If you steal a car and you get convicted of car theft, then you need to return the car because it's the fruit of criminal activity.
Microsoft committed the crime of antitrust abuse and established a browser monopoly. Then they were convicted of the crime. Yet, thanks to Bush (who was very $trongly supported by Bill Gates and Microsoft) Microsoft was not forced to shed the browser monopoly which was the fruit of their criminal activity.
Even forgetting antitrust, just for their support of Bush in 2000, and the ensuing catastrophe that that imbecile brought upon the nation and the world, Microsoft deserves to be punished.
Oh so now it's Bush's fault. Give me a freaking break. What did the great Clinton do. Sold the country to middle eastern thugs and had a bitch suck his dick.
Roughly 200 million people were killed by own governments in the 20th century, excluding wars, and excluding deaths from malaria after DDT was banned. This compares with about 6 million private homicides globally, in the same period. I will get stats.
1) You have failed to cite even a single source.
2) 'Their own government' is not the same as all governments of the world combined.
While it would be nice for more people to know what the requirements for a monopoly is, they would be better off looking it up on the wiki than listening to this drivel. This is the second time in less than a week you have managed to squeeze in this long wacky conspiracy theory of yours about governments and monopolies.
Please just stop.
You have no idea what a monopoly is and your attempts to redefine it single-handedly are doomed to fail.
If you really want to advance this nonsense, do what everyone else does and write a book about it. If you sell a few hundred thousand, then maybe we should listen to your crazy ideas, but until then I think you should just tie down your tin-foil hat a bit tighter and hunker down in the damp cardboard box you no doubt call home.
Wow! Talk about authoritative jabber whable. The Government IS a monopoly in it's present state. You have to be blind not to see it.
The conservative number of people killed by governments is 170 million citizens killed in the 20h century, plus 37 million people killed in wars. The source for the info is an article called "A League of Evil" in The Economist magazine, September 11th issue, 1999, page 7. This does not include the estimated 60 million people who died from malaria after DDT was banned.
I am hunting down the source on normal (non government) murder rates, but it was around 6 million for the 20th century, and I remember there was a 30 to one ratio.
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2) 'Their own government' is not the same as all governments of the world combined.
How can you possibly know if and when one of the' nice' governments is going to turn nasty? I doubt that most Russians at in the early 20th century had any idea that the slaughterhouse of communism was right around the corner. Many Jews in 1930s Germany could never imagine that that Nazism would take over and in a few years and kill millions of them. Zimbabwe used to be a pleasant western country, before Mugabe took over. America used to be a relatively free republic with the smallest government in the world, where people had the right to a trial, soldiers couldn't patrol the streets, and the dollar was as good as gold - and now, they are a tyrannical empire with the biggest government in history, the patriot act, a rapidly inflating currency, and a collapsing economy. Governments are unstable, you can't say that "I'm in one of the nice governments, so i have nothing to worry about." I'll bet you that most of those 170 million people thought they were safe too, until it was too late.
Okay, I've just registered for the sake of straightening a few things out.
a) Monopoly/dominant position
There is no talk of a monopoly in this case, rather a dominant position. I haven't seen a single post that contained correct information concerning competition law, and so I felt it important to state the obvious before going on to the next part.
If you don't know what the difference is, I suggest you refrain from saying anything until you have read up some information.
b) Abuse
The behaviour at stake here is the bundling of IE in Windows, which is still used on 90% of the world's computers.
Though in the past few years, Firefox has gained leaps of market share, IE is still the most widely used browser.
Basically, the behaviour of which the EU Commission is accusing Microsoft is that it is using its dominant position in the OS market to leverage its position in the browser market.
c) EU/US differences
In the US, the focus is on "freedom", whereas in the EU, the focus is on "consumer choice".
In the US, bundling is not truly a problem, because the company is free to do whatever it wants (well, pretty much). In the EU, however, bundling when you have a dominant position is a truly anticompetitive behaviour.
d) IE's market share
It doesn't matter whether IE doesn't have 90% of the browser market share any more. That has nothing to do with the claim. The problem is that Microsoft could regain its market share by continuing to bundle IE with Windows.
For those interested, read the Hilti case. Hilti didn't have a dominant position on the nail market, but did so on the nail gun market, and also on the nail cartridge market because of its dominant position on the nail gun market.
e) The solution
There are loads of unimaginative remarks about the fact that "you can't download a browser without a browser".
The solution wouldn't necessarily be an absence of browsers.
One solution would be the availability of browser downloaders, but another would be the automatic bundling of IE, Opera and Firefox. That wouldn't be as much of a problem if Firefox, Opera and IE are both treated the same way by Windows, i.e. if they are both on the desktop, if they both get small icons in the toolbar, ?
f) What about Apple?
Apple is fortunate enough not to have a dominant position on the OS or computer markets. If it did gain market share in a significant way, however, its practices would also be put into question.
Its use of the App Store on the iPhone could also at some point become troublesome, especially if the iPhone becomes the iPod of cellular phone and Apple still doesn't allow certain kinds of applications (especially without clear guidelines).
