Day: December 20, 2000

Bill Gates is No Free Market Hero

A lot of libertarians used Microsoft’s antitrust trial to highlight the numerous problems with antitrust law. Personally, I’d like to see all antitrust legislation repealed (or found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court). But some libertarians went further and almost created a cult of Bill Gates in which the billionaire was some sort of hero, even though Gates had previously supported left liberal political efforts in support of gun control and racial discrimination.

Now Gates is showing his true colors in calling for the Federal Communications Commission to investigate alleged monopolistic practices by AOL with its instant messaging software. AOL prohibits people using other instant messaging clients from communicating directly with people who use AOL’s instant messaging client (which is, by far, the most popular).

Forget for the moment that the FCC simply doesn’t have the authority to do this (although it seems to think it does), not to mention that AOL’s exclusion is child’s play compared to some of the stuff that Microsoft has pulled. If I were Steve Case I’d offer to completely open AIM’s protocols in exchange for Microsoft making Windows API’s open.

The answer to AOL’s exclusionary practice is the same in this case as it was in Microsoft’s case — the market will route around such monopolistic practices. Already there are a number of different technologies and projects that will make it possible to bypass AOL’s closed system or render it irrelevant altogether. As even AOL seems to realize, the days of AIM’s exclusivity are numbered.

The FCC should stay out of the instant messaging controversy and Bill Gates should at least pretend to have a consistent position on antitrust law. And some libertarians might want to think twice about their hero worship of Gates.

Ark Trust: It's All The Media's Fault

One of the more amusing things about radical political movements, such as the animal rights movement, is just how seriously they take themselves. In a press release announcing its annual list of media “foe-paws” (who thought that up), Ark Trust’s Gretchen Weiler goes on about the supposed overwhelming influence of the media,

In our role as media watchdog, we must be ever-vigilant and speak out about negative as well as positive messages. Either from ignorance or insensitivity, these movies, television shows, magazines and newspapers communicate messages that desensitize the public toward animal suffering and are deserving of a “Foe Paw,” our end-of-year dishonor roll.

What images in the popular media “desensitize the public toward animal suffering”? Here’s a sample.

  • Unsurprisingly, 20/20’s John Stossel gets a prominent mention for a segment on that show that criticized the animal rights movement. As the Ark Trust recognizes, the last thing in the world the animal rights movement can stand is any criticism, because it is modeled on philosophical premises that the overwhelming majority of Americans reject.
  • The film, The Wonder Boys, gets a “foe paw” for its black comedy treatment of a professor who shoots a dog and puts it in the trunk of his car.
  • CBS’ “Survivor” television show obviously comes in for criticism for advancing the bizarre notion that human beings might use fish, chickens, and even rats as a food source. Oddly, Ark Trust says, “We’d rather watch “Gilligan’s Island” — but didn’t that show frequently use non-human primates for some of its more amusing episodes?
  • “The Today Show” earns a “foe paw” for “glorifying” the use of animals in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
  • All of the sports shows on TNN, ESPN, and ESPN2 earned “foe paws.”
  • Jay Leno receive Ark Trust’s enmity for a skit in which Leno put a toy puppy in a wok and said the dish was a favorite in Korea. Bad taste, perhaps, and a bit inaccurate, but obviously it hasn’t done much to desensitize Americans as there have been no reported cases of people trying to fry up dogs in the United States.

Source:

The dirty dozen doesn’t save the day. Ark Trust, Press Release, December 11, 2000.