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The Monopolies That Dominate the Internet
Tim Wu has a piece up at the Wall Street Journal pointing out that the free-market, open Internet — "competition in its purest form" — has evolved to be dominated by monopolies. Wu argues that this is nothing new, and that each wave of information technology in the US has followed a similar pattern. "Today's Internet borders will probably change eventually, especially as new markets appear. But it's hard to avoid the conclusion that we are living in an age of large information monopolies. Could it be that the free market on the Internet actually tends toward monopolies? Could it even be that demand, of all things, is actually winnowing the online free market — that Americans, so diverse and individualistic, actually love these monopolies? ... Info-monopolies tend to be good-to-great in the short term and bad-to-terrible in the long term."
free market is what tends towards monopolies eventually. because there is competition, and nothing to prevent the big players from getting bigger, unless they make a HUGE mistake, all 'free' markets only function as free for all initial chaos environments until a hierarchy and order is established. as per the below post :
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1847700&cid=34083272
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imho its all about the money. Look at things now compared to say 5 or even 10 years ago. Most small companies are bought up by a larger competitor, just to make sure they get there hands on whatever tech it is they are developing. Or another company is sued by another for some copyright or patent infringement just to make a buck. No real new 'big' fish are coming to light with something new cool and innovative, if so very slowly, as the big boys try to make sure they stay on top and squash that competition.
Could it be that the free market on the Internet actually tends toward monopolies?
Free markets lead to successful companies. This is the same as in any other industry. Yes, the internet makes it very easy to just 'go with the flow' and follow the leader in a specific category but new companies and new leaders emerge regularly.
Just like with every other industry, if you sit back and watch it go by you'll see companies come and go. If you want to change things you've got to participate. The next "big thing" is in someone's basement or garage or spare room right now.
Apparently, according to the author, MS's failure in search is purely down to Google's monopoly and completely unrelated to the fact that MS has in the past chosen to skew search results and hence proven itself to be an untrustworthy search provider? The "$40B cash on hand" number is meaningless, because MS hasn't chosen to spend $40B on entering the search market. Perhaps the difference is simply that Google has been able to develop and maintain a better product?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
How hard would it be to go a week without Google? Or, to up the ante, without Facebook, Amazon, Skype, Twitter, Apple, eBay and Google?
Pretty fucking easy, actually. My God what are we becoming when people think this shit is so important?
Back in my day (well, ok, my grandfather's) we worried about important shit like steel, or oil. Hell, even telephone wire - it's physical, someone owns it, and they control it completely. Those are monopolies - you're strangled by one provider.
Facebook? Apple? Amazon? Give me a fucking break. Oh noesies, I can't go read about something cute one of some guy I barely know's brat kids did! Oh no, I have to buy a less expensive version that functions just as well of some gadget I don't need! Uh oh, I have to walk my fat ass to Target or order from one of the other billion internet stores!
Author makes common mistake of confusing a monopoly with most successful provider of something that one could, if one wanted, get from 20 other places.
Google is a de facto monopoly because they're pretty awesome. Your local Telco is a de jure monopoly because they have lobbyists. Monopolies are great so long as the market remains open.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Google and Amazon are possible because of a large crowd.
Facebook and Twitter and eBay don't work without a large existing crowd.
So you pick a site which already has a large crowd, thus creating a monopoly.
My other
like what other industry ? the publishing industry ? which is dominated by approx. 4 groups ? the broadcasting ? which is dominated by 4 groups again ? music ? 4 groups ? movie ? 4 groups ? cleaner products ? even less groups ? oil ? even less ?
ironically most of the above groups in different industries are either the same, or subsidiaries of bigger holdings.
what was about that 'come and go' bullshit again ? apparently they have come, and not going anywhere.
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It's a feature of the supply of credit to the market. You make money by pushing your competitors out of the market and taking their business. Credit is what allows you to do that.
In addition, the fact that you have loans to pay means you are largely required by your creditors to grow.
