[ManifestDestiny]

Eric Ivan Cantor (born June 6, 1963) is the Republican representative of Virginia's 7th congressional district. The district includes most of the northern and western sections of Richmond, along with most of Richmond's western suburbs and portions of the Shenandoah Valley.

On November 19, 2008, he was unanimously elected Republican Whip for the 111th United States Congress after serving as chief deputy whip for the previous six years. He is currently the only Jewish Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives
Old virginny will rise again!

[Taospark]

I think the term neoconservative has just come to describe the major players in the last administration and the think tanks that formulated their policy, specifically, the Project for the New American Century and Thomas Barnett's school of thought.

If you want a really accurate term to describe them, they were at best, extremely concerned with national security and foreign policy above all else, and at worst, jingoistic belligerents who committed numerous breaches of executive prestige and constitutional rights. In an earlier time, an appropriate term would've been militarists or neo-nationalists but we just ran out of new labels for old political urges that every nation gets.

I'm not even sure why the semantics is even an issue when we know what went wrong and where the Republican Party is now. Ironically, anything they do now will likely be met with approval as long as they stay away from the foreign policy alarmists (and claiming that anything the opposition party does is socialism.)

[HotLed]

Gelmax wrote:

Stop! I just bolded a critical, critical, critical misconception that makes it virtually impossible to continue this discussion! 9/11 did not spark this recent cycle of violence, whatever sparked 9/11 sparked this recent cycle of violence. Actually, that's not even true, since this recent cycle of violence could just as easily be traced back to whatever sparked whatever sparked 9/11...

I was talking about global stability, not cycles of hatred. Cycles of hatred/misunderstanding/violence have been going on throughout all of humanity ever since humanity's fall (yeah, I'm a Christian). Whether on the small scale with the Hatfield's and the McCoy's, to the regional with Israel and the Palestinians, to the global with Capitalism and Communism. Can we agree that the world was fairly stable in the '90s? In 2000? Sure it was rapidly destabalizing at that point with constant terrorist activity in the Israel/Palestinian region, but that was regional. Once 9/11 hit the US, another world war was in the making. Similar maybe to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the invasion of Poland. So this discussion can continue.

Gelmax wrote:

The wars in the Middle East right now are the next generation's war in the making - while neocons whine that we can't leave while they continue to hate us, our hamfisted attempts at trying to bomb anyone who hates us end up killing a whole bunch of civilians who may or may not be terrorists, and thus making the rest of the civilians hate us that much more! How can our mission of spreading freedom to the oppressed peoples of Iran and Afghanistan have any credibility if they're not even free to continue to hate us now that the dictators are gone?

And your blaming of the "neo-cons" for all this is sorta sad, since according to Psudo, they'd probably agree with you for the most part on domestic issues. Sorta like ostracizing your insider group in the GOP just because you want to use them as a scape goat. You're better off just blaming the whole GOP or at least war hawks in general so you can keep your liberal friends in power when domestic issues come to the fore again.

Taospark wrote:

If you want a really accurate term to describe them, they were at best, extremely concerned with national security and foreign policy above all else, and at worst, jingoistic belligerents who committed numerous breaches of executive prestige and constitutional rights. In an earlier time, an appropriate term would've been militarists or neo-nationalists but we just ran out of new labels for old political urges that every nation gets.

I'm not even sure why the semantics is even an issue when we know what went wrong and where the Republican Party is now. Ironically, anything they do now will likely be met with approval as long as they stay away from the foreign policy alarmists (and claiming that anything the opposition party does is socialism.)

So basically "neo-cons" to you mean a subset of war hawks who are willing to go to any and all lengths to protect the US from her enemies. I guess that means Jack Bauer is a neo-con. Still, it's an awfully small subset since neo-cons are the ones in high positions, make policy decisions, etc. Runs sorta counter to Gelmax's definition of neo-con (from the context he uses it in) as simply anyone, average Joe or not, who thinks that military might is the answer for everything.

Oh, and I think it'll be a bit difficult to stop Republicans from calling the Democrats the harbingers of Socialism at the rate they're going.

[Gelmax]

Psudo wrote:

It's true enough that it takes money to make money. How, then, do you explain Microsoft's example? Gates started as a Harvard drop-out with the support of his upper-middle-class parents. Microsoft's first product was Altair BASIC, a simple programming language for the new IBM 8080 processor. He rose to his lofty perch incrementally, by funding his next project with the proceeds from his previous. That same methodology is how Sam Walton established his retail giant, how Steve Jobs established Apple... how every great corporate "tyrant" comes to power.

