I really, really thought long and hard about sending this response. Ultimately, I decided it was important, not to refute your contentions, which I do (that's a bonus) :-), but to call on Mr. Buff to ask him to stop bring political ideology into these discussions.
I'm really sick and tired of this misguided right wing conservative BUNK (theory) that markets are always efficient and government intervention is always bad. Recent circumstances PROVE that markets are NOT efficient and a lack of government intetervention because of DEregulation (repeal of Glass-Stegall) was bad. That's my first point of contention with your email. My second point of contention is with your intimation that Microsoft is not a monopoly or that laws limiting monopolies are "smelly stuff". Microsoft's OS's are on ~90%+ of computers (1). Wikipedia defines a monopoly as: Monopolies are thus characterized by a lack of economic competition<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition>for the good <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_(economics)> or service<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_(economics)>that they provide and a lack of viable substitute goods <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitute_good>. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader as to how one supplier or a few suppliers of a particular good is bad but will point to the oil industry and OPEC and the summer of 2007 as a possible example. Finally, I'm calling you out. It was 7 hours after the comment was made, one might consider the thread dead. You added nothing technical or material to the discussion. You chose not to demonstrate or prove how Microsoft isn't a monopoly, yet took the opportunity to make clear how you felt about anti-trust laws. This also isn't the first time that you revived a "dead" thread to make a political comment. On August 15th, after Stu had asked the list members to cease commenting on the Salaries thread you sent an email three days after all discussion had ended bringing it all back to life with nothing but your political opinion. I'm only bothering to comment at all, because you, sir, seem to want to inject your political opinion into many threads, but yet don't provide any basis or fact behind your opinions. Here's what I hope: that some day all people, whether they are American or otherwise realize that concentrating any power into any organization has a risk of corrupting whether that organization is government or a corporation, and when you combine the two you get a geometric increase in the rate of corruption (example, see the past 8 years and currently ongoing). (1) http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp Yes, I am completely aware that I am responding to this thread over an hour after your email appeared (it was initially just a few minutes) and potentially keeping the thread alive. I am not afraid to debate, but it's quite clear that you and I are diametrically opposed on the ideological spectrum and will likely not change each other's minds. Further, I find your quote from the August 15th email referenced above from the Daily Oklahoman to be completely true and will have what some liberals would consider to be conservative values. I have a nuanced political ideology and hold positions that are both liberal and conservative and depend on the issue, much like the recently deceased Robert Novak or the esteemed former Solicitor General, Ted Olson, who is representing gays and lesbians in their fight against California Prop 8, and finally Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican Preseident who is largely instrumental in developing the modern framework of antitrust laws. On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Kurt Buff <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 07:15, Ben Scott<[email protected]> wrote: > > On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 12:54 PM, John Gwinner<[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Personally, I always wondered why Ford can sell cars with 'dealer > >> installed' tires (known to be fatally defective at one time), but > >> selling a PC with a browser bundled is somehow different. > > > > Because Ford does not have a monopoly on the automotive market. > > > > Microsoft got (and gets) in trouble for using its monopoly powers in > > ways which violate anti-trust laws. Not simply for shipping their > > browser with their OS, and not simply for being a monopoly, but using > > their monopoly to promote their browser. > > > > -- Ben > > Beg to differ. > > They get in trouble because they are successful, and therefore the > antitrust laws are applied to them. Antitrust laws are a crock of > smelly stuff. > > I'm no fan of MSFT, but the antitrust laws that it, and Intel, and > others, have been slammed with are unjust and unAmerican. I expect > this, unfortunately, of the EU, but hope some day that the Americans > will wake up and learn that freedom is their friend, not the > government. > > Kurt > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
