This combination squeezes excess profits and inefficiencies out of product prices. Retail price maintenance seeks to short circuit this extremely consumer friendly process. By setting minimum prices, manufacturers can build in excess margins for themselves and for their favored retailers -- prices that consumers have no choice but to pay."
There may be no more nebulous a concept than "excess profits." I realize economic literacy is at an all-time low, but prices are not set arbitrarily. A price is at once the most a seller can get and the most a buyer is comfortable paying. Any and all sales that take place are voluntary arrangements. Both parties percieve themselves to be better off for doing so. So as you can see there is no such thing as "excess" profit; only profit that is earned.
Well, the usual attack on Objectivism is unfortunately the norm. The only thing I've been awaiting from you is some justification for the court-ordered attacks on Microsoft. Thus far I've yet to see any cogent defense of what's taken place or how Microsoft gained its market dominance illicitly.
Not necessarily, but the usual attack on Objectivism carries with it the belief that nothing can be certain. Anyway, to the issue at hand. Why is it the government's responsibility to "protect" a "developing market"? What makes a given market eligible for government protection? Popularity? Dominant participants that don't curry favor with the government? Whims? Why was it "wrong" for Microsoft to release its own web browsing software and place it on the desktops of OS software is created and sound to millions of voluntary customers? Netscape charged for its browsing software, whereas Microsoft realized such immense value from its operating system software that it could afford to release its own browser free of charge, thus garnering the lion's share of web browser users. What did they do wrong?
You have a tortured definition of freedom in that you seem to stretch it to mean freedom from anything or anyone you happen not to like.
Of course, it's a much better use of your time to destroy successful people and live as if there are no fixed principles in life. That whole rational self-interest thing is for losers.
My point being that the laws in this case (and many others) have no root in any objective definition of physical force or fraud. Microsoft has not defrauded anyone or prevented any of its customers from choosing an alternative operating system, yet they still faced repeated investigations consuming valuable company resources. The anti-trust laws are firmly rooted in envy. How the various anti-trust suits against Microsoft couldn't reaffirm that sentiment is beyond me.
No. What I mean is, the courts don't identify unlawful behavior as just being of a forceful or deceptive nature. That's what they should do, and within those parameters, we wouldn't be having this discussion b/c there would have been no case.
Microsoft doesn't "control" the market. It's convenient how anti-trust law turns a completely blind eye to how a company comes to realize a dominant presence in a given market, only that it does. It's not about whether a company arrived at success through deceptive or forceful means, only that it IS successful. At no point were there any legal barriers to entering the operating system market, and in fact non-Windows operating systems see more use each year.
I see no justifiable reason for Microsoft to defer to other software developers in their business strategy, except maybe to appease government regulators who craft anti-trust charges on the fly. Anti-trust law might be better named "anti-trust ideology" or "anti-trust theory" for the lack of clearly defined "crimes" it supposedly defines.
The objective standard being that Microsoft has no means of forcing a customer to continue using Microsoft products against their will. People will argue that voluntary contracts between Microsoft and various vendors constitute "force" but I don't buy it. It's gotten to the point where any action taken by an unpopular company is deemed to be "force."
Yes, says me. Anti-trust is corporate welfare for market losers. RealPlayer can't hack it on its own, so it figures why not use the courts to cut MS down to size?
You provide no basis for the assertion that customers are coerced. By whom? To do what? Why?
Microsoft was never proven to be a monopoly, at least not by any objective standard. A monopoly by definition is an entity that is protected from competitors by the government. Microsoft enjoys no protection from the government and instead recieves regular crackdowns by our and other governments worldwide. The recent EU mandate that MS offer a version of Windows sans their own media player is repulsive. Who is the EU or any government body to set the terms by which a company provides its offerings to uncoerced customers?
A court-ordered breakup of Microsoft would've been a complete inversion of the concept of justice and would hopefully be seen as the posterchild of the government's witchhunt against successful businesses everywhere.
