So you're that one customer in 1,000 who wants to build a custom "street rod" on a Chevrolet engine and frame. You head down to your local dealership -- or call the factory direct -- and try to order a Chevy without transmission, drive train, or suspension.
You finally reach someone who patiently explains how mass production reduces unit costs. If they had to pull workers off the line to put together your custom "incomplete" car -- and then figure out how to winch it up onto the delivery truck (since it can't be driven without a transmission), such a car, they explain, would actually cost you more than just buying a street model and throwing away the parts you don't want.
And if that doesn't satisfy you, the manufacturer's attorneys will finally step in and say: "No way. We've never tested the handling characteristics of this vehicle you propose to put together. What if you take your new hot rod out for a spin, roll it over, and end up crippled? Some ambitious lawyer then takes us to court and claims we sold you this half-finished car in reckless disregard of the fact you'd informed us in advance you intended to put it together in some dangerous and untested configuration. The way today's juries love to play Santa Claus, who know how many millions we might have to pay?"
Go from dealer to dealer, seeking your incomplete Chevy. They'll all check with Detroit and turn you down.
Why, that's a conspiracy! You head down to the local U.S. attorney's office and claim an anti-trust violation: Chevrolet is "bundling" in a transmission, suspension, and drive train you don't want to buy, and pricing them so low that all the dealers buy them that way, taking away your FREE CHOICE in the matter!
I don't think you'd be very likely to succeed with this argument, do you? I suspect someone would eventually take you aside and say: "Listen, if you don't like the way Chevy does business, buy a Ford. Or, buy the Lumina the way it comes, strip out what you don't want, and have at it. But no, the federal government is not going to take General Motors to court for selling cars with transmissions already installed. Believe it or not, most people want them that way."
Yet most of the mail I've received from folks outraged that I've dared criticize the federal government's current "anti-trust" prosecution of Microsoft has been from fellows who complain they don't like Microsoft Windows -- a "buggy" system that's continually crashing. Furthermore, they whine, when they go to buy an "IBM-clone" personal computer, the MS software is already "bundled" onto the machine. Why? Because Microsoft chief Bill Gates in his nefarious greed has priced his products so cheaply that the darned hardware salesmen just plug it all in, on the assumption most users will like the convenience of having it all pre-installed.
The nerve!
I point out to these people they're free to buy Macintosh -- better for many uses. Or, these complainants are free to buy a PC with various MS programs in place, erase them all (or transfer them to storage disc for a ritual immolation), and then load Linux ... the alternative operating system to Windows which has, ironically enough, been growing by leaps and bounds even as the Microsoft "anti-trust" case has proceeded.
Anyway, do I really have this argument straight? The federal government is suing Microsoft for allegedly capturing 90 percent of the PC software market, and the reason Mr. Gates has had that level of success is because people are being forced at gunpoint to buy software that actually ... sucks?
In fact, of course, this prosecution is not about either the software's quality, or Mr. Gates' current, temporary market share. In fact, the federal government has no interest in protecting us from arrogant monopolies that impoverish our lives by overcharging us while limiting our choices.
If that was their concern, it would be easily within the powers of the federal government to break up the current medical monopoly, assuring us of our right to visit competing medical practitioners who are neither licensed by the state nor members of the AMA, and who would be free to treat us with marijuana if they judged that appropriate.
If the federal government wanted to stand strong against restrictive monopolies, they would surely facilitate my ability to head down to the competing, non-government-owned airport here in town, and launch my all-smoking, all-armed airline.
If the government wanted to protect me from costly, freedom-destroying monopolies, they would surely guarantee I had the right to commute to work on alternative private toll roads, built at much lower cost by private firms not bound by those 70-year-old racist rip-offs, the "prevailing wage laws" including the federal Davis-Bacon Act, introduced by a Long Island congressman outraged to learn that "low bid" procedures had actually allowed a veterans hospital to be built in his district using cheap, southern, "Negro" labor.
If the federal government wanted to protect us from costly, counterproductive monopolies, they would surely allow me to open a gold-only bank advertising: "Proud to be uninsured and unregulated by the FDIC." They'd surely see to it that parents who manage to rescue their kids from the government monopoly schools received a full refund of all their state, local and federal tax payments which would otherwise have gone to fund those youth propaganda camps, thereby encouraging others to do the same.
(As a side benefit, this would stop as many as 30 percent of our young men from being doped up on Ritalin, Prozac, or Luvox by their school nurses, in institutions whose real motto should be "Just Say No to Drugs ... From (start ital)Competing(end ital) Providers.")
The federal government poses as our "rescuer" from "oppressive monopolies." But much of what government busies itself with is specifically intended to protect the licensed monopolies of those who duly pony up their protection payments -- um, I mean, "campaign contributions" -- while (start ital)blocking(end ital) the entry of new competitors.
"Let's get to the real bottom line," advised the Wall Street Journal in a straight-talking Nov. 8 editorial on the "anti-trust" case. "Washington's crusade against Microsoft has fulfilled its purpose, serving as a great lever to pry open the wallets of Silicon Valley. Where three years ago the technology plutocrats spent their surplus earnings on racing yachts and Ferraris and charity, now they patriotically send donations to Washington to support the fixer class and its retinue in the style to which they would like to become accustomed."
Vin Suprynowicz, assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is author of the new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," available at $24.95 postpaid from Mountain Media, P.O. Box 271122, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127; by dialing 1-800-244-2224, or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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