education that is limiting its development is the repression of opportunity, change, and choice imposed by central planning. With the increasing importance of education, the increasing costs of public schooling, and the inability to serve all students, the need for reform pushes central planning to create more details and mandates. Whereas states traditionally have had little involvement in school operations, now states have increasingly taken over school operations through the imposition of reform plans. Not only have states transformed their lack of involvement into increasing micromanagement through funding, mandates, standards, and testing, the involvement of the federal government is now rapidly escalating in its intrusion into the management of schools. In the various governments’ attempt to deliver public education, the results of the central planning that has been imposed on educators in order to control education constantly appears to need fixing, reform, and more detailed centrally planned mandates. The system is increasingly gutted of choices and opportunities as the government attempt to impose one set of curriculum goals and control quality by increased testing while at the same time gutting the system of opportunities for educators to develop new and different programs. Even charter schools, a strategy designed to open up opportunities and choices, now are subordinated to state and federal mandates in what the teach and test if not in how they operate. Since the financial burden is much too heavy if they opt out of public schools, most people must “choose” government schools, yet still about 10% choose private schools of which there is a certain variety, and about 1% choose home schooling of even greater variety. Both of these relieve the state of costs yet neither receive support and in fact are largely opposed. Virtual schools are also a “threat” due to their lower costs. They too are opposed usually through limiting regulations. Charter schools, alternative schools, magnet schools arguably are no different from government schools since they all must provide the same product; they must conform to central standards and testing. Public education (that is, those K-12 education services that the public can choose) is by law monopolized so that all services in a geographical area are delivered by a single provider, “the district.” It is very similar to the old public utility model or perhaps to a cartel. The single provider, the district, is organized by central planning and control through regulations, standards, and testing and this central planning and control (by definition a bureaucracy), now is increasingly subsumed under larger governmental units—the state and now the feds.
Educational Bureaucracies Tend to Eliminate Tails
The result is that without free activity to create new products by educators and diverse choices by consumers who are the families, there cannot be educational development. There is stasis, a rigidity in the system, created by the one-provider model that seems to require constant additions of additional mandates and controls in order to reform it and force it to change but which only make it more rigid and “bureaucratic.” Except for the one great exception of the teachers, the primary professional knowledge of school officials is not learning theory but bureaucratic expertise. The field of education is not a healthy ecology but rather an almost sterile mono-culture in which the growth of the single product is stunted.
Destructive Effects on Human DevelopmentThe great experiments of history in attempting systems of central planning of human activities have provided such overwhelming evidence as to the bankrupt and total failure of such systems to promote human growth, it borders on astonishing and unbelievable that the education of humans—what could be the single, most effective institution for promoting the successful incorporation and participation of young people into our complex and dynamic society—is still attempted by central planning but in addition is essentially protected from any serious discussion of its devastating and immoral consequences and the choices we have in changing it. It is a system that has a single producer and single choice in place of what should and could be a Long Tail of diverse, rich, specialized educational products and choices. Instead we have a rigid, inefficient, single-provider single-product system that serves at best 20 to 25% of the consumers of education.
