From: mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539)
Subject: Re: FCC will proclaim Microsoft is run by Communists! :)
Organization: Texas Instruments Inc
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 21:58:25 GMT

In <1992Dec27.035536.7481@tc.cornell.edu> bai@msiadmin.cit.cornell.edu (Dov Bai-MSI Visitor) writes:

Well, I've sat and read through a raft of the usual arguments favoring
post-industrial feudalism, and I guess it's time to say something.

>In article <Bzvxpw.Lx3@csulb.edu> sichermn@csulb.edu (Jeff Sicherman) writes:
>>In article <1992Dec26.040250.11884@tc.cornell.edu> bai@msiadmin.cit.cornell.edu (Dov Bai-MSI Visitor) writes:
>>>In article <BzuFBF.8Dq@csulb.edu> sichermn@csulb.edu (Jeff Sicherman) writes:
>>>>In article <1992Dec26.000917.7829@tc.cornell.edu> bai@msiadmin.cit.cornell.edu (Dov Bai-MSI Visitor) writes:

>>>Please answer in a definite way: Do you support a position that denies
>>>an individual/company from selling/buying _voluntarily_ their property
>>>under certain conditions ?
>>
>>  I don't think I understand what you mean by 'under certain conditions'.
>>While I accept their right to choose to sell or not to sell their property
>>at their discretion, I do not accept the premise that they have an unfettered
>>right to sell (or, more generally, make contracts) in whatever way they see
>>fit independent of the laws and practices governing commercial activity in
>>this country. We are not discussing their right to distribute or to set
>>the price, but the way they interact with the market at large and an
>>obligation to engage in fair dealing in that marketplace.
>>
>>  If all MS wants to do is contemplate the beauty of their creations they
>>can exercise their property rights to their hearts content. If they want to
>>participate in the marketplace, they will have to follow the rules that
>>govern it for the establishment of good order. That is what the FTC is
>>tasked to examine and make determinations about and MS will have plenty
>>of opportunity to contest, challenge, and otherwise deal with any conclusions
>>and actions coming from the FTC as befits their right to due process.

>To say that a vendor cannt buy at an agreed price from a software 
>company, or that the company is allowed to display its ware but not
>sell it to whoever agrees to buy it, have property rights, is like 
>saying that one who is free to think but not to talk has freedom
>of speech.

YOUR version of 'property rights' is somewhat at odds with both common
usage and what is generally best for society.  It is, however, a
typical oversimplification one finds of this sort of thing among some
denizens of the net.  'Property rights', like 'free speech', is
certainly not unrestricted.  You do not, for example, have the right
to exercise your freedom of speech to incite to riot, nor to shout
fire in a crowded theater.  These restrictions exist because allowing
you unrestricted exercise becomes bad for the people around you.  The
same applies to your conception of 'property rights'.  MS has ever
right in the world to set whatever price they like on their goods and
sell them -- what they don't have any right to do is put requirements
on the people who they sell to which have nothing to do with their
goods, like requiring payment for every unit of their own product that
the MS customer moves, whether it includes MS product or not.  This is
similar to predatory practices engaged in by Standard Oil with regard
to things like shipping and IBM with regard to the use of non-IBM
punch cards.

>A position like yours is not rare, and you are entitled to it, but
>at least be honset and say that you are against property rights,
>rather then using charged terms like "predatory practices".

He's calling them what they are -- predatory practices.

>And to argue that the FTC is protecting the software customer when
>all evidence is the contary, and software prices are keep falling
>down all the time, is blindness at best.

And making unsupported claims about the automatic goodness of the
'free market', even when participants are violating the assumptions
that economists make that make free market forces work is an even
worse sort of blindness (at best).

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy