From: Stephen D. Williams (sdw@lig.net)
Date: Fri Jun 09 2000 - 21:59:46 PDT
ThosStew@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 6/9/2000 1:13:47 PM, beberg@mithral.com writes:
>
> >This is rather funny. The killer apps of course are the apps noone has
> >ever been able to monitize. Trying to charge for email or IM is
> >absurd...
> >
> >BUT...
> >
> >The companies that own the bandwidth are raking it in. And the ones that
> >own the stacks and stacks of patents on the hardware are raking it in -
> >for now. Just more evidence that software apps are dead, protocols are
> >free, and the past, present, and future belongs to the megacorps with
> >the IP or monopoly powe
>
> suggests that in some cases verrtical integration is the way to go, yes?
> otoh, see the DoC's new Digital Economy report, which says that $149
> billion/year is being spent on software. So someone's making money off it.
It's quite easy and pervasively needed for people to install, maintain, update,
run, use, etc. software and other kinds of work. The difficulty is hoarding
more than your 'share', or more appropriately "doing something worth much more
than 'normal' work". Taking risks, such as creating a startup, is 'more than
normal'. In a number of cultures, risk is negatively rewarded which limits
progress and innovation. It's interesting that an overabundance of risk-taking
in the name of innovation and progress might have its own self-limiting effect.
> >I dont think a monopoly is a bad way to make money, I think it's the
> >ONLY way. This has always been the case, but geography used to work to
> >limit the effect so that noone noticed that the grocery store has a
> >monopoly on customers withing a few miles. That's gone now in an
> >information age where I'm all of 1 second from anywhere on earth - or
> >even the moon.
>
> That, Adam, is true and profound. The function of free markets is to destory
> profits. The job of companies is to try to make markets unfree, by carving
> out little patches of monopoly or oligopoly, via legal monoploies like
> patents and copyrights, geographical ones, others like intimate relationships
> with supliers or customers, etc etc. The role of new competition is to attack
> those monopolies and substitute their own. And the role of antitrust law is
> to prevent a company from having a large, permanent, unassailable monopoly.
> The role of geography is a very interesting one. All of us who grew up in the
> midwest remember gas price wars, which invariably sprang up at intersections
> where there were at least three gas stations, a Pure, a Sinclair, and a
> Cities Service, say. (Ah, names perfumed with nostalgia.) Price wars NEVER
> happened where there was just one gas station in sight. (There's an
It's amazing how many people don't understand the above. In the case of the
press and random population spokesman who can't seem to understand any reason
whatsoever for anti-trust legislation to exist. Anti-trust rules to keep the
game running; to stop 'thermal runaway' in the capitalist sense.
> interesting chart in one of the Braudel histories of captialism, I think the
> first (The Structures of Everyday Life) in which he sites an historian who
> showed that towns in ancient China sprang up basically the same geographical
> distance (measure in time to walk) apart from one another. The pattern was
> like a honeycomb, a mesh of hexagons--with villages (represented by periods
> below) where the hexagons meet--and larger market towns (asterisks) at
> three-villages-apart distances.
> <=>.<=>*<=>.<=>
> <=>.<=>.<=>.<=>.<=>
> *<=>.<=>.<=>*<=>
> <=>.<=>.<=>.<=>.<=>*
> <=>.<=>*<=>.<=>
>
> Basically the market towns appeared far enough from one another that it would
> be a bunion-causing pain to go from one to the other comparing prices.
>
> Tom
Very cool... Something similar is easy to find in many parts of the US. Where
I grew up in NW Ohio, there were many little towns all about the same distance
apart. Large cities every 30 miles or so (Lima, Toledo, Ft. Wayne/IN), very
large cities every 100-150 miles (Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati), small towns
20 miles apart between those and tiny villages every 5-10 miles around those.
sdw
-- Insta.com - Revolutionary E-Business Communication sdw@insta.com Stephen D. Williams Senior Consultant/Architect http://sdw.st 43392 Wayside Cir,Ashburn,VA 20147-4622 703-724-0118W 703-995-0407Fax Jan2000
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