-Caveat Lector-
from:
http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.23/pageone.html
<A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.23/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City
Times - Volume 3 Issue 23
</A>
-----
Laissez Faire City Times
June 7, 1999 - Volume 3, Issue 23
Editor & Chief: Emile Zola
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Microsoft Madness
by Don Lobo Tiggre
One of the most bizarre aspects of the just-resumed U.S. government
persecution of Microsoft is the number of libertarians, anarchists,
objectivists, and other ostensibly pro-freedom individuals who are
cheering the state on. These people allege that Microsoft has done
Terrible Things, and maybe it has, but it’s still very strange that they
should so strongly favor the state’s use of a power it shouldn’t have:
the economic interference we call "anti-trust".
First off, let me say that I am not particularly a fan of Microsoft. It
seems hypocritical, to say the very least, that Microsoft (MS) should
use the bludgeon of the state against software companies that allegedly
"reverse engineer" MS products, when MS Windows itself is nothing but a
second-rate "reverse engineering" of the MacIntosh operating system
(OS). Ah, if only Apple had licensed the Mac OS, how different the world
would be! J And have you ever tried to get any so-called "support" from
Microsoft? Hah! What a joke!
Also, the practice of requiring hardware manufacturers that want to use
MS products to sign contracts guaranteeing that they will only use MS
products seems short sighted. It’s an aggressive move with the likely
outcome of long-term costs in enmity outweighing short-term gains in
cash flow.
However, as aggressive as that move has been, it is one that hardware
manufacturers have accepted voluntarily, in order to be able to sell
more products—they know what the consumer’s choice is most likely to be.
As Microsoft attorney John Warden put it during opening statements in
the trial, on October 20, 1998:
"Microsoft hasn't denied consumer choice, it is consumer choice..."
And that’s really the bottom line, isn’t it? People choose to use MS
products. No one forces them. Even the state’s own star economic witness
admitted on January 12, 1999, the final day of the government’s case,
that Microsoft has done nothing so far that would harm consumers. This
is why I have used the word "persecution" instead of "prosecution"—this
isn’t about protecting the people (the general purpose alleged to
justify the state) and never has been. It may be about protecting
Microsoft’s rivals at public expense—has anyone checked the campaign
contributions made by those rivals?—but is more likely a simple matter
of the state reacting with hostility to any large and powerful
organization it doesn’t control. In this context, the state’s
persecution of Microsoft is unethical, unconstitutional, and
counterproductive. Perhaps the state has other reasons for its
actions—could it be they the statists know that MS has the power to
seriously disrupt their systems, should it ever occur to them to do so?
Whatever the answer to that may be, my take on the whole situation might
be quite different if the state’s case were based on the allegations of
out-right fraud and other forms of sublimated violence that
anti-Microsoft people accuse the company of. If MS really has done those
Terrible Things, then the victims should step forward and press charges
for their legitimate grievances.
Using Government to Bludgeon Competitors
But that’s not what we see. Instead of victims of real harm, we see a
loser in the marketplace resorting to the coercive mechanisms of the
state to try to benefit his company. In the free market, you don’t
always win and you can’t force your opponents to give you market share,
but people like Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale don’t seem to get it.
Consider this ‘enlightening’ comment by Barksdale recorded by Wired
magazine’s Joe Nickell:
"As long as there are competing products on the shelf for soup, if I can
access either and buy either without... any of the stuff in the soup
that I may not want because they have included it without asking me, I
would think that would be an open market."
Never mind the confused nature of this statement—people get nervous on
the witness stand and don’t always make the most sense—it would still be
nonsense if it was clearer. Nobody but Campbell’s tells Campbell’s what
to put in their cans of soup, and there are competing cans of software
"soup" on the shelves; it’s just that most people pick MS "soup" of
their own free will. In fact, before MS started giving their Internet
Explorer away for free, Barksdale was arguably in a more monopolistic
position than Bill Gates, since Netscape was used by pretty much
everybody (and was also given away for free).
