They’re hounding Gates out of envy. When will we learn to applaud success?
COMMENTARY by Simon Heffer
T
HERE was something ourselves to peculiarly, but predictably, unpleasant in the response yesterday to the news that Microsoft had lost its U.S. Federal Court case on its alleged monopoly, and might have to be broken up. On this side ofthe Atlantic, that response was characterised by that barely concealed delight in which we specialise when an immensely successful enterprise runs into trouble. By the simple fact of being the richest man on the planet, Microsoft founder Bill Gates is regarded as some sort of enemy of the people. His enormous wealth, it seems, denies him the right to any sympathy, and quite possibly to any justice. In the rush to join in the entirely destructive joy at what has happened, we fail to notice that America supposedly the home of capitalism, is behaving like Soviet Russia. Microsoft is being punished for no reason other than that it has been so successful. Where other firms dithered, made bad judgments, refused to take risks or simply ignored the tremendous potential of the technological revolution, Microsoft piled in and as a result piled up profits. The case hinges on the allegedly monopolistic position that Microsoft has with regard to the Internet. It’s opponents claim that its browser - the gateway through which people access the net — is anti-competitive’, because It is failing competitors. In response integrated into the company’s software packages that run 95 per cent of the world’s computers. This is a dubious piece of commercial philosophy. Any other computer firm, had it been as innovative and forward-looking as Microsoft in the early 1990s, could have made its browsers the world’s gateway to the net, cornering lucrative advertising and promotional opportunities — but they failed to match Microsoft. Now, Microsoft’s rivals are complaining, in effect, that the company is too successful. They want Microsoft to be forced to be less successful, with a share of its business and revenue effectively parceled out to firms too lazy, backward or badly
managed to make money their own intuitive and intellectual efforts. To many Americans, what is happening to Bill Gates will have a familiar, rather eerie ring to it. Over 40 years ago the same plot was used in a famous novel by a Russian emigree, Ayn Rand, to warn her adopted country of the dangers of communism. In her book, Atlas Shrugged, a fictional businessman called John Galt discovers how to harness perpetual motion, and as a result drives his less gifted competitors out of business. Congress then passes a law – the Fair Shares Law – forcing successful businesses like Galt’s to
Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman share their profits with their failing competitors. In response he goes into hiding, and takes with him dozens of other successful businessmen from all branches of industry. The result is that America plunges into ruin and chaos much as, in fact, happened to socialist societies all over the world. In an age when the computer is central to business, trade and international competitiveness, Bill Gates’s Inventions, genius and willingness to take risks have made him hugely rich: But, equally, he has
made millions of others around the world rich too. BECAUSE of the labour-saving systems Microsoft invented, tens of thousands of businesses have been enabled trade solvently and competitively. The message the U.S. Federal Court has sent out not just to Mr Gates, but to all American businessmen, is that you succeed at your peril. The price of success will be to have your business broken up. If the American response to Mr Gates’s success has been of envy and a demand for a share of what he, by his wit and industry, has made, the British one is scarcely less edifying. No wonder our modern commercial history is one of missed opportunities, bad management, poorly directed workers and squandered resources. Until we can bring ourselves to applaud commercial success - and to realise we must all live off it if we are to live at all there is little hope for us. I am not defending the principle of monopoly. If a free market is to work, it has to allow choice to consumers. Over the past 20 years as the software market has grown, it has done just that; and many Microsoft competitors have fallen by the wayside not because of Mr Gates’s juggernaut, but because in a tough market they simply were not up to it. What we must not lose sight of, however, is that Microsoft is in its pro-eminent position because it gave hundreds of millions of consumers products they wanted at prices they could afford. It beat off competitors by being braver, cleverer and more original. That is what capitalism was supposed to be about. It was what America, the land of opportunity’ was supposed to be about. Now, though, fiction appears to be about to become reality. The U.S. Federal Court’s persecution of Microsoft is the creation of a Fair Shares Law in all but name: and if that principle is allowed to hold it will impoverish not just Bill Gates and the shareholders of Microsoft, but one day the whole world.
Wednesday, 5th April, 2000
Daily Mail