3 ms·

As an American, I'm more annoyed that our government isn't working to protect consumers than I am at Microsoft. Microsoft is acting predictably from a business

by prng2021 3y ago

As an American, I'm more annoyed that our government isn't working to protect consumers than I am at Microsoft. Microsoft is acting predictably from a business perspective. This is just a repeat of the Internet Explorer debacle decades ago.

denton-scratch 3y ago
> Microsoft is acting predictably from a business perspective A business can be predictable without being shitty to the core. Microsoft has been a shitty scofflaw company since the day it was founded. Apple and Google are pretty shitty, but they weren't in their early days. Microsoft has always been a criminal racket.
npteljes 3y ago
This hits the nail on the head. The issue is that the system is shitty - the entities within the system practically have to act shitty, otherwise the other one that does goes ahead and takes the profit. Doing the right thing is often not just orthogonal to business, but is actually hurting it directly. So not only is there no incentive to do the right thing, there's direct incentive to do the opposite.
moistoreos 3y ago
I wouldn't expect this to ever happen post-Citizens United.
bjackman 3y ago
I think this is the smart way to see it. Tax avoidance is another example. Being angry with Amazon for not paying tax is like being angry at the sea for sinking your ship. The absolute best case scenario is that boycotting Amazon leads to Amazon paying marginaly more taxes, and every other company and billionaire on earth continues to avoid it. Instead, it makes more sense to direct your energy towards the government that's letting them get away with it. Same with monopolies; it's absolutely fundamental to their nature that we don't have any leverage over them as consumers. We can either cry impotently about Google and MS being bad guys or we can actually demand our governments do something about it. It's bizarre how often people choose the former!
TheRealDunkirk 3y ago
We just need a new era of trust-busting. It's what pulled our economic system back from where it was headed in the "robber baron" era of the early 1900's, and allowed for the post-war boom. The Fortune 500 has learned to stop at duopolies and triopolies, but private equity is quietly trying to monopolize literally everything else. Lina Kahn and the current FTC have been trying, but they are hampered by the economic forces, corporations, and billionaires that have gotten us to this place already, and I just don't see them making much substantive progress. It certainly doesn't help that the public is also filled with Microsoft stans who think allowing them to buy Activision somehow "increases competition," when what they really mean is that they just hate that Microsoft is in third place behind Sony and Nintendo, as if this means the gaming division is somehow a failure, and pressure the FTC to back off of preventing more consolidation.

denton-scratch 3y ago

> Microsoft is acting predictably from a business perspective A business can be predictable without being shitty to the core. Microsoft has been a shitty scofflaw company since the day it was founded. Apple and Google are pretty shitty, but they weren't in their early days. Microsoft has always been a criminal racket.

npteljes 3y ago

This hits the nail on the head. The issue is that the system is shitty - the entities within the system practically have to act shitty, otherwise the other one that does goes ahead and takes the profit. Doing the right thing is often not just orthogonal to business, but is actually hurting it directly. So not only is there no incentive to do the right thing, there's direct incentive to do the opposite.

moistoreos 3y ago

I wouldn't expect this to ever happen post-Citizens United.

bjackman 3y ago

I think this is the smart way to see it. Tax avoidance is another example. Being angry with Amazon for not paying tax is like being angry at the sea for sinking your ship. The absolute best case scenario is that boycotting Amazon leads to Amazon paying marginaly more taxes, and every other company and billionaire on earth continues to avoid it. Instead, it makes more sense to direct your energy towards the government that's letting them get away with it. Same with monopolies; it's absolutely fundamental to their nature that we don't have any leverage over them as consumers. We can either cry impotently about Google and MS being bad guys or we can actually demand our governments do something about it. It's bizarre how often people choose the former!

TheRealDunkirk 3y ago

We just need a new era of trust-busting. It's what pulled our economic system back from where it was headed in the "robber baron" era of the early 1900's, and allowed for the post-war boom. The Fortune 500 has learned to stop at duopolies and triopolies, but private equity is quietly trying to monopolize literally everything else. Lina Kahn and the current FTC have been trying, but they are hampered by the economic forces, corporations, and billionaires that have gotten us to this place already, and I just don't see them making much substantive progress. It certainly doesn't help that the public is also filled with Microsoft stans who think allowing them to buy Activision somehow "increases competition," when what they really mean is that they just hate that Microsoft is in third place behind Sony and Nintendo, as if this means the gaming division is somehow a failure, and pressure the FTC to back off of preventing more consolidation.