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Salon has a more balanced article, based on real life experience. The author's experience echoes my own:

• curiosity in a novel, intuitively appealing layout
• experimentation, which gets nowhere until I start using it on the job
• confusion, during which time I can type neither Sholes nor Dvorak
• breakthrough after about a month

QWERTY keyboards were expressly designed to be inferior

Mostly an urban myth popularized by Dvorak.
Reason.com
UT Dallas

1Alpha7

There is some excellent reporting on the whole FCC micro-radio topic here, and also here

These were written a few monthes back, and don't apply to the recent stupidity of congress. They are, however, an excellent review of issue of the FCC and their recent positions on micro-radio.


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man sig

There is some excellent reporting on the whole FCC micro-radio topic here, and also here

These were written a few monthes back, and don't apply to the recent stupidity of congress. They are, however, an excellent review of issue of the FCC and their recent positions on micro-radio.


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man sig

Unlike tangible goods and real property, the nature of IP -- or any form of knowledge -- is to spread."

Looks a lot like "Information wants to be free" to me.. :)

Yes, but then he goes on to say

As far as IP being worthy of being safeguarded, it matters little to me whether or not a week's worth of my labor was spent fashioning a dining room table or writing code -- both consumed part of my life and are fruits of my labor, and I want both to be guarded from those who would take them without my giving me something in exchange.

The (unspoken) implication is that copyright, patents, and other forms of IP are OK, although strictly speaking he did not state that explicitly.

I think he (and a lot of people, both here and elsewhere) need to be educated and made to realize (or at least confront and argue against) the notion that a government mandated and enforced monopoly isn't necessary for IP creators to be fairly compensated and, furthermore, has a stifling impact on the field of endeavor so affected, not to mention the society, culture, and the economy as a whole.

Nevertheless, while Libertarians are split on the question of IP (and he perhaps falls on the wrong side of that debate), he is quite correct in saying that "our first step on the road to freedom is to return to the Constitution as the rule of law for our nation." We can (and must) fix the debacle that is IP, but he argues (perhaps correctly) that getting bogged down in that is putting the cart before the horse.

Although I disagree with his (implied) stance on patents and copyrights, I have been persuaded to vote for Harry Browne over Ralph Nader nevertheless. There is no candidate I agree with on every issue, but I agree with Harry Browne's agenda on far more points than I do with any other candidate.

(And yes, as someone who was going to vote for Ralph Nader based on his stance WRT corporate and special interests influencing government, I have had my mind changed. This happens from time to time, if one's mind is truly open.)

Reason Online Magazine handles many issues involved in the above debate, including "Violent entertainment doesn't neccessarily mean a violent society" here

Check out Reason Mag. And check out this for a breakdown of where Gore and Bush stand on technology issues.

Reason Online Magazine handles many issues involved in the above debate, including "Violent entertainment doesn't neccessarily mean a violent society" here

Check out Reason Mag. And check out this for a breakdown of where Gore and Bush stand on technology issues.

Reason Online Magazine handles many issues involved in the above debate, including "Violent entertainment doesn't neccessarily mean a violent society" here

Check out Reason Mag. And check out this for a breakdown of where Gore and Bush stand on technology issues.

Steve B sez...:
This is impossible on its face. Every complication was put there to serve some political special interest; removing any of them is inherently a political decision.

Yeah. Brin needs to consider Von Hayek. Centralized planning is dumber, not smarter. I see a return to feudalism all right - but it's Th e Road to Serfdom ..." The thesis of The Road to Serfdom, for instance, is not simply that central planning is inefficient because it blocks the flow of information. Rather, Hayek argues that substituting government plans for individual plans requires imposing a single hierarchy of values and overriding the diverse tradeoffs individuals would prefer. "One best way"--even for education, retirement saving or health care--is a prescription for tyranny or vicious political conflict. "

The payoff for progessive government is dead bodies. The intellectual distance from the DemocRATS to the Nazis is a thin line, and it's getting narrower all the time.

"BUT PEOPLE WILL HAVE SEX WITH DOGS!"

Gold in this context is a currency, like any other, except that its value relative to other currencies isn't easily under the control of any one government - rather, it's manipulable by _many_ entities (note what happens when, for example, a large central bank announces it's going to be selling part of its gold reserves).