The only two places where Apple has a dominant position are its iPod (a clear dominant position in the MP3-player market) and digital music sales. One day, someone might try to say that Apple used its dominant position on the MP3-player market to leverage its position on the digital music sales market, or vice-versa. And, who knows, there might be an antitrust case here.
Roughly 200 million people were killed by own governments in the 20th century, excluding wars, and excluding deaths from malaria after DDT was banned. This compares with about 6 million private homicides globally, in the same period. I will get stats.
OK, so you're mixing up all governments with a broad brush when we're talking about the EU, I see no indication that the problems of the last century would suggest that EU states as they are now are going to turn into rogue states. Even so, if such a change were to happen, I don't see how not allowing them to regulate commerce now in going to change when and how severely they would change into malevolent states.
The DDT part is pretty tenuous, if ecologies had collapsed from the continued overuse of DDT, then there's no knowing how many people would have died from the loss of life sustaining ecologies.
I am hunting down the source on normal (non government) murder rates, but it was around 6 million for the 20th century, and I remember there was a 30 to one ratio.
Such a number can not be set in stone. Their are many ways to define a government. I'm sure the most vile ruling parties wouldn't be seen as valid governments by most other nations, yet I bet those are counted in your source.
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How can you possibly know if and when one of the' nice' governments is going to turn nasty?.
I can't but you apparently can. But that isn't what you stated, now is it? You stated a date of the 20th century, not some future date. You are sounding more and more trollish with each anarchical laden post.
Genius! You saw straight to the heart of the issue and cut through all of this 'monopoly' nonsense.
I hate to be annoying, but the only monopoly here is the EU. At least people can compete with Microsoft - the success of safari and firefox are proof of that. What about competing with the EU's services? Why aren't there 3rd party companies that also provide the service of regulating monopolies? Or private police to compete with the EU's? Clearly, there's a double standard here. The government is a monopoly - the first monopoly, the biggest, a monopoly that has killed countless people in wars and failed social experiments. Whatever Microsoft has done, i'll bet you the EU has done worse, so it seems strange to me that the EU of all organisations should be in charge of this. Maybe that's just me, but it does seem a bit silly for people to be directing their energies against Microsoft. No matter how you justify it, i can assure you that Microsoft doesn't start wars, they don't have the power to tax you, to jail you for harmless activities, or to forcefully control how you run your business. Microsoft simply don't have this kind of power - if you don't like them, you are free to choose someone else's products! People, get your priorities right. You know better than this, we all do. Not to mention the practical side of this: If you ask for a world where governments can regulate businesses at will, then companies like Apple will not survive. Government stifles creativity - innovative companies will disappear, and be replaced by the businesses with the most 'political influence'. And that is certainly not a world where you can have nice shiny iPods and all of the good stuff that Apple keeps bringing us.
Anyone who supports this cannot claim to be against monopolies at all. People are picking and choosing which monopolies are 'good' and 'bad' on nothing more than a whim. You can't say "Monopolies are bad, so we really need to create an even bigger monopoly called the government to regulate the smaller monopolies, because monopolies are good!" That's a contradiction. If you don't like monopolies, then I am afraid that the first place you have to direct your energy towards is the government, not some decaying software company with shrinking market share.
That Ayn Rand Thesaurus must be getting a little tattered, huh?
BTW, how's this nice de-regulated economy working out. Thought so.
BTW, how's this nice de-regulated economy working out. Thought so.
Depends on your view of the root of the problem. Oversupply of cheap money with little to no risk ("skin") in the game (no money down half million dollar mortgages with little or no background vetting....thank Congress for that gem, mortgage industry didn't push that turkey) is the prevalent view with 'deregulation' being the CYA smokescreen. Did anyone in California really believe their house was worth that much? By setting rules for lending at the federal level, it invited mindless, reckless deals. Absent that government fiasco, it's working out very well and we could use more deregulation, especially in the recovery areas. What's most needed is oversight and transparency (political especially). Most deregulation in the U.S. goes back to the Eisenhower administration and was bipartisan throughout the last 50 years. Jimmy Carter, a democrat, was actually one of the most avid industry deregulators (transportation especially)....not Ronald Reagan. Given his economics appointments, Obama may very well continue that process. It depends on how it's done. Governments are nothing more than people like you and I. It's about control.
The EU complaint lacks sense. Where are the damages? Imagine being in court for murder and the prosecution points to a man seated in the front row as the victim, who stands up and identifies himself as the murdered man...you have a problem. The complaint goes to competition. Buy any Windows loaded machine (2000, ME, XP, Vista, beta Windows7), and as soon as you launch IE, you can download any other browser you like, then unload IE (what difference does it make if some .dlls are still there as far as competition goes?). How is competition being foiled?
It beggars belief that this should need to be explained to anyone. IE is built into Windows. The vast majority of computers sold in the EU come with Windows. Therefore IE does not have to compete on merit to be installed and used by end-users.
Get that dang-nabbed browser out of the OS. I don't care if you provide IE with Windows or even WMP, for that matter, but just untie IE from the freakin OS! Most of the issues with Windows security is because IE is Windows. There is no real separation of the two.
So what? That's NOT the EU's complaint. BTW, that's because the browser doubletimes as a drive browser for the same look and feel. There are dozens of processes that are integral to the OS.
