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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Terrapin who wrote (2444)	7/12/1998 3:22:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 29970

It is an ongoing misconception that "Big Oil" colludes. This is part of "60 Minutes" type yellow dog journalism that has come to dominate the 20th century and which has caused much suffering mostly borne by the poor. The oil industry majors don't like each other to say the least. They have rarely been able to cooperate on anything even when it has been legal and beneficial to do so. You just got to get rid of these useless university generated myths about what happens in the real world. Reminds me of the endless harping about the "manipulations" alleged by the OTC MMs. I challenge you to show me ANY business that has colluded with a competitor. Would you trust a competitor to honor such an arrangement? Since you already have expressed a certain level of paranoia, I suggest not. You are sure naive if you believe that the FCC will give a favorable review. That would be a first in American history and it isn't the style of an FCC operating under the auspices of the Democrats. This regime is noted for its return to the adversarial relation between government and business which always ends up putting our corporations at a competitive disadvantage to foreigners. It's presumably done to make sure the capitalist pigs are punished so that they don't get too powerful. This is part of the waltz of the initial "favorable review" which will evolve into a fairness and protection issue where the deregulated RBOCs will demand protection from the unfairness of technological competition. You say the RBOCs are monopolies, where have you been? If they are that, then government has completely failed to accomplish what they intended to do by breaking up the ATT monopoly. In fact, I tend to agree with you because as I've asserted repeatedly, the only way a monopoly can survive is through the laws passed by government to destroy it. Those laws historically have created the only possible environment under which the monopoly can persist. That is exactly what has happened with the RBOCs and it has also happened with the MSOs. That's the price you pay for all that fairness, junk expensive service. You should study the Soviet Union to get a crystal clear view of what happens when that process gets into high gear. It is absolutely critical that government stops looking out for the consumer. This is part of choosing winners and losers. It isn't governments rightful constitutional role and it creates a mess at every level. You may feel protected by big government, but what tangible evidence do you ever get for all that which you have paid? You end up with headaches and yet you continue to believe that is good. Unbelievable. It isn't the goal of any company to become a monopoly. Monopoly is a short term unstable transient business state. If left to its own devices, it self-destructs big time. Only government can enable a monopoly to survive. The inefficiencies of large scale guarantee that monopoly always fails. Monopoly precludes the competition that makes any company able to change and improve over time. Competition is critical for individuals or companies to survive and prosper because it forces all of us to do better in spite of our better judgement. A monopoly stagnates because it can't respond to the changes in all other aspects of society. Even when government inadvertently enables a monopoly to be propped up, it still dies. You can't escape death and in economics Schumpeteran expiration is unavoidable. Monopolies often occur in sunset industries where no other companies wish to get involved and in which the government must pass laws to prop up to protect the remaining labor. I believe that MSFT and the old TCI were headed in that direction. Government is the only ally left for MSFT. You say the gaining of market share is fair. MSFT gained market share and now that is considered to be unfair. Just when does the gaining of share turn from fair to unfair? The answer is when a competitor complains to government about "unfair competition". You will never know what is fair or unfair. No one ever does. Everyone believes they know and they believe that no one else does. Can't you see how absurd all this reasoning about what the word fair means is hopeless. The word has NO definition, so why is everyone trying to give it one? Some inherited notion from the conservation laws no doubt. I challenge you to think about defining what it means. You can't because it is an abstraction whose reification is infinitely far away. The T-TCI merger doesn't create competition. It is an attempt to develop a better product. The competition aspect comes if and when others try to imitate a possibly successful T-TCI product.