Re: How to Bust His Trust <== Great job!

[Gene Gaines <gene.gaines@ibm.net>]

The Max Frankel editorial is one great piece of writing.

Stated in such simple terms.

Thanks, Mitch Stone.

Hey AM-INFO people.  
This list is important.
It topic is very important.

I propose we agree to widen our discourse and our thinking.
In my view, emails to this list should address the lurkers, the
undecided, those perhaps not fully informed, those who may be
open to additional thinking about the terrible threat posed by
Microsoft.

I am going to invite ten new people to joint the list.  If they 
do not want their name to be on such a list, I will forward list 
activity to them.

Please ... let's refrain from arguring back and forth with each
other.  That may be fun and comfortable, but it kills the 
productive value of the list.

Those like Brett and Lewis, who only pursUe one favorite point
to the great harm of the list, I say they should be invited to
limit their emails to once per week on the same subject.  Of
course, those that answer them are equally guilty of diminishing
the effectiveness of the list.

lET'S Point our guns in the right direction, not at each other.

Just read the Max frankel piece again (below) to see how effective
writing can be.

Let's use this list to open the minds of others.  Please!

Gene Gaines
gene.gaines@ibm.net


Mitch Stone wrote:
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/19991212mag-wordimage.html
> 
> WORD & IMAGE BY MAX FRANKEL
> 
> How to Bust His Trust
> Bill Gates should have to choose between his  Windows and our wagons.
> 
> The judicial finding that Microsoft has attained, enjoyed and abused  the
> power of a monopoly reached me at a fortuitous moment. I  instantly knew
> what punishment fit the crime.
> 
> Just a few hours earlier, I had been reading about the tycoon known for
> "his visionary leadership, his courageous persistence, his  capacity to
> think in strategic terms, but also his lust for  domination, his
> messianic self-righteousness and his contempt for  those shortsighted
> mortals who made the mistake of  standing in his way."
> 
> Bill Gates, the visionary predator? No. John D. Rockefeller Sr., the
> "Titan" of Ron Chernow's splendid biography. The parallels are  uncanny.
> Also instructive.
> 
> Each man seized upon a product that would shrink the earth and define  a
> century. Each employed it to amass incomparable personal wealth.  What
> refined oil did for Rockefeller, processed information has done  for
> Gates. Both brilliantly appropriated the creativity of other  folks. Both
> used that control to gobble up competitors and to crush  all challengers.
> And when finally challenged in court, both  shamelessly denied the
> undeniable evidence of their monopolistic  ambitions and predatory
> conduct.
> 
> All this coincidental instruction in the behavior of Microsoft and
> Standard Oil left me wondering whether Americans would ever learn to
> overcome the fateful flaw in our free-market system: the very greed  that
> makes us economically creative also repeatedly makes us  creatively
> criminal.
> 
> But I was also left full of admiration for Judge Thomas Penfield
> Jackson's quick grasp of the world of Windows and ways of the Web. He
> mastered the intangibles of Bill Gates's vision much sooner than  anyone
> understood old Rockefeller's devilish designs. And the judge's  dense,
> 200-page indictment of Microsoft was devastating enough to  evoke Gates's
> interest in a deal that might yet rescue him from a  lifetime of
> litigation.
> 
> I don't know what either Microsoft or the trustbusters of the Justice
> Department would deem a proper settlement of the case. But I think  Judge
> Jackson should not close the affair until he can reassert an  elementary
> principle of fair commerce: competition can flourish only  if the roads
> to market are equally available to all competitors.
> 
> There's no way to test the market value of a dozen eggs if only one
> farmer owns a wagon to bring them to town. And if every farmer has a
> wagon, the market still will not work if one of them collects the tolls
> for use of the road.  For foxy old Rockefeller, the road was a pipeline,
> then a railroad  track, from refinery to port, and he conspired to
> dictate the tolls  for all those roads.  Inevitably, he not only paid
> less than any  competitor to ship his own oil; in time, he even
> commanded a rebate -- called a "drawback" -- from the tolls paid by  his
> rivals.
> 
> Decades passed before enough Americans understood how they were being
> cheated and wrote broad antitrust laws that might protect them  against
> similar betrayals of capitalism. Those are the laws that  Judge Jackson
> now strains to enforce on Bill Gates. But he won't  succeed until
> Microsoft is made to choose between running the wagons  and owning the
> road.
> 
> In simpler days, this was sometimes called the "common carrier" rule.  If
> you owned the track, you had to convey everybody's freight fairly.  If
> you owned the wire, you had to connect everybody's phone and carry
> everybody's  message. If you owned a movie house, you had to be available
> for  anybody's films. If you owned a cable, you had to carry all
> television programs. You could be a common carrier or the creator of
> something to be carried, but not both.
> 
> Simple but also quaint. Technology has a way of overtaking ideology  and
> blurring such distinctions. The cable companies learned to make  their
> own TV shows and to discriminate against rivals. Now the cable  owners
> think they can also become phone companies and the phone companies are
> angling to send  television shows to my computer. And all these wired
> companies are  being challenged by gadgets that send messages and
> pictures invisibly  through the air. What's an egg anymore? Who's a road?
> 
> Bill Gates thought his virtual monopoly could never be understood in  the
> old physical terms. And if he had not left a telltale trail of  e-mail,
> the Feds might never have made a plausible case against him.  But given
> the evidence from Gates's own computer, Judge Jackson well  understood
> that Microsoft's imperial triumph had been deliberately  and probably
> illegally engineered.
> 
> Gates built Windows, a good road to the information market, and then
> schemed brilliantly to make it practically the only road that PC  owners
> could navigate. Nearly all wagons -- computer programs -- had to fit on
> his tracks.  Gates's own wagons -- the Microsoft programs -- rode free on
> his  Windows highway, and those of his allies were waved onto low-toll
> express lanes.  Rockefeller rebates redux.
> 
> Gates had the market effectively cornered until the Internet produced
> the prospect of an alternate, Window-less turnpike. Microsoft's
> long-suffering competitors foresaw a chance of bypassing the personal
> computer and giving people a much simpler machine that would "borrow"
> the computing power and programs they periodically need via the
> Internet.
> 
> Belatedly aroused, Gates poured all his monopoly power into blunting
> that threat. He conspired to destroy rival dreamers, like Netscape,  so
> that his Windows would remain the universal gateway to the  Internet. But
> he was found to have rigged contracts and prices --  while plotting to
> control the Internet -- and the remaining question  is how best to bust
> his trust.
> 
> The remedy, now as in Rockefeller's time, is to make the monopolist
> choose: Windows or wagons? Gates has already said he wants to keep  the
> road; he wants no deal that deprives him of Windows. Very well;  then
> make him sell off his wagons, his Word and Office programs, and  fairly
> share the Windows specs that competing programmers need to run  their
> wagons on his road.
> 
> And then, dear federal trustbusters, please take a look at my cable-TV
> bills.