Paulies: What Don't You Agree With?

[LIFTICVSMAXIMVS]

[quote]pookie wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
True, but how many businesses are actually capable of a monopoly without government interference?

Microsoft. Standard Oil.[/quote]
Microsoft was never a monopoly and neither was Std Oil. Standard oil took part in some practices that may have been questionable but it was never a monopoly. In a completely free market there is nothing wrong with monopoly as long as competition is not barred from entering the market. Microsoft has Macintosh to compete.

Whenever a corporation, for whatever reason, ends up controlling near or over 90% of a market… it gets to be very difficult for others to enter the same market, even if they have a better idea on how to do it.

Yes, this is true. But if the company with a large market share can continue to satisfy customers is this a problem? As long as the larger company does not use unfair practices to restrict competition this is not an issue. This is why courts exist and precisely why the SCotUS stepped in to break up Std Oil. The funny thing is they were the Wal-Mart of their day for oil. They forced their competitors to sell at lower prices and threatened to not ship their oil via railroad unless they complied.[quote]

There has never been a monopoly without government interference and when there is potential for a monopoly without interference it must be because their products are cheap and superior if there are no other competitors in the same business. Mac and Microsoft should come to mind.

Exactly. But then Microsoft used their OS near-monopoly to destroy Netscape. They gave an inferior browser for free, and placed it prominently on the desktop giving most people little incentive to go and get another browser. Netscape died in a matter of months…

The customers were also the losers here. It made the internet browser market (arguable one of the most used application for a lot of people) a secondary market where only businesses that had another “money making” area were willing to “compete.”

To this day, MSIE is still the most widely used browser, even though it’s generally inferior and a couple of years behind everything else.
[/quote]
But none of this was fixed with regulation. It required the courts which is why they exist. To protect property rights, etc.

Still, there are some cases where it’s very hard to avoid government regulation. Nature and natural resources, for example. If you own the land, you’ll be very reluctant to let others tell you what you’re allowed to do with it. But if we want to leave our descendants something that is still inhabitable, we have no choice but to restrict corporate greed at some point.

My argument is that regulation doesn’t fix the problem of human error. They are usually just big, bureaucratic, red tape agencies that eat up taxes that are still prone to error. The FDA is the biggest one that comes to mind. Why couldn’t this function be run privately by competing interests if it were really necessary?

[pookie]

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Microsoft was never a monopoly and neither was Std Oil. Standard oil took part in some practices that may have been questionable but it was never a monopoly. In a completely free market there is nothing wrong with monopoly as long as competition is not barred from entering the market. Microsoft has Macintosh to compete.[/quote]

Ha! Good one.

Having your product on 95% of the world’s PCs and forcing PC producers to sign drastic license agreement that give you complete control of the boot sector (to prevent other OSes from being offered/installed) might not be a total monopoly, at least in theory, but in practice, it’s close enough.

Furthermore, the government disagrees with you. Both Microsoft and Standard Oil were found guilty of abusing their monopoly under U.S. law.

Yes, this is true. But if the company with a large market share can continue to satisfy customers is this a problem?

But that’s not what happens. The company who enjoys the large market share can and generally will manoeuvre so that it’s difficult for others to enter the market. Either by patenting “standards”, through endless litigation (when it has deeper pockets than it’s competitor) or by outright buying any start up and maintaining the status quo.

In those ways, the “free market” is not free, but under corporate control. The invisible hand is tied up.

As long as the larger company does not use unfair practices to restrict competition this is not an issue.

I’ve yet to see a successful company that doesn’t use every mean at it’s disposal to maintain every advantage it has.

DC wouldn’t be crawling with lobbyists if every company was content with playing fair under the established rules.

This is why courts exist and precisely why the SCotUS stepped in to break up Std Oil. The funny thing is they were the Wal-Mart of their day for oil. They forced their competitors to sell at lower prices and threatened to not ship their oil via railroad unless they complied.

Where was the free market there? Do you think the prices would have remained low after the competition had gone belly-up?

There has never been a monopoly without government interference and when there is potential for a monopoly without interference it must be because their products are cheap and superior if there are no other competitors in the same business. Mac and Microsoft should come to mind.

PCs had no inherent superiority to Macs… they “won” mostly because businesses trusted IBM more than they did Apple and probably because Apple was run by elitist snobs who didn’t understand the needs of businesses. While on the PC side you could get products like Oracle, Sybase, Postgress and similar, on the Apple side you had… Filemaker?

But none of this was fixed with regulation. It required the courts which is why they exist. To protect property rights, etc.

