Neuromancer essays

Neuromancer essays The case against Microsoft is based not just on bad economics, but on a fundamental misunderstanding of government's decision-making role when it comes to market operations. This misunderstanding has led to an attack on one of the USs most successful firms. It is difficult to measure consumer "harms", much less harms that may only occur in the future. A common misconception about antitrust law is that its purpose is to ensure fair competition. That's not true; antitrust law's purpose is to protect consumers. If fair competition maximizes their welfare, so be it; if monopoly maximizes their welfare thats what the antitrust laws provide for. It's not clear that Microsoft has a monopoly in the first place. Past Microsoft customers are not a captive market, as the Department of Justice portrays them. Rather, Microsoft must continue to add features and functionality to its products to get its Windows 95 consumers to become Windows 98 (and beyond) consumers. Consumers are free to change operating systems at any time. There are such alternatives as Linux with the graphic interface, the Mac OS but the point is that even if there were none Microsoft's ability to raise prices is strictly limited by the mere possibility of such an alternative's emergence into the market. Predatory pricing that is, the practice of lowering prices to drive out competition, thus enabling massive price increases later? Well, maybe. There are compelling academic theories that question the possibility of predatory pricing in a free market, but economists universally agree that one component of predatory pricing must be high entry/exit costs. If the competition can enter and exit the market at very low cost, driving them out serves very little purpose, since as soon as you, the monopolist, get around to raising your prices, they'll come right back in and compete those profits away. The purpose of this discussion of pricing strategy is to show that Mi...