But Netscape didn’t get the lion’s share of the browser market by any
dastardly means; they just produced a product that worked like nothing
else out there and gave it away. Microsoft may have done some dastardly
deeds in its pursuit of market share, but it is not being prosecuted for
these; it is being persecuted simply because it does have a huge share
of the markets it competes in. Some of the contracts that have given MS
its predominance are pretty tough on competitors, very tough, but they
are still contracts signed willingly by all parties.
If this is not so, will the victims please step forward and sue for
breach of contract, or for having been forced to sign under duress, or
whatever?
If it is so, then, to the extent that MS can be said to be a monopoly,
it is one of those rare creatures: a natural monopoly.
My own experience may shed some light on why this might be the case. My
first computer was a MacIntosh, and so were my next two. At the time,
IBM PCs and clones were still just on DOS and my Mac was incomparably
easier to use. When MS came out with Windows, it was obviously a cheap
knock-off of the Mac OS and I instantly disliked it. Then I started on a
new line of business and I needed a new computer again. All of my
customers were using PCs, so, as much as I hated to switch systems, I
did make the switch to Windows 3.1. The alternative was to embrace a
host of compatibility problems and lose business.
Bill Gates did not send goons to break into my house in the middle of
the night and threaten to bend my knees the wrong way if I didn’t
switch.
People Make Choices. Hmm.
I made the decision because it was in my best interest, and so too have
many others. After all, Apple may have opened the market for
microcomputers, but IBM charged in with a huge amount of resources and
soon IBM PCs and their clones had the greater portion of the market
share. Since Apple didn’t license the Mac OS, they basically drove DOS
and Windows into the larger market share then existing. Once that
happened, people had an incentive, as I did, to use the most common OS
in order to have the greatest compatibility with the greatest number of
potential customers. This was a "natural" consequence of "natural"
choices made by uncoerced individuals who could have made other choices,
then and now.
A natural monopoly doesn’t require state intervention to "solve" because
it’s not a problem. Theoretically, a natural monopoly exists because
there is some advantage to the good or service being provided by a
single provider. "Advantage" here has to mean to the consumers, because
if the monopoly disadvantaged consumers, there’d be an incentive to new
providers to compete with the old monopoly. QED.
This brings to mind the famous ALCOA case cited by Ayn Rand, in which
the judge basically ruled that ALCOA was breaking the law by producing
aluminum at such low prices and high quality that no one could compete
with them. If this is against the law, clearly it is the law that is not
in the best interests of the consumers, not the natural monopoly. This
should come as no surprise to defenders of the free market who advocate
a separation of economy and state anyway.
All of that having been said, however, I have to add that I do not think
that Microsoft is a true monopoly, natural or otherwise. A monopoly, by
definition, has exclusive control over a line of business, and MS does
not have this. Having the largest market share is not the same thing as
being a monopoly. Macs continue to do what they’ve always done better
than Windows, and Linux is also gaining market share. QED again.
The U.S. government has been after Microsoft since 1990, finding some
new reason to bring suit against the company every two or three years.
The reasons are always some bogus anti-trust contrivances that thinking
people should oppose on principle, even if they hate MS and think their
products are lousy. Let those who despise Microsoft put their support
behind the true victims of MS aggression, rather than behind the state’s
meddling in the economy.
Besides, if the Department of Justice is successful, it may just piss
Bill Gates off enough for him to relocate Microsoft offshore and hire
some top-notch hackers to hack into government systems and shut them
down. Hmmm… On the other hand, maybe that’s not such a bad idea.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don Lobo Tiggre is the author of Y2K: The Millennium Bug, a suspenseful
thriller. Tiggre can be found at the Liberty Round Table.
-30-
from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 3, No 23, June 7, 1999
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Published by
Laissez Faire City Netcasting Group, Inc.
Copyright 1998 - Trademark Registered with LFC Public Registrar
All Rights Reserved
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
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All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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