

The difference between Apple and GM - maxharris
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0302/Apple-vs.-GM-Ayn-Rand-knew-the-difference.-Do-you

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Tycho
I was about to say 'Astonishing, a blogger that grasped the point of Atlas
Shrugged' - and then I noticed it was written by Yaron Brook. False alarm,
everyone.

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baguasquirrel
"Meanwhile, today’s real-life Boyles constantly lobby for government
restraints on their more able competitors. Remember when the überproductive
Bill Gates started giving away free Web browsers to his customers, and
Netscape ran to Washington demanding that Microsoft be shackled via antitrust
laws?"

I was starting to think that this guy was onto something until I came to that
sentence. It's nice of him to propose his own counterexample though.

~~~
maxharris
Netscape imploded for internal reasons just as much as from competitive
pressure from Microsoft.

Do you remember Netscape 4? It was awful on every platform I had to run it on
(IRIX, NT4 and System 7.) Microsoft didn't make it awful - only Netscape could
do that.

I still remember downloading the first IE4 release on my NT machine in the
fall of 1997. It was much, much faster, more capable (CSS), nicer looking -
and most importantly - more stable than Netscape.

So Brook's example stands.

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alanthonyc
I've been avoiding reading Ayn Rand because the whole thing just seems so
cultish.

However, this summary echoes a lot of what I've been thinking lately: there
are "businessmen" who create value and there are others who try to make a
percentage.

I may end up reading _Atlas Shrugged_ yet.

