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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: t2 who wrote (24690)	6/22/1999 10:27:00 PM
From: Bill Holtzman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

The judge asked Schmalense about how to compete with WalMart in a small town. He said they must be either a "benevolent despot" or "monopoly". Schmalense should've told the judge that small towns are always prone to monopolies and despots. Their markets usually aren't worth fighting over. However, because of Bill Gates and the internet, a retailer can effectively compete with WalMart in a small town! And the judge asks: How? Schmalense: By setting up shop on the internet of course, and shipping it all in! Can't the folks in Tinytown, OK buy their books on Amazon, their clothes at Macys.com, and a bunch of other WalMart stuff on-line? There would be no way to compete with WalMart except for KMart to build a competing superstore, somehow with lower prices, and even then the town would only be big enough for one of them to survive. Ergo, a natural monopoly. But, the internet changes all that. Now, far flung businesses can take pieces out of WalMart's Tinytown action. Gates is the anti-monopolist!