So what can you do? Make copyrights addressable only to an individual, not transferable, and revokable on demand by the licenser? I don't think that will work either -- I'd rather see content protect by contract than by legal requirement. Even better, I'd like to see easily duplicated content protected by DRM (yes, it sounds ugly) as a deterrent to copying, and I'd rather see it also freely available if it isn't DRMd -- with the creator selling value added options to supplement their income.
I don't see Microsoft owning a 90% share of the PC software market. I've said it before, I recently ran a study of all the programs I use in a month, and I use over 400 different applications (locally and online). Of those applications, only 3 are Microsoft's. Their OS is used by all because Microsoft has gone through a great deal of pain to make sure it works for the masses -- which it does.
The DR-DOS/MS-DOS situation is very unique. The #1 problem I see with it is that Microsoft's first line of defense (if memory serves me correctly) was based on patent, copyright and other IP tactics, which I don't believe would exist in a free market. Secondly, I see no reason why any company can not introduce incompatibilities within their products in hopes of battling the competition. My own businesses do it all the time (we sell our own OEM products which require our own hardware, a la a dongle), and Microsoft did nothing to prevent the marketing of DR-DOS. If DR-DOS was concerned about incompatibilities, they should have written around them or done a better job of acquiring OEMs, which they didn't.
As a long time DOS user (I started using PCs in about 83), I can tell you that DR-DOS was a waste for me for many reasons, the first of which was third party support! I remember the hell I went through getting my multinode BBS running with DR-DOS and DesqView (ugh!). It had nothing to do with MS-introduced incompatibilities on my end as I ran no MS software (Lotus, DesqView, and my BBS apps as well as Illustrator and Quark). In the long run, it was DR-DOS' inability to adapt to the marketplace that killed them.
I know people believe that Microsoft was found guilty of being a monopoly, but all I see is a company that works extra hard developing new markets and is prone to recurring failures over and over and over again. If it wasn't for their awesome technet blogs, I'd be way behind in my IT market -- Microsoft goes above and beyond the call of duty in supporting my business, my employees and my customers. The same can't be said of HP, Autodesk, Xerox (shudder, don't start me on the Versatecs that I lost hundreds of thousands on), Epson, and the rest -- they've dropped the ball repeatedly.
Do I like Windows? NO! I would love for the day that *nix and OO were stable enough to run, just because the $600 that my users would save would be used for other things that I'd make MORE money on. But Microsoft drives customers to me, and *nix does not. It is sad, yes, but I see no monopoly -- just good competition.
You, and no one else, can name a single company that attained any sort of monopoly WITHOUT government allowance. They don't exist naturally, they never will. If a company gets to the top of their market and corners a large percentage, they have to compete EVERY DAY to keep themselves at the top. This means better prices, better and safer products, more competitive wages, more competitive benefits, and happier customers and employees. Only government destroys these items by enforcing elite-run monopolies to exist without competition.
There are no natural monopolies, only government has the power to create them.
So you think that the individual states have done better in the past?
We did do better -- 1776 to 1865. The dollar was stable for nearly 200 years, the individual states as a whole were very competitive and prosperous, and we were the wealthiest nation in less than 100 years.
The last time the individual states ran things before the national government got involved we had: the worst stock market crash of all time,
Created by the Federal Reserve, my friend. The dollar was stable for almost 200 years until the FEderal Reserve destroyed it. Since 1913 the dollar has lost 96% of its value. How can the poor save, now?
states that would not recognize another state's currency,
Good, currency should be a free market provided product, preferably 100% gold reserves. Read Rothbard's free e-book: What Has government done to our money? to learn more about free market currencies and why we had a Great depression.
race and gender segregation the likes of which you have never seen,
Most of which occured because of the White Supremecist Abe Lincoln and his hatred of the black race. Too much proof there to even begin. Lincoln created the worst segregation which continued up until even the 80s in the south and the north.
and a host of other screw the other guy mentalities. We weren't a country but rather a loose confederation of oligarchy's out to make the most buck they could. Anarchy-Capitalism at its finest.
Competition, growth, a growing country of entrepreneurs and freedom advocates. Slavery was bad EVERYWHERE in the world -- only in the US did it take a war to "end" and the war didn't even end slavery -- the free market of industrialism did. Lincoln hated blacks, he wanted to deport them after the war. He supported the law in Illinois that prevented blacks from entering the state!
Of those who answer yes, how many of you actually paid for it out of your own pockets, up front? Grants, most of which are funded by the government, stafford loans are backed by the government, the majority of the programs you were involved in at any school were funded mostly by the national, not the state, government.
Before government grants, most education was EASILY afforded by people who wanted to go. In fact, there are FEWER people getting value of out college since its liberalization. The Federal government destroyed college affordability through licensing and grants (supply and demand).
Would you really like to see air rates triple because each state now emposes their own air traffic tax that is different from everyone else's? Or how about when you just drive across the boarder to the next state, but oh, since you aren't a citizen of that state you have to pay a toll, it keeps their taxes down you know. Or how about frieght costs quadrupeling because each state has their own driver's licence requirements and now a cdl is something you have to have a certification for in each state you plan on driving through? There is no more FAA because we have cut federal taxes for it, so now the airlines can do whatever the hell they want. Or even worse there are now mini-faa's in each state that do things just slightly differently and to be allowed flight through their airspace the airline has to conform or fly around, taking rates up even further.
Competition means most of these things would exist in a competitive market rather than a federally union-monopolized one. The FAA in Canada was privatized and it is one of the most efficient ones ever -- in fact, it is safer and cheaper than the US' FAA. Freight costs are cheaper to ship from LA to China than from LA to New York (I know, I just started an import/export business). Driver's licenses are another state-created regulation that makes costs higher -- I believe that insurance companies can do a better job of providing driving priviledges in a free competitive market than the DMV or the Feds could offer.
Much of what you're ranting about are problems created BY the state, not fixed by it. More research is available, if you want links.
Then why does Microsoft's lack of interoperability not constitute a 'forcible reservation of a market', and how would a lack of legislation protect the market from such things occuring? (namely: Should MS be able to coerce PC sellers to include Windows? Should they be able to deliberately obfuscate APIs and interfaces to thwart other OSs? Should they have been able to engineer IE to render google more slowly?)
Simple: Microsoft does that in order to rightfully protect their market. They are not doing it to be uncompetitive, in fact open standards exist but no majority of users exists that really wants to support it. I don't want to support open APIs anymore -- we tried installing Open Office on 3 huge networks that we support and they were ALL failures. Returning to Windows/Office made a huge increase in efficiency for the customers AND their customers.
Microsoft's use of incompatible systems can be dismantled by a good competitor -- no competitor has done it successfully because no one spends as much R&D money (and marketing money) as Microsoft does. I don't think Microsoft will be a competitor in 10 years, though, as the network is changing faces as it has every 5-6 years for most of PC history.
Microsoft uses persuasion and market-demand to create their products. Governments like France create artificial monopolies AGAINST what the users want to create their products. You can select non-Microsoft products in thousands of situations (and are forced to use them in zero, at least versus competition). You can't select a mega-provider in France, though, because government says it is evil.
