Re: ...and some thoughts (was Re: Xy on Mac)

[Harry Binswanger hb@xxxxxxxx]

> It was summed up a century and more ago by Lord Acton: all power tends
> to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Yes, but Lord Action meant political power, not economic power--the power
of physical coercion backed up by police and soldiers, not the power of
production which anyone is free to accept or refuse.
>  If you have an open and varied market
"Open" means: not subjected to governmental coercion. "Varied" is something
else again. The are many variants to Windows today, only most people don't
choose to use them. Given the high overhead in learning a new OS (which I
experienced with OS X), we can't say they are irrational for sticking to
Microsoft.
> some company may say, "We cannot please everybody, but we can create (and
> make a decent profit selling) a niche product for `fit audience though few.'"

Yes, that's what we count on. Tame is an example.
>  But if a company has an effective monopoly, then it is not necessarily
> wicked, it might even be sensible, for it to say: "We're wasting time
> and money supporting these troglodytes who want to run old
> applications."

Agreed, speaking troglodyte to troglodyte.
> The problem with Redmond is that Big Brother Bill is absolutely sure that
> he knows what you want better than you do. I can put up with someone
> trying to tell me what I need. But not what I want. I know that for myself.
As Flash has pointed out, the alternative to Big Brother Bill is that which
the term "Big Brother" was originated to denote: government, with its
coercion, its deadening hand, its bovine stupidity, its
power-corrupting-power. I don't want George Bush picking my OS for me.
It's as simple as the alternative between voluntary choice and action at
gunpoint. And there's no middle ground, nothing that counts as
"semi-coerced, semi-voluntary"--like "a little bit pregnant" or a little
bit of assault and battery. So, ultimately, one has to choose between
totalitarianism and laissez-faire capitalism. Because the only two
consistent principles are: rights or no rights. It is a contradiction to
say, "You have rights, provided I'm a happy consumer with a varied array of
goods"--that's reducing a right to a permission, a permission conditional
upon pleasing someone.



Harry Binswanger
hb@xxxxxxxx