'Consumer Rights': Who decides What Goes into Windows?
Discussion of a Q&A by Mark Da Cunha (February 5, 1999) . The original is here
Quote:
Q: Don't consumers have a right to Microsoft Windows without Internet Explorer? Does not Microsoft's bundling of their products (i.e. Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Windows) into one package disrupt a person's right to only have to pay for products he wishes to buy?
A: No one has a right to buy whatever they wish, one only has the right to buy what others choose to voluntary sell to them. The terms of any trade must be agreeable to the buyer and the seller, or else a sale does not take place. If you don't like Microsoft's terms, then you are free to go somewhere else (like I did when I bought an Apple Macintosh and a UNIX server).
Morally, there is no "right to coerce" Microsoft to create, or sell, a product called "Windows without Internet Explorer" if Microsoft does not want to produce such a product. Unlike the "right to force Microsoft to obey ones wishes" the right to property is a legitimate right. Of course, politically this is possible; but, this does not make such an action a "right."
The property rights to Windows and Explorer belongs solely to Microsoft and not to potential buyers, and certainly not to the U.S. Department of Justice. That Microsoft does not want to sell the product "Windows without Explorer" does not violate your rights one iota. There is no such thing as your right to Microsoft's property. There is only the right to buy products that others wish to sell to you. If they don't wish to sell you them in the first place, then you have no right to buy them.
This answer is, quite literally, a “half-truth”. “No one has the right to buy whatever they wish” is true (except for the special cases when it isn't true), but it omits the other half of the equation “No one has the right to sell whatever they wish”. The essence of free market economics is that a trade occurs between a willing seller and a willing buyer.
Let's deal with the special case where “No one has the right to buy whatever they wish” is false. This is Eminent Domain, where the government forces the owner of property to sell it. It is, quite appropriately, called a “taking”. Eminent Domain is necessarily used when the government intend to build a public use facility like a road. Government can, and often does, purchase property at market price from a willing seller, but when building a road that necessarily requires the purchase of certain land, the owner of that land is capable of holding the government to ransom by seeking a price that reflects his monopoly ownership. I own one square foot of land that is in the middle of a $100 million dollar road project. If “No one has the right to buy” that land unless I agree, how I demand a $100 million for the square foot of land? In this circumstance the government forcibly purchases the land and I am paid that market price – which is determined without consideration of the inflation of the price because of my monopoly position.
The “monopoly” word gets thrown about in circumstances where there the freedom of the buyer not to buy is in doubt.
It is always possible to argue that there is no such thing as a monopoly. The government could build the road some where else. The buyer always has a choice. Even if a company cornered the market in air, you still have a choice – you could choose to die instead of buying air. (When the Supreme Court struck down minimum wage laws that were intended to prevent companies paying wages that were less than subsistence it was said “The Constitution gives citizens the right to starve to death and States have no business interfering with that right.”)
No one has to buy Windows. No one has to buy a PC. No one has to be able to read the Word document their colleague created. No one has to have air to the breath. The issue is where does it become the practical reality that the buyer has to buy a product; where there really isn't a practical alternative to buying the product. And if the buyer has no choice but to buy, what, if anything, does that say about the sellers choice of whether (or what) to sell? There are circumstances where the individual is forced to sell his property for the “greater good”. Should there be circumstances where a company's right to sell (or not) property should be limited for the “greater good”?