Anti-Free Market Canards
Anti-Free Market Canards Capitalism now suffers under a crushing load of confiscatory taxes; regulation runs up the price of everything we buy and holds down the wages we earn; discrimination...
...He seems afraid that Microsoft's "sheer market power" enables it "to bar entry to competitors or squeeze them out...
...The computer business is the freest industry in America today...
...They know that if Microsoft does the "wrong" thing, competitors will overcome any market dominance to give consumers a choice, whereas a government referee will always impose a single option that favors whoever has bought the most political influence...
...Stelzer worries that Microsoft's practice of giving away its Internet Explorer is predatory...
...Noted economist William Baumol recently wrote that there is "general consensus among informed observers that genuine cases of predation are very rare birds...
...The consistency of libertarianism is one reason it's in the ascendancy today, while Stelzer's conservatism is going the way of liberalism...
...discrimination police force companies to man customer phone lines with people the customers can't understand...
...Thus it is the obligation of individuals and groups (including religious groups) to persuade others to be moral...
...Being a libertarian does not mean that you are a libertine...
...President Clinton made school uniforms a viable national issue, but even he didn't graft it onto federal policy...
...Wray R. Johnson Fredericksburg, VA National, But Not Federal David Brooks is right when he urges conservatives to make education a national "issue...
...Libertarians recognize that liberty and morality depend on each other...
...And he praises anti-trust laws as the protectors of competition—as though they've ever been used for any purpose other than to beat down successful competitors...
...It didn't because a very large segment of the population didn't believe in it...
...But that doesn't—and shouldn't—translate necessarily into national "policy" ("Education as a National Issue," Dec...
...So how does Irwin M. Stelzer propose to save capitalism...
...Surety involves triangles (principal, surety, and obligee) as opposed to dualities (insurer and insured...
...So they side with individual liberty and personal responsibility—not the force of government—on all issues at all times...
...It seems clear that, with only a few exceptions (e.g., Gen...
...Donald J. Boudreaux The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc...
...MS-DOS is widely regarded as a brain-dead operating system...
...Harry Browne Franklin, TN While Irwin M. Stelzer justifiably fears monopolies, he unjustifiably concludes that anti-trust statutes are necessary to ensure competition...
...As any poet knows, triangles are more interesting...
...Libertarians know that any social problem can only be made worse by government...
...The Weekly Standard has been trying to pump some life back into a conservative movement that has failed to improve the lives of Americans in any tangible, substantial way...
...Clint Bolick Institute for Justice Washington, DC Another Supreme Fiction Ienjoyed Christopher Caldwell's essay on the double life of insurance lawyer and poet Wallace Stevens ("Wallace Stevens, Poet and Insurance Executive," Nov...
...Terry Schwalier as reported by Matt Labash ("The Scapegoat," Nov...
...it would send it over a cliff...
...Instead it left a legacy of organized crime and corruption...
...Such suits obstruct competition...
...After professing his love for free markets and competition, Stelzer goes on to recite all the anti-market cliches that have flooded welfare-state-mentality economics textbooks for decades...
...Irvington-on-Hudson, NY Imust take issue with one point in Irwin M. Stelzer's fine article...
...From its beginnings in the late 1880s, when local butchers agitated against the Chicago meat-packers, to today's actions against Wal-Mart, Toys "R" Us, and Microsoft, anti-trust has overwhelmingly been used to stymie competition...
...Libertarians, on the other hand, know that government doesn't work...
...It caught on only because it was the default operating system installed on IBM PCs back when IBM had a monopoly on them...
...But lacking a consistent, straightforward philosophy, conservative writers and politicians have had to try to devise some kind of noble mission to champion...
...Chicago, IL Libertarian Lessons In her review of William Bennett's book, Noemie Emery makes the unfounded charge that libertarians advocate uncontrolled morals ("For God and Country," Dec...
...Marshall wrote in his 1947 classic, Men Under Fire, regarding faith and confidence in our leadership: "[The military] should never be put under the necessity of humoring and yielding irretrievable ground to the inevitable malcontents, or of permitting governing principles to be influenced by voices from the lunatic fringe, even those which have been elected to Congress...
...Russell A. Paielli San Jose, CA The Schwalier outrage As an active-duty officer with a background in anti-terrorism and special operations, I was appalled by the treatment of Brig...
...Americans care deeply about education, but the last thing they want is centralized education policy...
...Ronald Fogleman's principled response to the Schwalier episode), senior uniformed leadership is surrendering the high ground to less principled civilian leadership...
...If government could coerce people to be moral, prohibition would have worked wonders...
