From: Bobby Whalen (organix@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Jul 11 1997 - 12:45:42 MDT
On Thu, 10 Jul 1997 John K Clark wrote:
>Nobody has a gun to your head, if you don't like the new "bloated"
version
>then don't buy it and stick with the old one. If many really felt that
way
>Microsoft would be out of business. They're not.
>
They're not out of business because they ARE the business. What people
feel about Microsoft is largley irrelevant to what choices they have
when buying a computer. Between the advertising of Intel and Microsoft
a new computer buyer thinks that if it din't say "Intel Inside" it's not
a computer.
>
>Being small is absolutely no excuse for not being competitive. I
manufacture
>99% of the worlds widgets, you make 1% . I want to drive you out of
business,
>so I figure I'll lower my price until you go broke and then I can jack
them
>up to anything I want. So now you louse money on each widget you sell,
>the trouble is I do too. I have 99 times as much money as you do, but
I'm
>lousing it 99 times faster. Even worse, because the price is very low
the
>demand for widgets is huge, and if prices are to remain low I must
build
>more factories and increase production. I'm lousing money faster and
faster,
>meanwhile you just temporally halt production in your small factory and
wait
>for me to go broke. It won't be a long wait.
>
With regards to Rockefellers tactics, your facts of history are wrong.
Rockefeller did not have to lower his prices everywhere - <only in those
places he was opening new gas stations>. History shows this worked
quite well to his advantage.
I have to make one very important point. Since we don't actually live
yet in a free-market economy, all we can do is speculate as to how it
might work; thus my questions are theoretical. My intention is to
increase my overall comprehension of free-market economics. By doing
so, I am taking on the roll of 'devils advocate' to see how others on
this list can respond to any holes I might see.
So far, people have made some pretty fair arguments regarding Microsoft
- although I still think some of Microsoft's historical tactics of been
anti-competitive.
Cheers!
Bobby Whalen
_______________________________________________________
Get Private Web-Based Email Free http://www.hotmail.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:44:34 MST