The standardization of operating systems was an important step though. If there were hundreds of different OS’s on the market, then the PC generation would have stalled. The fact that there were basically only three dominant platforms meant that we could have market stability.
Comment on Steve Jobs: The difference of stealing yourself vs being stolen from
explodicle@local106.com 10 months agoWith money he got from a monopoly, meaning the money he took plus the deadweight loss are even worse for humanity. Computers would be even better today if it wasn’t for him, and we would’ve produced better things than we have today.
Monopolists “giving back” is insidious because it’s much easier to see what they gave us than what they took away.
porkins@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
explodicle@local106.com 9 months ago
Where have you heard that a monopoly can be more beneficial than harmful because of standardization? Has that happened with any other monopolies?
porkins@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
It’s common sense. If you have hundreds of operating systems, then it becomes a pain to get the right software. First, developers are discouraged because they don’t know what platform will be best to develop on and users will be discouraged because they might need to install twenty different OS partitions in order to run the software they want to run.
explodicle@local106.com 9 months ago
No offense but no it is not common sense. The economics of monopolies have been studied for centuries, including any benefit from standardization (like with Standard Oil). It creates a costly deadweight loss.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Monopoly_and_effic…
For what it’s worth I was there, and the handful of OSes in the 1980s (not 20) weren’t as problematic as the monopoly later. It seems like common sense to me that today’s multiple browsers are better than IE standardization was.
Squizzy@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I agree with you but he’s not on the same page as Steve Jobs, not in my book. Billionaires can’t exist in a fair system so they’re existence isn’t justified but comparatively speaking he is better than Jobs
We may have better computers but Malaria may be more of an issue, whereas without Jobs nothing of note would be missing other too many biopics.
Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 10 months ago
Malaria is still around though, spending pocket change for a cause doesn’t mean it’s helping (especially with all the strings attached if you actually get a grant).
Malaria will be beaten with classic research. I mean it’s still all around…