Breaking up Microsoft and good sense
Scripps Howard News Service
An editorial / Jay Ambrose
Scripps Howard News Service
The government, it seems, is not going to be happy with some more
or less reasonable intervention in its antitrust case against
Microsoft, but wants instead to do something radical, something
major, something that will show this upstart company just who is who
in the American economy.
As the penalty for Microsoft's huge success, the Justice
Department is telling the press that it will propose breaking the
company into two parts _ one firm producing a computer operating
system and another producing software business applications.
Industrious reporters have even found some business professors who
say this is a great idea that should bring about marvelous results.
Sorry, business professors, but you just don't know, and neither
does the government. There are two basic reasons for having a free
enterprise economic system. One is that liberty is an end itself, and
much to be prized. The other is that the marketplace, over time,
rewards industriousness, intelligence, efficiency and innovation,
producing bounty that no centralized planning can produce. The reason
is that planners _ whether in business schools or government _ cannot
possibly gather and assess all the data necessary for wise intrusion,
such as possible consumer preferences.
If Microsoft had really thwarted marketplace determinations by
illegally conking its competitors on their noggins, as a judge has
ruled, you might be able to justify a drastic action, but the way
some of those competitors are thriving tells a different tale.
Microsoft was aggressive. It sought every advantage it could find. In
a dynamic, instantly changing industry, it secured some footholds
that enabled it to climb to the heights at least for a spell, but it
did not cheat consumers and it did not come close to disabling those
clear-eyed competitors aspiring to the same commercial achievements
themselves.
The government, on the other hand, apparently hopes to do to
Microsoft worse than Microsoft did to others. This is not a moment of
glory for the Clinton administration.
SHNS
AP-NY-04-25-00 1426EDT
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