It's not subject to inflation per se - but in a world of multiple, competing currencies, in which few things people are interested in buying are priced in gold, it's hardly a rock solid store of real-world value. Look at, say, this chart, best I could come up with in 10 seconds on Google :-) - finding a comparable chart for USD inflation is left as an exercise for the reader - but note that USD inflation peaked during the periods between points 3 and 5 on the graph - coincident with a spectacular decline in the gold price. Gold was US$296 in 6/1982 (in 1982 dollars). It's slightly under that now I think. That's in 2000 dollars. What was that about inflation again?

In an environment where gold (or some other designated commodity) were the standard currency that everyone used, e-gold might make sense. But as things stand now, where everything you want to buy is priced in dollars (or Euro or pounds or yen etc.), the friction of buying and selling e-gold and the metal storage costs make e-gold impractical.. and the stuff about gold being a valid inflation hedge and it not being subject to government manipulation is IMO hooey (see above).

I was talking about this with people at a conference I was at earlier this year... as I recall, I think what I said was e-gold would make more sense if the e-gold marketplace itself were open - so that the buying, selling, and storage or metal was handled by multiple competing companies, rather than the one gold firm that was behind e-gold. I can't check the site to see if the market has been opened up - I doubt it given the absurd spreads they were charging. With real competition spreads (the difference between buy and sell) might go down and using e-gold as an exchange medium behind real-world transactions would start to make sense. I still wouldn't use it unless there was a way to, say, earn interest on my idle cash, er, gold, and do other things I can normally and easily do with dollars. 'Till then, I think it's just for the gold bugs.

There is, or used to be, a great, and active, discussion section on e-gold over at Free-Market Net.

(Bonus! He's alive!)

Dave Barry. The Falwell piece was especially amusing, but he covered the Republican convention and has plans to cover the Democrat convention the same way shortly. He tends to do a better job on the conventions than some of the "serious" journalists, and all of his recent convention columns are at that URL.

For more about his libertarian politics (which tend to match mine) see:this interview. BTW, Dave Barry isn't just right & Paulina Borsook's wrong (although that's so, IMO) he's also a FAR better writer. I find Paulina downright tedious in her partisan, repetitive zeal to paint libertarians as all-one-thing. Wrong.

Mr. Barry also won't blow his own horn about it (and he has a right not to tell Paulina what he does with HIS! money) but I happen to know that he's a generous person, too -- as if that matters to this "debate." In fact, I find the spectacle of pre-announced, feted, giving (like Ted Turner's immense gift to the UN) to be distasteful for a number of reasons, and certainly every bit as political & ideological as a gift to the Boy Scouts or the NRA, whether or not the news media choose to paint it as such. I refuse to disclose or defend, to Paulina or anyone else who can't mind her own business, my charitable activities.
JMR

This review of Cyberselfish is from Reason magazine, which is a libertarian publication.

This review of Cyberselfish is from Reason magazine, which is a libertarian publication.

This is a bad book, unlearned in its titular subject, petulant, and poorly argued. It is tempting simply to dismiss it and move on. Despite its shoddy quality, however, Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High-Tech is not irrelevant. Far from it. The book is fascinating as a case study in the reasoning and psychology behind opposition to the mix of individualism and anti-statism that characterizes contemporary libertarian thought.

This is a bad book, unlearned in its titular subject, petulant, and poorly argued. It is tempting simply to dismiss it and move on. Despite its shoddy quality, however, Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High-Tech is not irrelevant. Far from it. The book is fascinating as a case study in the reasoning and psychology behind opposition to the mix of individualism and anti-statism that characterizes contemporary libertarian thought.

For a Libertarian critique of the book, try Cybersilly, published in Reason magazine.

So what is Borsook's case beyond pique, beyond finding Bionomics conferences to be "little shops of horror," beyond lamenting that technolibs prefer Edge Cities to "real" urban centers, beyond finding libertarians "psychically exhausting"? Boiled down, she makes two arguments: First, high-tech people have no right to attack government since their industry would not have existed without government funding. Second, successful businesses are successful because they operate in a world where governments keep schools going, food and drugs pure, banks honest, and the like.

The first argument is simply a non sequitur. Government is involved with just about any commercial transaction or field imaginable, if only because it builds roads. But the fact that the government paves streets hardly makes it responsible for all the businesses that spring up alongside them. (There is, moreover, ample evidence that road building would continue even if government disappeared.) ...

