Oh, I never said that the government would be particularly effective in what it does or doesn't do. Simply that it should take an interest, and that the situation I've painted is what leads to a government taking antitrust steps.
The original question was "why should any government take the power to interfere with a company?" (with the implication of the original post being that no interference should be allowed, even if the company is very powerful and a convicted monopolist). If my theoretical example isn't convincing as to why a government might be justified in taking antitrust actions, the history of Standard Oil should be.
The question you are asking is different. You want to know why government should be allowed to create regulations at all, given that officers of the government are easily corrupted. If it seems that my answer does not address this concern, it is because that is a different scenario than was being addressed.
It is because of this exact problem that I feel the only rational solution is to install me as absolute potentate. I know myself to be uncorruptable, so therefore I am the only person I can trust to have in charge.;)
There's a difference between what you're describing and what constitutes actions taken against a monopolistic company. The "hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations" you refer to aren't in place to prevent a monopoly from forming - they're there for other consumer safety reasons. It's easy to assert this because we don't currently have, nor have we had in the past, an automobile manufacturing monopoly.
I would hazard a guess, though, that a mechanic/metalsmithing company wouldn't enter into the automobile manufacturing business because of the immense capital startup costs. The costs of complying with the regulations pales in comparison to the costs of opening a new plant, securing the material resources, developing relationships with dealers, marketing the new vehicles, and the fantastic labor costs involved with the mass production of automobiles. Feel free to pull up sourced numbers to counter this assertion, if you think it unreasonable.
Larger companies certainly have reason to erect barriers to entry to restrict competition, but this is an effect of the LACK of proper control of these entities - not the result of antitrust actions against these entities. The fact that they use tactics such as political manipulation doesn't change anything I've discussed; it's just another way for a company to abuse their monopolistic power once they get there.
As to whether or not politicians get purchased by companies, that's an entirely different beast. I'm on the same page as you there, in that I agree that large corporations tend to leverage their influence within the political sphere to try to avoid any sort of interference from competition. However, the fact that monopolies do this only strengthens my point that governments should take a keen interest in trying to prevent monopolies from getting to that point.
Why should any company be forced to reveal their trade secrets?
This is a common question for people who don't understand why an unregulated monopoly is bad for the economy. Why should the government be allowed to tell a company how much it can charge? Or how they can market their products if the products aren't hurting anyone? Or how they're allowed to bundle them with other things? If a consumer doesn't like a particular company, why don't they just switch to another one?
To see why these things are needed, one need look no further than recent history to find other unregulated monopolies, and what their effects have been. Keep in mind that Microsoft has already been convicted of unfair practices and abusing their monopolist position, so these comparisons are completely fair to make. (I'm making a series of simplifications for the purposes of brief introduction to the subject, but there's plenty of information out there on this if you want to get a more detailed, more authoritative story.)
Rather than describe any particular monopoly (and therefore open the simplifications to too much "it wasn't exactly like that!"-style nitpicking), I'll describe a fictional company that sells milk.
Let's pretend for a moment that the Great American Milk Company (GAMC) starts out as a small business, competing on level ground with all the other milk producers in the country. Over time, through their business acumen, they manage to market their milk effectively enough to start buying out smaller milk producers. This, in and of itself, is perfectly fine and a valid business practice.
However, things start to get a little murkier as GAMC starts to get bigger. In order to increase efficiency, they also begin to purchase distribution channels. Soon, within their own market, GAMC owns not only the milk, but also all of the companies that distribute milk, and several retail grocery stores that stock only GAMC milk.
Once they're firmly wedged in as the (effective) sole local milk provider, GAMC begins to abuse its monopoly power. Retail establishments that carry GAMC milk are told that if they don't keep the prices of GAMC milk at a particular (artificially high) level, they will cut off sales to that company. Furthermore, retailers that aren't owned by GAMC are told that if they stock other company's milk products, GAMC will cease distribution of their products to that store. And if any retail establishment falls out of line, GAMC uses their retail presence to drop the prices on milk at their area just long enough to force the other retailers to give up on selling milk, and then jacks the prices back up to make up the loss GAMC just took.
Of course, those retail establishments are free to give GAMC the finger and buy from other locations, but since GAMC owns the all of the local distribution channels, the cost to purchase non-GAMC products is significantly higher. Retail grocers are left with a choice between expensive and more expensive, and either opt for the former or fail. As a result, the consumer is presented with a single choice - buy GAMC milk, or don't buy milk at all.