If you want to sell cars for less than GM, start by working for an auto parts vendor. Learn how parts are made, how the factories are run, and start your own auto parts manufacturer that makes GM-compatible parts for less money or of better quality. Start building a greater and greater diversity of parts, learning what GM is good at and what they're not, until you are designing entire cars that are competitive or better than GM's in many ways. It's just as risky and difficult as any other massive venture, but it's certainly not impossible.

The answer is simple - rather than breaking into an industry with established giants, they entered relatively new, still evolving industries in which they could grasp the winning strategy that their competitors hadn't yet managed to find, and they exploited every trick in the book to sneak into first place before their competitors could do anything about it. Once the companies already entrenched in an industry have had the time and money to really dig in and explore their options, anyone who hasn't already done the same in that industry is too late and they won't be able to enter without getting crushed by the current giants.

There's a major, critical flaw with your example that you don't address. You say that to compete with GM, all you have to do is make GM-compatible parts cheaper and better than GM does. But if it's so easy to do that, why isn't GM doing that? Even if they just didn't bother, what's stopping them from improving their parts and prices in response to your sudden competition and stomping you out before you can set up the distribution channels necessary to possibly pose a threat? Beyond that, it's so unrealistic that it's not worth discussing: if Joe Whoever manages to work all the way up to building bootleg GM cars with superior quality or lower price than GM itself on the same national scale of distribution, he still has to wake up from this imaginary world where GM didn't buy him out or cause him all sorts of legal trouble and he was able to overcome brand recognition and the fact that he didn't have the money or the technical expertise to compete with modern cars and so on and so on and so on infinitely. And I glossed over a lot of problems there for the sake of trying to avoid getting too long-winded (not that it worked, look at all this I typed); suffice it to say that the entry barriers to the auto industry are so immense that it's ridiculous that you tried to use it as an example and I'm not really sure what you hoped to prove with it.

Psudo wrote:

If one company has a massive head start, you're right, it's hard to catch up. But is that the definition of monopoly: "any far-leading company in a field"? I find it hard to find fault with a company that makes the great new thing getting a hefty reward for it via profits. It's only when they start hurting the customer that I turn against them.

Isn't the definition "a company that has no serious competition"? We seem to be disagreeing on why they're "far-leading" - I'm contending that they're "far-leading" because they got enough of an edge to repeatedly kick their opposition in the face till they folded while I think you're asserting that they were simply so much smarter or harder-working that all of their competitors just gave up or folded on their own thanks to the invisible hand of the free market...either way, without any competition, what's to stop them from hurting the customer?

Psudo wrote:

This strikes me as claiming victory in war is impossible because the enemy has strategies. Of course they do, and they're going to pick strategies that work. But every strategy can be countered. There's no reason upstart companies would be unable by definition to out-maneuver the big guys, and plenty of examples in history of upstarts doing just that.

This is an interesting metaphor. But I think a better way is that you are claiming that even if a big company crushes little ones that try to challenge it beneath its feet, it still won't be able to completely control the insurgencies and resistances that spring up against it, and so it will be kept from a complete victory over its competition because its competitors, supported by the whims of a small fraction of consumers, will continue to flail helplessly and self-destructively against the victor's rule, while I'm claiming that it's barely even worth calling that "competition" as it doesn't have enough of an effect to matter and it can never overthrow the conquering company.

Psudo wrote:

I described Microsoft as an unusually astute attempt at monopolization. Government choosing Microsoft as their platform of choice did not create Microsoft, but it further entrenched it's hold. If government had provided money but let the individual schools use their own, local judgment to pick out the new computers it might have better enabled Apple to do what it later did anyway: offer educational discounts and gain market share through the schools.

In short, government is unusually deft at accomplishing the opposite of it's intent. Putting them in charge of trust-busting seems to result in more and stronger monopolies than otherwise.

Education and free market policies mix like oil and firebombs, and free market competition ironically made free choice impossible for the educational system because standardization was necessary - one and only OS had to be chosen for schools due to the massive and often intentional incompatibilities between the two. I don't know whether the widespread adoption of Windows computers by school systems was an official government-wide decision or a lot of little decisions made by individual state or county school boards, but since it's irrelevant I'll proceed under the assumption that you're not wrong, because it was a sound decision no matter who made it, and your attempts to cast it in some kind of sinister light are hollow when closely examined. First of all, considering that many school systems used Apples for many years before Microsoft's supremacy became obvious not only in terms of market share and adoption among private business, but in its appropriateness for education, I highly doubt that Microsoft's victory was due to some percieved bias against Apple by the schools.

