NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/comp/os/os2/advocacy/10829

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-23 | 2.9 KB

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From: [e-mail] (STACY JOHN BEHRENS)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: FCC will proclaim Microsoft is run by Communists! :)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 23 Dec 92 03:13:16 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University
Lines: 45

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (R
andall A Helzerman) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Christopher Maur
itz) writes:
>
>|> Gates.  Just remember how expensive long distance service was before the
>|> government forced a more competetive market on Ma Bell...or should I say
>|> before Bill McGowan (former chairman of MCI) tricked the federal government
>|> into forcing a more competetive market on Ma Bell... :-)
>
>Agreed, but a more precise wording would be "Just remember how expensive
>long distance service was before the goverment stopped forbiding people
>to compete with AT&T."
>
>AT&T was only a monopoly because it was illegal to compete with it.  In fact,
>I can't name a single example of a monopoly which wasn't created by
>the goverment.
>

You are missing one very important point.  The government can actively
sanction a monopoly by doing nothing to prevent it.  The government doesn't
need to support a monopoly for it to exist.  The government not doing a thing
is sanction enough.  To use your own example, look at Morton salt.  They are
for all intents and purposes, a monopoly.  They will never achieve a 100%
monopoly because they cannot improve their product over their competitors.
Salt is salt.  All they can do is reduce prices and they can only do this so
much.  But the government is not trying to break them up and let other
potential salt companies compete, because in this case it doesn't hurt
anything.  The other salt producers are not going to be driven out of
business.  But the government more or less sanctions this monopoly by the
government's inaction.  The government can't afford to do this with software
however, because of the nature of the industry.  It is very possible for a
company to put another out of business in this industry, and anything
resembling a monopoly will put far more people out of work and create far more
problems than it would solve.  Different industry and different set of
circumstances and thus different action is required.

--
Stacy John Behrens
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The only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is that they
serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have not
legitimacy.                                  [Albert Einstein]
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