GAMC can make a LOT of money this way. Once they don't have to fear competition in a local market any more, they can charge whatever they like for the milk, and they don't even have to worry about quality any more! People will still buy GAMC milk, even if it's really crappy milk, because it's the only milk available in their area. GAMC can cut the wages of the truck drivers and lay off large portions of the workforce, because hey - if the milk gets there late, what are they going to do? Buy milk somewhere else?
As time goes by, GAMC can use all these funds to expand into other markets and treat them similarly. Once GAMC has acquired a large portion of the milk producers, distributors, and retailers across the country (as well as locking other retailers into their milk through the tactics outlined above), they can just sit back and do whatever they want. Any competing milk outfit
It's interesting that he should pick DDR as signaling the death of arcades, when, in fact, DDR was the beginning of a (albeit temporary) revival of arcades. The death of arcades started many years before DDR's release in the States, beginning with the rise of home gaming.
Specifically, the main draw of arcades for most goers wasn't the "competition" factor. It was that the technology available in arcade games was leagues above what was available at home. Anyone else remember the Genesis and SNES ports of Mortal Kombat 2? People were willing to pay for play at arcades because the games there were simply BETTER than what was available at home.
As commodity computing became a reality, and the technology required to run arcade-quality games became widespread, the draw of going to an arcade to play dampened significantly. It got to a point (around '99 or '00, plus or minus a bit depending on locale) where arcade machines were no longer able to outperform home computers and consoles. As a result, people were no longer willing to drop $50 a month at an arcade because they can spend that same $50 at home and get a BETTER gaming experience.
The reason why DDR did so well in the arcades was because of the speciality of the controllers. The game itself was well-designed, has an easy learning curve, and is attractive to players of both genders. This, coupled with the fact that good dance pads simply weren't feasible to purchse for one's home, meant that a central location (read: an arcade) was an ideal arrangement.
This, too, however, has been superceded by the level of tech available for home use. Now that reasonable dance pads are available for purchase affordably, the interest in DDR at the arcades has waned. So much so that Konami is no longer producing new machines, and has turned their focus primarily (and in the US, exclusively) to home releases.
If another thing comes along that substantially improves the gaming experience in a way that simply isn't economical to do in one's home, then the arcade will make a resurgence. No amount of "competitive" gaming draw will cause the same effect. (As an example, I'll point to the rise and fall of LAN-gaming shops.)
I know it's not what you're looking for for an office-based setting, but if you're into gaming, you'll want to look at XFire. Does all kinds of spiffy things like allowing IM'ing from within games (without having to alt-tab), and then has a bunch of other random stuff like voice chat, one-click game joining to your friends, a sort of regulated p2p file system, and a screenshot upload system.
Really, though, the whole being able to chat inside a game without having to constantly alt-tab out makes it worthwhile in my book. The downside, I suppose, is that it's windows only.
"Do you share my concern at the decision of Rockstar to publish a new game called Bully in which players use their on-screen persona to kick and punch other schoolchildren?"
I'm sorry, but other schoolchildren? The players themselves will, by and large, be adults - not schoolchildren themselves. Sure, sure, we can all argue "but that's not what they meant - 'other' here refers to the in-game persona", but that sort of sneaky rhetoric doesn't fly with me. It's a charged statement meant to imply that we have to protect the children from this sort of thing, when they're not the target audience and they're already going to be restricted from purchasing it anyway.
Something I did at a convention while running a Tron-themed room was to create some glowy drink. The magic ingredient is Tonic Water, but you have to mask the horrible, horrible aftertaste.
My solution was this:
Blue Raspberry Kool-Aid, unsweetened - 1 packet
Tonic Water - 1 cup
Water - 7 cups
Sugar - 2 cups
Prepare the Kool-Aid per normal, only with the above-listed ingredients. Blue Kool-Aid tends to look pretty bright on its own, but it glows fantastically under blacklight with the tonic water added in. 2 cups might seem like a lot of sugar, but it's absolutely necessary to cover the taste of the quinine.
Cherry or Orange Kool-Aid might work well for something more "spooky" on Halloween, but I'd recommend testing it in advance to make sure that it gets as good of a glow as you'd like. Avoid anything lemonade-y, as the sharp citrus only brings out the flavor of the quinine, which you really, really want to avoid.
If it's just adults that'll be drinking it, you can cut the sugar a touch (maybe down to 1.5 cups), increase the proportion of Tonic Water a bit (maybe up to 1.5 cups - 2 cups tops) and add vodka to taste. Add more vodka if you increased the Tonic Water too much - again, to help mask the quinine.