...Until you understand this phenomenon, you are totally ignorant about the war raging in the computing world today...
...Beyond that, conservatives should use the bully pulpit to promote systemic, state-based child-centered education reform...
...Has he ever visited a computer store...
...Bring the government in, and within a few years we'll see no more of the breathtaking price cuts and performance gains that have marked the industry for the past 15 years...
...If history is a guide, however, Microsoft's practice is robustly competitive...
...I hate to spoil the dichotomy Caldwell draws, but the fact that Stevens's day job was not dull actually squares with Caldwell's thesis that Stevens, like the rest of us, transcends any narrow views...
...Federal reforms should consist of tax credits and vouchers replacing existing aid programs...
...But what he wants wouldn't just nudge the computer industry down a slippery slope...
...The day a company tries to abuse its customers, new competition suddenly springs out of the bushes—except when anti-trust laws prevent companies from entering a market to compete...
...This is the standard argument for antitrust law, and yet no one has ever cited a real-life example of a company that was able to do this...
...Jim Rongstad Woodbury, MN...
...But Stelzer wants to bring the government in to make it better, somehow—not to run it, but to act as the fair, benevolent, impartial referee of his imagination...
...Researchers, however, have uncovered copious evidence that firms are all too ready to sue successful rivals for predation...
...In fact, Microsoft's so-called "better mousetrap" is a joke among the vast majority of computer professionals not affiliated with Microsoft...
...So-called "predatory pricing" is the most common sort of wrongful act, whereby today's benefits (low prices) breed tomorrow's ills (monopoly prices...
...Quite the opposite: Microsoft has opened the doors of opportunity to thousands of up-and-coming companies...
...Microsoft is an empire built on platform dependence...
...That's far more populist and tangible than anything liberals can offer...
...By having the government beat up on Microsoft ("Why Janet Reno vs...
...This is particularly dangerous given the potential long-term harm to our armed forces...
...J.C...
...Since everyone had to run MS-DOS on his PC, software developers had to write their software to run on MS-DOS...
...They have succeeded only in turning conservatism—which once sought to roll back the tyranny of the New Deal—into an embarrassing imitation of liberalism, professing to use the tyranny of government for "good" purposes instead of "bad" ones...
...But researchers have never been able to uncover clear evidence of predation...
...Stelzer repeats the old canard that a company like Microsoft can eliminate all its competition through low prices and giveaways, and then raise its prices to the sky after the competition is gone...
...Character and responsibility develop when people choose to do the right thing rather than being forced to do so...
...The computer revolution will be finished...
...These are but a few of the thousands of other intrusions by government...
...Then, because all the developers were writing for MS-DOS, everybody with a PC had to run it...
...Watts said it best: Character is what you do when no one is looking...
...Once MS-DOS caught on, a phenomenon known as platform dependence took effect...
...Has he seen the row upon row of software products that compete with Microsoft—word-processors, spreadsheets, databases, e-mail programs, accounting programs, and on and on...
...It surely must confound the academy that Stevens, most cerebral of the aesthetes, "greatest American poet of the twentieth century," was also "dean of surety claims" at the Hartford and maybe even a Catholic (perhaps his deathbed conversion had a prelude, as did his poetic career...
...James A. Knox Jr...
...Bill Gates Is Good for Capitalism," Dec...
...Instead, every new computer product will have to jump through the government's hoops—sitting in a lab for years while it's tested for efficiency, safety, and any conceivable side-effects, while companies fill out endless forms to prove they aren't upsetting the delicate balance of government-enforced competition...
...For instance, fidelity bonds insure banks against insider fraud...
...Abuse of anti-trust law is especially prevalent when the alleged wrongful act benefits consumers today but supposedly harms them tomorrow...
...In that vein, I am reminded of what S.L.A...
...However, Caldwell overplays these ironies when he describes surety claims as "one of the driest areas" of the insurance business...
...We can go much farther, but only if we remain consistent with our principles of education and freedom...
...Stelzer suggests that only Microsoft's competitors deny that the company "achieved its enviable position as the result of its own efficiency and innovative skill...
...Actually, surety often is to other types of insurance as chess is to checkers...
...They know that anything you turn over to the government will be transformed into a political issue to be decided by politicians...
...Obviously, Microsoft's success hasn't created a "stifling of innovation...
...The profession's subject matter is interesting, too...
...The real enemies of competition are Microsoft's rivals and their dupes in the Department of Justice who would force Microsoft to make life easier for other software producers...
Vol. 3 • December 1997 • No. 15