Because it was a case of “too little, too late.” MSIE was already the de facto browser by the time MS got its court date.

My argument is that regulation doesn’t fix the problem of human error. They are usually just big, bureaucratic, red tape agencies that eat up taxes that are still prone to error. The FDA is the biggest one that comes to mind. Why couldn’t this function be run privately by competing interests if it were really necessary?

I won’t argue that there is waste and bureaucratic inefficiency in those regulatory organizations. The problem with private regulation is that they can’t enact laws and penalties for non-compliance. So while they might establish basic ground rules, issue licenses, publish “blacklists” of bad faith members, etc. they really have no stick (and very little carrot) to actually regulate.

[lixy]

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Microsoft was never a monopoly and neither was Std Oil. Standard oil took part in some practices that may have been questionable but it was never a monopoly. In a completely free market there is nothing wrong with monopoly as long as competition is not barred from entering the market. Microsoft has Macintosh to compete.

Whenever a corporation, for whatever reason, ends up controlling near or over 90% of a market… it gets to be very difficult for others to enter the same market, even if they have a better idea on how to do it.
[/quote]

I agree with the sentiment, but for all intents and purposes, Microsoft is a monopoly. They’re loosing ground by the day though. In a decade’s time, their market shares will plummet spectacularly. You watch!

On a related note, MS is already feeling the heat and taking action.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hJ0MTN1bAAu9mxQWG-IjhCfTxMYwD8UT82980

[LIFTICVSMAXIMVS]

[quote]pookie wrote:
I’ve yet to see a successful company that doesn’t use every mean at it’s disposal to maintain every advantage it has.

Where was the free market there? Do you think the prices would have remained low after the competition had gone belly-up?
[/quote]
You are attempting to argue that businesses and customers have inherent rights that do not actually exist. There are no such thing as customer rights or business rights. Businesses have every right to protect their property as long as they do not use illegal practices that violate individual rights.

Microsoft did nothing illegal. Hardware manufacturers made a decision that they though their customers would accept to give the best product. All of this was done by voluntary contract.

If I was a third party software developer (Netscape, for example) and I wanted to get my product distributed on the same boxes running MS but I needed access to some piece of MS logic to make it work do I have a right to force my standards or would it have to be a voluntary arrangement between myself and MS? Does MS have to accept my proposal? If they do not allow me access to their proprietary logic is this a violation of my rights? If hardware manufacturers are under contractual obligation to distribute only MS software isn’t that their business whether they sign the agreement or not?

Oh, and thanks to these court decisions we now have to purchase MS Office Suite as a stand-alone product which is pretty damn expensive when it used to be bundled with the OS and “free”. How does this help customers?

[Beowolf]

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Oh, and thanks to these court decisions we now have to purchase MS Office Suite as a stand-alone product which is pretty damn expensive when it used to be bundled with the OS and “free”. How does this help customers?[/quote]

If nothing else it’s led to a exponentially increasing “market” for free open-source software.

[LIFTICVSMAXIMVS]

[quote]Beowolf wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Oh, and thanks to these court decisions we now have to purchase MS Office Suite as a stand-alone product which is pretty damn expensive when it used to be bundled with the OS and “free”. How does this help customers?

If nothing else it’s led to a exponentially increasing “market” for free open-source software.[/quote]

Again, I ask what does that do for the 99% of the people who don’t even know what that means.

Open source has always had a niche market. Those of us with the capabilities would never let something as trivial as a bootlock stop us from loading linux, for example.

[Chris82362]

[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
I don’t believe in the magic of free markets. Markets don’t conform to the laws of math and physics. Markets are just a herd of people, and people are corrupt, short-sighted, and stupid, and herds are prone to panic at the drop of a hat. Sure, herds have their own sort of logic that can be understood and predicted to some extent, but that doesn’t mean they should be allowed to run wild. I believe in the necessity of some laws and regulations to keep the playing field somewhat honest. Like Ron Paul, I don’t think it is the government’s job to manage or try to “stimulate” the economy. Their job is only to punish fraud, theft, and break up trusts that stifle competition. Regulations should always be limited in scope, and we shouldn’t let the government get carried away, as it always likes to.

[/quote]

I’m pretty sure a completely free market is the best way to go. It turned Hong Kong from shit to awesome in about 20 years. You can start a business in a day in Hong Kong. Basically all America has is safety nets, which try to weed out fraud and help people who are failing in a business. Hong Kong now has the second highest average income in the world, second to the US (in a video I watched that was around 2002)
I think our government is fine, we have just the right amount of security, without withholding any rights.