...As for Borsook's second line of attack: Anyone advocating a smaller role for the state is by necessity thrust into the realm of historical fantasy, of imagining the way things could be. Government has arrogated so extensive a role to itself that it's understandable that many people might imagine that nothing the government has a hand in could possibly have happened without it.

One of the key insights of libertarianism revolves around the notion of the "spontaneous order," the idea that social orders and markets can, do, and will develop to meet human needs without central direction or control. For instance, just because government has taken it upon itself to finance and run schools does not mean that no one would be educated if it didn't. Nor would restaurants start poisoning their customers if municipal food inspectors disappeared overnight.

But Borsook doesn't understand what libertarians mean when they talk about spontaneous order. Thus she asserts that such a theory of "self-organization" appeals to "engineers' physics envy" and that "the reason for the rise in technolibertarianism is that engineers are practical and like to fix things and get things right, so of course only the sensible political choice of libertarianism would fit."

In fact, the engineering mentality, which presumes a single best way of doing things in accordance with unchanging "natural" laws, is the exact opposite of the spontaneous order mentality that pervades libertarian thinking. That's why Hayek specifically identified the engineering mentality as the mind-set from "which all modern socialism, planning and totalitarianism derives."

The whole review is available here. It contains not just an interesting critique of the book but a sampling of many of the book's factual errors.

-BBB

Because we (geeks, engineers, developers, whatever) work with computers, we are creative, we understand the value of independent knowledge and thinking, we value skills and innovation, and we have (mostly) explicit standards of judgment. Thus we (often) do not belong to the crowd who deny the correlation between freedom, innovation, productivity, integrity, rational self-interest, and independence (basically what so-called "libertarianism" is about).

Please do read a very cogent review of cybersilliness at Reason -- starting thus: "This is a bad book, unlearned in its titular subject, petulant, and poorly argued. It is tempting simply to dismiss it and move on. Despite its shoddy quality, [it] is not irrelevant. Far from it. The book is fascinating as a case study in the reasoning and psychology behind opposition to the mix of individualism and anti-statism that characterizes contemporary libertarian thought."

Mises.org response

Reason Online response

Bottom line, the agenda held precious by Borsook and her colleagues is being torn apart by free thinking. They're terrified, and Borsook's awful writing confirms it.

..."Tech" or otherwise, and neither does Paulina Borsook.

Katz goes on and on about some weird doctrine he calls "Individualism", a psuedo-democratic world that supports "the legitimacy of the individual, whose voice and vote should count for more than any other single interest or group." This apparently boils down to nothing more substantive than "people who believe as I do in free MP3s and the evil of corporations should have a veto on the votes of everyone else". If he really was as big on freedom as he thinks, he'd have to acknowledge the necessity of personal responsibility...and he might even be a libertarian.

Katz and Borsook are completely ignorant of libertarianism beyond a few slogans and a vague bugaboo of evil little selfish people who love freedom and make their associates look bad. Here's an excellent deconstruction of Borsook's book, pointing out that not only does she know little about the movement she's so worried about but that she doesn't understand the real politics of techies, anyway. She's a perpetually hostile outsider who's been casting a jaundiced view at the technical community for as long as she's been familiar with it.

Katz is on a philosophical rampage. Here's a link to a better review of this book.

What I find interesting is that because we (geeks, engineers, whatever) work with computers, we are creative, we understand the value of independent knowledge and thinking, we value skills and innovation, and we have (mostly) explicit standards of judgment. Thus we (often) do not belong to the crowd who deny the correlation between freedom, innovation, productivity, integrity, rational self-interest, and independence (mostly what so-called "libertarians" care about).

Please do read a very cogent review of cybersilliness at Reason -- starting thus: "This is a bad book, unlearned in its titular subject, petulant, and poorly argued. It is tempting simply to dismiss it and move on. Despite its shoddy quality, [it] is not irrelevant. Far from it. The book is fascinating as a case study in the reasoning and psychology behind opposition to the mix of individualism and anti-statism that characterizes contemporary libertarian thought."

Then make up your own mind.

As for what I think, I don't know, I haven't really digested it yet. :)
--

As for what I think, I don't know, I haven't really digested it yet. :)
--

In fact, even the "data" Borsook cites don't support her contention. She notes that the regional United Way goal in Silicon Valley has not increased during the '90s and that, although San Jose has double the average U.S. per capita income, local charities do not receive twice the national average in donations. (She doesn't say how much they do receive and doesn't cite any sources for the data.)

