From: AdmrlLocke@aol.com Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 1998 5:41 AM Subject: GrammNet: My Latest Column GrammNet Issue 7/7/98 Dear Friend of Phil Gramm, I thought you might be interested in my latest column, which appeared in the Quad City Times on Sunday, July 5th, 1998. It was my first column in the Times, a result of the paper replacing its editorial page editor. Gramm was on Fox news recently, and when asked about any presidential plans, he remarked that he was waiting to see how the November elections turn out. He was also asked who of the current field of candidates he might supports, and he noted that several of them--including George Bush, John Ashcroft and John McCain--had been supporters of his, so that it would be a tough choice for him. He forgot to mention that Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire was also a Gramm supporter in 1996. Enjoy the column. Sincerely, David B. Levenstam Liberals Attack Competition By David B. Levenstam, CPA, MT, MA Liberals tend to want to control every facet of your life. Whether it's smoking, defending your right to life with firearms, or just driving the car of your choice, liberals are fighting to stop you. In December 1992 I joked that I hoped by the time Clinton left office we'd still be able to use the bathroom without a permit from Washington. But it's no joke: Clinton's regulatory Leviathan decreed that you can install only "low flush" toilets. Now Clinton and the liberals are trying to control which web browser you use. They're attempting to use old "antitrust laws to overturn the choices you and I make in the market, substituting their will for ours. Don't be fooled: they just want to stifle competition and expand the power of Big Government. You can download both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator for free from their web sites. American Online, the largest online service, offers a browser for no extra charge. The free availability of different browsers makes hash of the government's claims that Microsoft has any sort of monopoly. In fact, Microsoft has been the monopoly-buster, and it's busted monopolies without the government's method of threatening (or using) force. Microsoft has busted computer monopolies the old fashion way: through competition. Corel WordPerfect once dominated the market for word processing applications. But Corel acted like an arrogant monopolist, keeping its price high and WordPerfect relatively static. So Microsoft offered a better product at a lower price, knocking WordPerfect off its lofty perch. Even Macintosh users now prefer Microsoft Word to any other word processing application. It's a strange monopoly indeed that sells products which enhance the value of its competitors' products. Microsoft selling Word to Mac users would be like GM selling better turbochargers to owners of Chryslers. The biggest competition Microsoft Word 6 faces actually comes from older versions of Word. I still use Word 4 on my Macintosh PowerPC. If Microsoft doesn't make new versions of Word significantly better than old versions, we won't buy the new ones. Word isn't Microsoft's only trust-buster. Apple had a monopoly on fun, easy- to-use operating systems. If you could point, click, and drag with a mouse you could do almost anything on a Mac, while with DOS you had to type cumbersome commands to perform even simple tasks. Apple acted the arrogant monopolist. It refused to license its operating system (OS) and charged substantially higher prices for its computers. Then Microsoft created Windows, which lets you point and click. The price of Macs started falling. Windows wasn't a perfect substitute for the Mac OS, but it was good enough to please many would-be Mac users. After Microsoft introduced Windows 95--a closer substitute for Mac OS--the price of Macs plummeted. Now Mac actually gives you more computing power per dollar. I'm on my third Mac now thanks to Microsoft's competition. The latest competitive triumph has come in a field in which the arrogant monopolist still has what liberals would call a monopoly. Netscape still provides 60% of new browsers. It used to sell a much larger share, but Microsoft's Internet Explorer competes with it. Netscape is still the "monopoly," but is rapidly losing market share to Microsoft. That's why Netscape has run whining to the federal government for protection against the choices of its customers--and former customers--in favor of Microsoft. Non-competitive big businesses have often used antitrust law to try to thwart competitors' efforts to offer better goods at lower prices. Under the Supreme Court's "rule of reason"--invented by a "progressive" Court nine decades ago--you're considered more likely to have violated the law if your competitors complain about you. If you compete with other big companies, they complain, and the federal government busts you. But if you act like a monopolist by keeping prices high and quality low, competitors don't complain and the government leaves you alone. Microsoft has advanced by offering competitive products at competitive prices. Liberals and federal bureaucrats advance their careers by offering invented crises to justify government control of your life, which they hide behind the rhetoric of "protecting the people." But we the people have spoken, and continue to speak, by buying products from both Microsoft and its competitors. In the market, each of us buys what he or she wants. With government, liberals try to impose one outcome on all of us.