Such a number can not be set in stone. Their are many ways to define a government. I'm sure the most vile ruling parties wouldn't be seen as valid governments by most other nations, yet I bet those are counted in your source.
A government has 2 criteria:
1) It is an organisation with a geographical monopoly on the power to use violence. It is illegal to compete with them or copy them within their monopoly area.
2) Unlike normal criminal activity, a government is propped up by a veil of legitimacy - the people believe that the government is moral, right, or necessary, and even if they disagree with it, they will continue to provide moral support for it. Governments must have the sanction of the people they rule over.
When this veil of legitimacy falls, the government is just a criminal gang, and usually a revolution follows where someone else who does have a veil of legitimacy takes over.
I think it might be a bit silly to just say "Governments are good, until they get really bad, then we can define them as something else." I mean, that sort of thing is not going to help any discussion advance. An organisation does not require the approval of foreigners in order to be a government.
Soviet Union - 62 million killed
Nazi Germany - 21 million killed
Chinese Kuomintang - 10 million killed
Chinese communists - 35 million killed
Japanese Empire - 6 million killed
These were all governments. Sanctioned by the people, with a monopoly on the power to use violence.
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I can't but you apparently can. But that isn't what you stated, now is it? You stated a date of the 20th century, not some future date. You are sounding more and more trollish with each anarchical laden post.
That's not an answer, you're just accusing me of hypocrisy. I will answer you, though.
There are 2 ways to know the truth about something: Logic and evidence. I have been using logic to demonstrate why the idea of government regulation of monopolies is a contradiction. The purpose of evidence is to look at the past in order to create a series of general principles which can help us in the present and future. I have shown you evidence that governments have been unstable organisations which occasionally snapped, killing millions of people. Moreover, I pointed out that many of those victims (like the Jews) thought they were safe until it was too late - they didn't know what was coming. This evidence gives us 3 general principles:
1) It is the nature of governments to sometimes snap and kill lots of people.
2) This happens with so little warning that millions of people can be killed.
3) Just because a government hasn't snapped yet doesn't mean that it never will. If this were a very very rare thing, then it would be less of a concern, these numbers wouldn't be so large, and I would not have brought them up. But the numbers are large, and it happens often enough, to be genuinely concerned about this risk.
Now, there are some warning signs that things are getting gradually worse. People who look at history, good philosophy and economics might notice some warning signs like an increase in mystical thinking in society, regulations of business, militarisation of the police, checkpoints, economic crisis, high inflation, loss of civil liberties, restrictions on travel, and so on. If they are smart, they will leave at this point. Many Jews left Germany before it was too late, because they were paying attention. As fast as the transition was in Germany, it was only the final stage in a long series of gradual increases in power that had accumulated over the previous decades. Russia was more sudden because it involved a complete change in government.
So yes, if your government happens to go bad, you might be one of the people who can see it coming, and get out in time. But what if you don't? Is that really an acceptable risk for us to have, in the 21st century? Shouldn't we have more sympathy for the 170 million people who lost their lives for this collective fantasy? Or, should we just pay lip service to the tragedy, as if 170 million deaths is an acceptable cost of having government? There is something... missing... if all of these people's lives don't make a difference to your assessment.
Depends on your view of the root of the problem. Oversupply of cheap money with little to no risk ("skin") in the game (no money down half million dollar mortgages with little or no background vetting....thank Congress for that gem, mortgage industry didn't push that turkey) is the prevalent view with 'deregulation' being the CYA smokescreen. Did anyone in California really believe their house was worth that much? By setting rules for lending at the federal level, it invited mindless, reckless deals. Absent that government fiasco, it's working out very well and we could use more deregulation, especially in the recovery areas. What's most needed is oversight and transparency (political especially). Most deregulation in the U.S. goes back to the Eisenhower administration and was bipartisan throughout the last 50 years. Jimmy Carter, a democrat, was actually one of the most avid industry deregulators (transportation especially)....not Ronald Reagan. Given his economics appointments, Obama may very well continue that process. It depends on how it's done. Governments are nothing more than people like you and I. It's about control.
The EU complaint lacks sense. Where are the damages? Imagine being in court for murder and the prosecution points to a man seated in the front row as the victim, who stands up and identifies himself as the murdered man...you have a problem. The complaint goes to competition. Buy any Windows loaded machine (2000, ME, XP, Vista, beta Windows7), and as soon as you launch IE, you can download any other browser you like, then unload IE (what difference does it make if some .dlls are still there as far as competition goes?). How is competition being foiled?
Sorry, but once the reaganites discovered that they could continue to destroy wages (i.e. unions) and still keep people spending by getting them to mortage their homes (and futures) with cheap credit, the game was over.
De-regulation has been tried now to a far greater degree than ever thought possible, and found to be empty. Even Ayn's greatest disciple, Alan Greenspan, finally admitted that he was 'shocked' to find that greedy bastards with unlimited wealth dangling before them (due to lack of gov't oversite) do not act in their own 'selfish best interest'. Randians can now go back into their corner and argue amongst themselves about how many Objectivists can dance on the head of a pin.
BTW, I spent about 20 years as the hardest-core Randian MF you've ever run into.
