In article , Chris W writes:

Please point to an example of such a concentration of power in this country
where government has not been used to suppress competition in some way or
there
has been unlawful coercion in the marketplace.

Microsoft is the best example. They create new products, and use their
marketing
power and money to try and drive competitors out of business, Netscape being
just
one of many examples of that there are even some examples where they have
failed
because their marketing wasn't enough to over come the worthless product they
put
together when the competition in this case had a far superior product.

I like arguing politics, and I will even venture cautiously into religion, but
I find it far to polarized a battlefield to argue the relative merit of MS and
it's competitors quality.

However, the market place does not function on 'supply and quality' but on
supply and *demand.* Whether IE or Netscape is the better browser, the demand
for IE won out. That is probably a combination of marketing and integration,
you COULD buy a Ford but get a Chevy engine installed, but the added hassle of
adapting it wouldn't really be worth it. IE won out over Netscape, get over it.


They
have
told computer resellers that if they ship any computers with a competitors
product
pre installed then they will force that reseller to pay a much higher price
for
Microsoft products. In one case Microsoft had some kind of agreement with
computer
resellers where they had to put windows on all computers, that way those who
want
to run other operating systems still had to pay for windows, this in commonly
refereed to as the Microsoft tax. While the government is involved and has
pretended to do something about it, in reality they have done nothing.


There are thousands of computer assemblers who will be happy to sell you a
computer without an operating system. There always have been, but there were
also some vendors who would sell you one with Windows for less than the others
would sell one without an operating system. You are only harmed if you insist
on doing business with those suppliers who made that deal with MS. so long as
you have th choice to take your business elsewhere, you have no complaint.

Then there is the music industry where a few very large corporations control
everything and everyone from the DJs to song writers to artists to which
songs on a
new CD they are going to let us hear. In this case the government is helping
them
make it even worse, by taking our rights that the copyright laws give us.


Were those artists forced at gunpoint to sign those contracts? If so, call the
FBI, if not, then whose rights were transgressed?

I'm not trying to suggest that if libertarians were in charge that it would
be any
better or worse, just that it is pretty bad the way it is now.


Things are bad only where we have strayed from capitalism by letting the
governemt interfere in some way.

--
Wm. Donald (Don) Tabor Jr., DDS
PP-ASEL
Chesapeake, VA - CPK, PVG