Also, a word on blacklights: those 25W "blacklight" bulbs you get at your local general store are crap. Go to Spencer's or your local equivalent and pick up a flourescent blacklight. They even have blacklight CF's you can drop into existing light fixtures - waaaay more blacklight and so much less of that "I'm really purple, but trying hard to be UV".
It's a crying shame they won't be able to find anyone to do that job. If only there were a large repository of internet-pornography viewing people somewhere that could be readily tapped...
With a score of 8/100, he must really hate this game.
Or maybe, it's a score of 8/5, and he really, really, over-enthusiastically likes this game.
Perhaps it's 8/Green, and it's abstract.
(*cough* Attention editors: Do not give an arbitrary rating for a review without some indication of what the relationship is. Yes, we're all smart kids and can determine that you probably like the game from your review, so it should be 8/10, with 10 being the best, but it's considered shoddy work to omit the scale.)
I am currently using Exponent for a development blog of sorts ( Improbable Drive ), and set it up for my girlfriend's personal site who, while computer savvy, has no web skills to speak of.
Setting up a few users and appropriate permissions for the content items (this can be done on a content item-by-item basis) is both simple and should mask away most of the CMS-y bits that would be tricky for non-computer users to use.
It's OSS, and exceptionally easy to set up and use.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I never said that the government would be particularly effective in what it does or doesn't do. Simply that it should take an interest, and that the situation I've painted is what leads to a government taking antitrust steps.
;)
The original question was "why should any government take the power to interfere with a company?" (with the implication of the original post being that no interference should be allowed, even if the company is very powerful and a convicted monopolist). If my theoretical example isn't convincing as to why a government might be justified in taking antitrust actions, the history of Standard Oil should be.
The question you are asking is different. You want to know why government should be allowed to create regulations at all, given that officers of the government are easily corrupted. If it seems that my answer does not address this concern, it is because that is a different scenario than was being addressed.
It is because of this exact problem that I feel the only rational solution is to install me as absolute potentate. I know myself to be uncorruptable, so therefore I am the only person I can trust to have in charge.
There's a difference between what you're describing and what constitutes actions taken against a monopolistic company. The "hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations" you refer to aren't in place to prevent a monopoly from forming - they're there for other consumer safety reasons. It's easy to assert this because we don't currently have, nor have we had in the past, an automobile manufacturing monopoly.
I would hazard a guess, though, that a mechanic/metalsmithing company wouldn't enter into the automobile manufacturing business because of the immense capital startup costs. The costs of complying with the regulations pales in comparison to the costs of opening a new plant, securing the material resources, developing relationships with dealers, marketing the new vehicles, and the fantastic labor costs involved with the mass production of automobiles. Feel free to pull up sourced numbers to counter this assertion, if you think it unreasonable.
Larger companies certainly have reason to erect barriers to entry to restrict competition, but this is an effect of the LACK of proper control of these entities - not the result of antitrust actions against these entities. The fact that they use tactics such as political manipulation doesn't change anything I've discussed; it's just another way for a company to abuse their monopolistic power once they get there.
As to whether or not politicians get purchased by companies, that's an entirely different beast. I'm on the same page as you there, in that I agree that large corporations tend to leverage their influence within the political sphere to try to avoid any sort of interference from competition. However, the fact that monopolies do this only strengthens my point that governments should take a keen interest in trying to prevent monopolies from getting to that point.
Why should any company be forced to reveal their trade secrets?
This is a common question for people who don't understand why an unregulated monopoly is bad for the economy. Why should the government be allowed to tell a company how much it can charge? Or how they can market their products if the products aren't hurting anyone? Or how they're allowed to bundle them with other things? If a consumer doesn't like a particular company, why don't they just switch to another one?
To see why these things are needed, one need look no further than recent history to find other unregulated monopolies, and what their effects have been. Keep in mind that Microsoft has already been convicted of unfair practices and abusing their monopolist position, so these comparisons are completely fair to make. (I'm making a series of simplifications for the purposes of brief introduction to the subject, but there's plenty of information out there on this if you want to get a more detailed, more authoritative story.)
Rather than describe any particular monopoly (and therefore open the simplifications to too much "it wasn't exactly like that!"-style nitpicking), I'll describe a fictional company that sells milk.
Let's pretend for a moment that the Great American Milk Company (GAMC) starts out as a small business, competing on level ground with all the other milk producers in the country. Over time, through their business acumen, they manage to market their milk effectively enough to start buying out smaller milk producers. This, in and of itself, is perfectly fine and a valid business practice.
