Comment by frik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by frik | Hacker News Reader

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Great, way to go!

Reminds me of Bill Gates book "The Road Ahead" (1st ed, 1995, p. 158) - it's about his vision of a next-gen network that would replace the middle-man beside other innovative things:

  [...] most market places are very inefficient. For 
  instance, if you are trying to find a doctor, lawyer, 
  accountant, or similar professional, or are buying a house,
  information is incomplete and comparisons are difficult 
  to make.
  The information highway will extend the electronic 
  marketplace and make it the ultimate go-between, the 
  universal middleman. Often the only human involved in a 
  transaction will be the actual buyer and seller. All the 
  goods for sale in the world will be available for you to
  examine, compare, and, often, customize. When you want to
  buy something you'll be able to tell your computer to 
  find it for you at the best price offered by any 
  acceptable source or ask your computer to 'haggle' with 
  the computers of various sellers. Information about 
  venders and their products will be available to any 
  computer connected to the highway. Servers distributed 
  worldwide will accept bids, resolve offers into completed 
  transactions, control authentication and security, and 
  handle all other aspects of the marketplace, including 
  the transfer of funds. This will carry us into a new 
  world of low-friction, low-overhead capitalism, in which 
  market information will be plentiful and transaction 
  costs low. It will be a shopper's heaven. [...]

Amazing that the book was written by a man who failed to communicate that (rather obvious) idea to the employees of the multi-billion dollar company he owned and directly managed.

He had the financial incentive to not make that happen, namely to lock people onto IE/Windows and direct them out of AOL and into a 1990's MSN walled garden.

If anything, Gates the futurist vs Gates the businessperson shows us that, regardless of what the pro-lassiez faire types say, most often corporations left unfettered don't product the best results, but only results that directly benefit themselves and that often translates into things like vendor lock-in, poor software, poor support, lack of progress.

I mean, does Gates even question why the market for the things he complains about are so inefficient? Its because its full of guys like himself.

Corporations left unfettered are no longer corporations.

This isn't just semantics. An unfettered corporation no longer has the benefits of government either. I'm thinking of things like subsidies, added regulation that raises barriers of entry and limited liability.

> regardless of what the pro-lassiez faire types say

Not all pro laissez-faire types are strict utilitarians. Most that I know tend to appeal to ethics in addition to a freed market's utility.

> but only results that directly benefit themselves

That doesn't make any sense. Microsoft has surely provided benefits to a great number of people. Perhaps you'd argue that Microsoft benefited more in certain transactions, but that's an entirely different claim (and it doesn't imply that others didn't benefit at all).

>Not all pro laissez-faire types are strict utilitarians. Most that I know tend to appeal to ethics in addition

Utilitarianism is actually an normative moral theory concerned with determining whether an action is right or wrong. Any strict utilitarian would dispute that ethics are in addition to their view rather than a core component :)

Can't PM, it's spelled laissez-faire.

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