Additionally, she notes a survey by the Community Foundation Silicon Valley (CFSV) of area residents across all income lines that indicates they give to charities at a level similar to the national giving rate (about 2 percent of annual income). What's more, in Silicon Valley, "the percentages of those giving in each income bracket are somewhat above national averages."

Such data are her main evidence for the oft-bruited assertion that the high-tech world is uniquely stingy. Borsook simply assumes that Silicon Valley can be equated with the entire high-tech sector and that United Way is a reasonable proxy for all charity. And if you look at the CFSV report that she mentions, you find that 83 percent of Silicon Valley households donate to charity, compared to 69 percent nationally, and that Silicon Valley adults volunteer at a rate exactly equal to the national average (49 percent). But 40 percent of Silicon Valley charitable giving goes outside the immediate area, which might help explain the local United Way situation.

My respect for Jon Katz definitly took a hit broadsides with this one...

My respect for Jon Katz definitly took a hit broadsides with this one...

First paragraph of the review:
"This is a bad book, unlearned in its titular subject, petulant, and poorly argued. It is tempting simply to dismiss it and move on. Despite its shoddy quality, however, Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High-Tech is not irrelevant. Far from it. The book is fascinating as a case study in the reasoning and psychology behind opposition to the mix of individualism and anti-statism that characterizes contemporary libertarian thought."

No, I read this scathing review of the book a couple months ago and decided not to waste my time.

There was a good review of this book at Reason Online a while back. The reviewer there thought Paulina Borsook lacked clue.

There was a good review of this book at Reason Online a while back. The reviewer there thought Paulina Borsook lacked clue.

The socialists are thick in Hollywood. Have been since just about the time you're talking about. Here's a good article about how they got there.

http://www.reason.com/0006/fe.kb.h ollywoods.html

So, you won't explain why you don't think that the DoJ prosecution of Microsoft was political in origin?

But, to be fair, yes, my claim is the one that requires support. Previously, I missed out on the opportunity to explain and support this (I wasn't at the computer for a couple of days, and I didn't think anyone would actually SEE the reply), so I will do so now, briefly.

Before the anti-trust case, Microsoft avoided both the subtler and grosser forms of lobbying and contributing money to politicians.

Until a few years ago, Microsoft proudly refused to open a Washington office. Oddly, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman viewed this as demonstrating contempt for "rules and institutions."

From "Social Engineering by Legal Brief", The Washington Times, HTMLed here.

In contrast, the instigating companies in the case all happened to come from states (particularly California) with much more Congressional clout than Washington. Orrin Hatch, the Senator from Utah (the home of Novell) chaired the hearings where he personally blasted Microsoft and Bill Gates.

As pointed out in "Texas Swing", which appeared in the August/September 1998 issue of Reason, it's silly to try to pretend that anti-trust proceedings are disinterested government actions. Like most actions in our government, they involve the advancement of personal and corporate agendas and the application of political leverage in the form of favors and political contributions. Essentially, this entire trial is a big political favor to some of Microsoft's competitiors that also serves to promote the career of Joel Klein, one of the most active (and hence, famous) heads of the DoJ Antitrust Division in decades. (It's had little benefit to anyone else trying to jump on the bandwagon, and in fact, G.W. Bush got a little boost in the polls from announcing his opposition to the whole thing.) "The New Trustbusters" from the March 1999 Reason gives an interesting look at the curious history of antitrust, but more usefully, at its present application by those such as Klein. "Barbarians at Bill Gates" from the web site of the Foundation for Economic Education expands some of the points from that article with regards to MS's case.

Ultimately, this trial is a joke. The actions Microsoft is being punished for are only considered crimes because Microsoft holds a "monopoly" (meaning that it has no competition). This accusation of monopoly was brought by its competitors, of course. The trial showed that the presiding judge was biased against MS from the start, and the proposed and actual "remedies" wouldn't do anything to remove a monopoly if it really existed. (Or does anyone actually have a cogent explanation of how, if Windows is a monopoly, spinning it off into its own company will stop it from being a monopoly?)

