Hi Ticktanium2038,
>Very interesting point. Didnt think of the BUSH factor.
Yes its really interesting coming from some one who is so convinced Israel controls America that he puts it in his signature. And if it were true, of course the Prime Mininster of Israel would announce it on the radio, right? Shesh.
I personally find the subject of underhanded coporate tactics interesting. I don't expect people to discuss it rationally though.
I have no doubt that powerful companies, and not so powerful, use morally suspect tactics; but rather than it being illegal, the strong-arming is generally done by lawyers, and it is done through the legal system. Take SCOs method of destroying Linux, for instance. Although Congress sometimes holds hearings, and the press calls them investigations, the so-called investigations are just opportunities for political campaining, and a means of shaking down corporations for contributions.
As for GW and the Republicans, I will point out that the law on these sorts of things is exactly what the Democrats want it to be. Recall that the Democratic Party has controlled the bodies which writes the laws, the US House and Senate that is, since 1932, except for some minor isolated periods. That's roughly 70 years. They have corporate law precisely the way they want it by now.
There is nothing illegal, for instance, about refusing to sell chips to some vendor for any reason Intel or AMD may choose, or no reason. If they say they won't sell to you unless you buy 100% from them and no one else, or if they will only give you a lower price under those circumstances, that is legal. A contact to that effect is legal. And it is also legal to require you in the contract to keep the terms secret. It is not only legal, but it is often done (leaving Intel aside.) If you sign a contract like that, it will be enforced in court. And yes the court proceedings will be secret to the extent required to keep the terms secret. You may recall that the US lawyers in the MS suit were required to observe the secrecy of the terms of the MS contracts.
Before you get the wrong idea about my attitude toward capitalism, let me say I think corporations are the primary reason the people in this country are as well off as they are in comparison to the rest of the world.
I don't believe Intel was ever declared a monopoly, but there are some extra legal restrictions on corporations after a court decides they are monopolies. That may seem to be a good thing, but the settlement of the case is seldom, if ever, of any benefit to the consumer in terms of cost. Rather than being of any benefit to you or me, the average citizen, the settlement provides a protected environment for the competitor, which at best allows him to raise prices, and therefore allows the monopoly to raise their prices. For instance, in the MS case the only thing that might have happened to MS was to separate it into an OS company and an application company. A company, MS-1 say, would still be making and selling Windows. That would be of no advantage to the consumer. It would be of no advantage to a competitor, say Red Hat linux, unless possibly there were some restrictions on the sale of MS-1 Windows that made MS-1 less able to compete, in which case Red Hat could raise their price, in turn allowing MS to raise prices. It is true that at some future date the additional revenue may allow Red Hat to become a more formidable competitor, at the expense of the consumer, but it is more likely to further stengthen MS financially, because it is already the stronger of the two. The rationale for laws on monopoly is to insure competition, but they either do no such thing, or attempt to do so by making the competitors compete less, and so drive up the cost to consumers.
To sum up, the idea that some law can do better what the free market inherently does of itself, is economically naive. It is more wishful thinking, the province of socialists. There is no particular constituency for or against monopoly laws among businesses, and so the presumed prejudice against monopoly laws by Republicans is incorrect. At best anti-monopoly judgements would PROTECT partiticular businesses, but they don't really do that either. Republicans are rather more economically sophisticated than Demorcrats (at least in public) and the Bush administration terminated the pointless stupidity, to the advantage of the average American.
They are laws that protect monopolies, although people don't seem to notice. Patents, copyrights, and anything conceived as intellectual property. Democrats and Republicans are pretty much united in extending this type of monopoly, to the detriment of the average citizen.
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