Took a lot to finally see the light. Every John Galt stands on the shoulders of incremental progress, achieved by protection of the commons.
Thus ends my betrayal of my rule to never argue with Randians or Jehovah's Witneses.
Your not getting it, if safari for example is exposing my mac to a security risk i could just take it and delete and never see it again if i wish, iE is embedded to the OS so you can't get rid of it and have windows work right, to me iE is like a door for all kinds things to makes it's way to your machine but a door you can't close shut
Webkit is just as embedded in OS X as IE's frameworks are in Windows.
Sorry, but once the reaganites discovered that they could continue to destroy wages (i.e. unions) and still keep people spending by getting them to mortage their homes (and futures) with cheap credit, the game was over.
Yeah, Reagan talked a lot about freedom and small government, but he grew the government by two thirds during his presidency. I don't think you can get elected and then get away with radically shrinking government - too many people will get in your way. Attitudes in society have to change from the bottom up, in my opinion.
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De-regulation has been tried now to a far greater degree than ever thought possible, and found to be empty.
How so? I have not heard of the government dropping regulations, but rather adding new ones. Sometimes, the government will sell off one of its monopolies to their buddies in the private sector, without actually legally opening the market to competition. Incredibly, they call this fascistic blend of private profits and government power 'privatisation'. The only place I know of where the government has been greatly reducing regulations and going in a less authoritarian direction is China, presumably because this gives the government more wealth to tax.
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Even Ayn's greatest disciple, Alan Greenspan...
Greenspan is interesting. He was one of Rand's closer friends, he even gave suggestions to Rand on editing her book Atlas Shrugged. He wrote articles about how money should be left to the free market, that it should be gold, and that paper money was bad. Then, in the early '80s, probably after Rand died, he began working his way up in the government. I think he sold out, because he then got a job as head of the Federal Reserve, where he spent the next decade and a half doing the exact opposite of what he had preached. he had a significant role in creating the current economic bubble. Congressman Ron Paul confronted him many times about it, and he once asked Greenspan to sign the old article he wrote about the importance of leaving money to the free market. Greenspan signed the article, then simply said that he had changed his views.
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... finally admitted that he was 'shocked' to find that greedy bastards with unlimited wealth dangling before them (due to lack of gov't oversite) do not act in their own 'selfish best interest'. Randians can now go back into their corner and argue amongst themselves about how many Objectivists can dance on the head of a pin.
What does this even mean? There would have to be some kind of example to qualify this statement. Do you mean Halliburton, the big media companies, or all of the financial institutions which created the current bubble? They are all heavily involved with government power and regulations, and many of them owe their fortunes to these sort of unholy alliances. Remember the "looters" in Atlas Shrugged, like Jim Taggart and Oren Boyle? It's them. The current business world is full of them, versus the Henry Reardens of the world. Think of people like Steve Jobs.
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BTW, I spent about 20 years as the hardest-core Randian MF you've ever run into.
Took a lot to finally see the light. Every John Galt stands on the shoulders of incremental progress, achieved by protection of the commons.
Thus ends my betrayal of my rule to never argue with Randians or Jehovah's Witneses.
As brilliant as Rand was, there were a few major inconsistencies in her ideas. She didn't incorporate nearly enough real psychology into Objectivism. Did you ever read into her personal life? It's quite sad what happened in her relationships and her movement, and it was almost inevitable that it would happen that way. One minor correction, though: Rand never denied that greatness builds on the shoulders of others: instead, she showed that all genius is a product of the mind, of conscious thinking, reason, questioning, and action, not faith, whim, mysticism or irrationality. Compulsion and violence are the enemy of man's mind, of his creative process. The extent to which man is controlled is the extent to which his creative capacity is stifled. Those in society who live of the labour and mental energy of others are parasites, who depend on their victims invent the very tools needed to enslave them, and a mixed economy represents the maximum amount of control they can exercise before productivity starts dipping into the negative. I don't see how the fact that others came before these geniuses somehow invalidates their greatness - Rand never claimed this. Most of what she said was that heroes were the rare, exceptional people in society who move the world forward, and that we should look up to their achievements, instead of hating them for being good.
Simple truth. Like most others have pointed out. If government really do care about NON IE, they should start designing their website to be Firefox , Saferi Compatible.
I've enjoyed the off-topic posts very much. If you ever want to read another brilliant mind on the dangers of monopoly power, Peter Lynch brushes over the issue in Learn to Earn.
We've heard a lot lately about how bad our economic system is, how horrible deregulation has been, and why it's all the fault of <insert opposing political party here>.
This is normal and illustrates the power of psychology in driving man to do stupid things. Greed is capitalism's dirty little secret. Simultaneously fueling ambition to succeed in some and metastasizing into destructive behavior that can bring down an entire economy in others. Yet it's the best system we've yet devised to create and spread wealth.
The pendulum is swinging towards the other side now and we'll have to learn hard lessons yet again. Unable to achieve perfection, our economic system is being replaced with even bigger govt. Rather than tinker around the edges, we are driven by fear to take drastic action that may be even more painful to undo later. This is another business cycle with what appears to be a nasty trough - and no one wants to test how deep it may be.
