From: pmetzger@snark.shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger)
Subject: Re: Which brand(s) of anarchy?
Organization: Lehman Brothers
Distribution: world,local
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 21:20:29 GMT

galt%peruvian.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu writes:
>In article <1992Oct3.212130.13228@shearson.com>, pmetzger@snark.shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger) writes:
>>Do you imagine that there is no value in designing things? That
>>understanding how to set up, finance and run a business is worthless?
>>You can find millions of people who can lift heavy objects. How many
>>people do you know who could do what Bill Gates has done?
>
>Bill Gate bacame a billionaire by telling IBM he would get them an
>operating system for their new PCs.  He then went to some people
>who had written an operating system and bought it for $50,000.  For the
>next 10 years, he became a billionaire letting the operating system
>sell itself.  The only significant revision of the OS was MSDOS 5.0.
>So, a bunch of creative people create something, and a shrewd business
>man gets set for life.  A perfect example of how wonderful capitalism is.

First of all, his name is "Gates", not "Gate". Second of all, Mr.
Gates first sent IBM off to Digital Research, where Garry Kildall was
too busy flying his plane to be present for the meeting he had
scheduled with IBM. When the IBM people returned, Mr. Gates, a
businessman who had a bottom line to worry about, decided that yes, he
could find IBM an operating system for their machines. He then went
out and bought one. The company he bought it from was likely quite
happy to sell it -- so far as I know there are no allegations that Mr.
Gates used violence against them.

Yes, its true, millions of people have bought MS-DOS for their
machines. So far as I know, none of them have been threatened with
violence to get them to buy it. Each of them has gone up to the
counter, handed over their money, and received what they asked for.
Digital Research had CP/M-86 available, but people didn't buy it. The
UCSD P-System was also sold by IBM for their machines, but people
didn't buy it, either. DR also sold MS-DOS clones with differing
features, but no one bought many of them. It seems that Bill Gates
gave the public what they wanted. Prehaps it isn't what YOU think the
public should have gotten, but it seems to be what they asked for. No
one forced any of them to fork their money over. No guns or whips or
chains were needed to bring billions of dollars to Bill Gates's door.
It seems that everyone gave him their money VOLUNTARILY. 

If you have a problem with that, prehaps you would propose stopping
them from giving Mr. Gates their money. This would necessarily require
your threatening violence to one or more of the parties involved.
Presumably, when you use violence, you will only use good Marxist
ideologically pure violence that cleanses the spirit and doesn't make
you into a common butcher like those horrid Fascists who also thought
they knew what was good for other people but hadn't been enlightened
by Marx. Prehaps your violence will be inspired by the writings of
some other luminary -- prehaps it will be good Ralph Nader style
violence, or prehaps you will follow good old FDR style violence. It
matters little who's violence you choose, though. As soon as you pass
laws saying "those people can't hand Bill Gates their money", you are
going to need to get policemen out who are willing to shoot people to
enforce your laws.

I find it strange that you are so personally threatened by the idea
that people might actually want to buy MS-DOS that you would even
dream of threatening to kill people to stop it.

--
Perry Metzger		pmetzger@shearson.com
--
		  Just say "NO!" to death and taxes.
			 Extropian and Proud.
Newsgroups: alt.society.anarchy