Now, I am not surprised the book price fixing Apple did with the publishers.
But both Apple and Google get a pass - think if it is done by Oracle or MSFT, well we would be talking about Evil Empire and Death-star
Second, you don't need your hypothetical: Oracle and MSFT were both involved. And, if anything, they're getting "a pass" because their involvement has always been a secondary data point under the headlines about Apple and Google.
In any case, if the board or geeks in general had any special reserve of outrage for those two companies, that should have surfaced by now, right?
So where is it?
Seems like the opposite. Apple and Google are being called out for their behavior on a regular basis in the tech press, while the other companies named in the suit (Adobe, Intuit, etc.) are barely mentioned.
This is what he's referring to:
> all this outrage over the attitudes of the executives seems overblown to me
I'm no "occupy wall street" fan, but I think taking millions of dollars from the pockets of a lot of workers is very much something to be outraged about.
If you are working, you don't want to jeopardize your job with a lawsuit against your employer. Lest you do, you get blackballed.
If you aren't working, you cannot afford a lawyer. End of discussion.
Perhaps the Justice department can do something... But then again, I'm sure it will be smoothed out with greased palms to both parties.
Of all the discussion forums on the internet, I'd expect HN to be one where it's possible to discuss things rationally and discuss individual aspects of an issue separate from the whole in a reasonable manner, without being called out for failing to express the proper quantity of outrage at every step. Of course, this is completely naive of me as it ends up being proven wrong over and over.
My main point here is simply that not getting outraged at the attitudes displayed here is far from giving these companies a pass on what they've done.
Now, just to be extra clear, I agree with most people on HN that the substantive issue of non-poaching agreements is not acceptable. I expect all companies that were involved to be justifiably raked over the coals for it. But Steve Jobs responding with a smiley when he receives confirmation that the agreed-upon policy has been enforced? Total non-issue.
That said, most management courses will also tell you to privilege process over people - if something goes wrong it's because the process failed, not the person, and as such most of the time a public correction of someone making a mistake is not appropriate, unless it is felt that the person acted knowingly and deliberately against the rules... So unless the recruiter in question had already been corrected on this error, not only should they not have been fired, but they should not even have been reprimanded in public.
Then the textbook is wrong and should be thrown out. These are people we're talking about, real, actual, flesh-and-blood people... with feelings, family, friends, lives, hopes, dreams, etc. Not fucking "resources" or some fungible asset that can be treated as nothing more than a cell in a spreadsheet, and certainly not something that is a valid target for public shaming.
There are many immoral laws, and whatever law is being thrown at them in this case is one such.
I also think it was immoral to stop MSFT from selling their product as they saw fit---with Windows and IE bundled. So you can't accuse me of being partial to one set of companies over another.
Wouldn't that be the most efficient free market? One in which only the most brutal and powerful ideas and companies prevail (with money)?
"Free market" is not synonymous with "anything goes." It's a specific economic (rather than ideological) concept. Most economists believe that certain rules and restrictions are necessary to have any functioning market at all.
The usual economic definition of efficiency would be maximizing utility experienced by market participants, not maximizing production.
Currency-denominated "product" measurements are a common proxy measure for utility, but that's a compromise to the inability to measure utility directly.
What the best approximation you can acheive to a free market is depends on exactly what the features of the concrete set of products you are concerned with is, what features of the free market you prioritize approximating, and what technology (both technical and social) is available in the environment you are working in.
But in a free market, contractual agreements would be upheld and enforced by an agreed upon arbiter.
That's not really how you keep a market free. A free market requires regulation. Without it, you get a market dominated by monopolies and cartels, rather than open competition.
I don't know how much I agree with that, but your opinion certainly isn't universal.
Of course, with sufficient lack of regulation, it also becomes possible to just shoot people who monopolize stuff.
Libertarians are not a single group of people - and most libertarians agree that government is necessary to ensure the Law is respected - only a fraction of libertarians actually think no government is necessary at all. What most libertarians agree on is that Big Government is a Bad thing, not that it should be completely removed.
In libertarianism, "free market" means, "I'll shoot you if you try to make me pay taxes!".
The difference is glaring.
A free market is one which is free from government price intervention - subsidies, price floors, price ceilings but also free of monopolies and cartels. In practice, a government may need to step in to break up a monopoly or stop an anti-competitive cartel to maintain a free market.
So when the government itself initiates force in the market, it is not a free market.
There is no such thing as a monopoly without the use of force. You can temporarily have companies that have a very large share of their respective markets, but monopoly is not properly defined as "a very large company."
A cartel is just an opportunity for other people to make money by undercutting the cartel. For instance, if the cartel is maintaining artificially low wages, the competitor can take advantage by paying "normal" wages and getting the best employees. Hence, a cartel is not stable. (Unless it has government force backing it---as all modern successful cartels do.)
Looking at it another way...these companies are trying to keep their costs down (labor being #1). This in turn allows them to charge lower prices for their products while maintaining a profit margin that keeps investors happy. They are serving their consumers. We should be thanking them for being prudent and not engaging in labor bidding wars that would push their costs skyward. This is capitalism 101.
Even still your analogy is still wrong...you are talking about banana consumers (which inherently will always go for the cheapest banana products that satisfy their needs) vs. a business who is trying to keep their costs down to remain competitive.
There is an saying that everything in business should be viewed from the eyes of the consumer. If the consumer is getting the same product for cheaper and the business model is still viable (aka the business can sustain that price) then it's a net win.
Again in your example, banana producers will lower their prices until they cannot be viable and thus they will stop supplying bananas. You cannot collude enough to keep failing business models in business.
I'm talking about companies that buy bananas, not consumers. The supply chain looks like Farmers -> Dole/Chiquita -> You. If Dole and Chiquita colluded to keep the cost of bananas from farmers low, that is collusion that creates economic inefficiency.
> There is an saying that everything in business should be viewed from the eyes of the consumer. If the consumer is getting the same product for cheaper and the business model is still viable (aka the business can sustain that price) then it's a net win.
This "saying" is blathering that has no basis in economics.