Deleted
Wu argues that this is nothing new, and that each wave of information technology has followed the same pattern
It's not just information technology, it's technology in general since 1840. Textiles, railroads, oil, PC operating systems - they all started out as highly competitive markets then inevitably became monopolies, until the government stepped in. Why should the Internet be any different?
that Americans... actually love monopolies?
No, it's just that most of us are too stupid to realize this tendency, no matter how many times it's been demonstrated in the past. Show an American government regulation, even if it's to protect him, and he'll start shrieking about communism before you can get a word in edgewise.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
> Americans, so diverse and individualistic, actually love these monopolies?
Whenever a company gets too big (Intel, Comcast, Microsoft, I'm looking at you) I start giving my money to their competitors so we don't end up getting one or two dominant companies abusing us in the future. I have only bought AMD systems for a decade now for example, and I use a local ISP and an aerial for TV reception. I'm trying hard to find a good Cortex-A9 based laptop.
But nobody else seems to agree. They all seem to prefer doing what the rest of the sheep do. If everybody else is doing it, it can't be wrong!
So I think the article is correct. Americans LOVES them some monopolies, with only a few exceptions such as myself and probably some few other people reading this. But not so many exceptions. Not enough to matter.
Our current market economy depends on finite supply, and with limited production capacity per person in order to employ people and pay them wages so they can also be consumers. As automation and robotics take over the means of production, only societies that can cope with overproduction with more socially shared resources will be able to thrive.
In other words, China and Europe will continue to eat our lunch.
This article is full of sensationalist bullshit.
Facebook, Amazon, Skype, Twitter, Apple, eBay and Google
Yes, one can do comfortably without all these. I don't shop at Amazon, instead, I shop at several other places, which vigorously compete with Amazon.
I've never used online auction site, and still manage to buy shit online cheaply.
I check my facebook account once a week if that, and I still manage.
I switch between several search engines, and I think they've gone more or less on par.
Twitter and Apple? Monopolies? Lolwut.
It seems the author isn't very well versed in economics and uses words like "monopoly" and "free market" colloquially.
Also, he has his bearings wrong. The only thing that allows any kind of "monopoly" in information is the government and its fucked up system of copyright and related rights, which is being tended by lawyers who are probably students of the author in the quagmire of "Intellectual property". Now, this is the REAL danger, but he somehow misses it altogether.
Not impressive at all.
Maybe the professor should concentrate on his studies in law, and not venture with superficial sensationalism in areas he doesn't know much about -- like economics -- before learning the basics.
Apparently, according to the author, MS's failure in search is purely down to Google's monopoly and completely unrelated to the fact that MS has in the past chosen to skew search results and hence proven itself to be an untrustworthy search provider?
Citation needed. You're the first I have heard to make such an allegation. They only honest way to determine search engine "trustworthiness" or any over perceived performance measure is to do the search engine taste test. Three engines, one query. Choose the best result list.
I bet you'll be surprised.
Surprise surprise - capitalism on the internet is largely about companies dominated by the network effect. It is interesting, though, that while many folks thought the internet would lead to a broader spectrum of companies given that start up/fixed costs are so low, the network effect has tended to consolidate power to a very small number of winners.
I think the overall effect on capitalism itself will be very interesting. Capitalism was always about winners and losers, but previously you could have a lot more winners given that there were a lot more markets. The internet is connecting all these markets, making space for fewer (albeit much bigger) winners. We talk a lot about the rise in income inequality in the US over the past few decades, and I think it has as much to do with technology as with any policy changes. Technology fundamentally makes things more efficient and breaks down market barriers - in many ways this is a great thing, but I think people are just now starting to realize how it has broad negative effects given the way our brand of capitalism works.
This isn't Wikipedia. Grow up!
Apparently, you also fail at reading, since I specifically said "in the past". Anyway, I have had multiple experiences of searching for something on MS's site and found that Google gives me the best results.
Well as long as I get to play as the thimble or hat, I have no complaints.
