[OT] RE: Microsoft removes Netscape support from IE; plug-in needsre-writing.

Doug Way dway at riskmetrics.com
Fri Jul 27 04:36:29 UTC 2001


On Thursday, July 26, 2001, at 12:36 PM, Stephen Pair wrote:

> While I too am annoyed with Microsoft, I am pleased by the decision
> against breaking them up.  The decision to pursue that direction would
> only set a dangerous precedent that companies must "pay to play"...pay
> the government that is, or they'll wreck your business.  It only puts
> more money in the hands of government and lawyers, taking money from
> those that earned it, and putting it into the hands of those that
> extorted it.

I have to admit that I don't understand the notion that [government 
involvement in investigating abuse of monopoly power] is somehow 
automatically harmful.  It strikes me as too much of a purist, 
impractical, anti-government stance.  I do understand people being 
concerned about government overtaxation or overregulation in other 
areas.  But busting up monopolies?  For one thing, the breakup of a 
monopoly is a pretty rare event.  The few breakups that have occurred 
haven't proven to be especially harmful overall.  Busting up (and more 
importantly, threatening to bust up) monopolies which abuse their power 
is one of the very few pro-competitive things a government can do.  
(Although it is possible to allow "natural" monolopies to exist if they 
aren't abusive.)

My personal hunch is that if Microsoft were broken up, it would have a 
(probably very slight) net positive effect on the economy in 5 or 10 
years, versus letting Microsoft go completely unregulated.

> Anyone remember the tobacco wars?  How much money did our
> beloved gov't rape from that industry...did it do anything to curb
> smoking or raise health awareness?  It sure fattened a whole lot of
> pockets though...(Not to mention the subversion of congressional power
> that occurred just to enable the gov't to bring the lawsuit).

Not really a monolopy issue as much.

> Our gov't
> is, after all, the largest corporation in the world.

I can agree with that. :)  I say, let the government and the 
corporations (accused of being anti-competitive) fight it out on equal 
terms (in court).  Complete power should never rest in the hands of only 
one or the other.

(Apologies for further veering this thread off-topic...)

- Doug Way
   dway at riskmetrics.com




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