Second, and more importantly, there's no reason to suggest that Apple would have been able to change anything, and you're falling into your same old misconception when you say that Apple could have offered educational discounts! Yes, it's true that IF Apple had offered educational discounts AND IF Microsoft sat back and did nothing but nap on the job, then Apple could have possibly gained a slight amount of market share among schools, only to be dumped a year or two later when schools next replaced their computers as it became ever more obvious students were using an OS with vastly inferior compatibility at the time. However, that's not what would have happened, because Microsoft was one of Apple's competitors, and thus what they would do is COMPETE with Apple! In this case, Apple would offer educational discounts, and Microsoft would offer bigger educational discounts while championing the educational virtues of Windows and almost giving Microsoft Office away to schools for free through ridiculous discounts, outcompeting Apple like they did at almost every other thing the two companies did. You cannot in good faith preach the wonders of free markets if you don't truly understand the nature of the competition between competitors that makes up part of the basic framework of the whole system. To compete in the free market means to have no mercy and relentlessly do all that you can to crush everyone from Joe Nobody selling copycat stuff out of his basement to Rival Conglomerate Incorporated.

Psudo wrote:

Gelmax wrote:

As for foreign policy, a quick glance through history shows that aggressive foreign policy tends to cause more problems than it solves.

Why do you trust government to accomplish it's ends in domestic economic issues but not in foreign policy issues?

I'm fine with limiting aggressive foreign policy exclusively to response to the aggressive foreign policies of others; only fighting Hitler, for example, when he invades Poland or Belgium. It's a good precaution against being the aggressor the world should stop. My ire isn't invoked until people start looking at expansionist conquests as "someone else's problem" and reverting to isolationism or internationally-dictated inaction.

Where did I say that I didn't trust government to handle foreign policy issues? I didn't. In fact, to say something like that goes against my beliefs. I said aggressive foreign policy tends to cause problems. In this case, the group I have issue with isn't the government, but the group of childish hawks who keep urging it to go throw some punches and show who's boss and conquer all those whiny other nations so they know who's better and can stop trying to do wussy little "diplomacy" to handle their whiny little "problems". In this I would hope we are all in agreement.

Sure, but what expansionist conquests are going on in this day and age? The only ones I can think of are the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Israel rumbling tanks into Palestine and cracking some skulls every few months. I'm not even trying to be a leftist cariacture or something, but I literally can't think of any others; most modern aggressor nations prefer to be aggressive against their own populations, not other ones, and the only countries currently following the old-fashioned "conquer some territory, maybe set up a puppet state" formula of the last couple of centuries are the US and its close allies. I'm not saying others (particularly China and Russia) wouldn't want to expand their own sphere of influence if the US wasn't sitting in the corner with a huge pile of shotguns and missiles and twitching at the slightest movement, but as things stand now we don't exactly have the right to criticize if they do, and we certainly don't have the military force to intervene (unless we threaten nukes, but do we really want to take a leaf out of North Korea's book?).

Psudo wrote:

Gelmax wrote:

How can our mission of spreading freedom to the oppressed peoples of Iran and Afghanistan have any credibility if they're not even free to continue to hate us now that the dictators are gone?

I don't think the majority of Afghanistan or Iraq hate us. They hate their predicament, the chaos they've endured, and they rightly give us part of the blame for that. But they give parts of the blame to others, too, and in large majority of Iraqis seem to be cooperating with US endevors and expecting us to fulfill our promise of their independence and self-determination in a few years. I expect them to be number along with Kuwait, UAE, and Turkey as an independent ally of the USA. That's not an outcome that is compatible with hatred.

Of course it's an outcome that's compatible with hatred. There are people in the United States who hate Iraqis, yet the US continues to help them. Likewise, Iraq can still be an ally of the US even if some individual Iraqis hate Americans. That's what democracy and freedom are all about, isn't it? Now, we'll see how "independence and self-determination" work out; hopefully we don't end up treating our new buddies in the Middle East like we did our neighbors in South America and anyone we could lure away from Russian influence in Eastern Europe. I also wonder about the price that was ultimately paid for this "independent" ally; it's my own opinion that we sacrificed far too much to maintain good relations with Turkey.

HotLed wrote:

Can we agree that the world was fairly stable in the '90s? In 2000? Sure it was rapidly destabalizing at that point with constant terrorist activity in the Israel/Palestinian region, but that was regional. Once 9/11 hit the US, another world war was in the making. Similar maybe to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the invasion of Poland. So this discussion can continue.