What really gets me about this is that Linux and other forces would have brought down Microsoft in the marketplace in about the same timeframe this case will, assuming it doesn't get thrown out. And now, of course, when Windows slips from its current dominant position in (desktop intel-based system) OSes, as Lotus slipped away from its dominant position in spreadsheets years ago, interventionists will claim it was somehow due to the trial and not the workings of the free market. And Joel Klein will claim credit for that for the rest of his life.

So, you won't explain why you don't think that the DoJ prosecution of Microsoft was political in origin?

But, to be fair, yes, my claim is the one that requires support. Previously, I missed out on the opportunity to explain and support this (I wasn't at the computer for a couple of days, and I didn't think anyone would actually SEE the reply), so I will do so now, briefly.

Before the anti-trust case, Microsoft avoided both the subtler and grosser forms of lobbying and contributing money to politicians.

Until a few years ago, Microsoft proudly refused to open a Washington office. Oddly, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman viewed this as demonstrating contempt for "rules and institutions."

From "Social Engineering by Legal Brief", The Washington Times, HTMLed here.

In contrast, the instigating companies in the case all happened to come from states (particularly California) with much more Congressional clout than Washington. Orrin Hatch, the Senator from Utah (the home of Novell) chaired the hearings where he personally blasted Microsoft and Bill Gates.

As pointed out in "Texas Swing", which appeared in the August/September 1998 issue of Reason, it's silly to try to pretend that anti-trust proceedings are disinterested government actions. Like most actions in our government, they involve the advancement of personal and corporate agendas and the application of political leverage in the form of favors and political contributions. Essentially, this entire trial is a big political favor to some of Microsoft's competitiors that also serves to promote the career of Joel Klein, one of the most active (and hence, famous) heads of the DoJ Antitrust Division in decades. (It's had little benefit to anyone else trying to jump on the bandwagon, and in fact, G.W. Bush got a little boost in the polls from announcing his opposition to the whole thing.) "The New Trustbusters" from the March 1999 Reason gives an interesting look at the curious history of antitrust, but more usefully, at its present application by those such as Klein. "Barbarians at Bill Gates" from the web site of the Foundation for Economic Education expands some of the points from that article with regards to MS's case.

Ultimately, this trial is a joke. The actions Microsoft is being punished for are only considered crimes because Microsoft holds a "monopoly" (meaning that it has no competition). This accusation of monopoly was brought by its competitors, of course. The trial showed that the presiding judge was biased against MS from the start, and the proposed and actual "remedies" wouldn't do anything to remove a monopoly if it really existed. (Or does anyone actually have a cogent explanation of how, if Windows is a monopoly, spinning it off into its own company will stop it from being a monopoly?)

What really gets me about this is that Linux and other forces would have brought down Microsoft in the marketplace in about the same timeframe this case will, assuming it doesn't get thrown out. And now, of course, when Windows slips from its current dominant position in (desktop intel-based system) OSes, as Lotus slipped away from its dominant position in spreadsheets years ago, interventionists will claim it was somehow due to the trial and not the workings of the free market. And Joel Klein will claim credit for that for the rest of his life.

Interesting you should mention that...

I'm very much pro-Linux - I've been MS-free for over 8 years, having stuck with various combinations of Unix/Mac/Linux - but this trial against MS really burns me up.

This trial is really setting a dangerous precedent for the U.S. Federal Government bureaucracy to get involved in regulating the software/Internet industry. Some Linux users may take glee in seeing MS in legal trouble, but don't realize that this could come right back around and bite their own company, or their favorite Linux distro.

If you dislike Microsoft for being an unreasonable bully, wait until you get to know the U.S. Government up close and personal :)

Reason Magazine has an excellent section with some free-market viewpoints on the MS breakup. It's located at http://reason.com/bi/microsoft.html. IMHO, one of the very best articles in the collection is The New Trustbusters.

Interesting you should mention that...

I'm very much pro-Linux - I've been MS-free for over 8 years, having stuck with various combinations of Unix/Mac/Linux - but this trial against MS really burns me up.

This trial is really setting a dangerous precedent for the U.S. Federal Government bureaucracy to get involved in regulating the software/Internet industry. Some Linux users may take glee in seeing MS in legal trouble, but don't realize that this could come right back around and bite their own company, or their favorite Linux distro.

If you dislike Microsoft for being an unreasonable bully, wait until you get to know the U.S. Government up close and personal :)

Reason Magazine has an excellent section with some free-market viewpoints on the MS breakup. It's located at http://reason.com/bi/microsoft.html. IMHO, one of the very best articles in the collection is The New Trustbusters.

