Re: the best justice/kinds of monopolies

[Jim Burnes <jim.burnes@ssds.com>]

Jim Choate wrote:
> 
> Forwarded message:
> 
> > Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 08:23:58 -0800 (PST)
> > From: mark@unicorn.com
> > Subject: Re: the best justice money can buy --Lessig
> 
> > Of course there's a free-market remedy for Microsoft; eliminate copyright. If
> > anyone can copy Microsoft software for free, it would be forced to compete
> > on real benefits rather than installed base.
> 
> If there were no copyright nobody would have any reason to market software
> or much else for that matter. I would predict that much of the technology
> and infrastructure we have now wouldn't exist.

Thats pretty obvious.  I'm usually the last person to defend
Microsoft, but
cancelling copyright is throwing the baby out with the
proverbial bathwater.

There are a couple of obvious free market solutions.  The first
that comes
to mind is to stop buying Microsoft product.  This needs to be
restated because
even though obvious, it has a number of important follow-on
conclusions.

(1) There are other usable operating systems. (linux, mac-os,
os/2)
(2) There are other usable applications. (applix, macwrite?,
whatever)

Why won't people stop buying microsoft product?

(1) FUD helped along by a microsoft reality-altering marketing
budget
(2) The *applications* they write are sometimes quite usable.
(3) Their applications only work on *their* OS (mostly)?  Why is
that?
(4) Their OS, even considering its questionable quality has,
until this
    point, hornswaggled a bunch of developers because its the
*defacto*
    desktop applications API.  Why that is the case is probably
a topic
    for endless speculation -- though it probably comes down to
some
    version of the "stack 'em deep and sell 'em cheap"
philosophy -- 
    something that Apple still hasn't learned.

(5) ...and most importantly of all...it hasn't become painfull
enough
    yet to stop purchasing Microsoft software.

> 
> Free markets monopolize.
> 

Hmmm.  Thats a rather sweeping generalization.  Perhaps it would
be more
enlightening to discuss the nature of monopolies.  It is rarely
possible
to enforce a monopoly that isn't a natural monopoly.  A company
will tend
to keep a lion's share of the market as long as continued
investment
in more efficient production gives them greater market share --
bringing
you cheaper goods and larger quantities of them.  At that point
nobody cares
because quality goods are being sold as low prices.  When that
breaks down
all natural monopolies start to crumble or revert to their
previous market
share.

Having said that, let me follow it with a big "all other things
being equal".

One of the reasons NT became popular is because they priced
their NT
server not "by the client" as Novell used to, but at a
flat-price (if
memory serves -- which it is doing more infrequently these days
;-)

In doing so Novell's market share took a serious hit.  To some
extent
I say good riddance.  Novell server's IMOHO suck as a server
architecture
(not to mention truly horrible and snotty tech support).

Novell didn't react quickly enough and lost tremendous market
share.  Are
we suggesting that Novell be protected by the US Justice
Department?
I certainly hope not.  You are welcome to go back to those days.

The only other kinds of monopolies are cartels, and government
enforced
monopolies of both the public and private kind (the latter being
the most
heinous).

Cartels always collapse because one of the partners will
eventually see
the increasing profits to be made by breaking the cartel.  When
this happens
the company that breaks the cartel is the winner and the last
one to leave
the cartel may well collapse financially.  If members of a
Cartel get
together and use guns to prevent the breakup of the cartel then
that
is a lot more like a government enforced private monopoly -- bad
news.

Government-enforced public monopolies like the US Post office
and public
education are wasteful, out of touch with their markets (because
of
the lack of competitive price feedback) and thus inefficient. 
They
have no valid function in a free society and are a waste of
taxpayer
dollars.  The USPS will tell you that everything is hunky-dory
because
they don't use taxpayer dollars.  What they don't tell you is
that the
difference between the price you pay for their stamps and what
you would
in a free market is your tax.  (this and the strange tendency of
workers
to "go postal" -- you rarely hear about FedEX employees going on
an
AK47 rampage, must be the water ;-)

Goverment-enforced private monopolies teeter dangerously close
to the
pure definition of fascism.  Fascism, from the latin "fascia"
means
"to bind together" (perhaps you remember the "fascia" tissue
from
high-school biology class during dissection of frogs, cats and
other
unlucky animals).  In this case they bind a force monopoly with
a
yet-to-be-named monopoly.  Classic examples of
Fascism^h^h^h^h^h^h^h government
enforced-private-monopolies in the US are the Federal Reserve
System, the 
AMA, and the local Bar associations.  Why is this?  All these
monopolies
depend on FUD and govt to enforce their services.  "What would
happen if we didn't
regulate xyz is that all hell would break loose and many people
would
lead lives of horrible desperation.  'There oughta be a law!'
etc...blah blah..."
You know the drill.

Now that we have a perspective on monopolies, perhaps we can
take
a look a microsoft.  Microsoft is not a force monopoly
(usually), its not
run by the government (thank god), it doesn't appear to be a
cartel
(usually) so unless further information comes in it looks like a
natural monopoly.  What does it take to undo a natural monoply?

Build something cheaper, better and more reliable.

Its just possible (and this might be a stretch, but only by a
little)
that Linux, Free Netscape Sources, Java etc might acheive this.

Certainly Apache is more popular than any other webserver.

How you come up with a new product in this type of market
without
M$ "re-inventing it" and giving it away is anyone's guess.

(1) Hope that Linux/Scape/Java/KDE do something big
(2) Write a Win95/NT compatible operating system that is
    faster and cheaper.  If you can clone a Pentium, you
    can clone Windoze.  (visions of a QNX like OS with Win32
    API dance in my head).  A GPL'd VSTa-based Win32 OS
    would be pretty amazing.  This would be necessary because
    games are a big market and the Linux kernel just doesn't
    have what it takes to do realtime without a major hack.
    How about VSTa/a free DOS emulator/Wine.  If Sun would
    fund this effort it could take a lot of wind out of
    M$ sails.  Probably more than Java.  McNeally would have
    to hop down from his high-horse.

    When will this happen?  When the market gets tired of
    M$ practices and some lucky competitor comes to the
    fore.  Until then there is no devine right to a percentage
    of the operating system market share.

We can only code and hope.

(donning flame retardant vest)

jim burnes