Fairly stable during the 90s? Only if by "fairly stable" you mean "the news wasn't squawking at me about foreign politics". The collapse of the Soviet Union, the Gulf War, Kosovo...and those are just the things the US had some direct interest or involvement in that I can think of off the top of my head. Minor things, certainly, but then you're comparing minor squabbles like the War on Terror to World War I? That's insanity. Whatever the American media might be leading you to believe, this decade wasn't too much more exciting from a worldwide point of view than the last - for all the big talk of the War on Terror, wars of occupation to install leaders more favorable to the US happen all the time, and other than a couple of genocides we ignored as usual there wasn't really anything more than some international posturing. Don't let that get you down, though, there's still almost a whole year of worldwide recession before 2010, and with Pakistan falling apart maybe you'll get some excitement after all!

[Psudo]

Gelmax wrote:

There's a major, critical flaw with your example that you don't address. You say that to compete with GM, all you have to do is make GM-compatible parts cheaper and better than GM does. But if it's so easy to do that, why isn't GM doing that?

There are always ways to improve. For example, say GM's factories are predominantly in Detroit and the surrounding Rust Belt. If you build a factory makes parts similar or even a little worse than GM's but put the factory in Arizona, shipping to Arizona and surrounding states is going to be cheaper. Thus, you give yourself a step up in a local market and a chance to gradually build from there.

Further, increases in quality almost always go hand in hand with increases in price. If GM makes the best quality part possible of one variety, then make a part of that variety that is cheaper and slightly lower quality. If they make the cheapest part possible, make one more expensive but better. There's a whole sliding scale of quality/price balances, and it's pretty unlikely GM covers all of them.

If no one can find any way to improve on GM's prices or quality in any respect, then GM is hardly hurting anyone by providing the best products at the best price possible. In that case, they fall out of the negative category of "monopoly" and deserve to continue doing very well.

Gelmax wrote:

he still has to wake up from this imaginary world where GM didn't buy him out or cause him all sorts of legal trouble and he was able to overcome brand recognition and the fact that he didn't have the money or the technical expertise to compete with modern cars and so on and so on and so on infinitely.

This goes back to the "They have strategies!" argument. Sure they do, but every strategy has a counter-strategy. If you're competing against a giant that likes to sue, go out of your way to dot every i and cross every t. Advertise their bad tactics as Orwellian suppression, thus making it fashionable for free thinkers to buy your stuff.

If they like to buy out their competition, keep your company a private company until you've got ridiculous amounts of savings, thus retaining the ability to reject any sale. Or have the Chairman of the Board hold on to 51% of the stock, and thus retain veto power. If, on the other hand, they offer you a good price for what you've got, you might be better off selling and using the capital to start again with a stronger financial foundation. It all depends on your strategy.

As for brand recognition, Wal-Mart overcame the brand recognition of Albertsons, AMD of Intel, and the Japanese car companies of the Big Three in the 70s. There are plenty of reasons to go against brand recognition, the most obvious ones being lower prices and better conveniences than the big brand names.

I'm certainly not claiming it's easy. Competitive industry is a warzone by nature. But the worse the big "monopoly" company is treating it's customers, the easier it is to undercut their prices or improve on their quality.

Gelmax wrote:

And I glossed over a lot of problems there for the sake of trying to avoid getting too long-winded

I have no doubt. There are probably infinite strategies that could be employed to try and destroy competition. But every one of them has at least one counter-strategy with a real chance of working, at least until government starts making them illegal in failed attempts at trust-busting or other economic regulation.

Gelmax wrote:

Isn't the definition "a company that has no serious competition"?

I guess there are two definitions of monopoly we're dealing with; a generalized one that refers to any company with little to no competition, and another, narrower definition that only refers to little or no competition and maltreatment of the customer. Having no serious competition gives them the chance to hurt the customer, but hurting the customer gives the competition a chance to get serious market share. In that way, competition is companies regulating each other.

Gelmax wrote:

you are claiming that even if a big company crushes little ones that try to challenge it beneath its feet, it still won't be able to completely control the insurgencies and resistances that spring up against it, and so it will be kept from a complete victory over its competition because its competitors, supported by the whims of a small fraction of consumers, will continue to flail helplessly and self-destructively against the victor's rule

Your version of the metaphor assumes victory is impossible. Given the many examples of a new upstart establishing themselves despite the big guys or even overtaking them, your assumption makes your metaphor less accurate than mine. Lots of competition will fail, but some will succeed and overtake the big guys.

You can't prove something by including it in your assumptions. That's called circular reasoning.

Gelmax wrote:

Education and free market policies mix like oil and firebombs, and free market competition ironically made free choice impossible for the educational system because standardization was necessary - one and only OS had to be chosen for schools due to the massive and often intentional incompatibilities between the two.

