Hector Ruiz's book

[taltamir]

Hector Ruin looted the company for maximum self profit, while focusing all his efforts on internal politics and making a lot of costly (to the company; he got record payouts) mistakes.

 

[podspi]

I think this is highly cynical and sort of misses the point.

The alternative to regulators is no regulators. And big corporations have proven that without oversight, they will take actions that help themselves to the detriment of small corporations and society as a whole.

There's nothing hypocritical about assessing an action taken by a company that already dominates a market as different from a similar action taken by a small competitor. The entire point is that exclusivity should be used as a reasonable tool to improve the efficiency of markets, and not as a cudgel to reduce competition. A company with 65% of a market is far more able -- and likely to be willing -- to do the latter than a company with 5% of the market.

:thumbsup: Fantastically put. There actually are more complicated guidelines to determine when something is anticompetitive, and I think it is pretty funny that people are defending Intel for behavior that was obviously anti-competitive.

Now, I am not saying that is a reason to like AMD or hate Intel, because if AMD thought they could get away with it and make money they would (have) too.

 

[Idontcare]

I think this is highly cynical and sort of misses the point.

Generic statement that could be universally applied to anyone at any time who happens to hold an opinion which is viewed by you as being contrary to your own view.

The alternative to regulators is no regulators. And big corporations have proven that without oversight, they will take actions that help themselves to the detriment of small corporations and society as a whole.

Now you are building a strawman, casting this "no regulator" position as if it were mine such that you may now proceed to burn down the straw man and thus prove my "highly cynical" position as null and void.

The premise of your assertion there would appear to me to be that you believe small corporations are somehow intrinsically wholesome and noble, without the same innate desire to "take actions that help themselves to the detriment of small corporations and society as a whole"... Do you consider that kind of thinking to be the exclusive purview of "big corporations"?

There's nothing hypocritical about assessing an action taken by a company that already dominates a market as different from a similar action taken by a small competitor. The entire point is that exclusivity should be used as a reasonable tool to improve the efficiency of markets, and not as a cudgel to reduce competition. A company with 65% of a market is far more able -- and likely to be willing -- to do the latter than a company with 5% of the market.

Oh it is quite hypocritical, which is why you and others feel the need to jump in and defend the indefensible whenever it is brought up. I never characterized the regulation as hypocritical, you do, which is why you chose those words when reframing the discussion because that is the strawman you want to tear down versus the one that is actually being discussed.

Just because you declare something isn't biased, prejudiced or hypocritical that doesn't make it true. Kinda like how you know exactly what someone is about to say is going to be racist when they lead into it with "Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a racist, but..."

I get that people want to have their cake and eat it to. They want businesses to basically be non-profit organizations that work their employees to the bone to lower prices...but they don't want to work for one of those profit-less employers nor do they want to be one of those underpaid employees.

It is hypocritical, but not at the regulator level. The hypocrisy starts with the individual, the bureaucratic constructs society has created and foisted upon itself are truly nothing more than mirror reflections of the citizens when it comes right down to it.

We want Intel's technology, we want their innovation, but we don't want to pay for it (so we want AMD around, or we want our taxes to fund regulator activities that forces Intel to operate such that AMD can be around, but 8 out of 10 of us tax payers are still going to buy Intel).

Truth is I am free-market but I also take the long-view here in that I believe everything is already free market by definition. It just so happens that the free market is such that artifices like organized business, marketing, kickbacks, exclusives, and regulators are all part and parcel to the real free market entities (us, the consumers, tax-payers, voters, and employees) having decided these are the tools of choice for waging economic war with our neighbors.

You can't cheat an honest man, and people who took Intel's marketing kickbacks did so to line their pockets, and people who bought Intel chips rather than spend more time/money/effort to find AMD chips to buy did so because they wanted to lessen the impact on their wallet and nothing more.

There is no nobility in this, just greed masquerading as a philosophy of fairness with enough subjectivity intentionally injected into the equation such that people can justify getting their way as they see fit. Kudos to them, if I am irritated by it then it is only because they beat me to it and it is a rather clever mechanism for shifting wealth from one party to another. How do I get in that line?

 

[taltamir]

The alternative to regulators is no regulators.

You could make this strawman, yes... Or maybe you could realize that the alternative to bad regulation is good regulation. An army of bureaucrats regulating every minutia is bad regulation. Allowing cronyism is bad regulation.

Regulation forbidding anti-capitalistic behavior (aka monopoly abuses, cronyism, etc) by a few corrupt businessmen who are trying to slay the golden goose is good regulation. I have not seen any politician who holds a seat anywhere suggest the complete removal of all laws. Instead some argue for minimal regulation while others for increased regulation... and honestly they are both wrong and throwing out soundbites because its not the quantity that matters its the quality. A thousand well thought out rules could be fine while a single ill conceived one could devastate an economy... of course, the more rules you have (and bureaucrats) the easier it is for an ill conceived bad one to be enforced.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Generic statement that could be universally applied to anyone at any time who happens to hold an opinion which is viewed by you as being contrary to your own view.

