Apple is, of course, guilty of locking in customers, becoming a vertical "trust" etc. That seems obvious to me.
Technology changes things though. Since we foolishly went along with detante, enemies like China have been able to catch up. That that would happen also seemed obvious to me in the early 70s, I was against it. Weird the anti-coms pushed it.
Now however, the question to me is can regulated or broken up trusts compete against unregulated Chinese monopolies who have unlimited government support?
My guess is no. We've stupidly backed ourselves into a "free market" trap, unlike the improvements we enjoyed in the 80s when Bell was broken up... its not so simple now. I think democracies will be mired in anti-trust lawsuits for decades, sapping talent and distracting innovators, including innovators being crushed by corporations that make the Standard Oil trust look small.
We had a head start after WWII and its likely China would have caught up without detente, but we probably would still be a decade or so ahead without detante IMO.
Now it remains to be seen if our politicians can devise a fair marketplace that can compete with China's unfair market. Its a world market now so tariffs ain't gonna cut it like they did for us in the 19th century. We tend to think "US markets" while emerging markets like Africa, India, Malaysia are far FAR larger.
I'm not sanguine. I thought it would not be a bang, rather a whimper. |