Education and free market policies don't mix precisely because the national education system is a government-sponsored monopoly. Something like 70% of Americans go to public school. Thus, anything that is uniform across all public schools is government supporting something by name brand, which is pro-monopoly regulation. So, yeah, schools screw with free markets, but only because schools were monopolized by government. Why is it that you're perfectly willing to criticize that subset of monopolies that do no harm to customers but have no criticism for the government-established monopoly on education?

Gelmax wrote:

First of all, considering that many school systems used Apples for many years before Microsoft's supremacy became obvious not only in terms of market share and adoption among private business, but in its appropriateness for education, I highly doubt that Microsoft's victory was due to some percieved bias against Apple by the schools.

Before Clinton's decision, schools tended to have a few DOS/Windows computers, a few Apple IIe computers, and perhaps a unix box in a nerdy district. They were typically all obsolete, but there was diversity. After Clinton's decision, everything was obsolete except the name brand government chose. Thus, a generation of kids were raised on the idea that Windows was state-of-the-art and everything else was obsolete.

I have a friend that works for his local school district installing and repairing computers. He sends me occasional notes about the incredible financial waste caused by computer buying decisions made by computer-ignorant bureaucrats and English majors. And we come from a neighborhood where tweens are more likely to repair computer than set up lemonade stands and car washes when they need a few extra bucks. I shutter to think what it's like in areas with less computer savvy.

Gelmax wrote:

IF Apple had offered educational discounts AND IF Microsoft sat back and did nothing but nap on the job, then Apple could have possibly gained a slight amount of market share among schools, only to be dumped a year or two later when schools next replaced their computers as it became ever more obvious students were using an OS with vastly inferior compatibility at the time.

Want some more irony? In our local school district, Windows machines are used for teaching kids and Apple machines are used for all of the clerical work of school administration. So except when Clinton mandates Windows, schools have always been customers of diverse computer platforms.

Fine, you'd have bought Windows. Would you seriously want to mandate Windows to everyone, even circa 1996? I'm Christian, but I'm not out there passing laws everyone be Christian. I wouldn't if I could. It'd be a gross misuse of oppressive government power. You'd oppose it in any social situation. Why don't you oppose it in government mandates of some brand name?

Gelmax wrote:

You cannot in good faith preach the wonders of free markets if you don't truly understand the nature of the competition between competitors that makes up part of the basic framework of the whole system.

I couldn't agree more. But, out of respect for your right of free speech, I'll continue debating on points you bring up rather than trying to discredit your point of view on those grounds.

Gelmax wrote:

I said aggressive foreign policy tends to cause problems.

But aggressive economic regulation doesn't? There is a parallel there.

------
Okay, I'm going to be late for work if I don't leave now. I didn't get to answer everything, but it's enough for you to mull over and.

[Murray_Smith]

Psudo wrote:

Murray_Smith wrote:

I think of drug addiction as a disease to be treated, [...] I think hypocrisy is worse because it directly reflects a person's moral character, or lack thereof.

So drug addiction is reversible but hypocrisy is not?

Actually, the opposite is closer to my line of thinking: Hypocrisy is easier to change than physiological addiction. The former is always a matter of choice, whereas the latter is a matter of choice weighted by a mental/physical compulsion.

If I may go back to Rush's example, I believe the most morally sound thing for him to have done would have been to admit his addiction once he realized it was becoming a problem. It was not a matter of hypocrisy until illicit activity occurred.

Also, you misspelled "shudder."

[Psudo]

Yeah, I'm not much interested in defending Rush's drug use except by "It's in the past." You make an interesting argument, though.

Sorry for the misspelling. I didn't have time to proofread my post like I usually do.

[GenericHito]

Trying to treat Psudo like an idiot is like trying to treat a porcupine like a plush toy. You could do it, but why would you want to?

[KyleEverett]

I truly hope the GOP eventually dies out, granted there will always be a party for social conservatives, but I'd love to see a party that is fiscally conservative and socially liberal take the forefront. The Libertarian party would fit that mold, but I tend to believe that some state is a necessary evil because while the free market is best, it isn't the answer to everything. Oh I'd probably be a Republican if they didn't suck the Evangelical Christian teat.

[HotLed]

Gelmax wrote:

Minor things, certainly, but then you're comparing minor squabbles like the War on Terror to World War I? That's insanity.

Ummm.... Ok? Are you sure about this? So THE leading industrial nation involves itself in two simultaneous wars with an all volunteer military for 8+ years and going and this is MINOR??? According to wikipedia, around 260,000 personnel from all branches were deployed to both Afghanistan and Iraq. That's from the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force. I don't even know how much materiel is currently deployed. Honestly, are you serious?

Gelmax wrote:

this decade wasn't too much more exciting from a worldwide point of view than the last...there's still almost a whole year of worldwide recession before 2010, and with Pakistan falling apart maybe you'll get some excitement after all!

