On Friday, May 2, 2003, at 12:53 PM, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
Capitalism is a good idea, as long as it has the form of a lot of small, widely varying subjects. The current trend of consolidation brings away both the competition and the choice, and with high-enough barriers to entry there will be no new small subjects to disrupt the balance.
On Friday, May 02, 2003 2:32 PM, Tim May wrote:
Yes, you are right, the great electronics companies of the 1960s sit astride our economic life, crushing the life out of real competition! With Fairchild and Rheem Semiconductor and Mohawk Data Sciences controlling everything, new ideas and innovations cannot be developed!
And the 1970s were much, much worse, with the computer companies consolidating their power and dominating all computer work! Who can innovate when Burroughs, Honeywell, Data General, Univac, NCR, DEC, and CDC utterly dominate?
What about Intel and Microsoft? When the few microchip companies make a deal with the copyright content cartels (RIAA and MPAA) and the desktop operating system monopoly (MS), then gov't action isn't needed to restrict the way we use our computers - and the flow of information. Simply put, markets lead to consolidation. Consolidation leads to monopoly. Monopoly leads to control from above, with no accountability. Is this better than gov't? I certainly see the dangers of gov't: state terrorism, state ineptitude, state racism and xenophobia, but I see market control as at least as dangerous since corporations are not accountable to any sort of democratic control - and I don't think the people with the most capital necessarily make the best decisions.