I see many people bashing Oracle/Ellison, but they are not alone in this. MS does the same thing as well. The really worrying thing is that such practices are deemed to be legal. The entire principle of Free Markets is underpinned by consumers having accurate information about the goods they are purchasing. Having licensing agreements that are expressly designed to prevent the dissemination of product-information, goes against everything that Capitalism and Free-Markets stand for.
The fact that there are no government regulations against such behavior, is precisely what leads people to think that we are living in a Corporatocracy, and not a Free Market.
I agree with where you are going but I entirely disagree with your description of Free Markets and Capitalism.
free market - an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses
There's nothing in there about consumers having accurate information. If anything, caveat emptor. Moreover, if you are a free market entrepreneur then the absolute last thing you want is fairness to your competition or fairness to your consumer. Those are costs of doing business, to be avoided if possible. Naturally, Larry is only trying to avoid them.
That's why we have regulation. That's why civilization has evolved to have government. That's why Libertaristan isn't on any maps. That's why The Fountainhead is such a misguided fantasy where entrepreneurs can do anything and it's always better and governments can do nothing and it's always worse.
Free Markets and Capitalism don't stand for anything. That's not even a criticism of them either. Civilization might stand for something although that something is a provisional something at best but then that provisional something is better than nothing.
The requirement for consumers having accurate information is a government regulation. In the United States, it's enforced by the Consumer Protection Agency. It isn't a free market requirement.
Sort of. They do stand for something, even though we were meant to believe they’re the natural state of affairs.
Saying free markets “stand for nothing” presumes that markets are the natural state of affairs among humans and that classical economists were merely specialized anthropologists observing behaviour in the wild. That’s not accurate though - Karl Polanyi and his great old book the Great Transformation really explores this (and the causes of WW1).
The “free market” was deliberately imposed on western society in the 18th-19th century by politicians believing classical economists WERE these anthropological soothsayers rather than just crafting a social science, secular religion (“the invisible hand”), and belief system out of what once was a niche trading technique used between communities or in actual bazaars (market trade). It was better than mercantilism which was the previous prevailing theory among the powerful, but also societally unworkable. Reciprocity was the system most used through history, not free markets. It does stand for something, or at least lassez faire does: all societal power and behaviour should be organized and controlled by price and property. This is why libertarians have such a hard on for the free market, in their view, the market IS society, the market IS human behaviour, rather than one niche aspect of it. The fact we don’t have free markets is because humans tend not to want to subordinate every aspect of their life to a number (price, wealth, property). Sometimes market inefficiency is called for.
Capitalism is different from the free market theory, as classical economics implies the markets shouldn’t actually tend towards profit, it should tend towards equilibrium. One can also have capitalism without a fully free market, as most of the world has never had a fully lassez faire market for very long. And China is seeing how far one can go down this path. Capitalism really has to do with the pattern of market disequilibrium, profit making/taking, investment and re-investment of these profits to enable growth rather than a static economy of a fixed set of commodities (the unrealistic assumption of underlying classical economics). One might consistently agree with the benefits of capitalism over say, state-controlled investments, while disagreeing with completely free markets.
For that reason I think it’s a bit misleading to suggest that all businesspeople and entrepreneurs just want an unfair playing field, as the “free market” really doesn’t care. There are many perspectives out there as to the right set of constraints on the system. There never has been a “natural” set of constraints as they’ve all been human contrivances anyway. (Bitcoin fanatics railing against “fiat” also haven’t figured this one out yet). An entrepreneur might want fairer markets regulation. They might not. It’s in the eye of the beholder.
This was pendantic, sorry. I agree, Ayn Rand is a fairy tale for people that haven’t figured out that they’re not the protagonist of the world’s story, they’re just another jackass, hopefully trying to solve more problems than they cause.