So what, it'll take nuclear war and total global economic collapse for an "exciting" decade in the life of humanity? Awfully high bar you set there. Oh and you're still avoiding my comment on your use of the term "neo-cons". They should be your buddies, why you hatin' on 'em. This war they "started" is just something that'll pass right, just a drop in the bucket along with Kossovo and Somalia, eh? No big deal, what's important are the domestic social matters and that's where you and them should click, right?

KyleEverett wrote:

I truly hope the GOP eventually dies out, granted there will always be a party for social conservatives, but I'd love to see a party that is fiscally conservative and socially liberal take the forefront. The Libertarian party would fit that mold, but I tend to believe that some state is a necessary evil because while the free market is best, it isn't the answer to everything. Oh I'd probably be a Republican if they didn't suck the Evangelical Christian teat.

Interesting, something I wish would never happen, but an interesting thought. What do you have against social conservatives, and more specifically, Evangelical Christians. You know responsible spending is a social conservative ideal, right?

[Gelmax]

Psudo wrote:

If no one can find any way to improve on GM's prices or quality in any respect, then GM is hardly hurting anyone by providing the best products at the best price possible. In that case, they fall out of the negative category of "monopoly" and deserve to continue doing very well.

Or maybe no one can find a way to improve on GM's prices and quality because, unlike GM, they don't have dozens of skilled engineers and scientist of every type working in their own offices next to their massive auto parts factory.

Psudo wrote:

This goes back to the "They have strategies!" argument. Sure they do, but every strategy has a counter-strategy. If you're competing against a giant that likes to sue, go out of your way to dot every i and cross every t. Advertise their bad tactics as Orwellian suppression, thus making it fashionable for free thinkers to buy your stuff.

If they like to buy out their competition, keep your company a private company until you've got ridiculous amounts of savings, thus retaining the ability to reject any sale. Or have the Chairman of the Board hold on to 51% of the stock, and thus retain veto power. If, on the other hand, they offer you a good price for what you've got, you might be better off selling and using the capital to start again with a stronger financial foundation. It all depends on your strategy.

As for brand recognition, Wal-Mart overcame the brand recognition of Albertsons, AMD of Intel, and the Japanese car companies of the Big Three in the 70s. There are plenty of reasons to go against brand recognition, the most obvious ones being lower prices and better conveniences than the big brand names.

Funnily enough, strategies don't do much for a massive, massive advantage. What you're outlining here are ways to survive, not ways to win, and of course you ignored more direct issues like your competition buying out your suppliers. And counterstrategies, much like the original strategies, cost money - they can easily spend three times as much as you do per strategy and still bleed you dry. Same reason big companies can often lawyer smaller ones into oblivion with frivolous challenges - the big company can afford to pay the lawyers for every ridiculous court case, the small one can't, and strategic abuse of legal challenges can be utilized to deny the smaller company critical resources as well. As for your brand recognition examples, you gave several examples of companies starting at about the same time and advancing at similar paces so that one was never so much ridiculously bigger than the other that it could be relevant to this discussion.

Psudo wrote:

I guess there are two definitions of monopoly we're dealing with; a generalized one that refers to any company with little to no competition, and another, narrower definition that only refers to little or no competition and maltreatment of the customer. Having no serious competition gives them the chance to hurt the customer, but hurting the customer gives the competition a chance to get serious market share. In that way, competition is companies regulating each other.

Yes, but if there's no competition and the entry barriers have been built up to the point of being insurmountable (which should be indicated by the lack of competition, but I'm specifically stating it as a reminder) there's nothing to stop the company from hurting the customers; indeed, according to some free-market theories, under such a set of circumstances it would be that company's duty to abuse its customers as much as possible without stopping them from buying entirely or being so ridiculous that they destroy the entry barriers.

Psudo wrote:

Your version of the metaphor assumes victory is impossible. Given the many examples of a new upstart establishing themselves despite the big guys or even overtaking them, your assumption makes your metaphor less accurate than mine. Lots of competition will fail, but some will succeed and overtake the big guys.

Given the many examples? Like what? You haven't given any, and when you do I expect it to be a bunch of companies who were caught unawares by a major shift in the nature of their industry, allowing competitors to slip in while they were busy digging themselves out of their old trenches and attempting to reentrench themselves under the entirely new way the industry works before they get sunk by riduculously small competitors.

Psudo wrote:

Education and free market policies don't mix precisely because the national education system is a government-sponsored monopoly. Something like 70% of Americans go to public school. Thus, anything that is uniform across all public schools is government supporting something by name brand, which is pro-monopoly regulation. So, yeah, schools screw with free markets, but only because schools were monopolized by government. Why is it that you're perfectly willing to criticize that subset of monopolies that do no harm to customers but have no criticism for the government-established monopoly on education?

