On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 21:57:13 -0500, Yousuf Khan
wrote:

Robert Myers wrote:
A reasonable person in the business might want to be careful about
making allegations that sound actionable. On the face of it, one
might guess that Intel structures its discounts to make life as
difficult as possible for its competitor AMD. Also on the face of it,
whatever Intel may be thinking, it seems unlikely that they would
structure deals in a way that make it easy to show that they are doing
something illegal.

It's not that difficult to figure out the difference between
monopolistic business practices and just standard business practices.
I'm sure Intel would have you believe it's a fine line, hard to tell the
difference, but it isn't. You give your customers discounts based on the
_volume_ of Intel they sell, then that's standard practice. You give
your customers discounts based on _percentage_ of Intel, then that's
monopolistic practice.

Right. And you know, human beings being the way they are, that the
more loyal customers get the better volume discounts. Pricing can be
wildly arbitrary, and some customers are treated better than others.
Showing that a pricing strategy is predatory could be _very_ difficult
if the pricing strategy is structured properly, even though, in fact,
the strategy is aimed at rewarding loyalty at the expense of a
competitor. That's just the way it goes. Maybe Intel got careless
here. We'll have to see.

Corporate values have changed over the years, with significant events
leaving a lasting impression: McDonnell-Douglas being charged under
RICO for bribes to foreign officials, the collapse of Enron, the
collapse of WorldCom--I'm sure I've forgotten a few. Now there's
Sarbanes-Oxley, so that board members can't say they didn't know.

Guys with desks the size of putting greens have could stand having
their every move examined by a jury of Sunday school teachers? What
kind of world do you live in, Yousuf? No offense. I respect your
high standards, but the world just doesn't work that way.

Play devil's advocate with somebody else, it's simply not working.
Corporate values have not changed -- they've always been like this.
Enron, Worldcom, etc. are just today's examples of things that have
happened in the past, and will happen again in the future. The
anti-trust laws were first put into place over 100 years ago, originally
to control out-of-control railway barons, who were gobbling each other
up and leading towards a monopoly railway (and that's also why the game
of Monopoly is based around railways and land properties). Over the
years, the robber barons have changed from railway magnates, to oil
tycoons, to telephone companies, to full-service computer firms, to
software and chip companies. But their goals have always been exactly
the same -- complete domination of their own industries.

Laws are actually not all that effective, IMHO, in regulating this
kind of behavior. Market discipline is much more effective. The
Justice Department went after IBM for years for what really were
monopolistic practices. By the time the Justice Department got
anywhere close to enforcement action, one was beginning to wonder
about the survival of IBM, not about market domination.

As to the timelessness of what is deemed unacceptable, you're right at
least that monopolistic practices have a long history of legislation
and enforcement actions. What I was talking about was the
timelessness of people trying to get away with whatever they can get
away with. When something big happens, there is a flurry of activity,
and then people go back to seeing how far they can bend the rules. In
this case, the rule-bending is applied to using pricing in creative
ways that cross over from creative into illegal. No amount of
legislation or jawboning will ever stop such things.

Sunday school teacher morality? Not even close, just enforcement of laws
that are already in place, specifically designed to stop this kind of
behaviour. A sociopathic behaviour so common that the laws have already
been in place for hundreds of years.

You don't think use of the loaded term "sociopathic" a little over the
top?

Intel is worse than most? I doubt it.

Who cares if Intel is worse than most or not? I don't care if it's
accumulating its monopoly so that it could feed the hungry children of
the world. Completely irrelevant. Think carefully about why there is no
excuse for this behaviour no matter what.

There are laws, and there are people to enforce the laws, and they
will do their thing. Sometimes events occur, like the collapse of
WorldCom, that lead to meaningful action, like Sarbanes-Oxley. I
suspect that Sarbanes-Oxley is going to prove sufficiently cumbersome
and annoying to highly-paid directors who are unaccustomed to being
encumbered with actual responsibility, that it will be duly watered
down in due course. That's how hard it is to change the way business
is done with legislation and enforcement. The Intel enforcement
action would be interesting if it turned into something other than
isolated enforcement. I'm doubting that it will.

Your comments seem uncharacteristically intense. No plausible action
against Intel will restore the fortunes of Sun.

RM