Re: Boycott Microsoft

"Mark A. Peters" <Mark.A.Peters_at_cdc.com>, on Mon, 1 Jun 1998 12:47:16 -0700,
>
>(This was posted last week, but never showed up on my server or in Deja
>News).
>
>Doug,
>

 [...]
>
>The definition of individual rights that I gave, "A moral principle defining
>and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context" hints at the
>name of the third floor: morality. Rights are a link or bridge between
>morality and politics, between the principles that guide a man's actions as
>such, and the principles that guide his actions when living in a society.
>Naming reason as man's basic means of survival (i.e., his basic means of
>guiding his actions) hints at the name of the second floor: epistemology, or
>the study of how we know what we know.

 [...]
>Nobody has cornered the market on operating systems, and no computer
>manufacturer is _unable_ to make computers (one might fail due to bad
>business decisions, but that's not the same thing). The same holds true for
>browsers and other applications. There is no danger of the people employed
>by Netscape, Sun,etc. being left without any way to support themselves.
>Even in the incredibly improbable event that Microsoft _literally_ corners
>the market on computers and software, it should be clear that all the people
>who worked for the vanquished competitors would be able to find work with
>Microsoft, or work with companies that don't compete against it.
>
>Now, I could make a similar analysis of _all_ the alleged dangers of an
>economy not subject to anti-trust or other regulation, but the bottom line
>is that it isn't _necessary_. All such alleged dangers come down to one
>erroneous belief: freedom isn't practical. Cashing in on the point of my
>"skyscraper" analogy, that belief comes down to "morality isn't practical",
>which in turn comes down to "reason isn't practical". Grasping that these
>beliefs are all erroneous is the only way to grasp the truth of the claim
>that anti-trust is anti-freedom, anti-morality, and anti-reason, and hence
>harmful to human life across the board.

Your idealistic conception of "free markets" is not entirely inadequate, but if you're going to try to use it to say that in THIS ONE CASE, the government should not have a hand in disciplining commerce for the good of the people, because market discipline is self-imposed IN THE END, then you're barking up the wrong tree. If you want to make a case that the government should have no control whatsoever of commerce, there are plenty of less harmful ways to begin the implementation then by allowing the MOST grievous assaults and most critical restraint of trade in an entirely new industry.

One idea that might help you re-analyze your impractical "all regulation is unnecessary" principle is that while your "skyscraper" may be built with "rights" being the link between politics and morality, mine would have "responsibilities" being the link between commerce and ethics. Microsoft is acting irresponsibly _for the science, industry, and markets of technology_, and that puts anti-trust on quite strong ethical grounds, as far as I am concerned. When the profit motive of one company can be prevented from resulting in restriction of fair market access and healthy competition ("restraint of trade"), then despite the ambiguous text required to make such activities illegal (do you also think the RICCO Act is "immoral"?), the Sherman Act is on firm moral ground, and protects the rights of everyone concerned.

--

T. Max Devlin
Hi-TECH Connections/Eltrax Systems
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