Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 22:56:32 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: <jmdupx@yahoo.com>, <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Microsoft bashers Message-ID: <005b01c12ebd$05b18060$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <3B898505.23582.B20BFA4@localhost>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of jmdupx@yahoo.com >Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2001 3:24 PM >To: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: RE: Microsoft bashers > > > >I dont often post here, but I think a broader issue has been >overlooked in this thread, the fact that computer innovation (at least >all of the developments that have been raised in this thread, i.e. the >first GUI, the first mouse, the Internet and so on) has been virtually >exclusively carried forward by corporate businesses or private >individuals who have turned their ideas into corporations as soon as >they have proved popular enough, so ultimately this driving force >has always been bound up with commercial interest at one level or >another > >Leaving aside the specific crimes Microsoft may or may not have >been guilty of, or the contribution it may or may not have made to >computing i think the whole question is a great reminder that the >free-market economic model can have its flip-side too > >It may have a lot of advantages over other tried and failed systems, >but i think we would be fools to forget that it can leave open the >possibility for a corporation to achieve or attempt an abusive >manipulation of its section of a market - this could be Microsoft or >any other corporation, but the point is still the same - the more >dependent a society becomes on a single corporation's product or >products, the easier or more likely it is the corporation would try to >unfairly influence or dominate a market > I would amend the last sentence of that to "the easier or more likely it is that an individual will use a corporation to try to unfairly influence or dominate a market " This danger is known and has been known for a long time. It is why antitrust laws were written. Any economic prof will tell you that in a purely capitalistic system, that ultimately all global markets will collapse into monopolies. A system of monopolies is the normal end result state of a pure free market. The only answer to fix this is, of course, government. Only governments can enforce laws and contracts. The problem is that ever since the Reagan years we have had a string of conservatives (in the US at least) that have been telling us that government is evil and must be reduced. Now an entire generation has been raised on this fodder and believes it utterly. Meanwhile all this anti-government claptrap has not succeed in reducing government one bit - instead it has merely weakened it to the point that enormous numbers of special interest groups are now manipulating it and we end up with a system that's even worse than the supposedly bad government that it was meant to replace. Fortunately, the pendulum appears to be starting to swing back. The rolling blackouts in California were the obvious end result of these stupid anti-government deregulation campaigns, and now people are starting to realize that the last 20 years of populist crap is exactly that - crap. And, in the US we now have a crushing national debt that we didn't have 20 years ago that will prevent the conservatives from initiating deficit spending to pump up the economy, and thus conning all the fools into believing that the deregulation is what jump-started the economy, instead of the real reason - mass printing of funny money. It is definitely not a good time for Microsoft to be spouting it's "Help the nasty government is beating up on us with anti-trust laws" excuses. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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