1998-10-08 - RE: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction (fwd)

Header Data

From: Ryan Anderson <ryan@michonline.com>
To: Jim Choate <ravage@einstein.ssz.com>
Message Hash: 42cbb92b08b7d684c5de4280df60198d29d00487c21d81bf612b324b96462ca8
Message ID: <Pine.GSO.4.00.9810072148400.11985-100000@pawn.michonline.com>
Reply To: <199810012235.RAA21520@einstein.ssz.com>
UTC Datetime: 1998-10-08 01:59:04 UTC
Raw Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 09:59:04 +0800

Raw message

From: Ryan Anderson <ryan@michonline.com>
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 09:59:04 +0800
To: Jim Choate <ravage@einstein.ssz.com>
Subject: RE: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199810012235.RAA21520@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.00.9810072148400.11985-100000@pawn.michonline.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



> > Show me an example of an unregulated coercive monopoly whose source of
> > monopoly power is not ultimately the government.
> 
> The Mafia. The handful of world-class coke dealers. Your local church.

Umm...  both of those are around because the governemtn made the cost of
delivering both alcohol and drugs prohibitively high, in terms of legal
punishments and in terms of sheer distribution costs.  Legal drugs, or
even lightly regulated drugs would spur competition, and probably reduce
the number of poo quality drug batches that make it out into the market.
When your reputation to a bunch of addicts can disappear *and* competition
exists, you can lose a lot of business real quickly.   Production costs
are fairly low on these products, the real costs is in distribution and
defense.

Thsi is *clearly*  a government induced monopoly.


Ryan Anderson 
PGP fp: 7E 8E C6 54 96 AC D9 57  E4 F8 AE 9C 10 7E 78 C9





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