The Tyranny of the Market: Why You Can’t Always Get What You Want (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

This is a book for all the people out there who sit down and flip through hundreds of channels but never seem to find something they like. In it Joel Waldfogel, one of America's most interesting economists, shows exactly how many people in the marketplace end up stranded, unable to get what they want. It's a provocative statement on why free markets don't necessarily make everyone better off.
--Austan Goolsbee, The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business

The Tyranny of the Market conveys an exciting debate focusing on whether "the market gets it right," allowing each type of consumer to achieve his own goals through participating in markets. An important book.
--Matthew Kahn, University of California, Los Angeles

The Tyranny of the Market presents a fascinating account of why the market fails to satisfy preference minorities.
--Fiona Scott Morton, Yale School of Management

Joel Waldfogel takes up the mythology of the market responding to our wants and desires, and shows how it often leaves out many people who are unable to get very much of what they want...This book could be very persuasive to those who will not listen to voices that have an explicitly progressive agenda. (Tikkun )

Product Description

Economists have long counseled reliance on markets rather than on government to decide a wide range of questions, in part because allocation through voting can give rise to a "tyranny of the majority." Markets, by contrast, are believed to make products available to suit any individual, regardless of what others want. But the argument is not generally correct. In markets, you can't always get what you want. This book explores why this is so and its consequences for consumers with atypical preferences.

When fixed costs are substantial, markets provide only products desired by large concentrations of people. As a result, people are better off in their capacity as consumers when more fellow consumers share their product preferences. Small groups of consumers with less prevalent tastes, such as blacks, Hispanics, people with rare diseases, and people living in remote areas, find less satisfaction in markets. In some cases, an actual tyranny of the majority occurs in product markets. A single product can suit one group or another. If one group is larger, the product is targeted to the larger group, making them better off and others worse off.

The book illustrates these phenomena with evidence from a variety of industries such as restaurants, air travel, pharmaceuticals, and the media, including radio broadcasting, newspapers, television, bookstores, libraries, and the Internet.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 216 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; First Edition edition (October 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674025814
• ISBN-13: 978-0674025813
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #982,340 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, October 30, 2007

By	Dendrite (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews

This book makes a great companion to Chris Anderson's The Long Tail. Anderson talks about an emerging trend where some businesses do cater to minority interests. The Tyranny of the Market examines the much more common case facing us today, where businesses cater to the majority and leave others out. It's a useful examination of why they do this, and what the consequences are.

4 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars So we all can't get what we want...why is that tyranny?, October 22, 2007

By	David R. Uitenbroek - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

What a waste of paper and peoples time. In the end you can't decide what is better, government intervention or let the free market decide. The idea that the market should cater to small amounts of consumers is ludicrous with no suggestions on how to economically do it? So majority rules is Tyranny...ho hum. If you like fruitless debate with no deciveness, if you like living in the gray, this book is for you.