It was an introductory statement that was followed by other statements explaining my position.

Now you are building a strawman, casting this "no regulator" position as if it were mine such that you may now proceed to burn down the straw man and thus prove my "highly cynical" position as null and void.

IDC, if my comment about regulators sounded like a strawman, that's perhaps because it was in response to a comment from you -- "In other words it is entirely subjective, whose watching the people who decide these things and are they driving a mercedes while making $40k/yr on a government regulator salary?" -- which was pretty straw-filled itself.

The premise of your assertion there would appear to me to be that you believe small corporations are somehow intrinsically wholesome and noble, without the same innate desire to "take actions that help themselves to the detriment of small corporations and society as a whole"... Do you consider that kind of thinking to be the exclusive purview of "big corporations"?

I think it is more prevalent among big corporations, but more to the point, big corporations are the only ones with the capability of engaging in the sort of behavior in question here.

Oh it is quite hypocritical, which is why you and others feel the need to jump in and defend the indefensible whenever it is brought up. I never characterized the regulation as hypocritical, you do, which is why you chose those words when reframing the discussion because that is the strawman you want to tear down versus the one that is actually being discussed.

Just because you declare something isn't biased, prejudiced or hypocritical that doesn't make it true. Kinda like how you know exactly what someone is about to say is going to be racist when they lead into it with "Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a racist, but..."

I don't get all the hostility here. I didn't "declare" anything -- I explained my position. A position that, I'll remind you, was supported by direct quotes from the regulatory body, and a position that is hardly controversial among economists.

Anyway, I see no point in continuing if you're just going to jump down my throat. Believe what you want.

 

[podspi]

The premise of your assertion there would appear to me to be that you believe small corporations are somehow intrinsically wholesome and noble, without the same innate desire to "take actions that help themselves to the detriment of small corporations and society as a whole"... Do you consider that kind of thinking to be the exclusive purview of "big corporations"?

Each regulatory action including those by antitrust organizations are full of tradeoffs. A great example of this is the patent system -- patents create market failures (bad), to provide property rights to ideas to encourage innovation (good). I don't think Charles Kozierok implied that smaller businesses were intrinsically wholesome and noble, I think he was trying to imply that behavior that is acceptable on the small scale (improves efficiency without reducing competition) isn't acceptable on the large scale (where loss of competition overpowers efficiency improvements).

Oh it is quite hypocritical, which is why you and others feel the need to jump in and defend the indefensible whenever it is brought up. I never characterized the regulation as hypocritical, you do, which is why you chose those words when reframing the discussion because that is the strawman you want to tear down versus the one that is actually being discussed.

I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to say here. Is the regulation hypocritical (you say "Oh it is quite hypocritical") or is the characterization of the regulation hypocritical? I think when you take into account what I've said above, the regulation is not hypocritical, although there are some obvious ways it could be abused if regulators are not honest.

I get that people want to have their cake and eat it to. They want businesses to basically be non-profit organizations that work their employees to the bone to lower prices...but they don't want to work for one of those profit-less employers nor do they want to be one of those underpaid employees.

It is hypocritical, but not at the regulator level. The hypocrisy starts with the individual, the bureaucratic constructs society has created and foisted upon itself are truly nothing more than mirror reflections of the citizens when it comes right down to it.

We want Intel's technology, we want their innovation, but we don't want to pay for it (so we want AMD around, or we want our taxes to fund regulator activities that forces Intel to operate such that AMD can be around, but 8 out of 10 of us tax payers are still going to buy Intel).

It isn't clear to me that Intel's success and the technology it has created requires the level of anti-competitive behavior they have engaged in. This is the same type of argument that cable companies used to get local monopolies, that if competition was allowed service quality would decline because they were a 'natural monopoly'. I am honestly on the fence about this one because there just isn't enough information available to really look into Intel's costs -- but my hunch is that the semiconductor market is big enough for more than one player.

You can't cheat an honest man

In my experience, honest men are the easiest ones to cheat. They never see it coming :biggrin:

 

[CHADBOGA]

I've pre-ordered it.
I have 5 PCs, all Intel.
I have AMD and NV GPUs.
I own shares in Intel.

I'm buying it because I think it will be interesting to get a perspective on how things happened.
It will, of course, be insanely biased, but then most non-fiction work tends to be, because it's written by humans.
When it's an autobiographical type piece, that's especially true.
Doesn't mean you have to be an AMD fanboy to want to read it though.

You will come out knowing less than you did before you read it, because what you will be reading will be atrocious self-serving propaganda and I doubt you will be able to pick up all of it, so you end up misinformed(to some extent), rather than simply being unaware of something.

 

[Vesku]

http://www.econlib.org/cgi-bin/searchbooks.pl?searchtype=BookSearchPara&id=smWN&query=MONOPOLIES

I'm with Adam Smith regarding collusion and monopolies. Unfortunately most regulators fall flat on this part of capitalist philosophy , the breaking of cabals only seems to get triggered when the business(es) get too filled with hubris and do things like force you to lease crappy phones direct from them at silly prices or try to lock everyone into using their internet browser. Imo, citizens have had very little influence and input in this regard.

