From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Sat Jun 08 2002 - 10:42:06 MDT
On Wednesday, June 5, 2002, at 02:57 pm, Olga Bourlin wrote:
> Just throwing this out to whoever may have a comment.
>
> Is this greed? Or is it "all in the game" (and therefore okay)?
>
> http://www.economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1164914
>
> What kinds of guidelines, in your opinion, would be acceptable - and how
> much should government regulate (if at all)?
I would call this "playing the system" rather than "playing the game."
Our economic system of capitalism is meant to increase competitiveness
and production such that the best goods are produced. Some companies,
like in the above example, don't aspire to this goal. Rather than
produce better products, they choose to sabotage their competitors.
This is a sign that these companies know they are not competitive. They
know they can't compete with the other companies. Eventually they will
fail, and they are just trying some stop-gap measures to slow down the
inevitable. There strategy only works against copy-cat products that
are also not innovative. When a new and better product comes along, it
will take over the market and beat both the drug originators and the
drug copy-cats.
Future-looking companies know that real improvements will win in the
long-term. These legalistic games are just short-term fluctuations in
the market perpetrated by companies that can't think of anything more
productive to do. Extropians would find ways to leverage future
technology to compete, rather than hiring lawyers to suppress our
competition because our products can't compete in the marketplace.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
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