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I like to stop by my friend Peter G. Klein's group blog, Organizations and Markets. I'm a hack and an amateur in economics, and more than that, I do an injustice to those words. But I love Peter's willingness to stand up for economic freedom and sound economics. Anyway, there was this exchange in the comments on a post thanking Steve Jobs:

C. Ahlstrom | 8 October 2011 at 7:42 pm
“Neither Steve Jobs nor Bill Gates nor Linus Torvalds nor anyone else decided what products we all should use and made us use them.”
Actually, Bill Gates did… just try going to a store and buying a Mac or Linux box. The actions of Microsoft are well documented.
Of course, Steve Jobs offered an alternative for those who wish to pay a lot more for their hardware, and Linus Torvalds offered an alternative for those willing to risk their warranty and install an alternative operating system. For that, I thank them (especially Linus). But only a small percentage of people are willing to go over those “small” hurdles to avoid Windows.

  • 4.Peter Klein | 8 October 2011 at 10:27 pm
    No, actually, Bill Gates didn’t. Note that I’m using “made” in the dictionary sense of “coerce,” as in the government “making” you pay its taxes and fees, not the euphemistic sense of contemporary competition policy, where it means “failing to offer exactly the products certain buyers want at exactly the prices they want to pay.”
  • 5.C.Ahlstrom | 9 October 2011 at 7:26 am
    Whaaa? “Antitrust” means /nothing/ to you?
  • 6.Peter Klein | 9 October 2011 at 4:03 pm
    Sure, it means a lot — a lot of horribly designed, inefficient, arbitrary, and grossly unfair rules to protect politically connected, failing firms from competition.


    • [Me] ZING! In your face, likely liberal guy! You got served!

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