So you're saying that Gates is simply a producer of "great products and low prices" and the only people complaining are "evil, plunder-seeking competitors and their paid professional obfuscators"? Is this really the position you're taking?
To a point, yes.
Here's the situation: where Gates gets preferential treatment from government (local, state, federal or international), I am against Microsoft COMPLETELY. This includes patents and copyright, which I am against. When he gets preferential treatment from market pressures, I am for his business. I have owned my IT business for over 18 years -- a very profitable one that grows between 20 and 60% every year. While we provide many FOSS services, Windows is repeatedly our #1 requested operating system by over a 50:1 margin, even including some of our top tier billion dollar customers. Why do they want Windows? Because it runs their programs.
I use over 400 programs a month on average. Some are FOSS (Wordpress, Apache, etc), but many are Windows-based. They work very well for me and I have very few problems. I only run THREE Microsoft apps regularly (Windows and DOS mostly), and the other 4xx programs are written by other companies. I see no monopoly, I see no coercion.
Microsoft "forces" me to sell their OS with my PCs per my licensing agreement with them. I am happy to do it because 98 out of 100 customers request Windows specifically on their purchase orders. The 2 out of 100 that don't understand they'll pay more for a fresh install of *nix to their specs -- Windows frees up my employees for at least 4-6 hours per PC per install. The INDUSTRY makes Microsoft successful, not any form of coercion.
When government requires a program, I am against it. Usually they require outdated specs, though. I just saw a government bid that still specs Windows 98 for a job that will have a punch list of April 2007.
Interesting. I'm not familiar with Standard Oil. I guess my opinion is that we need some legislation to 'keep the free-market free'. What's your opinion on the Microsoft antitrust? Should MS be able to coerce PC sellers to include Windows? Should they be able to deliberately obfuscate APIs and interfaces to thwart other OSs? Should they have been able to engineer IE to render google more slowly? I would think these things would be legitimate in a "totally" free-market, without legislation.
For me, campaign finance reform isn't needed -- if you limit the Federal government to the Constitutional limits (or a Federal Government smaller than 1% of the GDP), no amount of bribery would help. Bribes only work with those with massive power, dig? In terms of medical licensing, the AMA is a lobbying group that gives Congress the means to limit the amount of licensed Doctors as well as med students. They restrict the supply of doctors, which increases the costs. They also lobby for every sort of government health-welfare program because they know that the State will never really regulate the money paid for public healthcare.
Regulation in both markets is bad for consumers, prices, quantities, qualities and those who want to work.
That is the problem with all concepts that entail using the monopoly of force that we call government -- things don't exist as you or I would wish. We could vote for people with our ideas, but they'll never enact them exactly as we wish. Even worse, with time we end up living with laws that our fathers, grandfathers or great-grandfathers created to deal with limited problems but are now existing in manipulated versions to help a select elite few.
I'll accept government with one condition: a sunset clause on that government every new generation (10-12 years). Destroy all laws and regulations, and force society to regroup and attempt to make new ones. Maybe even create a 2 year period where there are no laws at all except for the basic property rights: don't hurt someone's physical body or property. I think we'd see amazing growth in human development and charity rather than tyranny and disregard for basic rights.
In a free market without regulation, we do see SOME mega-companies that grow into being a majority of the market provider. On such "monopoly" was Standard Oil, which was never a monopoly -- they were large because they lowered the price of oil to the end user every few months. They were never an evil company, but they were sued and dissassembled due to the competitors who could not produce oil as cheaply. When we think of monopoly, we think of high prices and restricted products. The free market of competition seems to give us MORE choice, LOWER prices and HIGHER quality everywhere that it still exists. Look at PC hardware. Look at the new online media. We have more choice because of the lack of regulation -- and competition keeps quality and prices in check (and forces things to get better with time).
Welcome to the club, either way:) I have a ton of friends who still prefer big-L libertarianism (through legal means) than small-l libertarianism (encompassed by a variety of voting and non-voting ideals). The most recent LP problems are REALLY scary because it seems that some of the paleoconservative and paleoliberal policies of the LP are being usurped by neoconservative and neoliberal thoughts.
Keep a look out at the LRC and at the Mises Institute blog for more updates on the LP issue. I gave up my membership a few years ago when I realized that the LP internal politics prevented anything from moving forward. Only in the past 2 years did I realize that voting is also fraudulent, coercive, and against almost everything that can be labeled as "free" or "pro-liberty."
Copyright is one of those issues that even Mises and the LRC don't agree with me on -- I guess I'm a fringe libertarian.
I'm against voting in every way, but the LP is especially bad since their recent reform that now places them closer to the wackos on the New Right. I believe that all federal parties are corrupt: if you look at what the late Harry Browne did within the LP (stole, lied, defrauded, lied, stole, and defrauded), you'd see that almost all politicians are corrupt, especially at the Federal level.
And, for what it's worth, protecting the integrity of artistic works strikes me as a worthy use of copyright
I agree, it strikes me as a worthy use of the law, too. But does it work? No. Does public welfare at the national level work? No. Does retirement funding at the national level work? No. Nothing seems to work at the national level -- all national laws sound great when you read their titles, but the descriptions show the fallacy of a large central government.
Think about it when you consider the "worthy use" of the feds -- they really have no use other than true national defense and the protection against the individual states of trampling basic human rights.
Excellent comment -- if I hadn't posted already I'd mod up for sure.
My only problem is with your phrase that copyright is "horribly broken." If it is broken, how do you fix it?
I know a lot of slashdot/FOSS advocates love Lessig's Creative Commons, but to me CC is just another shill for state-destruction of individual rights. In EVERY situation where the law is supposed to protect you (and the "crime" is so easy to accomplish), you will have zero power to protect those rights that the law seems to create. Even under CC, how can you enforce the law that backs it up? With what money, with what attorney, and in what court?
Copyright is dead -- not broken. Copyright is useless and enables nothing; no one creates because of copyright. I repudiate copyright on every single thing I publish in the public eye (blogs, music, video productions, etc). I use the free distribution of information to increase my billable rate for people who want to know more about my trade secrets: I'll write about things I can do, and then charge customers more for the secrets I hold back. That is where the power of creation is: in creating a bigger market for your private knowledge or unique talents (such as a band performing live for a fee but giving their digital music aware freely).
I'm a vocal anti-copyright advocate and I repeatedly try to get people to realize what most Federal legislation does, especially regulatory legislation: it removes rights from the individual and creates cartelization: legal monopoly. It has happened in every industry that has any form of federal regulation: oil refinery, content distribution, medical licensing, campaign finance rules, even the stock market is cartelized now moreso than every before. Regulation at the national level is unconstitutional regardless of what people think of the non-applicable "interstate commerce clause."
Cartels exist because they have the legal monopoly to do so. Copyright only helps create and empower the cartels -- it has never helped an individual unless that individual was protected by a cartel. If you created a movie and someone wanted to hack it so that more peopl could watch it -- and they paid you for each and every hack -- you'd love it because you are getting income, you're gaining a new audience, and even more profitable: you're learning what people want. DVD players already allow for multiple versions, and maybe companies would start taking advantage of it had it not been for the big cartel that controls the flow of movie productions and releases.
