On Mon, 8 Nov 1999, curious wrote:
> define ethical? if your saying that I can insure that I can get my
> operating system to be included with every PC by making a deal with
> vendors.. I think I would... is that unethical?
let's see if I can't put this another way
pretend I'm a really big guy (okay, this is hard, but pretend
anyway...think, like..my father's size or something)
you're selling glasses
I'm selling lemonade
if I agree to give you a cut rate on lemonade so you can sell it with your
glasses as an incentive to your customers to buy *your* glasses over other
vendors who don't have lemonade, then that's fair
if I threaten to pound you into the ground if you don't include my
lemonade, that's not
now, understand that power does not just come with size. In this case, MS
had the *only* lemonade, everyone else was selling glasses with lemonade,
and most of the people who were buying were convinced they were allergic
to limes (okay, that's a bit contrived, but it's hard to make an analogy
for this one at 11 at night :) ). Hence, in order to survive, you *have*
to sell MS lemonade. Therefore, if you *have* to sell MS lemonade, and MS
won't sell you the lemonade at the same rate as everyone else, then you
won't be profitable, and you will die (as a company). And if MS says 'we
will charge you more than we charge anyone else if you give your customers
the option of any other drink' you will not give your customers the option
of other drinks with their glasses. Hence, MS has just threatened to pound
you into the ground (kill you) if you don't include their lemonade.
got it yet?
And this is just *one* issue -- the OEM one...MS has done stuff like this
consistently. They have also renegged on contracts and other shady stuff
(according to what I've been reading..I don't remember how much was
actually used in the trial right now, but I do know that quite a bit of it
was). Basically, they are the neighborhood bully and they can be because
they are big. Either the government can stop it, or we can hope (and
unlike most free-trade'ers, I don't believe this for a second, and no one
ever has proven it right, though I'll grant no one has proven it
completely wrong [proving negatives, again] ) that the market will
straighten itself out and despite MSes strongarming someone will
outmanuver them, or we can accept that MS (and any other company as
ruthless as they ) will happily destroy anything in it's path on the way
to a profit.
The biggest problem I see with your brand of libertarianism (the whole
anti-government/pro-capitalism schtick) is that it replaces the power of
the state with the power of the corporations. At least the state is
nominally under citizen control. We know the corporations aren't. The
biggest problem I see with capitalism is that it values things over people
(note capitalism != free enterprise, which is of the same genus, but a
different, and imo much tamer species). This is bad when it happens on an
individual basis. Do we have any reason to believe it would be good on a
larger scale?
I don't think anyone here *wants* a great deal of government control. We
certainly don't want things like the VA government looking into our
bedrooms (says the walking felon :) ) (for those who don't know, Virginia
has some really heinous laws about how, where and with whom you can have
sex with ). But, at the same time, we don't want our lives to be run by
corps, either. Big brother can be business, even as it is often depicted
as government. Increasingly the line between business and government in
the U.S. gets blurred. I don't have many good answers on how to fix what
we have now. I'll discuss the ones I do have with you when I have the time
and energy. I do know that your 'solution' would just, long term, make the
problem worse.
Also, I know that you don't see this as trolling, largely because you see
it as a philosophical discussion about business and government and how
much control the latter should have over the former, but this isn't a
soapbox for your political views. This was a discussion about what *is*
and what should be done *under the current rules*. Can we bring it back
that way?
At some point, after I've dug through the ethics a bit more, and after the
WTO stuff is over, I'll be happy to talk to you about the whole economics
thing a bit more. Right now, I'll be happy if I can think of an anti-WTO
action by wednesday...
Vinnie
--
a safe place for all of the pieces that scatter
learn to pretend there's more than love that matters - e saliers
Obligatory pathetic website at http://george.he.net/~drachen
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