The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business

http://www.business2.com/b2/web/dumbest/2005/1/0,22933,,00.html

#5. "Microsoft has had competitors in the past. It's a good thing we have museums to document this stuff."—Bill Gates, in a talk at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

What a cocky bastard!

Thanks. It's a great read!

Sure, we'll throw all those people out of work and they won't be able to buy the goods or services they used to produce, but somebody else out there will be able to.

It's dumb, but it works for a while. Then we have a depression.

You'll live to eat your museum.

Bill Gates is like *. You think life is gonna spank him for acting the way he does, but it doesn't. He just keeps getting richer, trashing his competitors, and those fines? Come on. He could pay out those fines for decades and Microsoft would never get hurt.

Does anyone remember when one pro-capitalism argument used to be that capitalism promotes competition, which would be good for "consumers" (that's us) because competition would drive corporations to compete on price and quality of their products, providing us with stuff that's both better and cheaper.

I do remember that. I remember thinking one point that this argument doesn't entirely jive with the fact that there's ever more crap for sale, lots of stuff that's cheap and of poor quality.
Looking back, i realize that after some point in time that particular argument wasn't heard of much anymore.

Even though mr Gates was't entirely correct in his assesment, what we all can see happening is the opposite of competition: through mergers, takeovers and aquisitions ever more economic power is concentrated in ever fewer corporations, in the hands of ever fewer individuals.

Methinks we've been had. Yet again. It's just one of many of their fairly succesfull con-jobs.