We'll see how it all pans out. I think we are discounting what we've gained over the decades and unfairly blaming capitalism as a whole. To me, the current rhetoric sounds a lot like "If exercise and eating right were so good, how come you have the flu?"
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If you steal a car and you get convicted of car theft, then you need to return the car because it's the fruit of criminal activity.
Microsoft committed the crime of antitrust abuse and established a browser monopoly. Then they were convicted of the crime. Yet, thanks to Bush (who was very $trongly supported by Bill Gates and Microsoft) Microsoft was not forced to shed the browser monopoly which was the fruit of their criminal activity.
Even forgetting antitrust, just for their support of Bush in 2000, and the ensuing catastrophe that that imbecile brought upon the nation and the world, Microsoft deserves to be punished.
Oh so now it's Bush's fault. Give me a freaking break. What did the great Clinton do. Sold the country to middle eastern thugs and had a bitch suck his dick.
Roughly 200 million people were killed by own governments in the 20th century, excluding wars, and excluding deaths from malaria after DDT was banned. This compares with about 6 million private homicides globally, in the same period. I will get stats.
1) You have failed to cite even a single source.
2) 'Their own government' is not the same as all governments of the world combined.
While it would be nice for more people to know what the requirements for a monopoly is, they would be better off looking it up on the wiki than listening to this drivel. This is the second time in less than a week you have managed to squeeze in this long wacky conspiracy theory of yours about governments and monopolies.
Please just stop.
You have no idea what a monopoly is and your attempts to redefine it single-handedly are doomed to fail.
If you really want to advance this nonsense, do what everyone else does and write a book about it. If you sell a few hundred thousand, then maybe we should listen to your crazy ideas, but until then I think you should just tie down your tin-foil hat a bit tighter and hunker down in the damp cardboard box you no doubt call home.
Wow! Talk about authoritative jabber whable. The Government IS a monopoly in it's present state. You have to be blind not to see it.
1) You have failed to cite even a single source.
Not failed; delayed.
The conservative number of people killed by governments is 170 million citizens killed in the 20h century, plus 37 million people killed in wars. The source for the info is an article called "A League of Evil" in The Economist magazine, September 11th issue, 1999, page 7. This does not include the estimated 60 million people who died from malaria after DDT was banned.
I am hunting down the source on normal (non government) murder rates, but it was around 6 million for the 20th century, and I remember there was a 30 to one ratio.
2) 'Their own government' is not the same as all governments of the world combined.
How can you possibly know if and when one of the' nice' governments is going to turn nasty? I doubt that most Russians at in the early 20th century had any idea that the slaughterhouse of communism was right around the corner. Many Jews in 1930s Germany could never imagine that that Nazism would take over and in a few years and kill millions of them. Zimbabwe used to be a pleasant western country, before Mugabe took over. America used to be a relatively free republic with the smallest government in the world, where people had the right to a trial, soldiers couldn't patrol the streets, and the dollar was as good as gold - and now, they are a tyrannical empire with the biggest government in history, the patriot act, a rapidly inflating currency, and a collapsing economy. Governments are unstable, you can't say that "I'm in one of the nice governments, so i have nothing to worry about." I'll bet you that most of those 170 million people thought they were safe too, until it was too late.
a) Monopoly/dominant position
There is no talk of a monopoly in this case, rather a dominant position. I haven't seen a single post that contained correct information concerning competition law, and so I felt it important to state the obvious before going on to the next part.
If you don't know what the difference is, I suggest you refrain from saying anything until you have read up some information.
b) Abuse
The behaviour at stake here is the bundling of IE in Windows, which is still used on 90% of the world's computers.
Though in the past few years, Firefox has gained leaps of market share, IE is still the most widely used browser.
Basically, the behaviour of which the EU Commission is accusing Microsoft is that it is using its dominant position in the OS market to leverage its position in the browser market.
c) EU/US differences
In the US, the focus is on "freedom", whereas in the EU, the focus is on "consumer choice".
In the US, bundling is not truly a problem, because the company is free to do whatever it wants (well, pretty much). In the EU, however, bundling when you have a dominant position is a truly anticompetitive behaviour.
d) IE's market share
It doesn't matter whether IE doesn't have 90% of the browser market share any more. That has nothing to do with the claim. The problem is that Microsoft could regain its market share by continuing to bundle IE with Windows.
For those interested, read the Hilti case. Hilti didn't have a dominant position on the nail market, but did so on the nail gun market, and also on the nail cartridge market because of its dominant position on the nail gun market.
e) The solution
There are loads of unimaginative remarks about the fact that "you can't download a browser without a browser".
The solution wouldn't necessarily be an absence of browsers.
One solution would be the availability of browser downloaders, but another would be the automatic bundling of IE, Opera and Firefox. That wouldn't be as much of a problem if Firefox, Opera and IE are both treated the same way by Windows, i.e. if they are both on the desktop, if they both get small icons in the toolbar, ?
f) What about Apple?
Apple is fortunate enough not to have a dominant position on the OS or computer markets. If it did gain market share in a significant way, however, its practices would also be put into question.
