You give Microsoft too much credit
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| dinotrac Jun 09, 2006 9:07 AM EDT |
>Microsoft's business tactics set all-time records for corruption and bullying. Oh Carla, Carla, Carla. Your Microsoft worship must cease. It's true that are nasty, ruthless monopolists with the morals of an eel -- my apologies to any and all offended eels. But... all-time records? Compared to the Old railroad and steel guys, or the oil trusts, Microsoft's a bunch of pussycats. Not content to let their paid-off politicians and cops do their dirty work, they happily hired Pinkerton's guards to shoot up and/or beat up whoever needed shooting and/or beating. You see, Microsoft may be better and nasty business than they are at software, but they're not even world-class nasties. |
| tuxchick2 Jun 09, 2006 9:53 AM EDT |
It's a generally-accepted principal that economic harm is less serious than physically harming someone. I don't agree with that. I'd rather take a sock in the nose than spend the rest of my life subsidizing chairman bill, or any of the other legalized thieves. Weigh the uncounted billions of dollars of economic harm done by microshaft against the dirty deeds of the old-time robber barons, and they might still fall short. But not by much, methinks. |
| dinotrac Jun 09, 2006 9:58 AM EDT |
tc - Only inflation makes Microsoft seem worse. Remember - The old guys operated in a climate where government regulation wasn't even a concept. |
| jimf Jun 09, 2006 10:12 AM EDT |
Comparing MS to the Railroad Barons is like comparing the early Mafia to the current one. No need to kill people when you can use lawyers to establish a pseudo legitimacy. The goal is power and money, and, you can get that without physical violence. In any case I think that a present day Corporation can do untold damage without lifting a finger... Enron comes to mind. MS may not be the worst plague to hit us, but they certainly aren't a beneficent force. |
| dinotrac Jun 09, 2006 10:21 AM EDT |
>Enron comes to mind. MS may not be the worst plague to hit us, but they certainly aren't a beneficent force. In no way to I mean to minimize Micro-nastiness. Simply pointing out that we have some pretty nasty bad guys in our economic history, including all those sweet folks who caused the antitrust laws to be written in the first place. |
| tuxchick2 Jun 09, 2006 10:23 AM EDT |
OK, I concede that Microsoft is not the biggest corporate baddie of all time. Lessee, good candidates for that are DeBeers and the Royal Dutch Oil Company, both of whom adore controlling and manipulating markets, and using slave labor. If there is not a handy slave labor pool, then by gosh they don't sit around crying about it. No, they simply buy laws to force people into poverty and create one. Ingenious. |
| jimf Jun 09, 2006 10:32 AM EDT |
> Simply pointing out that we have some pretty nasty bad guys in our economic history Point definitely taken :) |
| grouch Jun 09, 2006 11:37 AM EDT |
tuxchick2: >"It's a generally-accepted principal that economic harm is less serious than physically harming someone. I don't agree with that." A couple of decades of continuous paper cuts to hundreds of millions of people is pretty serious stuff. That's how I view MS. The railroads had some people shot, just as the automakers did (see early GM strikes). This caused tremendous grief for those families and their friends. MS has bankrupted businesses in many unethical ways, destroying jobs, has quashed investment into start-ups, sucked resources from taxpayers in every industrialized nation, damaged markets and productivity in every economical area on the planet, for many years. Is the total amount of grief and anguish less than that created by the robber barons? |
| jimf Jun 09, 2006 11:43 AM EDT |
> Is the total amount of grief and anguish less than that created by the robber barons? History continues... Same old, same old. |
| dinotrac Jun 09, 2006 10:13 PM EDT |
grouch - Let us not forget that the damage done by robber barons was not limited to people shot. Competitors were destroyed and countless people ripped off by monopoly pricing. |
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