DH> KK> I run my own business.  I have no problem with corporations
DH> KK> in general.  I also know that when they get big enough, they
DH> KK> often begin competing by suppressing their competition rather
DH> KK> than by making better stuff.  I was not aware that being concerned
DH> KK> about that was socialistic.
DH> I apologize for the accusation, but in a free market, it is
DH> impossible to suppress the competition, unless you have a government
DH> backed monopoly, such as ATT had until 1982.
I think that's true on the scale of small businesses.  But in a truly
laissez-faire, chaotic environment, the biggest and most powerful
entities have an automatic advantage, and if you let this run out
over years, you tend to end up with one or a few entities with
almost all the market share.  E.g., IBM, the big three automakers,
the biggest aerospace firms, MS, etc.  Frito-Lay has something like
90% of the snack chip market, Coke and Pepsi probably have a similar
presence in soft drinks, etc.
A _very_ interesting book detailing many of the competition-
suppressing moves IBM made is titled "THINK -- A biography of
Thomas Watson" or something like that (I haven't seen one for
a long time).  A more recent book is "Big Blues."  Another
interesting book is "On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors."
A thought-provoking novel on this topic is Kurt Vonnegut's
first novel, "Player Piano," written in the 50s -- at the time
V. was a public-relations guy for GE.
Even someone as big, and
DH> bad as Microsoft cannot completely suppress the competition, unless the
DH> competition allows itself to be suppressed.
I'm not so sure about that, altho I'm not exactly up on the subject.
Last year I saw a computer magazine that quoted some of MS's
competitors as saying they were scared to death to spend the
millions it takes to create a major new software product, because
MS would just copy it, spend 10 times as much on marketing, and
take over the market.  Back in the 80s a lot of people didn't
really mind MS's dominance because the PC realm was an
unstandardized mess, and when MS came out with systems stuff,
it became a de facto standard.  But when a company gets so big
that it starts to stifle innovation, that's another story.
In the case of one
DH> Microsoft competitor, Apple, I understand that at the time that
DH> Microsoft decided to license their product, Apple decided not to
DH> license, and thus we see the astronomical growth of Microsoft, and the
DH> almost death of Apple. Apple has now seen the light, and I predict that
DH> they will begin to regain some of the market share.
That's probably part of it, but I think a more important part is
that when IBM entered the micro market, it became the instant
standard, in spite of the fact that neither the hardware nor the
OS were really anything special.  MS simply surfed the big wave,
and took advantage of it.
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