However, things start to get a little murkier as GAMC starts to get bigger. In order to increase efficiency, they also begin to purchase distribution channels. Soon, within their own market, GAMC owns not only the milk, but also all of the companies that distribute milk, and several retail grocery stores that stock only GAMC milk.
Once they're firmly wedged in as the (effective) sole local milk provider, GAMC begins to abuse its monopoly power. Retail establishments that carry GAMC milk are told that if they don't keep the prices of GAMC milk at a particular (artificially high) level, they will cut off sales to that company. Furthermore, retailers that aren't owned by GAMC are told that if they stock other company's milk products, GAMC will cease distribution of their products to that store. And if any retail establishment falls out of line, GAMC uses their retail presence to drop the prices on milk at their area just long enough to force the other retailers to give up on selling milk, and then jacks the prices back up to make up the loss GAMC just took.
Of course, those retail establishments are free to give GAMC the finger and buy from other locations, but since GAMC owns the all of the local distribution channels, the cost to purchase non-GAMC products is significantly higher. Retail grocers are left with a choice between expensive and more expensive, and either opt for the former or fail. As a result, the consumer is presented with a single choice - buy GAMC milk, or don't buy milk at all.
GAMC can make a LOT of money this way. Once they don't have to fear competition in a local market any more, they can charge whatever they like for the milk, and they don't even have to worry about quality any more! People will still buy GAMC milk, even if it's really crappy milk, because it's the only milk available in their area. GAMC can cut the wages of the truck drivers and lay off large portions of the workforce, because hey - if the milk gets there late, what are they going to do? Buy milk somewhere else?
As time goes by, GAMC can use all these funds to expand into other markets and treat them similarly. Once GAMC has acquired a large portion of the milk producers, distributors, and retailers across the country (as well as locking other retailers into their milk through the tactics outlined above), they can just sit back and do whatever they want. Any competing milk outfit
It's interesting that he should pick DDR as signaling the death of arcades, when, in fact, DDR was the beginning of a (albeit temporary) revival of arcades. The death of arcades started many years before DDR's release in the States, beginning with the rise of home gaming.
Specifically, the main draw of arcades for most goers wasn't the "competition" factor. It was that the technology available in arcade games was leagues above what was available at home. Anyone else remember the Genesis and SNES ports of Mortal Kombat 2? People were willing to pay for play at arcades because the games there were simply BETTER than what was available at home.
As commodity computing became a reality, and the technology required to run arcade-quality games became widespread, the draw of going to an arcade to play dampened significantly. It got to a point (around '99 or '00, plus or minus a bit depending on locale) where arcade machines were no longer able to outperform home computers and consoles. As a result, people were no longer willing to drop $50 a month at an arcade because they can spend that same $50 at home and get a BETTER gaming experience.
The reason why DDR did so well in the arcades was because of the speciality of the controllers. The game itself was well-designed, has an easy learning curve, and is attractive to players of both genders. This, coupled with the fact that good dance pads simply weren't feasible to purchse for one's home, meant that a central location (read: an arcade) was an ideal arrangement.
This, too, however, has been superceded by the level of tech available for home use. Now that reasonable dance pads are available for purchase affordably, the interest in DDR at the arcades has waned. So much so that Konami is no longer producing new machines, and has turned their focus primarily (and in the US, exclusively) to home releases.
If another thing comes along that substantially improves the gaming experience in a way that simply isn't economical to do in one's home, then the arcade will make a resurgence. No amount of "competitive" gaming draw will cause the same effect. (As an example, I'll point to the rise and fall of LAN-gaming shops.)
No wonder I feel so well rested!
It's like sticking your hand into your sock drawer 100 times at random and always coming up with matched pairs.
Oh, that's easy. Just ensure that your sock drawer only has one type of sock in it.
The last prize company's name is actually "uTime Games" - it looks like the mu in the name didn't make it through.
Of course, I'd post the #181 html code here so it looks right, but apparently that gets filtered out, too. So, um, picture the 'u' with a tail.
I mean, if they really think it can be done for that, I'd be willing to pony up the $25 myself.
Oh, wait.
I mean, sure it feels nice, but when will children learn that a life of misdemeanor isn't the answer?
If you're into really bad video games, or just poking fun at them, another place to check out is Something Awful's ROM Pit.
The reviews score the games in various categories (gameplay, sound, etc.) on a scale of -10 to -1, and the writeups are fantastic.
I know it's not what you're looking for for an office-based setting, but if you're into gaming, you'll want to look at XFire. Does all kinds of spiffy things like allowing IM'ing from within games (without having to alt-tab), and then has a bunch of other random stuff like voice chat, one-click game joining to your friends, a sort of regulated p2p file system, and a screenshot upload system.