This whole premise is flawed a true monopoly of information in the traditional sense is not really happening on the Internet as far as I can tell. Sure the vast majority of people see Facebook as the Ineternet and spend entirely too much time on there posting inane updates, doing inane quizzes and playing terrible web games. However that does not stop Slashdot, Reddit or Penny Arcade or xckcd or hack a day or cnczone from existng and doing just fine for people that want or have a thought rattling around between their ears. The cost of entry is not high in fact with tech like Amazon ec2 it's stupid low at this point. Anyone can start a web site and make money it's just most people suck at it (me included).
completely unrelated to the fact that MS has in the past chosen to skew search results and hence proven itself to be an untrustworthy search provider?
Yes, because nobody cares.
"Google is a de facto monopoly because they're pretty awesome." decisively true...
dubbing
As long our CHOICE to search on Google or post on Facebook or whatever is what is creating these so-called monopolies, we have no problem with them.
> Forgoing Google and Amazon is just
> inconvenient; forgoing Facebook or Twitter
> means giving up whole categories of activity.
I don't use facebook or twitter, but use google on a daily basis & amazon on a weekly basis.
Anyone that claims to not be able to live without twitter/facebook is not someone I wanna hang out with regularly. Or read what they have to say about tech :P
intellectual property patents.
The term "free market" is used to mean "competitive market" and is also used to mean "un-regulated market", despite the fact that few markets are both competitive and un-regulated. When someone uses the term "free market" with out clarifying which they mean, they are either confused, or they are trying to confuse you.
"Could it be that the free market ... actually tends toward monopolies?"
That's economics 101: economy of scale means that a pure free market tends to monopoly. Why anyone should expect the Internet to be different escapes me. The usual argument is that the role of the government in a free market economy is to provide regulation to limit this tendency: first, by preventing the abuse of the monopoly (to prevent competition, or to take over related fields), and second, by limiting the maximum size of companies, if necessary, by breaking them up.
The recent banking mess is a good illustration of the failure of modern governments. They should never allow companies to become "too big to fail". If a company has achieved such a size, the government has failed its regulatory responsibility - at the cost we all saw: hundreds of billions of dollars/euros of your tax money used to prop up companies whose mistakes should have simply bankrupted them.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Google is a monopoly as long as the alternatives suck.
Seriously.
I have yet to see Bing, Yahoo, Altavista, Webcrawler, Lycos, etc, bring their products up to speed to offer better alternatives to Google's offerings.
There is nothing stopping Microsoft making Bing a successful alternative to Google except maybe the poor algorithms they use.
Oh yeah, and where are my advanced search functions, Bing?
--
BMO
These are not monopolies. A monopoly is a company that has complete command over a market, to the point where nothing else can possibly compete. These companies are large and dominant, but they are nowhere near being monopolies.
Let me explain the difference through some examples. If Standard Oil had decided in 1910 to start charging $1 per gallon (a fortune in those days) they could have done it. People would have had no other choice, aside from abandoning petroleum altogether. There simply was no competition in too many areas. Similarly, if Ma Bell had decided to charge $1/minute for phone service, again people would have had no choice but to pay.
In contrast, consider the so-called monopolies from this article. If Google started charging $1 per search, Google would have no more business. If Facebook started charging $1 per post, facebook would be gone. And those are in today's dollars, which are far less valuable than they were back in 1910 or even 1980. None of the companies listed have the ability to arbitrarily gouge their customers without losing their positions.
Tim Wu has a piece up at the Wall Street Journal
They speak of hating monopolies, yet that's what Murdoch wants to be.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
N/T
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The question here is: can technology help reduce our reliability on monopolies? Are projects like diaspora /opensocial viable? Will monopolists be able to keep up their information walls indefinitely? And can open source help out?
This is actually what TFA says.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
TFA refers to big monopolies that are familiar to us all, but there are millions of small monopolies that also drive business.
The USPTO gives monopolies to businesses and individuals in the form of Patents, Trademarks and copyright.
Exclusive rights to something of value confer power to the owner. This is the core strength of all the big monopolies mentioned.
Your local shoe repair shop will never have power because it owns no IP or other exclusive rights.
Your local gas station is in the same situation except that it may have exclusive rights to the only viable corner in the neighborhood.