Consider you're that same small movie maker -- if someone copies your movie (with or without hacking it), how would you battle them in court? What money would you use to fight the hacker/pirate/modifier/copyright violator? Is the financial risk of losing in court worth the reward? Definitely not -- more proof that cartelization is always bad.
Stephan Kinsella made a great case as to why intellectual property restrictions are anti-consumer in his free PDF titled Against Intellectual Property. (PDF WARNING) Stephan is a IP lawyer, as well, and has offered dozens of great articles on the problems with IP and how more laws aren't going to support more consumer freedom, better quality products and more competition. When you create federal regulations, you create cartelization. He also has a great non-PDF article from last year titled No such thing as a free patent, which goes beyond copyright but makes very good arguments for why they're all bad. This guy makes his living with the law, amazing that he cries out against it.
While I'm anarcho-capitalistic, I do understand that the Constitution DOES allow regulation of some sort to be created at the state level. This is preferably where regulations "should" be, if at all. The states that over-regulate will see less choice (and higher prices due to decreased supply). The states that don't over-regulate would likely see better choice, safer products and better pricing.
As usual, the federal government oversteps its bounds predictably -- in the direction of cartels. I won't call them "big business" because no real business exists with the help of government. Thankfully the future of the free market is proving to the world that copyright is insignificant to most people: they'll continue to find new ways to distribute all media products "for free," and the producers of content will have to learn the reality of supply and demand: if it is digital, it has a virtually unlimited supply. Put infinity in the supply/demand/price equation and the price will always fall to zero. This means it is time to find new ways to promote value added products along with your content.
I see no reason to enforce "Net Neutrality" through any law, especially since we've seen what happens when the government regulates any action -- less freedom, not more.
The Mises Institute has a great article on why NN is a terrible idea. The article is titled Who Owns the Internet? and it really gives great insight into why the political side of NN is just another fiasco and a tool to control the Internet by those already in power.
Competition will keep the Internet cheap and fast -- not laws. NN will only decrease competitive opportunities, and we all know the law will end up with 5000 pork barrel adders that have nothing to do with the title.
The "invisible hand" of the market opens up many "opportunities" for people all over the world -- in response to other gains and losses. I truly believe that most governments of the world are oppressive in the financial sense -- they create poverty with all their various schemes that are supposed to help people.
Minimum wage laws create unemployment -- they set the bar at which point some people can't be hired because they're not worth the minimum wage to an employer. I believe that minimum wage laws are the most racist and age-prejudice law around, and create huge cycles of poverty around the world.
Labor laws also create problems -- if you look at India's example of child prostitution, you can see that the child labor laws were 100% responsible for the rise in children being sold by poor families into prostitution; children that used to work for their family's food. I just visited India in March and I visited many poor families that hate the decision to force children to go to school. I have seen it with my own eyes, and I know that the liberal and conservative media both lie about the problems.
Society's problems are never fixed by government programs -- I believe they're always made worse. You don't see the mess made with the invisible hand of the free market when you create paternalism and cronyism for the elite or select few -- for everyone helped by government you have many more people who are hindered or hurt. Many more.
It is sort of a straw man argument, but I'll take the bait. If you're attempting to label me the brigand, though, you won't be supported if you consider the logical outcome of the "government saves us from child porn" fallacy.
First, I don't support child porn, and I believe that most pornography is addictive and something that needs a stronger family, home and faith in order to overcome. Yet I don't believe I am able to be the one to tell one person what is considered child porn and what is not. In my view, an adult who takes naked pictures of a child is guilty of child abuse and should be punished. Chasing the viewers is not going to make a hill of beans of difference, and if you think government can control it, it will only get worse. Encrypted distribution systems on the Internet will soon make it impossible track. Child porn can only be solved when people are free to realize their problems. I truly believe that houses of worship are on the decline because of government intrusion in so many aspects of our lives (such as in welfare, family counseling, and other areas that the church or the faith handled in the past). If I catch one of my brothers in faith having a problem with porn, I'll deal with it with our entire family of faith.
Second, I only believe in direct physical harm and fraud as actual crimes. If I tell you to kill someone and you kill someone, it is between you and the person you murdered. While I believe that telling another person to commit a crime is sinful, I don't believe that government has any right to control my speech with another person. Expression is non-violent UNLESS it physically harms someone or their property or restricts their actions on their property. If I want to sit on my property and yell racial slurs out loud, I'm hurting no one.
If I pay someone to commit arson, the person who actually burns the property is guilty of the crime. If someone offers you money to commit a crime, don't do it. End of the problem. If someone offers you money to kill someone, don't do it! Notify the person who is the target to let them know that they're in danger. End of problem, at least from your perspective.
Has government helped in ANY of these situations? I don't think so. The expansion of government in our lives has made these problems WORSE -- how many familes in the world sell their children into prostitution because of excessive taxes and the inability to save money because government devalues it through inflation? It is all one big loop of coercion and force. I look at what happened in India when they made child labor illegal in some states, so parents sold their children to monsters. Government at its finest.
I'm not saying anyone should support the promotion of someone who is out to kill for no reason. I'm fairly pacifistic, and I also do not wish to support killing for ANY reason. My fear here is that our government really has no right to tell us where to put our money.
Had Western Union existed 300 years ago, would England have prevented them from financing a bunch of "anarchists" in the New World? There are many freedom fighters all over the world who are considered "terrorists" by our government, and I am one to believe that individuals have the right and freedom to do what they please with their money -- especially in foreign support. Some of the countries, maybe even many of the countries that we support financially with illegal and unconstitutional foreign aid dollars are considered terrorist to me.
If you want to sponsor someone with your money that you earned with your time, it is your choice. No government should have the right to prevent you spending your money as you please in ANY way (campaign finance, rebel funding, vacation, retirement, drugs, prostitutes, schooling, whatever). Money is nothing magical, money is merely a store of your time to be redeemed to save you time in the future. That is all money is, time saved up for another day. Why should there be barriers on how you use your time, if you personally aren't hurting anyone?
I don't believe in insider trading laws because anyone who runs a business, works for a business, or is involved with any internal operations of a business definitely has insider information and will act on it. It is ridiculous to think that you can legislate what a corporation has to offer its investors -- if the investors want information, they should make sure it is contractually required for the corporation to offer that information. That is the best way to get rid of the problem, not new laws when old contract laws would suffice.
As for the 4000 employees who lost their savings, there were a lot of greedy idiots who invested all the savings in one company. They get what they deserve -- namely nothing. Many of them were bragging to their relatives about how wealthy they'll be when they retire (I know, I have 2 "friends" who worked for Enron on the West Coast who bragged regularly). I would never put all my eggs in one basket. Kids, learn from the mistakes of your parents and never ever trust a single savings system. I keep hearing about grandmas who lost everything, but they took that risk! They took the risk knowing they were going to be very wealthy IF the risk turned out right.
