Microsoft Hatred FAQ

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 16:17:20 -0700, David Schwartz wrote:

>>>     Microsoft goal is and should be their own success, not the success of
>>> the economy or the market in general.
> 
>> Neither I, nor you, nor the government of any nation, should care a
>> monkey's toss specifically for Microsoft's success. Microsoft is one
>> special interest, out of a potentially unbounded number of possible
>> players in the economy of a country and the world.
> 
>     No, not at all. It is the gravest act of self-contradiction to maintain 
> that one should be allowed to pursue one's own interest while denying that 
> same right to others.

This is perhaps the most ignorant thing I've seen written down by somebody
educated for a long, long long time. An individual's self-interest may
very well include theft, murder or rape, to mention just a few examples.

Pursuing one's own self-interest is not and never has been an unrestricted
right. At the point that your self-interest harms others, civilization
steps in and slaps you down. You are not allowed to pursue your own
self-interest by dumping your trash over the fence into your neighbour's
back yard. You are not allowed to pursue your own self-interest by putting
a bullet in the brain of that annoying busker on the sub-way playing
Beatles tunes badly. You are not allowed to pursue your own self-interest
in breaking into your neighbour's home and stealing his property. And
neither are you allowed to pursue your own self-interest by engaging in
predatory and anti-competitive business practices.

Now perhaps you personally would like to live in a society where Steve
Ballmer, pursuing Microsoft's own interests, is allowed to have Google CEO
Eric Schmidt gut-shot and left to bleed to death in the gutter, but I
think the vast majority of people think that behaviour like that should be
discouraged, no matter how much money that would make Microsoft.


>> Unless you or I are specifically shareholders in Microsoft, we should
>> not care about their specific success; and the government should be
>> entirely agnostic about who are the winners and losers in an economy.
> 
>     We should certainly care that Microsoft be allowed to pursue their
>     own
> success. The government should be agnostic about who the winners and
> losers are, but must respect each entity's right to attempt to be that
> winner.

Certainly. Like any other entity, Microsoft is allowed to live it's "life"
any way it sees fit, so long as it obeys the law. At the point it breaks
the law, then, like any other legal person, Microsoft should be punished,
by fines, prohibitions, seizure of property, and if need be, the death
penalty.

Or would you like to suggest that Microsoft's board of directors should be
allowed carte blache to break any law, commit any deed, so long as it
makes Microsoft money? 


>> The
>> government's role should be to ensure a level playing field, and
>> minimum levels of health, safety and environmental standards. There is
>> no place for government giving special-interests like Microsoft
>> favours.
> 
>     The problem is, people complain when the playing field is in fact
>     level.
> For example, Microsoft's "exclusionary" Windows agreements didn't ask
> for more than Windows was worth (or nobody would have agreed to them).
> Yet they are considered examples of the playing field not being level.

Microsoft's exclusively agreements -- no need for scare quotes -- gave
people the choice, sign this agreement or go out of business. As such,
they are as level a playing field as a thug demanding a restaurant pay
"insurance" to him or "lot of flammable goods in your kitchen, terrible if
it were to burn down".

Microsoft's behaviour was merely smoother, wearing an expensive suit, and
written up in lots of legal language, but in effect it was no different:
do what we want, or we'll put you out of business.


>> Society regulates where and how we park our cars: for instance, none of
>> us are allowed to park our car in the middle of busy road. and if we
>> try, our car is likely to be impounded. This is not because there is
>> anything in and of itself *wrong* with parking at such-and-such a
>> place, but because of the effect it has on others.
> 
>     Umm, no. It's because the government owns the roads and operates
>     them
> for the benefit of all. This analogy applies *only* to government
> property.

Perhaps you should stop and think for a moment about privately owned toll
roads.

You, as a private individual, are not allowed to detonate a small nuclear
warhead, even on your own property. The government prohibits you from
carrying explosives on privately owned airplanes. I didn't notice the Bush
government shrugging their shoulders and saying "Hey, the World Trade
Centre is private property, it is none of *our* business what people do to
it" a few years back. Perhaps you might say that it was none of the
government's business, if private individuals wish to fly planes into
privately owned buildings, but fortunately no government in the world
agrees with you.



>> A sensible government cares for smooth flowing traffic on the roads,
>> with the minimum of delays and the maximum flow practical.
> 
>     You could replace "government" with "road owner" and the analogy
>     would
> then be correct. Governments don't give a damn if traffic flows smoothly
> on private roads.

Yeah, tell that to the operators of CityLink in Melbourne.

>> Perhaps Walmart or Safeway might find it convenient to park their
>> trucks on public roads for any number of reasons. Too bad for them: the
>> benefit to them does not outweigh the loss to everyone else, even if
>> they don't specifically block access to their competitors.
> 
>     And this is what any road owner would do.

Not if the road was owned by the people blocking their competitors'
traffic.

[snip]

>>> Microsoft's status of a "monopolist"
>>> is only meaningful if you define the market as "desktop operating
>>> systems for 32-bit x86 computers".
> 
>> That is *precisely* the market we're talking about. Not "any item that
>> runs off electricity", not "orange juice", not "pork bellies", not "all
>> computing devices", but desktop PCs. What did you think the Justice
>> Department's investigation was about? Motor vehicles?
> 
>     I thought it was about operating systems, actually. 

How stupid do you think we are, that we are unable to tell the difference
between a market and a product? Microsoft's *products* under investigation
in the DoJ case were the operating system and web browser, but the
*market* was the desktop PC market.


> And I thought
>     that both OSX and Linux competed with it.

As you know, because you have been following this thread, an economic
monopoly does not mean that the monopolist is literally the only player in
town. Even today, when Microsoft's effective marketshare has fallen from
97% to maybe as low as 90%, they still hold a monopoly in both the
operating system and the office suite in the desktop PC market.


>>> There is no way Microsoft could have expected the market to be defined
>>> in this way and no way to argue that Microsoft had any reason to
>>> believe their conduct was illegal.
> 
>> Microsoft have lawyers. Microsoft destroyed emails and at least one
>> senior manager perjured himself in court. Microsoft created a fake
>> video demonstration which they then gave as evidence. Do you really
>> believe that Microsoft's executives are so incompetent that they don't
>> get legal advice before writing up contracts? Or that nobody in
>> authority at Microsoft realised that destroying evidence and lying to a
>> judge are crimes?
> 
>     When a criminal willing to use force points a gun at your head, you
>     lie
> to him.

Well don't this just take the biscuit. Judges investigating crimes are
criminals pointing guns. I wonder whether you are this understanding about
accused muggers and liquor-store robbers, or if it is only white guys in
business suits that get your sympathy?


>> In any case, even if you are right that Microsoft had no ideas... so
>> what? Ignorance of the law never has been an excuse for criminal
>> behaviour. It has always been every individual's responsibility to make
>> sure that they do not act illegally, and that goes for companies as
>> well.
> 
>     I am not saying Microsoft did not know the law. I am saying that no
> rational person could have expected the law to be applied to Microsoft
> that way it was. 

No rational person could have expected that Microsoft would be expected
to obey the law? You have a bizarre concept of "rational".

> The law *must* put a person on notice of precisely what
> conduct it prohibits. However, in this case, the law's applicability was
> conditioned on an abritrary and irrational choice of what the relevant
> market was.

Riiiight.

Because as we all know, micro-controllers for VCRs and desktop PCs are the
same market. If you want to run common business applications like word
processing, book-keeping, web-browsing, etc, you have a free choice
between running those applications on a desktop PC or a VCR.


-- 
Steven.