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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy who wrote (286071)	4/29/2006 10:41:06 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573908

OK. Elroy, so in your world, we should let all the telecoms get together and charge $200 for internet access and we should let all the US oil companies get together and slow production to charge US consumer more and we should let all other would be monopolies squeeze the consumer until the cost of living is so high, we are all reduced to poverty. We have antitrust laws in the US for a reason. Competition is the hallmark of a well-functioning economy. If we allow anti-competitive institutions like OPEC to be the rule rather than the exception, then free markets will come to a stand still and the global economy will suffer. Your pro-monopoly stance is fairly ignorant. What's worse is that it seems that you weren't paying attention in all the economics classes you should have taken in undergrad as well as grad school, if you went to grad school. Do I need to explain econ 101 to you? Microsoft has already been sued, let's move on to the next monopoly..OPEC.

To: Elroy who wrote (286071)	5/2/2006 2:42:46 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573908

The topic is punishing monopolies. MSFT is a monopoly and it gouges customers daily. OPEC is more than 10 countries. It may be a cartel, but it's not even CLOSE to a monopoly. Also, its the responsibility of each country to maximize the value of its natural resources. To do anything else would be poor governance. While I agree with you that MSFT is a monopoly as opposed to OPEC which is more an oligarchy; in terms of punishment, I think OPEC is the more significant. In my mind, MSFT is not a "punishing" monopoly at all....after all, having a pc is not an absolute necessary and there is an alternative: linux. However, oil has a much greater impact on our well being and if withheld, it can punish us badly. Plus, to date, there are few reasonable alternatives.