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This combination squeezes excess profits and inefficiencies out of product prices. Retail price maintenance seeks to short circuit this extremely consumer friendly process. By setting minimum prices, manufacturers can build in excess margins for themselves and for their favored retailers -- prices that consumers have no choice but to pay." There may be no more nebulous a concept than "excess profits." I realize economic literacy is at an all-time low, but prices are not set arbitrarily. A price is at once the most a seller can get and the most a buyer is comfortable paying. Any and all sales that take place are voluntary arrangements. Both parties percieve themselves to be better off for doing so. So as you can see there is no such thing as "excess" profit; only profit that is earned.
Well, the usual attack on Objectivism is unfortunately the norm. The only thing I've been awaiting from you is some justification for the court-ordered attacks on Microsoft. Thus far I've yet to see any cogent defense of what's taken place or how Microsoft gained its market dominance illicitly.
Not necessarily, but the usual attack on Objectivism carries with it the belief that nothing can be certain. Anyway, to the issue at hand. Why is it the government's responsibility to "protect" a "developing market"? What makes a given market eligible for government protection? Popularity? Dominant participants that don't curry favor with the government? Whims? Why was it "wrong" for Microsoft to release its own web browsing software and place it on the desktops of OS software is created and sound to millions of voluntary customers? Netscape charged for its browsing software, whereas Microsoft realized such immense value from its operating system software that it could afford to release its own browser free of charge, thus garnering the lion's share of web browser users. What did they do wrong? You have a tortured definition of freedom in that you seem to stretch it to mean freedom from anything or anyone you happen not to like.
Of course, it's a much better use of your time to destroy successful people and live as if there are no fixed principles in life. That whole rational self-interest thing is for losers.
I read Atlas Shrugged a long time ago. Why, is there something terribly wrong with Objectivists?
My point being that the laws in this case (and many others) have no root in any objective definition of physical force or fraud. Microsoft has not defrauded anyone or prevented any of its customers from choosing an alternative operating system, yet they still faced repeated investigations consuming valuable company resources. The anti-trust laws are firmly rooted in envy. How the various anti-trust suits against Microsoft couldn't reaffirm that sentiment is beyond me.
No. What I mean is, the courts don't identify unlawful behavior as just being of a forceful or deceptive nature. That's what they should do, and within those parameters, we wouldn't be having this discussion b/c there would have been no case.
Microsoft doesn't "control" the market. It's convenient how anti-trust law turns a completely blind eye to how a company comes to realize a dominant presence in a given market, only that it does. It's not about whether a company arrived at success through deceptive or forceful means, only that it IS successful. At no point were there any legal barriers to entering the operating system market, and in fact non-Windows operating systems see more use each year. I see no justifiable reason for Microsoft to defer to other software developers in their business strategy, except maybe to appease government regulators who craft anti-trust charges on the fly. Anti-trust law might be better named "anti-trust ideology" or "anti-trust theory" for the lack of clearly defined "crimes" it supposedly defines.
The objective standard being that Microsoft has no means of forcing a customer to continue using Microsoft products against their will. People will argue that voluntary contracts between Microsoft and various vendors constitute "force" but I don't buy it. It's gotten to the point where any action taken by an unpopular company is deemed to be "force." Yes, says me. Anti-trust is corporate welfare for market losers. RealPlayer can't hack it on its own, so it figures why not use the courts to cut MS down to size? You provide no basis for the assertion that customers are coerced. By whom? To do what? Why?
Microsoft was never proven to be a monopoly, at least not by any objective standard. A monopoly by definition is an entity that is protected from competitors by the government. Microsoft enjoys no protection from the government and instead recieves regular crackdowns by our and other governments worldwide. The recent EU mandate that MS offer a version of Windows sans their own media player is repulsive. Who is the EU or any government body to set the terms by which a company provides its offerings to uncoerced customers? A court-ordered breakup of Microsoft would've been a complete inversion of the concept of justice and would hopefully be seen as the posterchild of the government's witchhunt against successful businesses everywhere.