From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sun Aug 24 2003 - 15:52:01 MDT
On Sun, 24 Aug 2003, Robbie Lindauer wrote:
> As far as I can tell, the underlying property, means of production and
> right to "be in any particular place" continues to be largely "owned"
> by the rent-collectors backed by their military cohorts.
>
> Not a significant change over feudal times.
Huh? Microsoft owns a few acres over in Redmond and perhaps a few
other places -- can hardly be considered a "feudal" landlord. It
probably has a large amount of cash (go look at its SEC statements)
invested in some combination of treasury bills (allowing the U.S.
to run a somewhat lesser budget deficit) and mutual funds (allowing
the U.S. to provide decreased capital costs to other companies) and
perhaps in VC funds (allowing the promotion of a greater rate of
innovation).
The Microsoft Empire was built in less than 25 years. It started,
relatively speaking, from zero property and zero means of production --
it also does relatively little for the "military" compared with say
Boeing or Lockheed. The same could largely be said for Oracle. If
you want to take the discussion out of the software realm, one might
look at 3M or even GE.
The idea that the "rent-collectors" drive things now-a-days is absurd.
Robert
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