Its use of the App Store on the iPhone could also at some point become troublesome, especially if the iPhone becomes the iPod of cellular phone and Apple still doesn't allow certain kinds of applications (especially without clear guidelines).
The only two places where Apple has a dominant position are its iPod (a clear dominant position in the MP3-player market) and digital music sales. One day, someone might try to say that Apple used its dominant position on the MP3-player market to leverage its position on the digital music sales market, or vice-versa. And, who knows, there might be an antitrust case here.
Roughly 200 million people were killed by own governments in the 20th century, excluding wars, and excluding deaths from malaria after DDT was banned. This compares with about 6 million private homicides globally, in the same period. I will get stats.
OK, so you're mixing up all governments with a broad brush when we're talking about the EU, I see no indication that the problems of the last century would suggest that EU states as they are now are going to turn into rogue states. Even so, if such a change were to happen, I don't see how not allowing them to regulate commerce now in going to change when and how severely they would change into malevolent states.
The DDT part is pretty tenuous, if ecologies had collapsed from the continued overuse of DDT, then there's no knowing how many people would have died from the loss of life sustaining ecologies.
I am hunting down the source on normal (non government) murder rates, but it was around 6 million for the 20th century, and I remember there was a 30 to one ratio.
Such a number can not be set in stone. Their are many ways to define a government. I'm sure the most vile ruling parties wouldn't be seen as valid governments by most other nations, yet I bet those are counted in your source.
How can you possibly know if and when one of the' nice' governments is going to turn nasty?.
I can't but you apparently can. But that isn't what you stated, now is it? You stated a date of the 20th century, not some future date. You are sounding more and more trollish with each anarchical laden post.
Genius! You saw straight to the heart of the issue and cut through all of this 'monopoly' nonsense.
I hate to be annoying, but the only monopoly here is the EU. At least people can compete with Microsoft - the success of safari and firefox are proof of that. What about competing with the EU's services? Why aren't there 3rd party companies that also provide the service of regulating monopolies? Or private police to compete with the EU's? Clearly, there's a double standard here. The government is a monopoly - the first monopoly, the biggest, a monopoly that has killed countless people in wars and failed social experiments. Whatever Microsoft has done, i'll bet you the EU has done worse, so it seems strange to me that the EU of all organisations should be in charge of this. Maybe that's just me, but it does seem a bit silly for people to be directing their energies against Microsoft. No matter how you justify it, i can assure you that Microsoft doesn't start wars, they don't have the power to tax you, to jail you for harmless activities, or to forcefully control how you run your business. Microsoft simply don't have this kind of power - if you don't like them, you are free to choose someone else's products! People, get your priorities right. You know better than this, we all do. Not to mention the practical side of this: If you ask for a world where governments can regulate businesses at will, then companies like Apple will not survive. Government stifles creativity - innovative companies will disappear, and be replaced by the businesses with the most 'political influence'. And that is certainly not a world where you can have nice shiny iPods and all of the good stuff that Apple keeps bringing us.
Anyone who supports this cannot claim to be against monopolies at all. People are picking and choosing which monopolies are 'good' and 'bad' on nothing more than a whim. You can't say "Monopolies are bad, so we really need to create an even bigger monopoly called the government to regulate the smaller monopolies, because monopolies are good!" That's a contradiction. If you don't like monopolies, then I am afraid that the first place you have to direct your energy towards is the government, not some decaying software company with shrinking market share.
That Ayn Rand Thesaurus must be getting a little tattered, huh?
BTW, how's this nice de-regulated economy working out. Thought so.
BTW, how's this nice de-regulated economy working out. Thought so.
Depends on your view of the root of the problem. Oversupply of cheap money with little to no risk ("skin") in the game (no money down half million dollar mortgages with little or no background vetting....thank Congress for that gem, mortgage industry didn't push that turkey) is the prevalent view with 'deregulation' being the CYA smokescreen. Did anyone in California really believe their house was worth that much? By setting rules for lending at the federal level, it invited mindless, reckless deals. Absent that government fiasco, it's working out very well and we could use more deregulation, especially in the recovery areas. What's most needed is oversight and transparency (political especially). Most deregulation in the U.S. goes back to the Eisenhower administration and was bipartisan throughout the last 50 years. Jimmy Carter, a democrat, was actually one of the most avid industry deregulators (transportation especially)....not Ronald Reagan. Given his economics appointments, Obama may very well continue that process. It depends on how it's done. Governments are nothing more than people like you and I. It's about control.
The EU complaint lacks sense. Where are the damages? Imagine being in court for murder and the prosecution points to a man seated in the front row as the victim, who stands up and identifies himself as the murdered man...you have a problem. The complaint goes to competition. Buy any Windows loaded machine (2000, ME, XP, Vista, beta Windows7), and as soon as you launch IE, you can download any other browser you like, then unload IE (what difference does it make if some .dlls are still there as far as competition goes?). How is competition being foiled?
How is competition being foiled?
It beggars belief that this should need to be explained to anyone. IE is built into Windows. The vast majority of computers sold in the EU come with Windows. Therefore IE does not have to compete on merit to be installed and used by end-users.
There is no real separation of the two.