What? You're approaching this from a completely incorrect and biased direction which shows a fair bit of ignorance about what technology was actually like ten years ago. The government had to standardize on something, because each company made their systems mostly incompatible with their competitors on purpose, and one of the major reasons for this was in fact to force potential customers to buy only their system rather than buying both Microsoft and Apple computers as needed. Besides, what's the difference between the government buying a few thousand Windows PCs and a particularly big business buying a few hundred Windows PCs? In the latter case, you would say that Microsoft presented a more attractive product to the business while locking out its competitor completely via incompatibility, and thus the business buying entirely Microsoft was a success of the free market; yet when the government does the same thing you call it "pro-monopoly regulation". Drawing some sort of distinction between business and government is deceptive anyway; a government isn't too much different from a national business, except that it values the well-treatment of its employees over raw profit-mongering driven entirely by market forces. Oh, and by the way, the reason education and market forces don't mix is because basic necessities like food, water, and lower education are things that should be provided with the best quality possibly regardless of profitability; education in particular is not something you want to allow private interests into, and a bad enough job is done of keeping them out without opening the floodgates by not regulating it.

Psudo wrote:

Before Clinton's decision, schools tended to have a few DOS/Windows computers, a few Apple IIe computers, and perhaps a unix box in a nerdy district. They were typically all obsolete, but there was diversity. After Clinton's decision, everything was obsolete except the name brand government chose. Thus, a generation of kids were raised on the idea that Windows was state-of-the-art and everything else was obsolete.

As surprising as this may seem, I was a kid once, and from an anecdotal point of view I can say that this impression was not given at all; the Windows machines were usually in computer labs which we would only get access to occasionally and only be able to use the educational software of the day on, and it was fullscreen so students couldn't go mucking around or discovering basic Windows features like "the Start menu". The real benefits of Windows machines were mostly to the teachers. On the other hand, there was a Mac or some older variety of Apple in every classroom and they were often used as incentives, as (unlike the Windows machines) they were loaded with a number of vaguely educational games like Oregon Trail and Number Munchers, and the student could do pretty much whatever they wanted.

Psudo wrote:

I have a friend that works for his local school district installing and repairing computers. He sends me occasional notes about the incredible financial waste caused by computer buying decisions made by computer-ignorant bureaucrats and English majors. And we come from a neighborhood where tweens are more likely to repair computer than set up lemonade stands and car washes when they need a few extra bucks. I shutter to think what it's like in areas with less computer savvy.

This is universal, and applies to non-technically-oriented businesses just as much as it does to non-technically-oriented schools. Even people who are supposed to be technical experts can make some surprisingly stupid decisions if they've had their own office for too long.

Gelmax wrote:

Want some more irony? In our local school district, Windows machines are used for teaching kids and Apple machines are used for all of the clerical work of school administration. So except when Clinton mandates Windows, schools have always been customers of diverse computer platforms.

Fine, you'd have bought Windows. Would you seriously want to mandate Windows to everyone, even circa 1996? I'm Christian, but I'm not out there passing laws everyone be Christian. I wouldn't if I could. It'd be a gross misuse of oppressive government power. You'd oppose it in any social situation. Why don't you oppose it in government mandates of some brand name?

The bit you quoted said "at the time"; you can't seriously offer up how things are now as an example of how well the current state of affairs would have worked twelve years ago. Apple has improved a lot over the last twelve years, and the OS world is a lot less competitive than it used to be now that everyone's given up on biting at each other and focused on improving themselves instead before they get outpaced by the internet or slaughtered by another giant hiding in the shadows (such as Google).

What are you doing here? You are trying to make this out as some ridiculous abuse of government power when it isn't, nor is it any different from what a business would do! Would I, as some sort of living incarnation of Congress, mandate that everyone in the entire United States use Windows? No, that would be ridiculous. Would I, as a CEO, mandate that every division of my company use Windows except for positions requiring specialized software/hardware better catered to by Apple or Linux? Sure, and that would be perfectly within my rights. Would I, as the President or Secretary of Education or whomever, mandate that every district of the school system use Windows except for positions requiring specialized software/hardware better catered to by Apple or Linux? Sure, and that would be perfectly within my rights, although I would have to have arrived at that conclusion fairly because regulators, watchdogs, and every tech company would be peering over my shoulder ready to raise hell if any funny business went on during that deal. Why is it okay for business but not okay for government? Because government is bigger?