Interesting you should mention that...

I'm very much pro-Linux - I've been MS-free for over 8 years, having stuck with various combinations of Unix/Mac/Linux - but this trial against MS really burns me up.

This trial is really setting a dangerous precedent for the U.S. Federal Government bureaucracy to get involved in regulating the software/Internet industry. Some Linux users may take glee in seeing MS in legal trouble, but don't realize that this could come right back around and bite their own company, or their favorite Linux distro.

If you dislike Microsoft for being an unreasonable bully, wait until you get to know the U.S. Government up close and personal :)

Reason Magazine has an excellent section with some free-market viewpoints on the MS breakup. It's located at http://reason.com/bi/microsoft.html. IMHO, one of the very best articles in the collection is The New Trustbusters.

Well, here we are again, yet another round of the perils of technology.

So, what do we do about it?

Stop it? That's not going to happen, no matter how hard we try.

Regulate it? Good Luck. Try getting every other country on Earth to agree with you, or to follow those proposed regulations. Whoops, sorry, kids, guess that one's a wash also.

Oh, I know, we'll hype up all of the potential negative effects of new technology and scare the crap out of the average citizen, who will then clamor for one of the above useless 'remedies'.

Guess what? It won't work, not one single bit of it. You simply cannot put the genie back in the bottle, and all the wishful thinking in the world is only going to make you complacent, hoping uselessly that we're 'doing something' about the problem.

Can technology be harmful? Absolutely. But you want to know what is even more harmful? The attitude that we're going to make it less harmful by ignoring it, regulating it (and hoping no-one else decides to play in that pool), or giving in to our worst fears, thereby letting it become them.

Simply put, only the advance of technology (and our knowledge of it) is going to help us cope with the advance of technology. To give into fear (whatever foundation it may have) is only going to realize those fears.

Here's an article from Reason that does a good job of countering Bill Joy's views.

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Q: Wouldn't it be easier for a dealer to drop the S&W line?

A: The Clinton administration was counting on S&W's status as the number one gun maker. Having absorbed that variety of antitrust analysis that describes a manufacturer as "controlling" a certain market share, the president's men thought helpless buyers would have no place to go. They figured they could leverage S&W's market share through what amounts to a tying arrangement: If dealers and gun shows wanted to stock the dominant manufacturer's line, they'd have to agree to stop promoting disfavored, competitive product lines.

Q: Wait a minute. Isn't that kind of like what Microsoft did to Netscape?

A: Yep. Tying arrangements aimed at excluding competitive products from the market are bad, bad, bad when dominant companies attempt them on their own. But very similar arrangements are to be applauded when companies do them in collusion with state attorneys general and cabinet secretaries.

Q: How did the tying arrangement work?

A: It was an instant flop. Rather than allow someone else's legal needs to dictate their business practices and inventory, many dealers resolved to drop the S&W product line. Instead of the race to settle that the gun suit organizers expected, they got a race to break ties with the (former) market leader. Aside from the dealers who jumped ship, some organizers of shooting matches have told S&W that it is no longer welcome, and other gun companies stopped coordinating their legal defense efforts with S&W, which meant it had to find a new law firm.

Q: What happened then? Did the anti-gun side admit it had miscalculated?

A: You're not going to believe this part. Several of the most combative state attorneys general, including Connecticut's Richard Blumenthal and New York's Eliot Spitzer, announced that they were going to sue the gun industry for not cooperating with S&W. On antitrust grounds, no less. This may be the first antitrust action in history aimed at smaller companies that refused to enter into tying arrangements with the dominant manufacturer in their market. It's a purely political move, meant to punish the still-free portions of the gun industry for their determination to remain free.

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Contributing Editor Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, edits the new Web site Overlawyered.com . Visit Walter Olson's official Web site

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Q: Wouldn't it be easier for a dealer to drop the S&W line?

A: The Clinton administration was counting on S&W's status as the number one gun maker. Having absorbed that variety of antitrust analysis that describes a manufacturer as "controlling" a certain market share, the president's men thought helpless buyers would have no place to go. They figured they could leverage S&W's market share through what amounts to a tying arrangement: If dealers and gun shows wanted to stock the dominant manufacturer's line, they'd have to agree to stop promoting disfavored, competitive product lines.

Q: Wait a minute. Isn't that kind of like what Microsoft did to Netscape?

