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

To: mozek who wrote (10367)	8/27/1998 9:12:00 PM
From: Hal Rubel	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Taxation Without Representation RE: "There's a big difference between taxes and personal choice in purchased products. You don't like Microsoft, Hal? Don't purchase Microsoft products. You say your company does? Unless you own the company, that's not "your" money. Microsoft makes money by doing business. Maybe you should take some beginning courses on economics to understand the difference between private business and public government." Mozek, lighten up. Don't fall in love with this or any other stock. Microsoft is not capable of loving you back. We both understand the difference between private business and public government. This is not about the difference between private business and public government, as you well know. It's all about Monopolies. In fact there is little diference between public government and private monopolies. Monopolies limit choices in order to tax the public. The government, which we all have a stake in running, has a monopoly on civic taxation. Microsoft, which is run darkly behind closed doors, has a default monopoly franchise in the computer field for which it too taxes the public. Your argument seems totally blinded by the fact that you expect to make more off your Microsoft shares than you will be paying in Microsoft taxes. I could just as easily say to you: "Don't like paying the civic taxes, Mozek? Then move to another country." But why should you have to move to another country to get a fair deal? (Actually, moving to another country is easier than avoiding Microsoft. They are taxing people everywhere.) Incidently, I hope you are not one of those people who think that the purpose of Free Enterprise is to create privileged Monopolies. For my part, I'm not saying that Microsoft does not have commercial merit. What I'm saying is that it's this inherent commercial merit exclusively that should be used by Microsoft to compete in the market place. Microsoft's primary inherent commercial merit is that it offers a standard OS platform. That's it in the smallest number of words. That does not mean that it is the best product necessarily, just the best standard. Microsoft therefor gets a lot of its business by default, plain and simple. Now, a standard with 20% of the market is just a standard, but standard with 90% of the market begins to have monopoly overtones. To the extent that abuses of monopoly power occur, monopolies need to be regulated. The need for investigative vigilance and regulation are the difference between monopolies and freely competitive firms in a democratic society. One of the relevant principles of the law and justice is that no mater how fairly a monopoly came into being, a monopoly can not be allowed to use its monopoly powers to create business for itself in other markets. This possibility happens to be one of the main issues with Microsoft. If Bill Gates went into, lets say, the trucking business and if you weren't into trucking and weren't a shareholder, I think it would all be easier for you to see. Beware, love is blind. Hal