Re: [PLUG] MS Outlaws?

["Arthur S. Alexion" <arthur@alexion.com>]

At 04:31 PM 2/21/2002 -0500, you wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Feb 2002, Arthur S. Alexion wrote:
>
> > At 03:24 PM 2/19/2002 -0500, you wrote:
> >
> > >If two people and/or companies who might do business are not BOTH willing,
> > >then that particular business will not be conducted.  Where is the
> > >coercion in any of this?
> > >
> > >Nowhere.
> >
> > On the way back to your car after the next PLUG meeting, a stranger, 
> larger
> > than you, appearing to have a gun confronts you and give you the choice
> > "your money or your life".  You "freely exercise" the choice he has given
> > you and you chose to give him your money, which he takes and runs away.
>
> Well that's a neat trick.  Turn a situation in which a thug is restricting
> my choices, and make it sound like he's offering me choices.

You are absolutely right and that's what many of us believe that microsoft 
has done.  In my opinion it would be bad enough if MS put conditions on 
company A that A must act a certain way for MS to do business with A, but 
MS was found to have gone further.  MS told company B that it would not do 
business with it if B also did business with A.  That is, MS restricted 
Company B's right to do business with company A.  What appears to be MS' 
offer to B of the choice of doing business with MS or not is really MS' 
prevention of B from the choice of doing business with A.


> You see if I were walking down the street after the next PLUG meeting, I
> would have many choices about what to do next.  However, when the
> humongous stranger (he'd have to be to be bigger than me! :-) ) threatens
> that if I don't give him my money he's going to kill me, that means I'm
> being forcibly prevented from doing lots of other things that I might
> otherwise have chosen to do.  Go into a convenience store and buy a coke?
> Nope.  Go install NetBSD on that old computer at home?  Nope.  Go visit my
> girlfriend?  Nope, there's this guy threatening my life, you see.  I have
> fewer choices, not more.  If I get out of this situation alive, then I'll
> be back to where I was with lots of choices, but at the moment he's
> threatening me, he's restricting my choices, not offering me choices.
>
> > Have you been coerced or did you "make a choice"?  Where do YOU draw 
> the line?
>
> I draw the line at people minding their own business.  If your thug were
> instead a vendor selling goods and said he wouldn't do business with me
> unless I promised not to do business with his competitors on the next
> block, I would simply choose to do business with him or not.  But he's not
> threatening my life for not doing business with him.

That's a false choice if MS is a monopoly, because when MS threatens not to 
do business with a hardware manufacturer, it is threatening the business' 
life -- just like your example and mine.  A hardware manufacturer can not 
stay in business if it cannot offer compatibility with MS products.


> > PS Are you having fun with the absurd extreme to which you have taken this
> > argument, while we take your bait, or do you really believe this nonsense?
>
> To be honest with you I do enjoy a good debate, although I believe it is
> your example which is nonsense.  I really believe in the position I'm
> taking, although I realize it's off topic, I find it hard to leave some
> absurd arguments of others alone.

Well, me too.  Otherwise I wouldn't have pursued this with you. 
;)  Actually, I have more fun with these debates than the on topic stuff, 
but the on topic stuff is enjoyable in the sense that I learn things.

Art


> Wayne
>
>
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Art Alexion                                 mailto:arthur@alexion.com
Arthur S. Alexion LLC                          http://www.alexion.com
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