But your local hacker who comes up with a patentable idea could skyrocket to wealth when Google buys his idea. Or he could just sit on it and prevent anyone from using it.
Monopolies come in all shapes and sizes. They can benefit or hurt individuals, corporations, nations or consumers. This general discussion cannot lead to a simple answer about monopolies.
...omphaloskepsis often...
c) a company buys all the competitors
Of course you won't find perfect examples of that because we do have some regulation preventing that. But even with regulation, that's the direction we're going towards. Each year top 100 companies in the world make up a bigger and bigger part of the world economy. And the entry barriers in pretty much any business today is so high, that new competitors don't just magically appear out of nowhere.
"This isn't Wikipedia. Grow up!"
Exactly! Citations are only useful on Wikipedia. Who needs those silly things anywhere else?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
When it comes to the internet I think it's all about scale, not necessarily free market. For example, what scale (infrastructure, etc) is required to generate and update a searchable index of the entire WWW? Isn't the main appeal of Facebook the number of users it has?
Being big is essentially a requirement - my point is whatever entity provides these specific services must be of at least a certain size in order to function or meet a critical mass of sustainability.
Better known as 318230.
Usa makes for about 7% of the internet users, why assume that it is your likes or dislikes that shape the darn thing
Monopolies naturally form in industries that have increasing returns to scale. For example, it's hard to compete with Facebook, even if you have a better product, because initially no one has signed up for your service and therefore no one will want to (since they won't have anyone to friend or message).
Monopolies naturally form in fields based on intellectual property. For example, someone can't just copy Mac OS X and start selling it (on a large scale).
Information technology companies simply have natural barriers to competition and that is why companies can reduce supply and increase prices with impunity.
i havent seen it put shorter, more precise than this. a very fat dog eh.
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yours is just conditioned belief. you are either young, in or fresh out of college, or indoctrinated, or stupid. no offense, these are the potential possibilities.
there wasnt any government interference back in early 19th century to late 19th century. and, at the end of that period, america ended up being owned by FOUR persons, which can be named even today. vanderbilt to rockefeller.
the only way to prevent that, has been the regulations theodore roosevelt put.
simply ; in a dog eat dog world, you end up with one very fat dog.
read the below post.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1847700&cid=34083272
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Microsoft took a bit longer to get it's monopoly without the internet because after all there was a real world distance propagation delay...
Admittedly this is anecdotal, but when I was using Bing for my searches I didn't notice any more of a skew than I did with Google. At this point with Google the first page or so is typically crap. Link farms regularly appear in the first page, as do sites which ask for a donation to see the information while including it at the very bottom so that they're technically in compliance with Google policy.
In short Google doesn't have a better product. In fact the use of their dumb algorithm to do the searches has probably set the industry back several years. The reason people started using them was that they were fast and provided more relevant searches more quickly. The problem is that they did it by not even bothering to attempt to analyze the sites.
As much as I dislike MS, the reality is that Bing is really not a bad search engine. Which is typical of MS their products in areas that they don't control are frequently quite good, it's not until they own the market that the products start to really suck. There are exceptions like their mobile software platform, but it tends to hold up fairly well.
dear fool, WHAT identifies a government, and a corporation ?
if, a private entity owns all rights to a vast swath of land, all the resources and amenities that come from that swath of land, any rights that can be conceived over that land, arent they de facto ruler of that land ?
so, if someone owns a vast swath of land as large as idaho or arkansas, then arent they de facto the government of that land ? because they own all rights to it.
it is even the case today. the ONLY thing that is limiting their sovereignty there, are the laws that GOVERNMENT put out. if those laws had not been there, they would be able to do anything with that tract of land. its as simple as that. if they said that 'no people will drink water in this land, without paying to us', everyone would have to abide. if they said 'noone will be able to make homes in hilltops', they would have the right to it. if they said 'we are going to sell all the iron in this land to pygmies', it would happen.
so, if you take the government out of the picture, any owner of anything becomes RULERS of what they own. its as simple as that. there is no discussing this. this was the historical foundation of feudalism and aristocracy. im not even saying this is a fact - this is the way things, societal dynamics work. if you let anything happen, you will eventually see some parties overpower others, and rule over them, in any manner conceivable.
read some history, and less right wing bullshit.