So what? That's NOT the EU's complaint. BTW, that's because the browser doubletimes as a drive browser for the same look and feel. There are dozens of processes that are integral to the OS.
Such a number can not be set in stone. Their are many ways to define a government. I'm sure the most vile ruling parties wouldn't be seen as valid governments by most other nations, yet I bet those are counted in your source.
A government has 2 criteria:
1) It is an organisation with a geographical monopoly on the power to use violence. It is illegal to compete with them or copy them within their monopoly area.
2) Unlike normal criminal activity, a government is propped up by a veil of legitimacy - the people believe that the government is moral, right, or necessary, and even if they disagree with it, they will continue to provide moral support for it. Governments must have the sanction of the people they rule over.
When this veil of legitimacy falls, the government is just a criminal gang, and usually a revolution follows where someone else who does have a veil of legitimacy takes over.
I think it might be a bit silly to just say "Governments are good, until they get really bad, then we can define them as something else." I mean, that sort of thing is not going to help any discussion advance. An organisation does not require the approval of foreigners in order to be a government.
Soviet Union - 62 million killed
Nazi Germany - 21 million killed
Chinese Kuomintang - 10 million killed
Chinese communists - 35 million killed
Japanese Empire - 6 million killed
These were all governments. Sanctioned by the people, with a monopoly on the power to use violence.
I can't but you apparently can. But that isn't what you stated, now is it? You stated a date of the 20th century, not some future date. You are sounding more and more trollish with each anarchical laden post.
That's not an answer, you're just accusing me of hypocrisy. I will answer you, though.
There are 2 ways to know the truth about something: Logic and evidence. I have been using logic to demonstrate why the idea of government regulation of monopolies is a contradiction. The purpose of evidence is to look at the past in order to create a series of general principles which can help us in the present and future. I have shown you evidence that governments have been unstable organisations which occasionally snapped, killing millions of people. Moreover, I pointed out that many of those victims (like the Jews) thought they were safe until it was too late - they didn't know what was coming. This evidence gives us 3 general principles:
1) It is the nature of governments to sometimes snap and kill lots of people.
2) This happens with so little warning that millions of people can be killed.
3) Just because a government hasn't snapped yet doesn't mean that it never will. If this were a very very rare thing, then it would be less of a concern, these numbers wouldn't be so large, and I would not have brought them up. But the numbers are large, and it happens often enough, to be genuinely concerned about this risk.
Now, there are some warning signs that things are getting gradually worse. People who look at history, good philosophy and economics might notice some warning signs like an increase in mystical thinking in society, regulations of business, militarisation of the police, checkpoints, economic crisis, high inflation, loss of civil liberties, restrictions on travel, and so on. If they are smart, they will leave at this point. Many Jews left Germany before it was too late, because they were paying attention. As fast as the transition was in Germany, it was only the final stage in a long series of gradual increases in power that had accumulated over the previous decades. Russia was more sudden because it involved a complete change in government.
So yes, if your government happens to go bad, you might be one of the people who can see it coming, and get out in time. But what if you don't? Is that really an acceptable risk for us to have, in the 21st century? Shouldn't we have more sympathy for the 170 million people who lost their lives for this collective fantasy? Or, should we just pay lip service to the tragedy, as if 170 million deaths is an acceptable cost of having government? There is something... missing... if all of these people's lives don't make a difference to your assessment.
Depends on your view of the root of the problem. Oversupply of cheap money with little to no risk ("skin") in the game (no money down half million dollar mortgages with little or no background vetting....thank Congress for that gem, mortgage industry didn't push that turkey) is the prevalent view with 'deregulation' being the CYA smokescreen. Did anyone in California really believe their house was worth that much? By setting rules for lending at the federal level, it invited mindless, reckless deals. Absent that government fiasco, it's working out very well and we could use more deregulation, especially in the recovery areas. What's most needed is oversight and transparency (political especially). Most deregulation in the U.S. goes back to the Eisenhower administration and was bipartisan throughout the last 50 years. Jimmy Carter, a democrat, was actually one of the most avid industry deregulators (transportation especially)....not Ronald Reagan. Given his economics appointments, Obama may very well continue that process. It depends on how it's done. Governments are nothing more than people like you and I. It's about control.
The EU complaint lacks sense. Where are the damages? Imagine being in court for murder and the prosecution points to a man seated in the front row as the victim, who stands up and identifies himself as the murdered man...you have a problem. The complaint goes to competition. Buy any Windows loaded machine (2000, ME, XP, Vista, beta Windows7), and as soon as you launch IE, you can download any other browser you like, then unload IE (what difference does it make if some .dlls are still there as far as competition goes?). How is competition being foiled?
Sorry, but once the reaganites discovered that they could continue to destroy wages (i.e. unions) and still keep people spending by getting them to mortage their homes (and futures) with cheap credit, the game was over.
De-regulation has been tried now to a far greater degree than ever thought possible, and found to be empty. Even Ayn's greatest disciple, Alan Greenspan, finally admitted that he was 'shocked' to find that greedy bastards with unlimited wealth dangling before them (due to lack of gov't oversite) do not act in their own 'selfish best interest'. Randians can now go back into their corner and argue amongst themselves about how many Objectivists can dance on the head of a pin.