Gelmax wrote:

But aggressive economic regulation doesn't? There is a parallel there.

Not really. Countries tend to calm down a bit when no one's being aggressive toward them or their general area; if you show the slightest hint of being dangerous to anyone, on the other hand, they'll get either scared or angry and start being aggressive back in order to try to scare away potential foes. Businesses, on the other hand, tend to get out of control when no one's watching, and it takes a watchful government with a big stick to keep them in line.

HotLed wrote:

Ummm.... Ok? Are you sure about this? So THE leading industrial nation involves itself in two simultaneous wars with an all volunteer military for 8+ years and going and this is MINOR??? According to wikipedia, around 260,000 personnel from all branches were deployed to both Afghanistan and Iraq. That's from the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force. I don't even know how much materiel is currently deployed. Honestly, are you serious?

We're not involved in any wars right now; this is merely an occupation supporting a puppet state. Sure, we've got a lot of soldiers doing it, but nothing really significant on the global scale has happened there in over five years except for us contributing a whole lot to the destabilization of Pakistan. We invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, set up puppet governments, and ever since then all our soldiers have been doing is sitting there propping them up and being a target for insurgents.

HotLed wrote:

So what, it'll take nuclear war and total global economic collapse for an "exciting" decade in the life of humanity? Awfully high bar you set there. Oh and you're still avoiding my comment on your use of the term "neo-cons". They should be your buddies, why you hatin' on 'em. This war they "started" is just something that'll pass right, just a drop in the bucket along with Kossovo and Somalia, eh? No big deal, what's important are the domestic social matters and that's where you and them should click, right?

No? I'm saying that of the 20th century, World War I lasted four years, the Great Depression lasted for about a decade (depending on what country you lived in), World War II lasted six years, and the Cold War lasted for around fifty years, so almost SEVENTY years out of the last century were spent in massive turmoil compared to which issues like Iraq and Kosovo barely qualify as minor territorial disputes. Major powers meddling in the affairs of third-world countries while other third-world countries massacre each other's civilians (or their own) is unbelievably stable from a "world history" perspective.

[KyleEverett]

HotLed wrote:

KyleEverett wrote:

I truly hope the GOP eventually dies out, granted there will always be a party for social conservatives, but I'd love to see a party that is fiscally conservative and socially liberal take the forefront. The Libertarian party would fit that mold, but I tend to believe that some state is a necessary evil because while the free market is best, it isn't the answer to everything. Oh I'd probably be a Republican if they didn't suck the Evangelical Christian teat.

Interesting, something I wish would never happen, but an interesting thought. What do you have against social conservatives, and more specifically, Evangelical Christians. You know responsible spending is a social conservative ideal, right?

Until the Republican party can stand up and say, all human beings are equal, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, gender identity, or anything else that makes us different, I cannot support them. And who says responsible spending has to be by social conservatives only?

[KrytenKoro]

Quote:

Until the Republican party can stand up and say, all human beings are equal, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, gender identity, or anything else that makes us different, I cannot support them. And who says responsible spending has to be by social conservatives only?

From their point of view, they are saying that, and are in fact more often fighting against policies which they think distort that, like affirmative action.

For example, on race, Republicans were historically in charge of the fight for that equality. For gender - I'm not sure, I'm not very much of a history buff to know who did what with that. For Gender identity - is their actually any laws penalizing that?

What exactly do you mean by equal? If you mean "follows the same rules for the same consequences" - by and large, they do. While some African-Americans may get harsher penalties for crimes, which is unfortunate, they aren't being prosecuted based on a set of laws specifically for them.

There is a large disconnect here - do you mean by equal "Everyone can do whatever they want, no/few restrictions", or "Everyone follows the same rules"?

[Kjorteo]

How about equal as in groups having access to rights and privileges without any particular group being singled out and denied? Gay marriage is an example of this. (Though, personally, I think legally recognizing the religious institute of marriage in the first place is a violation of the Establishment clause, and support civil unions for same and opposite-sex couples. There's some equality for you.)

[Geryon]

HotLed wrote:

KyleEverett wrote:

I truly hope the GOP eventually dies out, granted there will always be a party for social conservatives, but I'd love to see a party that is fiscally conservative and socially liberal take the forefront. The Libertarian party would fit that mold, but I tend to believe that some state is a necessary evil because while the free market is best, it isn't the answer to everything. Oh I'd probably be a Republican if they didn't suck the Evangelical Christian teat.

Interesting, something I wish would never happen, but an interesting thought. What do you have against social conservatives, and more specifically, Evangelical Christians. You know responsible spending is a social conservative ideal, right?

Wait wait wait... I always understood responsible spending to be a financially conservative thing, not social.