I don't invest one dime in a publicly traded stock. They're all shams -- they grow in dollar value more because the dollar falls in value and needs more to cover the same costs. I also don't invest in companies that use immoral procedures to con their employees and investors -- again something that almost every SEC regulated company does. The SEC is the fraudster here for setting up impossible levels of service that can never be met, and for trying to combat crimes that don't really exist.
It is all common sense, most investors should try to look into getting some, I guess.
Re:Whats so bad about Peace, Love and Sarbanes-Oxl
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Enron's Kenneth Lay Dies
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· Score: -1, Flamebait
Come on, tell me what Lay did that was wrong. Not a single person here can actually prove that he committed any actual crimes against anyone else. Does anyone know how convoluted the energy regulations and restrictions in the country (and in all 50 states) has become? It's a mess. Lay is guilty of one thing -- running a government subsidized business. He isn't guilty of defrauded anyone because that is the norm with any government-sponsored business.
The only reason Lay got strung up is because politicians lost their money, too. Blame Greenspan for that entire mess, not Lay. Blame your Congressman who definitely voted for the regulations that were in place (and are today). Sarbanes-Oxley is WORSE than the problems that existed before it -- and those problems were created because of previous regulations on businesses and accounting practices. There is no rule of law, now, not that it was that strong before.
It seems obvious from all the anti-Lay comments on slashdot that the average reader really hasn't read enough about the Enron trial to understand that Lay really wasn't the evil that our government said he was.
The Enron fiasco occurred 100% due to over-regulation of many different markets, including the wholesale energy business, the retail energy business, the accounting regulations on larger corporations and the myriad of acceptable loopholes that existed in the tax law up until they fell. Enron was supported by many politicians because many politicians had their hands in that big pie of money Enron would make for them.
What laws were broken by Lay? "Conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud." What does that mean exactly? It means that they didn't jump through the regulation hoops the way that your government mandated they do. As a business owner myself, I can tell you that I will NEVER want to run a big business (which helps the economy at every level) because of the government's rules that change on a whim.
Securities fraud cases are always "derivative" crimes, meaning they are made up crimes -- there were no actual victims who were harmed physically from these actions. Much of the blame for Enron's collapse should be pointed to Alan Greenspan who created money out of thin air with his decade of inflationary monetary policy. This money that was easily created was just as easily invested in thousands of publicly traded companies -- this investment caused stock prices to go up and allowed many companies to spend like no tomorrow. As more money was created by Greenspan, more people wanted a piece of the stock market pie -- fraudulent as it is.
I'm not defending the late Lay, but I don't think he did much more than piss off a bunch of politicians who lost their money as well. We should be stringing Greenspan up on a pole for all to see, but instead he makes $150,000 per speech defending his terrible money supply fraud.
What happened to Lay happened to Martha Stewart as well. Stocks lost value, the general idiotic public wanted some throats to be cut, so throats were cut. Nothing illegal happened, the law is too complicated for anyone to really gauge legal from illegal. They just wanted meat, and they got it.
Of course in my mind anyone who runs a State-subsidized corporation deserves to go down with the ship, but Lay was no different than any number of politicians many slashdotters love and admire. They're all crooks in terms of free market theory, and that is what matters most to me.
They provide me with a Operating System that runs all the software I need to run. I run almost a half dozen businesses daily, along with 5 church ministries, and a home network (Media Center). All my software runs flawlessly. A few weeks ago I counted that I use over 400 different applications a month, and only 3 of them are Microsoft application (Windows XP, Windows XP Media Center Edition, and Notepad). All the other 4xx applications are NOT made by Microsoft, they're made by thousands of developers who are thankful for Microsoft's mostly standardized API.
Sure, Windows has bugs. So does Linux. I nuked Open Office after 6 months of unproductive problems. We tried to run it on numerous platforms and had the same problems. We switched to higher end software packages and a web interface -- using Firefox.
In my IT company we maintain thousands of desktops and almost 80% of the software being run daily is NOT Microsoft. Where is the monopoly? My customers run AutoCAD, 3D Studio Max, Firefox, Apache-based servers running custom and off-the-shelf PHP/MySQL applications. They run Windows as their operating system, but they ignore it because it works. Things don't crash. In all our desktops, we've seen maybe 5 viruses in the last year, and absolutely zero adware. Why? We train EVERY user (at their cost) with 4-8 hours of "Don't do this" training. They listen.
If people think Microsoft is a monopoly, they're ignoring everything they do every day. I spent over 40 minutes using a great software application today called Slashdot -- run by someone who isn't involved in Microsoft. I bet you did too. I spent another hour or so running another application called Wordpress (and PHPBB) which aren't Microsoft. I just did my billing for the last 2 weeks of traveling work using an application called gmail and another application called Adobe Acrobat -- neither of them are Microsoft based.
Just because the main OS is Microsoft doesn't mean that they're a monopoly. IE built into Windows means nothing now that Google is promoting Firefox to the billions out there. My websites get more Firefox users than IE users, why is that? Almost every desktop we maintain runs Firefox, because its there.
Don't tell me that anyone is forced to use Microsoft. I don't buy computers at Circuit City, I have them built to my spec -- with Windows. Why? It works for me, and it works for most people I know -- few people really complain unless they've done something wrong to mess things up.
Microsoft is not a monopoly. There is too much choice in that market, and Microsoft spends a huge amount of money in keeping themselves at the top of the game -- and they have millions of happy consumers to prove it. The same isn't true of the DMV in Illinois (or your state) which has a monopoly on driving permits. There are more people mad at the DMV as a percentage of users than at Microsoft, for sure. I know, I run a medium-sized IT company in the Chicago market and not more than 10 of my thousands of desktop users that we maintain has complained about Microsoft.
Standard Oil was never a monopoly - they were a success. The only peole who complained about Standard Oil were the competitors who could not provide oil at the same price! Standard Oil lowered consumer prices for decades. The one book/media author who spoke out against Standard Oil was the sister of a man who ran a competitive (and state-subsidized) business that competed with SO and failed.
AT&T was created by the State through licensing schemes, regulatory restrictions, and local mandates. It wasn't until competition was allowed that prices fell and consumers were happy.
Comcast is the same as AT&T -- the State created a monopoly through municipal regulations and restrictions on competition. This still exists in most municipalities.
No, because certain geographical areas are relagated to one company. If I want Roadrunner, too f'n bad, only Comcast is available in my area. If I want another power company, too bad, only Consumer's Energy has wires going to my house. This is not choice, and it is not competition, it's pseudo-competition.
Why do these restrictions exist? Because the "State" (municipality in this case) made it so! They prevented competition -- they created a State-mandated monopoly.
Slashdot Mirror
So what can you do? Make copyrights addressable only to an individual, not transferable, and revokable on demand by the licenser? I don't think that will work either -- I'd rather see content protect by contract than by legal requirement. Even better, I'd like to see easily duplicated content protected by DRM (yes, it sounds ugly) as a deterrent to copying, and I'd rather see it also freely available if it isn't DRMd -- with the creator selling value added options to supplement their income.
