Bill Gates Steps Down

This article says that "Three decades after he started Microsoft with the dream of placing a personal computer in every home and business, Bill Gates said Thursday that he would leave his day-to-day role there in two years."

The article continues to say that gates will shift his energies to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But he also said that he will remain as chairman and maintain his large holding in the company. And he still considers himself the largest shareholder in the company.

As Dan Gilmor observed, this is only a "sort of" stepping down.

Internet Neutrality - Free Market Issues

Some people argue that the U.S. government should pass the bills which the big telecommunication firms are pushing. They actually propose this on the basis of a "free market".

This absurd. These companies are clearly not satisfied with putting their product out on the "free market". The free market, as it is now, has allowed grass-roots companies to form and take away their marketshare.

The fact that these big companies are lobbying government to pass repressive laws in order to try to get the upper hand shows that these big corporations are actually afraid of a free market. Because a free market would challenge their unquestioned dominance.

The concept of "free market" is inseperable from the libertarian principle of freedom from government meddling. And yet these big telecommunications corporations are proposing to use government force to "ensure" that we have a "free market".

A free market is about competition and companies out-manouevering their competition by offering a better product and better service. Allowing the market to be rigged through the use of repressive laws is not what a "free market" is about.

I wish people would stop using the term "free market" when they are unwilling to deal with the realities of what "free" really means (in terms of having a playing field free of artificially imposed obstructions).

Can monopolies form in a free market? Yes, technically. Are they likely to survive long? No. A long standing monopoly is a sign that the market may not really be as free as once thought. Monopolies usually survive on circumventing the freedom of the market, unless of course all competition falls on its own nose (which is rarer than you may think). The neutrality of the Internet is being threatened right now because companies are posturing in order to try to make U.S. law play into their schemes to monopolize the Internet.