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LinuxPlanet Interviews Robert Bork
Greg writes: "Robert Bork, former Supreme Court appointee from the Reagan era and a recent entrant in the MS antitrust case, did an
interview
over at LinuxPlanet. The topic? The Evil Empire's court settlement." Bork isn't actually new to the Microsoft case or to the subject of monopolies -- his legal experience makes this an interesting read, even for those who don't consider Microsoft an "evil empire."
"So it is not so remarkable that a noted conservative lawyer would see perfect reason for action to be brought against Microsoft for the transgressions we have all witnessed and experienced over the years; what is remarkable is that people would find such a position at all unusual."
I'm not sure I agree, at all. Alright, so from an intellectual standpoint, it's ridiculous that the public would find the Judge's position unreasonable, but from the Public's Perspective, it makes perfect sense.
Mircosoft Provides Software to the Large Majority of the Public that they Encounter Every Single Day for, in their mind, a reasonable price. Therefore, people who use this software have nothing against Microsoft, don't realize what it's doing to the industry as a whole, and keep going with their MSWord/Internet Explorer/WindowsXP Spyware.
The web has started to become "optimized" for Internet Explorer, but the public doesn't really care, because they aren't seeing the huge technological impairment that Microsoft is - they're only seeing the benefits.
If and when Microsoft really does make a PR mistake, or Linux finally jumps into the mainstream, I expect the "flyswatter of freedom" (from the article) to crack down on their heads, but for now, they're going to stay afloat because of public opinion and use.
Bork is widely acknowledged in legal circles as one of our country's greatest legal minds
You understate the case. He's generally considered the foremost legal mind in the field of anti-trust law.
He also consulted for Netscape, and perhaps still is.
I was reading Ayn Rand recently (Capitalism: The inknown Ideal, 1967 or so) and she pointed out that in all previous anti-monopoly cases it was the government itself that gave some exclusive rights to the companies and these exclusive rights allowed the companies to grow into the illegal monopolies. The AT&T case supports this statement, but what about Microsoft?
In your opinion, did they (MS) get any exclusive rights from the government or are they the exception of a company which managed to get to this position all by itself?
And your answer can be found in the LinuxPlanet interview, sorta between the lines. The article describes how Bork changed the direction of antitrust enforcement from protecting the competitors to protecting the state of competition, i.e., the consumers. This shift implies that monopolists no longer need explicit, exclusive rights... but then again, by adopting a lassez-faire, hands off approach, there can be implicit endorsement of a monopoly.
The US government is larger today than it has ever been. I'd venture that the percentage of government office computers running Windows is roughly equal to the overall percentage of American office computers running Windows - in other words, friggin' huge. So how much of your paycheck goes to Microsoft every month?
What would be the effect on Microsoft's monopoly if every federal and state (since the state governments are the ones complaining now) government office installed Linux or bought a Mac? If you never had to apply for a government job by submitting your resume as a Word document? If every publicly-funded school stopped teaching kids on Windows? If every government web site complied with HTML standards?
The government takes your money to buy from Microsoft, then it takes more to pay lawyers to bring down Microsoft. God bless America.
grep -ri 'should work'
"was nominated to the United States Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan"
Damn. I think this is the first conservative that actually interprets conservatism for the people. I am impressed.
Generally most conservatived *cough* Bush interprets "small government" as "laissez-faire" which then they perverse into "leave big corporations alone even if they have a monopoly" in and Adam-Smithian belief that "The Invisible Hand" will fix everything. Of course they don't argue because it also fixes their wallets.
It is VERY nice to see a person interpret small government as NOT laissez-faire economics. If the whole Republican party went by that ideology I would vote for them every time.
I wasn't following politics too much at the time Bork was put forward for the supreme court, but years later I saw him on a William Buckley show where "Free Speech" was debated. (Mark Green, who just lost the NYC mayorality to Bloomberg was on this show too.) Bork argued what seemed to me to be an anti-free speech position (arguing the original intent of the Bill of Rights). He thought it obvious that a lot of sexually-related expression had no place in a civilized society. The example he kept giving of expression going too far was (I kid you not) "Michael Jackson gyrating his hips..."
Off topic? Maybe. But for me this clinched my impression of Bork as someone I not only disagreed with, but who seemed damned-right retarded.
... in restoring competition? One of the assumptions behind anti-trust is that business practices valid for small agressive companies are not legal for monopolies. But imposing behaviour constraints seems to be like pissing in the wind ... basically if the officers are not legally responsible for their corporate culture (e.g. FUD sales tactics) then there is no incentive to alter their mindset.
.NET cough)
Perhaps its it time to consider identifying where the competitive pressure has failed and why it is os. Competition refers to more than the guy trying to do unto thee what you're trying to do unto them. It also includes substitute goods/services, threat of entry, pricing power of suppliers, and pricing power of buyers. Here we see specific tactics that should be considered as hindering competition
- denial of interoperability to avoid subsitution
- rapid change of APIs to impose high conversion costs to smaller entrants (cough
- extend and embrace to extinguish markets created by more gung-ho startups
- distribution contracts that forbid secondary sales
The last component is a subtle one as it disguises a depreciating service (license) as a phsycial good (CPU). If people were free to sell their MS software license (substitute Linux instead say) on their OEM box then the market price for MS software would be established by the free market which would estimate the half-life of a specific version of their OS/app. Unfortunately a free market does not serve the needs of a monopolist as people can then have an alternative to compare the cost of other features (such as lack of security).
