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Conclusion: The DOJ should help the country by procecuting software pirates, blah blah blah....
Cripes, I missed this crapola at the end of Alan's long "common sense" piece, and now I've got to tell a story, unfortunately approximately true.
Right now, the U.S. runs a huge trade deficit with China. China is the sole remaining communist country with any real power and is run by a corrupt gerontocracy as bad as the old evil empire. China is considered a threat by all the Pacific basin economic tigers, and has a human rights record "to die for", as it were. We get to import a lot of cheap stuff from China that's built by prison labor or under sweatshop conditions. But somehow American businessmen think that China is this big market that's going to open up to them someday, neglecting the fact that the overseas Chinese are the entreprenurial class of Asia and it's pretty doubtful that the Chinese gov. is going to open its arms to American Corporate Capitalism when there are a lot of local alternatives much better in tune with the culture.
So our beloved president goes over for a trade/foreign policy summit, and what's the big result?
An agreement by China to work on software piracy, with Microsoft mentioned as a prominent benificiary. Give me a break.
I've no illusion that there is going to be any meaningful antitrust action against msft; the wimpy consent decree that came out of the OS investigation is pretty indicative of that. But please don't cry about it not being fair, microsoft is perfectly capable of getting its own measure of "fairness", by whatever means. I don't think they need they need Alan or Reg cheerleading for them. I apologize for being vituperative, but I don't think insufficient corporate liberty is among the major problems facing our country, or the world. Cheers, Dan. |