I don't see Microsoft owning a 90% share of the PC software market. I've said it before, I recently ran a study of all the programs I use in a month, and I use over 400 different applications (locally and online). Of those applications, only 3 are Microsoft's. Their OS is used by all because Microsoft has gone through a great deal of pain to make sure it works for the masses -- which it does.
The DR-DOS/MS-DOS situation is very unique. The #1 problem I see with it is that Microsoft's first line of defense (if memory serves me correctly) was based on patent, copyright and other IP tactics, which I don't believe would exist in a free market. Secondly, I see no reason why any company can not introduce incompatibilities within their products in hopes of battling the competition. My own businesses do it all the time (we sell our own OEM products which require our own hardware, a la a dongle), and Microsoft did nothing to prevent the marketing of DR-DOS. If DR-DOS was concerned about incompatibilities, they should have written around them or done a better job of acquiring OEMs, which they didn't.
As a long time DOS user (I started using PCs in about 83), I can tell you that DR-DOS was a waste for me for many reasons, the first of which was third party support! I remember the hell I went through getting my multinode BBS running with DR-DOS and DesqView (ugh!). It had nothing to do with MS-introduced incompatibilities on my end as I ran no MS software (Lotus, DesqView, and my BBS apps as well as Illustrator and Quark). In the long run, it was DR-DOS' inability to adapt to the marketplace that killed them.
I know people believe that Microsoft was found guilty of being a monopoly, but all I see is a company that works extra hard developing new markets and is prone to recurring failures over and over and over again. If it wasn't for their awesome technet blogs, I'd be way behind in my IT market -- Microsoft goes above and beyond the call of duty in supporting my business, my employees and my customers. The same can't be said of HP, Autodesk, Xerox (shudder, don't start me on the Versatecs that I lost hundreds of thousands on), Epson, and the rest -- they've dropped the ball repeatedly.
Do I like Windows? NO! I would love for the day that *nix and OO were stable enough to run, just because the $600 that my users would save would be used for other things that I'd make MORE money on. But Microsoft drives customers to me, and *nix does not. It is sad, yes, but I see no monopoly -- just good competition.
You, and no one else, can name a single company that attained any sort of monopoly WITHOUT government allowance. They don't exist naturally, they never will. If a company gets to the top of their market and corners a large percentage, they have to compete EVERY DAY to keep themselves at the top. This means better prices, better and safer products, more competitive wages, more competitive benefits, and happier customers and employees. Only government destroys these items by enforcing elite-run monopolies to exist without competition.
There are no natural monopolies, only government has the power to create them.
So you think that the individual states have done better in the past?
We did do better -- 1776 to 1865. The dollar was stable for nearly 200 years, the individual states as a whole were very competitive and prosperous, and we were the wealthiest nation in less than 100 years.
The last time the individual states ran things before the national government got involved we had: the worst stock market crash of all time,
Created by the Federal Reserve, my friend. The dollar was stable for almost 200 years until the FEderal Reserve destroyed it. Since 1913 the dollar has lost 96% of its value. How can the poor save, now?
states that would not recognize another state's currency,
Good, currency should be a free market provided product, preferably 100% gold reserves. Read Rothbard's free e-book: What Has government done to our money? to learn more about free market currencies and why we had a Great depression.
race and gender segregation the likes of which you have never seen,
Most of which occured because of the White Supremecist Abe Lincoln and his hatred of the black race. Too much proof there to even begin. Lincoln created the worst segregation which continued up until even the 80s in the south and the north.
and a host of other screw the other guy mentalities. We weren't a country but rather a loose confederation of oligarchy's out to make the most buck they could. Anarchy-Capitalism at its finest.
Competition, growth, a growing country of entrepreneurs and freedom advocates. Slavery was bad EVERYWHERE in the world -- only in the US did it take a war to "end" and the war didn't even end slavery -- the free market of industrialism did. Lincoln hated blacks, he wanted to deport them after the war. He supported the law in Illinois that prevented blacks from entering the state!
Of those who answer yes, how many of you actually paid for it out of your own pockets, up front? Grants, most of which are funded by the government, stafford loans are backed by the government, the majority of the programs you were involved in at any school were funded mostly by the national, not the state, government.
Before government grants, most education was EASILY afforded by people who wanted to go. In fact, there are FEWER people getting value of out college since its liberalization. The Federal government destroyed college affordability through licensing and grants (supply and demand).
Would you really like to see air rates triple because each state now emposes their own air traffic tax that is different from everyone else's? Or how about when you just drive across the boarder to the next state, but oh, since you aren't a citizen of that state you have to pay a toll, it keeps their taxes down you know. Or how about frieght costs quadrupeling because each state has their own driver's licence requirements and now a cdl is something you have to have a certification for in each state you plan on driving through? There is no more FAA because we have cut federal taxes for it, so now the airlines can do whatever the hell they want. Or even worse there are now mini-faa's in each state that do things just slightly differently and to be allowed flight through their airspace the airline has to conform or fly around, taking rates up even further.
Competition means most of these things would exist in a competitive market rather than a federally union-monopolized one. The FAA in Canada was privatized and it is one of the most efficient ones ever -- in fact, it is safer and cheaper than the US' FAA. Freight costs are cheaper to ship from LA to China than from LA to New York (I know, I just started an import/export business). Driver's licenses are another state-created regulation that makes costs higher -- I believe that insurance companies can do a better job of providing driving priviledges in a free competitive market than the DMV or the Feds could offer.
Much of what you're ranting about are problems created BY the state, not fixed by it. More research is available, if you want links.
Then why does Microsoft's lack of interoperability not constitute a 'forcible reservation of a market', and how would a lack of legislation protect the market from such things occuring? (namely: Should MS be able to coerce PC sellers to include Windows? Should they be able to deliberately obfuscate APIs and interfaces to thwart other OSs? Should they have been able to engineer IE to render google more slowly?)
Simple: Microsoft does that in order to rightfully protect their market. They are not doing it to be uncompetitive, in fact open standards exist but no majority of users exists that really wants to support it. I don't want to support open APIs anymore -- we tried installing Open Office on 3 huge networks that we support and they were ALL failures. Returning to Windows/Office made a huge increase in efficiency for the customers AND their customers.
Microsoft's use of incompatible systems can be dismantled by a good competitor -- no competitor has done it successfully because no one spends as much R&D money (and marketing money) as Microsoft does. I don't think Microsoft will be a competitor in 10 years, though, as the network is changing faces as it has every 5-6 years for most of PC history.
Microsoft uses persuasion and market-demand to create their products. Governments like France create artificial monopolies AGAINST what the users want to create their products. You can select non-Microsoft products in thousands of situations (and are forced to use them in zero, at least versus competition). You can't select a mega-provider in France, though, because government says it is evil.
So you're saying that Gates is simply a producer of "great products and low prices" and the only people complaining are "evil, plunder-seeking competitors and their paid professional obfuscators"? Is this really the position you're taking?
To a point, yes.