A: Yep. Tying arrangements aimed at excluding competitive products from the market are bad, bad, bad when dominant companies attempt them on their own. But very similar arrangements are to be applauded when companies do them in collusion with state attorneys general and cabinet secretaries.

Q: How did the tying arrangement work?

A: It was an instant flop. Rather than allow someone else's legal needs to dictate their business practices and inventory, many dealers resolved to drop the S&W product line. Instead of the race to settle that the gun suit organizers expected, they got a race to break ties with the (former) market leader. Aside from the dealers who jumped ship, some organizers of shooting matches have told S&W that it is no longer welcome, and other gun companies stopped coordinating their legal defense efforts with S&W, which meant it had to find a new law firm.

Q: What happened then? Did the anti-gun side admit it had miscalculated?

A: You're not going to believe this part. Several of the most combative state attorneys general, including Connecticut's Richard Blumenthal and New York's Eliot Spitzer, announced that they were going to sue the gun industry for not cooperating with S&W. On antitrust grounds, no less. This may be the first antitrust action in history aimed at smaller companies that refused to enter into tying arrangements with the dominant manufacturer in their market. It's a purely political move, meant to punish the still-free portions of the gun industry for their determination to remain free.

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Contributing Editor Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, edits the new Web site Overlawyered.com . Visit Walter Olson's official Web site

On an unrelated issue, anyone know what's up with the DOS attacks on /.? Are they over with? Wired has had a few stories on it that I've covered on geekpress. (There's been lots of news about Slashdot lately, including a profile of Malda and Bates.)

-- Diana Hsieh

On an unrelated issue, anyone know what's up with the DOS attacks on /.? Are they over with? Wired has had a few stories on it that I've covered on geekpress. (There's been lots of news about Slashdot lately, including a profile of Malda and Bates.)

-- Diana Hsieh

You seem to be confusing 'corporatism' with 'capitalism'. These terms are not synonymous. Readers interested in individualism might wish to check out Reason magazine for another perspective.

Well, at least there's no chance I'll ever read anything so stupid again.

Sorry to disappoint you, but you should try these wingnuts and these idiots. Hell, they're even dumber than you are :)

You can find similar arguments from a recent Reason article. Recent corporate extensions of copyright laws border on the ridiculous. Legislators could justifiably be accused of collusion.

Well, Liberty, while not as slick as Reason (or as well-funded!) is also on a few stands. If you want 151-proof libertarianism with an excellent letters section and some-great/some-not articles, go for Liberty. If you want what Time would look like if it weren't run by Democrats, go for Reason. Reason has, in the past, been somewhat soft on certain Republicans. And, as AC says, neither one is the LP. (In fact, both tend to cover Libertarians with a more-jaundiced eye than -- for example -- Time covering the Democrats, IMO.)

I found the Reason article very good, and I'm glad Slashdot featured it. Reason editors reading this might want to consider covering the free software movement in more detail (or else I've just missed what they've done on the subject, I have about a 6 month reading backlog on dead trees). Anyway, if Reason decided to do a story, they should definitely come here and ask questions first, and then submit an early draft here if they can, if they're smart.
JMR

May I be pained again now?

Sure. Though, in fairness, the MPAA? (regex) really needs to decide what its name is; furthermore, all of the lawsuits have been filed by the "MPAA". Now, the "MPA" may have had the kid arrested. All I know is that "industry stooge Jack Valenti" (tm) is involved with both. And I have $100 that says Katz got this right by accident (in the same way that the late Gene Siskel was only right about movies when he agreed with Roger Ebert).

This is starting to make my head hurt.

(Incidentally, the DVD fiasco made Reason Express this week; see here for details.)

Apparently, the idea of drug legalization is so abhorrent to the UN and so obviously criminal that anyone who suggests it should be punished. Write a book supporting it? The UN wants your head. A politician realizing how corrupt and pointless this 'war on drugs' is with the guts to tell others the truth? The UN thinks they should be quiet... or go to jail.

You may not agree with this position. Fine. But any decent human being will realize that criminal penalties based on political beliefs and speech is blatantly unfair and a violation of freedom of speech. Background information can be found at this site (information on UN anti-drug laws) and here (more important; a direct look at the censorious SOBs of the UN).

Follow the link, and find enlightenment:
http://www.Reason.com/bi/bi-forf.html.