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i have exhausted my quota of debating against ayn rand bullshit a few posts ago. i wont be able to reply to you. other than that, all these are 'if this happens, if that happens', invisible hand etc are no different than belief in miracles of our lady of santa maria da rosaria and catholic church.
its belief.
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The premise seems to be that because there is a dominant player in a market, that we have a "monopoly". Here's the problem. None of the companies mentioned in the article have a monopoly on the market that they dominate. That's because competition still exists and there are alternatives for each of the businesses mentioned. Here's my take. If we applied the same low standard to a dozen randomly chosen markets in the world, we're going to find a few that happen to be dominated by a single business. In other words, the same phenomena seen here appears everywhere else as well. So I don't think the author can even claim that internet markets are more likely than any other market to tend towards market domination by a single player.
PS, what's particularly striking is that Microsoft only gets mentioned once as a competitor to Google's "monopoly". Think about it, the premier example of the internet monopoly and they only get mentioned once in passing. That's what happens to dominant players, if they can't evolve out of their market niches.
Facebook:
http://opensource.appleseedproject.org/
http://www.joindiaspora.com/
http://www.myspace.com/
Amazon:
http://www.bookfinder.com/about/booksellers/
Skype:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_VoIP_software
Twitter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumblr
http://www.plurk.com/
Apple:
http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx
http://www.ubuntu.com/
eBay:
http://online-auction-sites.toptenreviews.com/
Google:
http://www.thesearchenginelist.com/
market forces overcome democratic forces within the government
It is government that is the organization holding the special right to employ coercion as a means, not "market forces". No private group can possibly hold that right; otherwise, they wouldn't be private at all, but an arm of government.
In other words, only government holds the key to government corruption, not "market forces". They can bribe government all they want, but if government takes the bribe, it is ultimately a deliberate decision on that part of government.
3. I don't care if ANYBODY thinks gov't regulations is a 'good thing'. Gov't is terrible from my perspective for every single one thing completely and fully.
So, children should still be working underground until they die from exposure to their working conditions? Workers should be born into debt to the company hospital? Slavery should still exist if it's economically viable?
Really, no one takes you seriously except for yourself.
you may be born before me, but, apparently im still much older than you, since i have better comprehension. find me one pointer in the post you replied, which points to you as the person who is fresh out of college. or, is understanding posts from one's ass an oldtimer specialty ?
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n/c
This morning Google gave me 20 results for a search, none of which answered by question. So I tried Bing - 0 results. Several other specialist queries later, so result so I gave up.
People don't switch products unless they feel that the new product is significantly better. So, nuff said.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Competition needs not actual competition; as long as the market is free for new investors to come in, competition already exists. The "monopolist" can only profit as much as it would cost the second best entrepreneur to come in. But that's something I suppose only Austrian Economists fully understand, so it's inevitable that people will be clueless for decades to come still.
Also, the state is the biggest monopoly of all. Those inherently opposed to monopolies should consistently oppose it - yet most do not. They look for the greatest monopoly to swallow all others, never accomplishing anything that was allegedly intended. That's because the state cannot increase competition, it is analytically impossible. All the state can do is restrict, forbid, restrain. Every time it breaks a monopoly for example, it creates a cartel of higher prices.
http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae9_2_3.pdf
All those monopolies competing one against the other!
Keep Doing Good.
http://advice.cio.com/shane_oneill/bing_search_tainted_by_pro_microsoft_results
This has been around for a while, and was referenced on Slashdot.
Everyone wants a common interface - but you are not allowed to just rip
You might be surprised at how much ripping U.S. courts will allow. See, for example, Lotus v. Borland : Borland made and sold a 1-2-3 workalike with the same menus, Lotus sued, Lotus lost in the Supreme Court. The end result is that menu text in a computer program is not subject to U.S. copyright.
The political innovation that made markets work so well is to counterbalance them with democracy, where the guiding principle is "one person one vote" (i.e. votes can't be traded away - the opposite of markets).
