From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 12:40:00 +0800
To: Tim May <declan@well.com
Subject: Re: Fallaciousness of the Chicago School of Economics
In-Reply-To: <199802161934.TAA03259@server.eternity.org>
Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19980220093846.008dd100@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Adam:
>>I tend to agree with the view that monopolies exist due to government
>>subsidies (eg. free government enforcement services for copyright,
>>corporate welfare, government contracts.)

Monopolies may depend on government for long-term stability,
but fads can stick around for quite a while before dying out.
Remember Disco?  :-)

Attila also talked about Intel making badly-designed microprocessors.
It was somewhat of a vicious circle, since the big market for 80*86s
required bug-for-bug compatibility with Microsloth's "640K is enough" 
real-mode DOS, partly because of the large investment companies had in 
applications like word processors that ran in that environment.
Getting out of the problem requires replacing a whole bunch of things
at the same time, and incremental upgrades can't get you there.
(For a horrendous example, there's the Air Traffic Control system,
brought to you by the same government that wants to help us fix our
Microsoft addictions; got any spare 360/90 clones?)

Tim:
>I am trying to sit out this latest "Microsoft" thread as much as I can bear
>to. (It seems that several lists I'm are consumeed by the dual memes of
>"What to do about Microsoft?" and "What to do about spam?" Same arguments,
>recycled endlessly.)
Obviously, ship the spam to Microsoft and be done with it :-)
The Spam Wars does seem to be muscling out "Libertarians vs. Statists"
as the canonical all-consuming political discussion on the net,
though there's a fair bit of overlap.




>My view is a simple one: those who don't like Microsoft products should use
>something else. It works for me.

Sigh.  In the business world, we tend to be stuck with Microsoft products,
chosen by the same clueless bureaucrats who choose 10-pound laptops :-)
				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639