The long tail

James De Long has some interesting comments on Chris Anderson's article "The Long Tail," at Wired, "which discussed one of the most important aspects of the Internet Age: that customers for entertainment products are digging deep into the catalogue, and that the non-hits are actually more important sources of revenue than the hits"; and an article by Arnold Kling at TechCentralStation, where he "ponders the implications for the productive process, noting that the existence of such aggregating businesses as Google or eBay, or iTunes, can lower the cost of entry for many types of businesses and facilitate the creation of "capitalism without capital," a development of immense importance for the structure of economic activity."