Re: Offtopic, inappropriate jokes?

["Frank BENNETT (=?iso-2022-jp?B?GyRCJVUlaSVzJS8hISVZJU0lQyVIGyhC?= )" <bennett@example.com>]

On Fri, Jun 08, 2001 at 10:00:47AM -0700, Scott Stone wrote:
> 
> hmm, aren't antitrust laws sort of anticapitalist in nature themselves?

Nope.  They're as capitalist as apple pie.

In rough outline, the idea is that Marie Callender's work hard to keep up the
quality and hold down the cost of their pies, because otherwise See's Candies
and Cinnabon will nick their customers.  Everyone likes an easy life, and the
Marie Callender's people would __like__ to raise prices and spend more time in
the Bahamas.  But because they can't control the number of sweets sold by
other firms (which, judging from my recent visits to the US, can be _a_ _lot_
of sweets ...), raising their prices would lose them lots of money instead.

Now suppose that Marie Callendar's has the good luck one day to see all the
other sweets peddlers wiped out (because some sympathetic legislator makes
their operations illegal, say, or because it suddenly and inexplicably becomes
physically dangerous to compete in this line of business).  The company now
controls both price and quantity.  What will they do?

Before Marie Callender's became a worldwide monopoly, no single firm could
control the price that customers were willing to pay for pies, and no single
firm could control the total number of pies sold. Now, if you think about it,
it costs a little bit more to make each extra pie (in things like overtime),
and each extra pie makes Marie Callender's a little less money too (because
the number of pie-craving stomachs is reduced to that degree). If you look at
it in this way, at the competitive market price, Marie Callender's was making
zero on that last pie.  Under competition, that was just tough; the market
price was out there, and the firm either made pies at that price, or it wasn't
going to stay in business.

But after Marie Callender's controls the pie universe, they can control the
total quantity of pies sold.  That means that it's pretty stupid for them to
keep making the same number of pies as the market did before.  If the folks
at Marie Callender's want to improve their quality of life, they will start
taking it easy, and trim back on production.  When they do, they will discover
that they have to raise their prices (to avoid creating a pie mountain).  The
cost of producing the last pie will also decline (no more overtime).  Marie
Callender's worldwide pie monopoly operation will drop production to the point
that maximizes the amount of time that they can spend in the Bahamas.

They could cut corners in other ways instead -- by substituting raw cane sugar
for pies, or by closing a bunch of their stores, or by taking less care to
keep insects and bits of dirt out of their pie fillings.  But the idea is that
they don't have to work so hard to do just as well for themselves as they did
before. The people who lose are the ones who would have __wanted__ pies, but
didn't get them because the price was a little too high (or the quality was a
little too low) to suit them.

The Soviet Bloc countries had __lots__ of pie mountains, and lots of would-be
fat people, when that system came unstrung.  The antitrust laws are supposed
to help keep us from going there.  (Oddly, the one tool most likely to be
useful in creating and preserving a wasteful monopoly is beyond the control of
the antitrust statutes: namely, other statutes.  But that's another story.)

> I
> don't think that Microsoft is EVIL, per se.  I don't agree with a lot of
> their business practices, and I have issues with their products as do the
> rest of us, but I think that calling Microsoft "evil" or a "criminal
> organization" is a bit much.

Yes.  But swearing is so therapeutic.

> And let's look at WHY MS is a monopoly - partly due to very very good luck
> in being at the right place at the right time, partly due to very good
> business decisions early on, and partly due to the stupidity of other
> players ...

They're also a pretty well-managed operation.  If they weren't, they
wouldn't be taken seriously.

> Hopefully I've made somewhat of a point here, and hopefully that point does
> NOT simply boil down to, "Scott is a clueless jackass", although that has
> been put forth at times in the past as well...

We haven't met personally, Scott, but for what it's worth, you don't strike
me as a clueless jackass.

Cheers,
Frank Bennett