Really, though, the whole being able to chat inside a game without having to constantly alt-tab out makes it worthwhile in my book. The downside, I suppose, is that it's windows only.
Who wants to be the first to register "com", and have the entire internet be reduced to a subnet of your domain?
"Is this really a worthwhile debate or just an excuse for toilet humor?"
/., I'm gunning for the latter. I offer as evidence any comment that gets modded "Funny", including this one.
Given that this story was submitted to
...but the comments there are pretty loaded.
"Do you share my concern at the decision of Rockstar to publish a new game called Bully in which players use their on-screen persona to kick and punch other schoolchildren?"
I'm sorry, but other schoolchildren? The players themselves will, by and large, be adults - not schoolchildren themselves. Sure, sure, we can all argue "but that's not what they meant - 'other' here refers to the in-game persona", but that sort of sneaky rhetoric doesn't fly with me. It's a charged statement meant to imply that we have to protect the children from this sort of thing, when they're not the target audience and they're already going to be restricted from purchasing it anyway.
And yes, the irony in my sig is intentional.
Something I did at a convention while running a Tron-themed room was to create some glowy drink. The magic ingredient is Tonic Water, but you have to mask the horrible, horrible aftertaste.
My solution was this:
Blue Raspberry Kool-Aid, unsweetened - 1 packet
Tonic Water - 1 cup
Water - 7 cups
Sugar - 2 cups
Prepare the Kool-Aid per normal, only with the above-listed ingredients. Blue Kool-Aid tends to look pretty bright on its own, but it glows fantastically under blacklight with the tonic water added in. 2 cups might seem like a lot of sugar, but it's absolutely necessary to cover the taste of the quinine.
Cherry or Orange Kool-Aid might work well for something more "spooky" on Halloween, but I'd recommend testing it in advance to make sure that it gets as good of a glow as you'd like. Avoid anything lemonade-y, as the sharp citrus only brings out the flavor of the quinine, which you really, really want to avoid.
If it's just adults that'll be drinking it, you can cut the sugar a touch (maybe down to 1.5 cups), increase the proportion of Tonic Water a bit (maybe up to 1.5 cups - 2 cups tops) and add vodka to taste. Add more vodka if you increased the Tonic Water too much - again, to help mask the quinine.
Also, a word on blacklights: those 25W "blacklight" bulbs you get at your local general store are crap. Go to Spencer's or your local equivalent and pick up a flourescent blacklight. They even have blacklight CF's you can drop into existing light fixtures - waaaay more blacklight and so much less of that "I'm really purple, but trying hard to be UV".
There is easily a hundred times more depravity, violence, and subversive thinking in books on a public library shelf than in any set of video games.
Yes, but we all know that no child in the US in their right mind goes to the library. Libraries are for geeks and losers.
It's a crying shame they won't be able to find anyone to do that job. If only there were a large repository of internet-pornography viewing people somewhere that could be readily tapped...
That won't be completely the case until they hire CmdrTaco as a grammar editor. ...Twice.
Who remembers the old Rings of Power cheat that showed you the boobies on startup.
What, no screenshots?
I mean, 85% of the time they were just calling the people on their cell phones and predicting that the subject would answer.
This time the check engine light won't turn off...
That's what electrical tape is for: to cover that light so you don't have to look at it any more.
Giant mutant trout with Klinefelter's syndrome. Just what the world needs.
In an amusing bit of coincidence, the best test for Klinefelter's is known as FISH.
With a score of 8/100, he must really hate this game.
Or maybe, it's a score of 8/5, and he really, really, over-enthusiastically likes this game.
Perhaps it's 8/Green, and it's abstract.
(*cough* Attention editors: Do not give an arbitrary rating for a review without some indication of what the relationship is. Yes, we're all smart kids and can determine that you probably like the game from your review, so it should be 8/10, with 10 being the best, but it's considered shoddy work to omit the scale.)
How can sex be more offensive than violence?
Have you seen the average American?
*shudder*
I am currently using Exponent for a development blog of sorts ( Improbable Drive ), and set it up for my girlfriend's personal site who, while computer savvy, has no web skills to speak of.
Setting up a few users and appropriate permissions for the content items (this can be done on a content item-by-item basis) is both simple and should mask away most of the CMS-y bits that would be tricky for non-computer users to use.
It's OSS, and exceptionally easy to set up and use.
It can be found http://www.exponentcms.org.