As an American citizen, I am not willing to live in the Brave New World according to Bill Gates and Microsoft. I hope Justice nails them:
New York Times
February 4, 2000
FOREIGN AFFAIRS / By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Corporations on Steroids
Yasir Arafat came to Davos this year, and there were two people he
insisted on meeting with: Bill Clinton of the United States of
America and Steve Case of America Online.
I never got to ask Mr. Arafat whether he thought Bill C. was more
important than Steve C. After all, AOL-Time Warner has a market value
exceeding the gross national product of most countries Mr. Arafat deals
with. It's no wonder that when you ask White House officials what the
President did in Davos, they say he had a few "bilaterals" -- meetings
with other heads of state and business. When I asked the spokesperson
for one of the giant technology firms what the company's C.E.O. was
doing in Davos, the answer was: "He's holding bilaterals" with other
heads of state and business. Every day the line between companies and
countries blurs a bit more.
Get used to it. As the walls around the world disappear, companies can
increasingly compete everywhere. And when you can compete
everywhere, in many businesses you must compete everywhere. This is
making companies bigger than ever, whether it is AOL-Time Warner, or
Exxon-Mobil or Microsoft. World leaders, investors and the media are
naturally dazzled by the sheer size and power that some of these
companies are amassing.
But what happens to democracies when companies grow to size
extra-extra-large, in order to compete globally, but democratic regulatory
institutions -- like the antitrust division of the Justice Department --
remain a size small?
At a press lunch in Davos, Bill Gates was asked how Microsoft could
have hired lobbying firms to try to defund the Justice Department's
antitrust division, when it had a case pending before the antitrust division.
Flashing anger, Mr. Gates said this was "an outrageous characterization
-- it's untrue . . . The only thing that we ever spoke out on in terms of
funding is p.r. funding." The Justice Department, Mr. Gates said,
shouldn't be leaking or promoting "negative activities against U.S.
companies overseas. I wasn't involved in any of the specifics of that, but
to characterize that as defunding . . . is an outrageous thing."
This answer was disturbing on two levels. First, the notion that it was
O.K. for Microsoft to engage lobbyists even just to reduce the public
relations budget of the Justice Department's antitrust division -- while
Microsoft had a case pending before it -- suggests a moral obtuseness
that is, well, outrageous.
Second, the antitrust division of the Justice Department has no p.r.
budget! It has one spokeswoman assigned to it from Justice's central
office of public affairs, and her salary and related p.r. expenses are paid
by public affairs, and they amount to roughly $100,000. Yet, according
to The Washington Post, Microsoft's lobbyists, and several nonprofit
foundations Microsoft brought to its headquarters on an all-expense-paid
trip, tried to get the fiscal 2000 budget for the Justice Department's
antitrust division slashed by $9 million -- from Justice's request of $114
million (a modest increase so it could hire more lawyers) down to $105
million (so it would have to cut back activities).
Microsoft wasn't trying to reduce the antitrust division's ability to engage
in p.r.; Microsoft was trying to reduce its ability to engage in antitrust --
in a year when there had been a 30 percent increase in corporate
mergers. As The Post noted, while corporate lobbying over policies is
normal, it is rather unusual for a firm "to seek an across-the-board cut in
a department's budget, especially in the middle of a major court battle."
Old problem -- dangerous new twist. America's antitrust laws were
initially motivated by two concerns, argues the Harvard University
political theorist Michael Sandel -- preventing big monopolies from
overwhelming consumers and preventing big business from overwhelming
democratic government. Those laws first arose when businesses grew
beyond the control of state and local institutions, and therefore some
federal power was needed to rein them in.
"Now business is growing to global dimensions, but governments are still
national -- so government is again struggling to keep pace," observed
Mr. Sandel. "In a world without walls, we are going to have to come up
with new ways for government to rein in the power of global
corporations, and prevent them from buying up democracy. Instead of
just being dazzled by these mega-mergers, there should be a nagging
voice in us all asking: Is democracy going to be bought up too?" |