So what can the legal system do to help restore competition to the software market? I would recommend requirements that licenses/terms of usage be written in clear language rather than legalese, that any promises (spam-free mail) be backed up by some form of performance bond, and that termination/opt-out clauses be subject to scrutiny by fair trading groups.
LL
The only difference between "conservative" and "liberal" is in what things about your life they wish to control through government force.
Some people suggest it's "economic control" verses "private choice control", but it all ends up being control.
I consider Bork to be a hypocrite in so far that he both argues for "limited governemnt" and for "one that enforces what I think is right."
Freedom means freedom to do what other people find objectionable, the limit being force or fraud.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Am I the only one who feels like this interview never took place and the author just took comments that the Judge made to somebody else and put statements around them to make it sound like an interview? I mean we never see the actual questions that he is answering.
Here is an example:
Microsoft is evil, very evil. I hear they torture little boys and feed them to Bill Gates. He cruches their bones and spits out the cartilage.
Judge Bork - "Yes. I hear that can be very detrimental to society."
What ever happened to a straight question/answer session without all the bullshit posturing and editorializing in between.
and Microsoft dances away from this with a slap on the wrist. The only saving grace I can think of is that this will go a long way towards fueling the fires of Microsoft paranoia brewing outside the US. More non-US governments will look seriously for Microsoft-free solutions as it becomes crystal clear that the US goverment and Microsoft are sharing the same toothbrush and underwear.
I disagree that MS has enjoyed governmental help to achieve thier monopoly.
For the government's use of MS products, I think they are victims of MS's monopoly, not creators of it. I don't see any collusion between MS and the gov to install MS products exclusively on gov computers. The majority of gov computers use MS because it is the de facto industry standard. Everyone uses MS Word, so you better use software that can read MS Word docs. The majority of off the shelf software runs on Windows, so if you want to use off the shelf software, you better run Windows. The government is no different in this respect than the rest of the country. The gov didn't buy MS products exclusively early on, helping to create the monopoly. They gradually moved to it as the corporate and private worlds did.
As for tax breaks and writeoffs, I am unaware that MS gets any different treatment in that respect than any other large software manufacturer.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
Netscape had a monopoly and blew it. When faced with an obvious competitive threat from the bundled and free Explorer, they basically didn't take any effective measures to protect their market share.
Have consumers, in net, been harmed by Microsoft's giving the browser away for free, bundled?
On the harm side, there's the theoretical loss of some unknown benefits of competition, and the hypothetical threat that Microsoft may yet someday use its monopoly to price gouge.
On the benefit side, consumers don't have to buy Explorer separately or download it and install it separately or even think about it very much. It provides some small benefits through tight integration with the Windows interface - radically exaggerated by Microsoft, of course.
So, by Bork's theory of harm to consumers as the standard for application of anti-trust - where's the big net harm to consumers?
All Microsoft did was take reasonable steps to maintain it's market share in the software platform business, in the face of a competitor that publically bragged that they were going to put an end to Microsoft's dominance. If you pull the lion's tail, you shouldn't complain about being mauled and eaten. STUPID!
Netscape could have offered to license their browser to Microsoft on very reasonable terms for bundling with Windows, back when Explorer was just an idea. They could have built up a wall of proprietary technologies that they licensed to web content creators. Fully automatic and invisible browser updates sure wouldn't have hurt their existing market share. They could have done an AOL, and sent free CDs around the country - or joined forces with AOL sooner. They had many options, and again - their egos and greed made them blow it.
That is a warped view. Capitalism, at it's heart, is free commerce. I'll grant you that the economic system we have today is called "capitalism", but it's really capitalism's dowdy cousin, "sort-of capitalism".
The first condition of Capitalism is availability of people who lack the tools to produce on their own and thus must sell their labor. The second is a government that sanctions and enforces contracts and property rights, without which capital can neither accumulate nor contract with labor.
This is not correct. The first condition of capitalism is supply, the second is demand. You are stuck on the idea that capitalism needs government intervention in order to function.
Even a stable currency isn't *neccessary* for capitalism (not that our government is providing us with one): barter and trade work interchangably with dollars and cents. The convenience of a single currency, and the standardization (and enforcement) of rules of commerce (i.e. the SEC) are just that: conveniences. They are not, repeat NOT neccessary for capitalism to exist.
Milton and Rose Friedeman described money in this way:
There are four ways for money to move
1. You spend your money on yourself. You get exactly what you want at the best price.
2. You spend your money on other people. You get the best price, but you don't care as much about pleasing the recipient. This is why you got underwear for Christmas.
3. You spend other people's money on yourself. You get exactly what you want, but at any old price. This is why 20-year-old second wives of 55-year-old men drive convertible BMWs.
4. You spend other people's money on other people. Nobody gives two shakes about price, quality, or suitability of purpose.
Capitalism works in the first area. Government works in the fourth. They mix poorly, and whereas #1 can begat #4, the reverse is almost never true.
There isn't any historical reference to capitalism absent these two conditions. Buying and selling isn't capitalism, it's commerce. Capitalism is buying and selling other people's work.
Sure there is: look at the origins and beginning of America. People living out West did well enough without the benefit of the SEC, the dollar, or even Alan Greenspan. If you grew corn, you traded that corn for a cow when you wanted milk or meat. If you wanted a new plow, you bought it with gold you got from selling your corn to hungry miners. If people didn't trust their gold assayer, he got shot.
Modern capitalism is a dog's breakfast of free market, socialism, and political chicanery. Pure capitalism is based in the free market.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.