Here's the situation: where Gates gets preferential treatment from government (local, state, federal or international), I am against Microsoft COMPLETELY. This includes patents and copyright, which I am against. When he gets preferential treatment from market pressures, I am for his business. I have owned my IT business for over 18 years -- a very profitable one that grows between 20 and 60% every year. While we provide many FOSS services, Windows is repeatedly our #1 requested operating system by over a 50:1 margin, even including some of our top tier billion dollar customers. Why do they want Windows? Because it runs their programs.
I use over 400 programs a month on average. Some are FOSS (Wordpress, Apache, etc), but many are Windows-based. They work very well for me and I have very few problems. I only run THREE Microsoft apps regularly (Windows and DOS mostly), and the other 4xx programs are written by other companies. I see no monopoly, I see no coercion.
Microsoft "forces" me to sell their OS with my PCs per my licensing agreement with them. I am happy to do it because 98 out of 100 customers request Windows specifically on their purchase orders. The 2 out of 100 that don't understand they'll pay more for a fresh install of *nix to their specs -- Windows frees up my employees for at least 4-6 hours per PC per install. The INDUSTRY makes Microsoft successful, not any form of coercion.
When government requires a program, I am against it. Usually they require outdated specs, though. I just saw a government bid that still specs Windows 98 for a job that will have a punch list of April 2007.
Nothing works. Thanks to the Mises Institute for battling all your fallacies of working government:
The FAA Is a failure PDF WARNING
The Government's Highway System
The FCC and telephone tragedies of government
NSF irresponsibility
NAS PDF WARNING
The Trouble with NASA
PTO
USGS failures
NOAA
National Park Service - more
NEA
and as for education, let's look at No Child Left Behind and the Department of Education PDF WARNING.
That enough?
Interesting. I'm not familiar with Standard Oil. I guess my opinion is that we need some legislation to 'keep the free-market free'. What's your opinion on the Microsoft antitrust? Should MS be able to coerce PC sellers to include Windows? Should they be able to deliberately obfuscate APIs and interfaces to thwart other OSs? Should they have been able to engineer IE to render google more slowly? I would think these things would be legitimate in a "totally" free-market, without legislation.
Great questions. Both these questions are very well explained from a free market perspective in the Mises Institute article titled The Gates-Rockefeller Myth. They had an old article titled Priviledged Producer. The other article I like is Anti-trust, anti-truth.
I'll defer to some basic facts about anarcho-capitalism (the "true" free market) that Lew Rockwell himself said in 1990:
The Trouble with Licensure
On campaign finance reform, I'll defer to Ron Paul ( Why Is There So Much Money in Politics? ) and another by Lew Rockwell ( Corruption in Government )
For me, campaign finance reform isn't needed -- if you limit the Federal government to the Constitutional limits (or a Federal Government smaller than 1% of the GDP), no amount of bribery would help. Bribes only work with those with massive power, dig? In terms of medical licensing, the AMA is a lobbying group that gives Congress the means to limit the amount of licensed Doctors as well as med students. They restrict the supply of doctors, which increases the costs. They also lobby for every sort of government health-welfare program because they know that the State will never really regulate the money paid for public healthcare.
Regulation in both markets is bad for consumers, prices, quantities, qualities and those who want to work.
That is the problem with all concepts that entail using the monopoly of force that we call government -- things don't exist as you or I would wish. We could vote for people with our ideas, but they'll never enact them exactly as we wish. Even worse, with time we end up living with laws that our fathers, grandfathers or great-grandfathers created to deal with limited problems but are now existing in manipulated versions to help a select elite few.
I'll accept government with one condition: a sunset clause on that government every new generation (10-12 years). Destroy all laws and regulations, and force society to regroup and attempt to make new ones. Maybe even create a 2 year period where there are no laws at all except for the basic property rights: don't hurt someone's physical body or property. I think we'd see amazing growth in human development and charity rather than tyranny and disregard for basic rights.
In a free market without regulation, we do see SOME mega-companies that grow into being a majority of the market provider. On such "monopoly" was Standard Oil, which was never a monopoly -- they were large because they lowered the price of oil to the end user every few months. They were never an evil company, but they were sued and dissassembled due to the competitors who could not produce oil as cheaply. When we think of monopoly, we think of high prices and restricted products. The free market of competition seems to give us MORE choice, LOWER prices and HIGHER quality everywhere that it still exists. Look at PC hardware. Look at the new online media. We have more choice because of the lack of regulation -- and competition keeps quality and prices in check (and forces things to get better with time).
Welcome to the club, either way :) I have a ton of friends who still prefer big-L libertarianism (through legal means) than small-l libertarianism (encompassed by a variety of voting and non-voting ideals). The most recent LP problems are REALLY scary because it seems that some of the paleoconservative and paleoliberal policies of the LP are being usurped by neoconservative and neoliberal thoughts.
Keep a look out at the LRC and at the Mises Institute blog for more updates on the LP issue. I gave up my membership a few years ago when I realized that the LP internal politics prevented anything from moving forward. Only in the past 2 years did I realize that voting is also fraudulent, coercive, and against almost everything that can be labeled as "free" or "pro-liberty."
Copyright is one of those issues that even Mises and the LRC don't agree with me on -- I guess I'm a fringe libertarian.
I'm against voting in every way, but the LP is especially bad since their recent reform that now places them closer to the wackos on the New Right. I believe that all federal parties are corrupt: if you look at what the late Harry Browne did within the LP (stole, lied, defrauded, lied, stole, and defrauded), you'd see that almost all politicians are corrupt, especially at the Federal level.
And, for what it's worth, protecting the integrity of artistic works strikes me as a worthy use of copyright
I agree, it strikes me as a worthy use of the law, too. But does it work? No. Does public welfare at the national level work? No. Does retirement funding at the national level work? No. Nothing seems to work at the national level -- all national laws sound great when you read their titles, but the descriptions show the fallacy of a large central government.
Think about it when you consider the "worthy use" of the feds -- they really have no use other than true national defense and the protection against the individual states of trampling basic human rights.
Excellent comment -- if I hadn't posted already I'd mod up for sure.
My only problem is with your phrase that copyright is "horribly broken." If it is broken, how do you fix it?
I know a lot of slashdot/FOSS advocates love Lessig's Creative Commons, but to me CC is just another shill for state-destruction of individual rights. In EVERY situation where the law is supposed to protect you (and the "crime" is so easy to accomplish), you will have zero power to protect those rights that the law seems to create. Even under CC, how can you enforce the law that backs it up? With what money, with what attorney, and in what court?
Copyright is dead -- not broken. Copyright is useless and enables nothing; no one creates because of copyright. I repudiate copyright on every single thing I publish in the public eye (blogs, music, video productions, etc). I use the free distribution of information to increase my billable rate for people who want to know more about my trade secrets: I'll write about things I can do, and then charge customers more for the secrets I hold back. That is where the power of creation is: in creating a bigger market for your private knowledge or unique talents (such as a band performing live for a fee but giving their digital music aware freely).
I'm a vocal anti-copyright advocate and I repeatedly try to get people to realize what most Federal legislation does, especially regulatory legislation: it removes rights from the individual and creates cartelization: legal monopoly. It has happened in every industry that has any form of federal regulation: oil refinery, content distribution, medical licensing, campaign finance rules, even the stock market is cartelized now moreso than every before. Regulation at the national level is unconstitutional regardless of what people think of the non-applicable "interstate commerce clause."