Mass media broke this. The parent companies of five movie studios control U.S. television news, which in turn controls the general public's awareness of issues and of candidates. Notice that TV news hasn't covered ACTA or other issues where the public could stand to gain at the expense of the MPAA or vice versa.
Governments are associated with monopolies when market forces overcome democratic forces within the government.
This has in fact happened. U.S. voters by and large do what the TV tells them.
With Facebook, the resource you are accessing is not necessarily the social network platform itself but its other users, and the users of Diaspora and Appleseed are a rounding error. It'd be like trying to start an alternative to AT&T before the breakup: if all your contacts are on the big network, and you can't call anyone on the big network from an alternative network, you have no choice but to use the big network. Likewise, as far as I know, you can't use Appleseed or Diaspora to friend someone on Facebook or like a group on Facebook, and you can't use Tumblr to follow the feed of a Twitter user. And under "Comparison of VoIP software", can software other than Skype call a Skype user?
For Apple you recommended Microsoft and Ubuntu. Like Facebook, Apple provides a platform for the resources you want to reach, namely applications. The applications that one can run on an iPod touch are usually not available for Zune or for whatever Ubuntu-powered handheld device you are thinking of.
What alternative do you recommend to the Microsoft-Nintendo-Sony oligopoly on local multiplayer video gaming? Apparently there aren't a lot of games with a mode designed for PCs connected to TVs because there aren't a lot of PCs connected to TVs, and vice versa.
As much as I agree with people stating that free market is a temporary period before stronger entities devour others and things stabilize as (mono|duo|oligo)polies, I think that services industry (like custom web development) will have place for lots of players for some time.
The "failure of modern government" you mentioned is IMO a result of a familiar economic process: elimination of all other players by the most cunning/brutal ones. The situation is probably not likely to change due to the population having been "trained" by media that serve the two winning entities.
Only on slashdot would such economic bullshit (and the socioeconomic bullshit referenced within) get modded +5 insightful and repeated ad-nauseum. Free markets do NOT tend towards monopolies eventually. The vast majority of markets are not monopolies and are in no danger of becoming so, regardless of government intervention or regulation. The evidence on this is so overwhelming I wouldn't know where to begin. In fact, there are so few examples of natural/existing monopolies (where the efficient scale of production exceeds the size of the market) that we tend to use the same examples over and over in classrooms and textbooks (public utilities).
The internet and information goods have some interesting characteristics (e.g. network effects) that tend to encourage consolidation, but even in this area, changing technology and consumer preferences tend to overthrow dominant firms (e.g. Microsoft).
And yes, I'm an economist.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
The problem with the article is that it assumes that the Internet is one huge homogeneous market. In fact, it is many markets almost as diverse as the real world, but all using the Internet as a delivery mechanism. Of course some companies get bigger than others, but only in their respective markets, and often in markets where being big is an advantage, like search and social networks. Other markets, however, are not subject to monopolies.
Then you get illicit market activity, such as kickbacks, blackmail,
lobbying, donations, special access ...
I am not a robot. I am a unicorn.
Monopoly is such a scare word, ESPECIALLY on the internet. If something better comes along people will eventually tend towards that. People are scared of Google? What do you expect? Google is simply phenomenal at what it does. If something better comes along, then people will use that, like they did when people switched to Google in the first place. Myspace died because Facebook was better. Facebook will probably eventually die out, too. It works, it works well, and people will continue to use it as long as it works well.
Sorry, but people really have to lookup up what this effing word means. The very fact that he claims the internet is ruled by monopolies (plural) rebuts his whole argument.
I have a lot of choice online, choosing one service that is better or I prefer more then another is not a monopoly. Only having one service available to me is a monopoly.
I tire of success being equated to monopoly. The moment one company pulls away from another and sells more product or makes more profit naturally the internet becomes littered with cries of monopoly, especially in light of the fact that while it may not be easy to compete against these companies, its not impossible.
Monopoly = the absence of choice. It's economic definition is "a market in which there are many buyers, but only one seller". When did Google become the only thing on the Internet?
