That is like saying a banana and an apple are interchangeable, just because they are both fruits and you can eat both of them.
The Civic and Solstice are not “interchangeable”. They both look different and use different patented parts to work.
No, the goods are simply “sex” and “feeding birds”. And she definitely does not have a monopoly on sex. And the owner of a dodo bird would definitely not have a monopoly on “feeding birds”.
The only difference between Microsoft OS and other operating systems is not just the name. A dodo bird has all the same body parts as any other bird. And Pamela Anderson has all the same body parts as any other woman. They are both just called something different.
They’re not interchangeable for drag racing. And they’re not interchangeable for purposes of seducing cheerleaders. But for getting to the mall, they’re 100% interchangeable. They’re equally useful alternatives. You may value the Solstice higher, but you’d still prefer a Civic to, say, walking barefoot knee-deep in manure.
Suddenly you’ve switched sides and started advocating my view against your own. Sort of. Whether the good is “sex with Pamela Anderson,” or just “sex,” is as fuzzy as the concept of goods themselves. I can always define the good narrowly enough to claim that a monopoly exists, or broadly enough to deny it. If the good is “cars,” then Ferrari doesn’t have a monopoly. If the good is “Ferraris,” then they do. If the good is “travel,” then Greyhound offers an alternative to US Airways. If the good is “air travel,” then Greyhound does not offer an alternative.
The bottom line is that Austrians don’t give a damn whether you happen to be the only supplier of a thing. You don’t have a monopoly in the Austrian sense unless you have the power to suppress voluntary transactions–namely, any transaction you deem to be “competition.” A patent IS a government-granted monopoly. But non-disclosure agreements that achieve the same end do NOT constitute a monopoly. If you buy out your competitors, you aren’t a monopoly. If you shoot them, you are.
Put in those terms, we could respond to the original topic simply: OK, so Microsoft is a “monopoly.” So what? As long as they don’t use aggression against anyone, they can do anything they want. Attempting to “break” their “monopoly” would be an act of aggression, and hence illegal.
Spideynw, in one breath you say ‘apple’ and ‘banana’ are not interchangeable (even though both are fruit and negative cross-elasticity of demand), and yet in another Pamela Anderson offering sex is just ‘sex’. Isn’t this inconsistent?
No, because he is talking about one apple. Just because he calls the apple “Pamela Anderson” does not make it any different from any other apple. And it does not give him a monopoly on apples.
And when I say not interchangeable, it is because apples and bananas look and taste different. Pamela Anderson’s body shape is the same as any other woman’s. Intercourse with her would feel the same as with any other woman. She does not have a monopoly on sex, just like someone who buys an apple does not have a monopoly on apples, just because they own one apple.
I already pointed out the fallacy in what you’re saying here. But it appears that there’s a deeper problem at work. Having already defined a good narrowly in the case of Microsoft’s OS, you now reserve the right to unilaterally decide the correct definition of a good in all cases. Specifically, you have decided that “sex with Pamela Anderson” is not a good, presumably because all vaginas are interchangeable. Which leads to the monstrous conclusion that when a consumer is promised “sex with Pamela Anderson,” and instead receives “sex with Roseanne Barr,” he hasn’t been swindled–because either way, he got the same good.
I didn’t quite clue to that when I read your previous post–but I should have. You clearly said that if someone comes to my petting zoo to see the last surviving dodo, and instead I show him a big parrot, he should be completely satisfied.
The fact is that the precise definition of a good is subjective, exactly as value is subjective. Sometimes I want “an apple,” and sometimes I want “this particular apple and no other.”
True, but if apples become too expensive, consumers will tend to switch to other fruit, hence negative cross-elasticity of demand. This is a significant check on the ability of monopolies to raise prices very high. As for Pamela Anderson, you’re looking at this from the wrong perspective; value is subjective, and what is valuable about having sex with Pamela Anderson is the fact that she is who she is, not what body shape she might have. There’s more to it than just her body shape. To be really crude, there’s more to the product than just its physical characteristics…
I will concede that Pamela Anderson has a monopoly on “sex with Pamela Anderson”. However, unlike Microsoft, it is a monopoly simply because there is only one Pamela Anderson. The government cannot mandate how many Pamela Anderson’s there are.
You’ve granted in theory that a “monopoly” is OK when it’s the incidental result of scarcity, like owning the last dodo. Presumably, analogous situations would also be OK: for example, the world’s only surgeon skilled enough to perform procedure X will effectively monopolize it, and that’s OK.
So I’m asking if there’s any situation in which you’d condemn a “monopoly,” even though the monopolist doesn’t initiate aggression in any way, shape or form. For example, suppose I start selling iPhone killers, but jealously guard its design secrets, and enclose it in a tamper-proof case that reduces the electronics to powder if you try and reverse-engineer it. That would give me a fairly secure “monopoly,” at least for a while. Would you complain about that, too?
In the case of Microsoft, they use patents and copyrights, which can be attacked on the grounds that these involve coercive power from the state. But their real protection lies in the fact that their source code is closely guarded. The binaries can be reverse-engineered, but it’s prohibitively expensive to go that route. The Wine project illustrates that it’s doable in theory, but also that it’s nearly futile in practice.
So Ford has a monopoly over Ford Focus, Versace has a monopoly over the Versace Blue Jeans perfume and and even I have a monopoly over my thoughts… [:O]
I guess the question is whether or not Microsoft has a monopoly because of patents or because they have simply been able to protect their source code? And I guess I do not have the answer to the question.
That’s tricky though. Take the case of books. I’d say you are committing fraud if you repackage a novel someone else wrote in a different cover with a different title and author name (your own, for example).
Pepsi has a monopoly on Pepsi, Coke on Coke, Ford on Ford, Toyota on Toyota, etc etc. Your point that a company has a monopoly on its own trade secrets doesn’t bring anything new to the table.