January 27, 2008
Disagreeing with Michael Shermer Part 1
Michael Shermer has been touring to promote his latest book, The Mind of the Market. In fact, he was here in Philadelphia a couple weeks ago, and I greatly regret that I didn't make the effort to attend his lecture. Maybe if he comes back when it's warmer...
But I did listen to his interview on Skepticality, where he said a few things that I disagree with. Rather than one long post, I'll divide this up into several posts, one for each topic.
For example, at one point Shermer states that the government didn't have to "go after Microsoft" for being a monopoly. He points to the fact that Firefox and Safari are better browsers than Microsoft's own Internet Explorer.
Excuse me?
Doesn't Shermer realize that there might not be a Firefox and Safari if the government hadn't "gone after Microsoft"? Apparently not.
He doesn't seem to recall that in the mid 90's, Microsoft nearly drove Netscape (the number one browser at the time and the predecessor of Firefox) out of business. Microsoft, because of its monopoly in the Windows operating system, was able to strike deals with personal computer manufacturers to bundle its applications software. That's how Microsoft Word displaced WordPerfect as the leading word processor.
Because of the contracts that Microsoft forced on the computer vendors, they weren't able to offer alternatives to their customers. For example, if they wanted to offer a computer without an operating system (so that the customer could supply his own), they had to charge the same price as they did for a computer with Windows, and pay Microsoft the royalty.
I'd say that's exactly the sort of situation where a little legal intervention is appropriate. It would seem that Shermer's ideology (he's a Libertarian) is getting in the way of his clear thinking.
(And yes, the same accusation might be leveled at me. I'm a Liberal Democrat.)
Speaking of Liberalism, Shermer decries the fact that he can't get his Conservative friends to accept the facts of global warming or evolution and equates this with his Liberal friends not accepting free markets.
Say what?!
Isn't that setting the bar awfully low for Conservatives? Evolution and global warming are backed up by tons of scientific studies, and in fact Darwin's concept of evolution by natural selection has been confirmed by so much evidence from so many different fields that it is now one of the central tenets of biology. By contrast, the concept of free markets is a political ideology.
I just wish someone had challenged him on this statement.
Posted by jt at January 27, 2008 11:49 AM