Google, I would argue, is not a true monopoly as I define things.
Google still requires public assent, ("We all like this option and so we give it all the power!"). People can still collectively choose something different. Google, however, is buying into the infrastructure which makes it possible to choose and become informed. If they were to use those muscles to quash competition in subversive ways, and if they were successful at this, then they would become a monopoly and we would be owned.
People have the conceit to believe that large human populations cannot be contained, programmed and controlled. The Free Market only works if we are free, but in many ways, we are not.
The interesting part is that we are made up of collections of set and predictable behavioral reactions. It takes awareness and will power to break those reaction cycles, but most people, and I mean nearly everybody, never attains the self-awareness necessary to accomplish this. The Ego gets in the way. People THINK they achieve self-awareness and self-determination, but really, their reactions are not only predictable, but easy to control without their being aware that they are only choosing within a set of pre-determined and controlled boundaries.
The American two-party political system as controlled by the global banking elite is an example of this kind of illusory "free" market. There are options within it, but really, to break out of its primary bounds is very difficult. -Especially when people are so totally programmed to not ever question it or even see it. The control level extends right down to our basic beliefs about reality and the soul.
Many of the economics specialists and students quoting their knowledge here are, in fact, caught in a type of semantic control. The system will not teach you that you are slaves. It will teach you to be happy within the system and to not see beyond it.
-FL
s/the Internet//
There have been a bunch of such stories about Bing as well. Every time, someone eventually points out that this is due to fluctuations in the page ranking algorithms, and you can just as well come up with queries slanted for the "other side". Or get the same kind of bias from Google.
thats the point. if things go more in the direction the right wing wants, government wont be able to do ANYthing regarding your land. 'private rights', 'individual liberties'. 30 senators including mccain had given objections to a bill that prevented companies from putting contract clauses in their contracts with female employees, that held them not to sue the company or the rapists, if they were raped by company employees while working overseas.
their reason was 'government should not be able to tell private citizens how to conduct their business'.
so in short, they are saying that, if a private company lets its employees rape each other, it should be able to do so, if they drop a contract clause preventing rapists and company from getting sued.
this was an actual hearing, in u.s. houses. it was an actual bill. the 30 senators objected to it were actual senators. one of them, was the presidential candidate of the last election. these are real people.
this is where ayn randists want to end up. and youre saying 'government can take it away'. yeah. not if they get their way with 'no government'.
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And then Microsoft proves that they did it by "un-fixing" the results a few days later.
Exactly! This is the key conundrum of human government.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Covert drugging, anesthetized sleep, or disabled consciousness surgeries, implanted devices, bodily abuse and mind abuse
Advanced and clandestine surgical or abuse techniques to cause target to be essentially unaware.
Covert drugging with anesthetics such as needle injected Propofol (also known as the "milk of amnesia") or a gas such as Chloroform administered through a hose into the sleeping area of the target or by a rag over the target’s mouth and nose.
Using directed energy weapons to maintain a sleep state in the brain of the target.
Brain surgery to install a mind control chip that simply allows the conscious mind to be disabled when a target is asleep so they remain unconscious making drugging unnecessary.
Plastic surgery on the face, nose and rectum to make a "designer face" or a "designer rectum."
Cochlear implants for inner ear transmissions covered up with eczema behind the lower back crevice of each earlobe.
Tracking device implants in center of left eyebrow, upper right earlobe or right armpit.
Tear duct implants.
Rectal pain suppression implants.
Beating forearms or calves of target.
Wedging items between teeth to move teeth out of or into alignment.
Designing dried nasal mucus in nose of target.
Skin conditions in places hidden by clothing but noticeable to the target (specific harmful topical creams and chemicals such as nail polish remover which are well known to scientists/dermatologists are generally used): eczema, psoriasis, warts, acne, moles, in-grown hairs, in-grown toenails, freckles, strange hair growth.
Mouth sores especially canker sores.
Ear and eye infections.
Tap water drugging.
Medically necessary surgeries or operations to maintain health of target.
Signs (upon awakening):
Needle injection marks especially on upper right (or left) arm, forearms, back of fingers, back, stomach, ankles, and calves.
