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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Amy J who wrote (18519)	3/12/2004 1:12:23 AM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

It doesn't matter whether or not they think they can do it better or steal a better way of doing it or just get something for nothing, it is the fact that they are interfering where they have no business making decisions. It is the fact that it is a government decision about the standard and who gets the contracts in the first place. Government imposed standards tend to create monopoly conditions. Technical monopolies arise in a market economy, but they tend to be limited in time because society isn't static. Eventually some change in the environment makes their continued dominance difficult to impossible to maintain. Government sponsored monopolies tend to have no natural end and the company or group of companies that are the beneficiaries tend to put all their effort into lobbying the government for continued protection instead of effort into innovation. If a bunch of people who lose their jobs because a company's products become obsolete then it is considered painful but unavoidable consequence of change. A change in government standards which puts a bunch of people out of work is seen as deliberate pain imposed by the government. Therefore technical standards set by the government tend to change too slowly and the whole industry falls behind along with anyone who got taken along for the ride. This is why I think their brand of managed capitalism will either fail or they will have to abandon it.