Cartels exist because they have the legal monopoly to do so. Copyright only helps create and empower the cartels -- it has never helped an individual unless that individual was protected by a cartel. If you created a movie and someone wanted to hack it so that more peopl could watch it -- and they paid you for each and every hack -- you'd love it because you are getting income, you're gaining a new audience, and even more profitable: you're learning what people want. DVD players already allow for multiple versions, and maybe companies would start taking advantage of it had it not been for the big cartel that controls the flow of movie productions and releases.
Consider you're that same small movie maker -- if someone copies your movie (with or without hacking it), how would you battle them in court? What money would you use to fight the hacker/pirate/modifier/copyright violator? Is the financial risk of losing in court worth the reward? Definitely not -- more proof that cartelization is always bad.
Stephan Kinsella made a great case as to why intellectual property restrictions are anti-consumer in his free PDF titled Against Intellectual Property. (PDF WARNING) Stephan is a IP lawyer, as well, and has offered dozens of great articles on the problems with IP and how more laws aren't going to support more consumer freedom, better quality products and more competition. When you create federal regulations, you create cartelization. He also has a great non-PDF article from last year titled No such thing as a free patent, which goes beyond copyright but makes very good arguments for why they're all bad. This guy makes his living with the law, amazing that he cries out against it.
While I'm anarcho-capitalistic, I do understand that the Constitution DOES allow regulation of some sort to be created at the state level. This is preferably where regulations "should" be, if at all. The states that over-regulate will see less choice (and higher prices due to decreased supply). The states that don't over-regulate would likely see better choice, safer products and better pricing.
As usual, the federal government oversteps its bounds predictably -- in the direction of cartels. I won't call them "big business" because no real business exists with the help of government. Thankfully the future of the free market is proving to the world that copyright is insignificant to most people: they'll continue to find new ways to distribute all media products "for free," and the producers of content will have to learn the reality of supply and demand: if it is digital, it has a virtually unlimited supply. Put infinity in the supply/demand/price equation and the price will always fall to zero. This means it is time to find new ways to promote value added products along with your content.
I see no reason to enforce "Net Neutrality" through any law, especially since we've seen what happens when the government regulates any action -- less freedom, not more.
The Mises Institute has a great article on why NN is a terrible idea. The article is titled Who Owns the Internet? and it really gives great insight into why the political side of NN is just another fiasco and a tool to control the Internet by those already in power.
Competition will keep the Internet cheap and fast -- not laws. NN will only decrease competitive opportunities, and we all know the law will end up with 5000 pork barrel adders that have nothing to do with the title.
The "invisible hand" of the market opens up many "opportunities" for people all over the world -- in response to other gains and losses. I truly believe that most governments of the world are oppressive in the financial sense -- they create poverty with all their various schemes that are supposed to help people.
Minimum wage laws create unemployment -- they set the bar at which point some people can't be hired because they're not worth the minimum wage to an employer. I believe that minimum wage laws are the most racist and age-prejudice law around, and create huge cycles of poverty around the world.
Labor laws also create problems -- if you look at India's example of child prostitution, you can see that the child labor laws were 100% responsible for the rise in children being sold by poor families into prostitution; children that used to work for their family's food. I just visited India in March and I visited many poor families that hate the decision to force children to go to school. I have seen it with my own eyes, and I know that the liberal and conservative media both lie about the problems.
Society's problems are never fixed by government programs -- I believe they're always made worse. You don't see the mess made with the invisible hand of the free market when you create paternalism and cronyism for the elite or select few -- for everyone helped by government you have many more people who are hindered or hurt. Many more.
It is sort of a straw man argument, but I'll take the bait. If you're attempting to label me the brigand, though, you won't be supported if you consider the logical outcome of the "government saves us from child porn" fallacy.
First, I don't support child porn, and I believe that most pornography is addictive and something that needs a stronger family, home and faith in order to overcome. Yet I don't believe I am able to be the one to tell one person what is considered child porn and what is not. In my view, an adult who takes naked pictures of a child is guilty of child abuse and should be punished. Chasing the viewers is not going to make a hill of beans of difference, and if you think government can control it, it will only get worse. Encrypted distribution systems on the Internet will soon make it impossible track. Child porn can only be solved when people are free to realize their problems. I truly believe that houses of worship are on the decline because of government intrusion in so many aspects of our lives (such as in welfare, family counseling, and other areas that the church or the faith handled in the past). If I catch one of my brothers in faith having a problem with porn, I'll deal with it with our entire family of faith.
Second, I only believe in direct physical harm and fraud as actual crimes. If I tell you to kill someone and you kill someone, it is between you and the person you murdered. While I believe that telling another person to commit a crime is sinful, I don't believe that government has any right to control my speech with another person. Expression is non-violent UNLESS it physically harms someone or their property or restricts their actions on their property. If I want to sit on my property and yell racial slurs out loud, I'm hurting no one.
If I pay someone to commit arson, the person who actually burns the property is guilty of the crime. If someone offers you money to commit a crime, don't do it. End of the problem. If someone offers you money to kill someone, don't do it! Notify the person who is the target to let them know that they're in danger. End of problem, at least from your perspective.
Has government helped in ANY of these situations? I don't think so. The expansion of government in our lives has made these problems WORSE -- how many familes in the world sell their children into prostitution because of excessive taxes and the inability to save money because government devalues it through inflation? It is all one big loop of coercion and force. I look at what happened in India when they made child labor illegal in some states, so parents sold their children to monsters. Government at its finest.
I'm not saying anyone should support the promotion of someone who is out to kill for no reason. I'm fairly pacifistic, and I also do not wish to support killing for ANY reason. My fear here is that our government really has no right to tell us where to put our money.
Had Western Union existed 300 years ago, would England have prevented them from financing a bunch of "anarchists" in the New World? There are many freedom fighters all over the world who are considered "terrorists" by our government, and I am one to believe that individuals have the right and freedom to do what they please with their money -- especially in foreign support. Some of the countries, maybe even many of the countries that we support financially with illegal and unconstitutional foreign aid dollars are considered terrorist to me.
If you want to sponsor someone with your money that you earned with your time, it is your choice. No government should have the right to prevent you spending your money as you please in ANY way (campaign finance, rebel funding, vacation, retirement, drugs, prostitutes, schooling, whatever). Money is nothing magical, money is merely a store of your time to be redeemed to save you time in the future. That is all money is, time saved up for another day. Why should there be barriers on how you use your time, if you personally aren't hurting anyone?
I don't believe in insider trading laws because anyone who runs a business, works for a business, or is involved with any internal operations of a business definitely has insider information and will act on it. It is ridiculous to think that you can legislate what a corporation has to offer its investors -- if the investors want information, they should make sure it is contractually required for the corporation to offer that information. That is the best way to get rid of the problem, not new laws when old contract laws would suffice.