Ability to easily cause bruising by squeezing sites of needle injection marks.
Object the size of a grain of rice especially if found in eyebrow, upper earlobe or armpit.
Eczema behind lower back crevice of each earlobe to cover up cochlear implant surgery.
Feeling the post-anesthetic type of drugged-out dazed and confused mental effect.
Unexplainable severe pain in limbs.
Strange skin problems.
Strange mental (conscious or subconscious) feelings or sensations.
Homosexual and degenerate behavior recruitment campaign
Lust themes including sexually degenerate behavior, homosexuality, poly-amorous lifestyle, infidelity, pedophilia, bestiality or other fetishes.
Designed by corrupt and perverted psychotherapists and psychologists who study and practice sexual identity manipulation.
Designed experiences to destroy sexual fantasies and make women seem unappealing.
Homosexual and liberal messages in mainstream media.
Attempting induction of homosexuality through geographic location in known areas with large populations of homosexuals.
Use of all boys and all girls schools or summer camps.
Attempting to incarcerate or institutionalize the target such that they can be raped in jail or prison or in the hospital where nobody will believe them or be able to communicate with them. This type of rape is also referred to as mind rape as the mind is conscious during the rape as opposed to being raped while unconscious during sleep.
Unconscious Body Manipulation
Sexual abuse.
Forced swallowing or injection of hormones to give a hyper-masculine sexual drive.
Genital manipulation: Penile eczema or scraped off skin on the bottom center of the shaft or tip or on the left or right front tip of the penis, excessive penile hair growth on the base of the shaft through hair growth creams and hormones, scrotal stretching.
Symptoms of genital manipulation: eczema from chemical such as nail polish remover or skin scraping plainly visible, painful and stretched out scrotum.
Anal manipulation: clandestine serial rapist(s) performing rape or sometimes special gang-rape rituals involving sodomy and
some people want a device that doesn't cost $600 or come with yet another $70 per month phone bill.
I think blackberry has a larger market than Apple in the US, and Android is pretty competitive as well.
As I said, some people don't want another phone line. There are plenty of BlackBerry and Android counterparts to the iPhone, but which counterpart to the iPod touch do you recommend that people try?
Copyright infringement does act as a competitor to prevent certain abuses of a monopoly.
But in my home country, it is considered contributory copyright infringement for the maker of a device or service to promote it primarily for use with infringing copies. A&M v. Napster; MGM v. Grokster. For this reason, few established companies will try making a bullet point out of ability to play warez.
I really wonder at the fundamental stupidity of the surprise that free markets tend towards monopoly.
Free market capitalism involves competition for profits. The point of gaining profits is to invest them in future production, for increased profits. A successful competitor wins a decisive advantage over the unsuccessful competitors. Competitors in a free market are competing to be monopolies, and the prize for winning a round of competition is the means to become a monopoly.
Professional team sports, with rules to enforce competitive equilibrium and a reset of standings each season, notoriously suffer from the problem that successful teams have more resources to recruit players and coaches than less successful teams. How much more the case would it be if successful teams got to claim the best players and staff from the losing teams at the end of each game?
The only way I can imagine a free market with a level competitive playing field persisting is if there's a level of state intervention that would be more heavy-handed than a completely monolithic and centralized command economy. I would prefer a democratic socialism, in which the competition occurs between debaters proposing policies in a democratic theater.
Probably some archos handheld, or a MID.
The advantage of iPod touch over "some archos handheld, or a MID" is that an individual can walk into a Best Buy store and try the former but not the latter. A handheld device bought online that turns out to be unusably unergonomic for the buyer leaves the buyer $100 out of pocket in shipping, return shipping, and restocking fees. Apple has a monopoly on in-store demonstrations of Wi-Fi-only MIDs in that size range.
You might even argue that a netbook competes to some degree.
In fact, I've described iPad as what Apple makes instead of netbooks.
iTunes is competing with piracy, which keeps their prices lower
Piracy costs several thousand dollars even when done by a home user. Capitol v. Thomas.