I have no doubt that Ruiz would have used similar practices to Intel if he had managed to end up CEO of an AMD-Nvidia company. Somehow I don't think his book mentions all that lost shareholder value from him not willing to take a side position and have Nvidia's Jen-Hsun Huang operate as CEO of a merged company. Intel dodged a bullet there. Perhaps Ruiz should be asking Intel for an honorarium.

 

[Centauri]

You will come out knowing less than you did before you read it, because what you will be reading will be atrocious self-serving propaganda and I doubt you will be able to pick up all of it, so you end up misinformed(to some extent), rather than simply being unaware of something.

You're right. We should all get together and burn all of the books you haven't read, wont read and try to convince others not to read.

 

[Vesku]

You're right. We should all get together and burn all of the books you haven't read, wont read and try to convince others not to read.

Well, in regards to Autobiographies their usefulness as a source of information depends largely on how much other information is available regarding that person's life. Something like this where there won't be much if any biographies or historical analysis is best viewed as more entertainment than instructive.

 

[Centauri]

That's only true when there are other points of reference. In this case, however, we're about to get the only book written on the subject. To assume there wont be some level of bias given the level of involvement of the author would of course be absurd, but to dismiss the entire book as bringing nothing new to the conversation is a far more absurd form of ignorance fuel.

 

[CHADBOGA]

You're right. We should all get together and burn all of the books you haven't read, wont read and try to convince others not to read.

LOL That has nothing to do with what I wrote.

You are now confusing yourself, God only knows what state you will be in after reading Hector's Mein Kampf.

 

[Vesku]

Well how much can you trust one first person view without other points of reference. Not very much at all. It's not pointless, as it can serve as one of many sources for any future analysis of that time period of the x86 business. But on its own it's mainly entertainment (if you are entertained by such things).

 

[pablo87]

I wont buy it but I am interested in his spin on the gloflo spin-off.

 

[Centauri]

LOL That has nothing to do with what I wrote.

You are now confusing yourself, God only knows what state you will be in after reading Hector's Mein Kampf.

I get the feeling you don't actually know what Mein Kampf is, otherwise you would have picked another analogy.

 

[ThePeasant]

I'm pretty surprised at your response here. You responded to what concisely equates to 'each case must be judged based on the circumstances' with this:

In other words it is entirely subjective, whose watching the people who decide these things and are they driving a mercedes while making $40k/yr on a government regulator salary?

Sounds like your classic situation of what could be black-and-white being intentionally held in a gray area so the corrupt can do what they like and when they like.

In other words, its just business as usual.

The interpretation of the law has always had room for subjectivity and there is rarely any "black-and-white". It is a natural result of the complex nature of the interactions between human beings and their environment. The merits of the intents, reasoning and outcomes of human behaviour among other factors are rarely if ever black or white and often depend on perspective. It would also be impractical and likely impossible to write legislation that deals with every specific situation which is why there will always be some amount of discretion involved, how this gets reduced to being "entirely subjective" is lost on me.

While the wording of the Sherman act labels the possession of monopoly power as a felony offence. The courts apparently have made a distinction which doesn't outright punish monopolies but rather the anti-competitive actions taken to obtain and maintain monopoly powers. With that being said, larger (quasi-monopolistic) companies tend to have a much higher capacity to be anti-competitive and a certain mass relative to the market can be a prerequisite for certain practices deemed anti-competitive to yield successful results. The increased power and impact on the market is likely why larger companies appear to get scrutinized to a higher degree but statements like these:

Its funny, because the difference between lawful and unlawful is simply the size of the marketshare so to say.

Thats pretty bad, because you sit with something that is objective. AMD could for example do exactly what Intel did in both graphics and CPus and get away with it, simply due to marketshare size.

Are gross oversimplifications and come off as ignorant because smaller companies can and have been the targets of anti-trust lawsuits.

In regards to who monitors the decision makers, I imagine that separation of powers still applies at least in theory but as with many things concerning legal theory, human nature is a limiting factor in implementation.

 

[notty22]

The elephant in the room is this:

(The book doesn’t mention that Ruiz became publicly associated with the Galleon insider-trading case; the Wall Street Journal in November 2009 identified him as an AMD executive accused in a federal complaint of sharing advance information about the chip-manufacturing venture. He was not accused of wrongdoing, but stepped down a couple of months earlier than expected as Globalfoundries’ chairman).

Along with helping, setting up the costly deal and possibly leaking information that made 'insider trader's ' richer, this is reflective of his actual goals while CEO. Imo.
Making his other accounts of history, less believable.

 

[Idontcare]

“I didn’t think (mentioning) it was appropriate for a number of reasons,” Ruiz said. “There were never any allegations made against me, no one from the government side or the Justice side have ever contacted me.”

Ruiz added that he even volunteered to speak with investigators. “They never took me up on it,” he said. “I didn’t think there was any point in making any mention of it...Part of that is because I strongly believe that I never have done anything wrong or inappropriate.”

Source

No allegations? Didn't do anything wrong? The history revisionism in this one is strong.