Comment Sod the free market - let's all move to China (Score 1) 132
Oh whoops. Suddenly anyone who does not agree with unfettered free market capitalism is a tree hugging whining whinging lefty communist? Is that really what they teach you in school - I pity you lot who use these arguments. Free market capitalism is always good, anything else always bad? That sort of dogma makes the seeds to an unimaginative and rather stagnant society. Like the Catholic Church in Europe 500-1500 AD, for example.
The underlying doctrine/assumption behind free market capitalism is that everyone is in one way or another a megalomaniac. Any study of human history will reveal this to be true, and by and large capitalism seems to works fairly well (excluding unemployment, poverty and other minor faults). But eventually this small fish grows up and becomes a big shark, hungry for ever more, eating everybody up that comes in its way.
No one was ever meant to succeed in becoming God and hold the rest of the universe at ransom, because that would cost too many votes. So someone has to step in before real harm is done. The DOJ is just about the only thing that Microsoft cannot put out of business, and that's merely because they're lawyers.
So this is why the same system that gave Bill Gates and everyone else a license to be megalomaniacs is now withdrawing this license before the Gods start to run the masses into the ground. That is why Steve Jobs is not in court. He may be a megalomaniac, but Jobs is not about to monopolise the server market, the handheld market, and force Apples down everybody's throats (whoops!). Paradoxical isn't it?
The underlying doctrine/assumption behind free market capitalism is that everyone is in one way or another a megalomaniac. Any study of human history will reveal this to be true, and by and large capitalism seems to works fairly well (excluding unemployment, poverty and other minor faults). But eventually this small fish grows up and becomes a big shark, hungry for ever more, eating everybody up that comes in its way.
No one was ever meant to succeed in becoming God and hold the rest of the universe at ransom, because that would cost too many votes. So someone has to step in before real harm is done. The DOJ is just about the only thing that Microsoft cannot put out of business, and that's merely because they're lawyers.
So this is why the same system that gave Bill Gates and everyone else a license to be megalomaniacs is now withdrawing this license before the Gods start to run the masses into the ground. That is why Steve Jobs is not in court. He may be a megalomaniac, but Jobs is not about to monopolise the server market, the handheld market, and force Apples down everybody's throats (whoops!). Paradoxical isn't it?