BTW, I spent about 20 years as the hardest-core Randian MF you've ever run into.
Took a lot to finally see the light. Every John Galt stands on the shoulders of incremental progress, achieved by protection of the commons.
Thus ends my betrayal of my rule to never argue with Randians or Jehovah's Witneses.
Your not getting it, if safari for example is exposing my mac to a security risk i could just take it and delete and never see it again if i wish, iE is embedded to the OS so you can't get rid of it and have windows work right, to me iE is like a door for all kinds things to makes it's way to your machine but a door you can't close shut
Webkit is just as embedded in OS X as IE's frameworks are in Windows.
Seriously.
Sorry, but once the reaganites discovered that they could continue to destroy wages (i.e. unions) and still keep people spending by getting them to mortage their homes (and futures) with cheap credit, the game was over.
Yeah, Reagan talked a lot about freedom and small government, but he grew the government by two thirds during his presidency. I don't think you can get elected and then get away with radically shrinking government - too many people will get in your way. Attitudes in society have to change from the bottom up, in my opinion.
De-regulation has been tried now to a far greater degree than ever thought possible, and found to be empty.
How so? I have not heard of the government dropping regulations, but rather adding new ones. Sometimes, the government will sell off one of its monopolies to their buddies in the private sector, without actually legally opening the market to competition. Incredibly, they call this fascistic blend of private profits and government power 'privatisation'. The only place I know of where the government has been greatly reducing regulations and going in a less authoritarian direction is China, presumably because this gives the government more wealth to tax.
Even Ayn's greatest disciple, Alan Greenspan...
Greenspan is interesting. He was one of Rand's closer friends, he even gave suggestions to Rand on editing her book Atlas Shrugged. He wrote articles about how money should be left to the free market, that it should be gold, and that paper money was bad. Then, in the early '80s, probably after Rand died, he began working his way up in the government. I think he sold out, because he then got a job as head of the Federal Reserve, where he spent the next decade and a half doing the exact opposite of what he had preached. he had a significant role in creating the current economic bubble. Congressman Ron Paul confronted him many times about it, and he once asked Greenspan to sign the old article he wrote about the importance of leaving money to the free market. Greenspan signed the article, then simply said that he had changed his views.
... finally admitted that he was 'shocked' to find that greedy bastards with unlimited wealth dangling before them (due to lack of gov't oversite) do not act in their own 'selfish best interest'. Randians can now go back into their corner and argue amongst themselves about how many Objectivists can dance on the head of a pin.
What does this even mean? There would have to be some kind of example to qualify this statement. Do you mean Halliburton, the big media companies, or all of the financial institutions which created the current bubble? They are all heavily involved with government power and regulations, and many of them owe their fortunes to these sort of unholy alliances. Remember the "looters" in Atlas Shrugged, like Jim Taggart and Oren Boyle? It's them. The current business world is full of them, versus the Henry Reardens of the world. Think of people like Steve Jobs.
BTW, I spent about 20 years as the hardest-core Randian MF you've ever run into.
Took a lot to finally see the light. Every John Galt stands on the shoulders of incremental progress, achieved by protection of the commons.
Thus ends my betrayal of my rule to never argue with Randians or Jehovah's Witneses.
As brilliant as Rand was, there were a few major inconsistencies in her ideas. She didn't incorporate nearly enough real psychology into Objectivism. Did you ever read into her personal life? It's quite sad what happened in her relationships and her movement, and it was almost inevitable that it would happen that way. One minor correction, though: Rand never denied that greatness builds on the shoulders of others: instead, she showed that all genius is a product of the mind, of conscious thinking, reason, questioning, and action, not faith, whim, mysticism or irrationality. Compulsion and violence are the enemy of man's mind, of his creative process. The extent to which man is controlled is the extent to which his creative capacity is stifled. Those in society who live of the labour and mental energy of others are parasites, who depend on their victims invent the very tools needed to enslave them, and a mixed economy represents the maximum amount of control they can exercise before productivity starts dipping into the negative. I don't see how the fact that others came before these geniuses somehow invalidates their greatness - Rand never claimed this. Most of what she said was that heroes were the rare, exceptional people in society who move the world forward, and that we should look up to their achievements, instead of hating them for being good.
We've heard a lot lately about how bad our economic system is, how horrible deregulation has been, and why it's all the fault of <insert opposing political party here>.
This is normal and illustrates the power of psychology in driving man to do stupid things. Greed is capitalism's dirty little secret. Simultaneously fueling ambition to succeed in some and metastasizing into destructive behavior that can bring down an entire economy in others. Yet it's the best system we've yet devised to create and spread wealth.
The pendulum is swinging towards the other side now and we'll have to learn hard lessons yet again. Unable to achieve perfection, our economic system is being replaced with even bigger govt. Rather than tinker around the edges, we are driven by fear to take drastic action that may be even more painful to undo later. This is another business cycle with what appears to be a nasty trough - and no one wants to test how deep it may be.
We'll see how it all pans out. I think we are discounting what we've gained over the decades and unfairly blaming capitalism as a whole. To me, the current rhetoric sounds a lot like "If exercise and eating right were so good, how come you have the flu?"