At 9:59 PM -0500 10/7/98, Jim Choate wrote:
Forwarded message:
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1998 21:52:17 -0400 (EDT) From: Ryan Anderson <ryan@michonline.com> Subject: RE: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction (fwd)
The Mafia. The handful of world-class coke dealers. Your local church.
Umm... both of those are around because the governemtn made the cost of delivering both alcohol and drugs prohibitively high,
That's inaccurate. The Mafia pre-dated the US by several hundred years if
So what? There was probably a government wherever the started, and they probably started out providing services that their local government prohibited.
not more (depends on how one wants to choose the bloodline). Most definitely they predated the bans on alcohol.
As to the coke market, In S. America it has been around for quite a while as well. The chemical has been used medicinaly for hundreds of years until just recently.
Which says nothing about whether it was/is a government sponsored/ protected monopoly. -- "To sum up: The entire structure of antitrust statutes in this country is a jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance. It is a product: (a) of a gross misinterpretation of history, and (b) of rather naïve, and certainly unrealistic, economic theories." Alan Greenspan, "Anti-trust" http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/antitrust.html Petro::E-Commerce Adminstrator::Playboy Ent. Inc.::petro@playboy.com::petro@bounty.org