As for the 4000 employees who lost their savings, there were a lot of greedy idiots who invested all the savings in one company. They get what they deserve -- namely nothing. Many of them were bragging to their relatives about how wealthy they'll be when they retire (I know, I have 2 "friends" who worked for Enron on the West Coast who bragged regularly). I would never put all my eggs in one basket. Kids, learn from the mistakes of your parents and never ever trust a single savings system. I keep hearing about grandmas who lost everything, but they took that risk! They took the risk knowing they were going to be very wealthy IF the risk turned out right.
I don't invest one dime in a publicly traded stock. They're all shams -- they grow in dollar value more because the dollar falls in value and needs more to cover the same costs. I also don't invest in companies that use immoral procedures to con their employees and investors -- again something that almost every SEC regulated company does. The SEC is the fraudster here for setting up impossible levels of service that can never be met, and for trying to combat crimes that don't really exist.
It is all common sense, most investors should try to look into getting some, I guess.
Come on, tell me what Lay did that was wrong. Not a single person here can actually prove that he committed any actual crimes against anyone else. Does anyone know how convoluted the energy regulations and restrictions in the country (and in all 50 states) has become? It's a mess. Lay is guilty of one thing -- running a government subsidized business. He isn't guilty of defrauded anyone because that is the norm with any government-sponsored business.
The only reason Lay got strung up is because politicians lost their money, too. Blame Greenspan for that entire mess, not Lay. Blame your Congressman who definitely voted for the regulations that were in place (and are today). Sarbanes-Oxley is WORSE than the problems that existed before it -- and those problems were created because of previous regulations on businesses and accounting practices. There is no rule of law, now, not that it was that strong before.
It seems obvious from all the anti-Lay comments on slashdot that the average reader really hasn't read enough about the Enron trial to understand that Lay really wasn't the evil that our government said he was.
The Enron fiasco occurred 100% due to over-regulation of many different markets, including the wholesale energy business, the retail energy business, the accounting regulations on larger corporations and the myriad of acceptable loopholes that existed in the tax law up until they fell. Enron was supported by many politicians because many politicians had their hands in that big pie of money Enron would make for them.
What laws were broken by Lay? "Conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud." What does that mean exactly? It means that they didn't jump through the regulation hoops the way that your government mandated they do. As a business owner myself, I can tell you that I will NEVER want to run a big business (which helps the economy at every level) because of the government's rules that change on a whim.
Securities fraud cases are always "derivative" crimes, meaning they are made up crimes -- there were no actual victims who were harmed physically from these actions. Much of the blame for Enron's collapse should be pointed to Alan Greenspan who created money out of thin air with his decade of inflationary monetary policy. This money that was easily created was just as easily invested in thousands of publicly traded companies -- this investment caused stock prices to go up and allowed many companies to spend like no tomorrow. As more money was created by Greenspan, more people wanted a piece of the stock market pie -- fraudulent as it is.
I'm not defending the late Lay, but I don't think he did much more than piss off a bunch of politicians who lost their money as well. We should be stringing Greenspan up on a pole for all to see, but instead he makes $150,000 per speech defending his terrible money supply fraud.
What happened to Lay happened to Martha Stewart as well. Stocks lost value, the general idiotic public wanted some throats to be cut, so throats were cut. Nothing illegal happened, the law is too complicated for anyone to really gauge legal from illegal. They just wanted meat, and they got it.
Of course in my mind anyone who runs a State-subsidized corporation deserves to go down with the ship, but Lay was no different than any number of politicians many slashdotters love and admire. They're all crooks in terms of free market theory, and that is what matters most to me.
And again how is Microsoft a monopoly?
They provide me with a Operating System that runs all the software I need to run. I run almost a half dozen businesses daily, along with 5 church ministries, and a home network (Media Center). All my software runs flawlessly. A few weeks ago I counted that I use over 400 different applications a month, and only 3 of them are Microsoft application (Windows XP, Windows XP Media Center Edition, and Notepad). All the other 4xx applications are NOT made by Microsoft, they're made by thousands of developers who are thankful for Microsoft's mostly standardized API.
Sure, Windows has bugs. So does Linux. I nuked Open Office after 6 months of unproductive problems. We tried to run it on numerous platforms and had the same problems. We switched to higher end software packages and a web interface -- using Firefox.
In my IT company we maintain thousands of desktops and almost 80% of the software being run daily is NOT Microsoft. Where is the monopoly? My customers run AutoCAD, 3D Studio Max, Firefox, Apache-based servers running custom and off-the-shelf PHP/MySQL applications. They run Windows as their operating system, but they ignore it because it works. Things don't crash. In all our desktops, we've seen maybe 5 viruses in the last year, and absolutely zero adware. Why? We train EVERY user (at their cost) with 4-8 hours of "Don't do this" training. They listen.
If people think Microsoft is a monopoly, they're ignoring everything they do every day. I spent over 40 minutes using a great software application today called Slashdot -- run by someone who isn't involved in Microsoft. I bet you did too. I spent another hour or so running another application called Wordpress (and PHPBB) which aren't Microsoft. I just did my billing for the last 2 weeks of traveling work using an application called gmail and another application called Adobe Acrobat -- neither of them are Microsoft based.
Just because the main OS is Microsoft doesn't mean that they're a monopoly. IE built into Windows means nothing now that Google is promoting Firefox to the billions out there. My websites get more Firefox users than IE users, why is that? Almost every desktop we maintain runs Firefox, because its there.
Don't tell me that anyone is forced to use Microsoft. I don't buy computers at Circuit City, I have them built to my spec -- with Windows. Why? It works for me, and it works for most people I know -- few people really complain unless they've done something wrong to mess things up.
Microsoft is not a monopoly. There is too much choice in that market, and Microsoft spends a huge amount of money in keeping themselves at the top of the game -- and they have millions of happy consumers to prove it. The same isn't true of the DMV in Illinois (or your state) which has a monopoly on driving permits. There are more people mad at the DMV as a percentage of users than at Microsoft, for sure. I know, I run a medium-sized IT company in the Chicago market and not more than 10 of my thousands of desktop users that we maintain has complained about Microsoft.
Standard Oil was never a monopoly - they were a success. The only peole who complained about Standard Oil were the competitors who could not provide oil at the same price! Standard Oil lowered consumer prices for decades. The one book/media author who spoke out against Standard Oil was the sister of a man who ran a competitive (and state-subsidized) business that competed with SO and failed.
Read about both Gates and Rockefeller and the myth here: The Gates-Rockefeller Myth
AT&T was created by the State through licensing schemes, regulatory restrictions, and local mandates. It wasn't until competition was allowed that prices fell and consumers were happy.
Comcast is the same as AT&T -- the State created a monopoly through municipal regulations and restrictions on competition. This still exists in most municipalities.
No, because certain geographical areas are relagated to one company. If I want Roadrunner, too f'n bad, only Comcast is available in my area. If I want another power company, too bad, only Consumer's Energy has wires going to my house. This is not choice, and it is not competition, it's pseudo-competition.
Why do these restrictions exist? Because the "State" (municipality in this case) made it so! They prevented competition -- they created a State-mandated monopoly.