Now Obama is going after companies that work.

[Squilliam]

TheRealMafoo said:

Squilliam said:

TheRealMafoo said:

Yea, because so far the governments been doing a bang up job of making sure the markets run efficiently.

For every one market failure prevented by the government im certain you could name 10 failures caused by governmental interference in the market. However, overall the market place does benefit from government intervention. There are many key areas, for example patent and copyright protection. You wouldn't enjoy the wealth of technological/medical/entertainment you do currently if the government decided that it would not enforce copyrights/patents. However for the most part, you could assume that if your goverment announced it was doing X in Y market that its overall effects will be negative/inefficient.

The government has a role in the market, no question. I just think at times like these, where we have a few businesses doing great and thousands failing, that leaving ticky tacky shit like this alone for a while and focusing on much bigger problems are in order.

The only companies this would even impact, are Big tech companies that can hold there own (MS, IBM, HP.. etc).

I just mean with all the problems in the US right now.. this is something they focus on?

If this was some stupid corporate welfare or hairbrained scheme like it usually is, then I would totally agree with you man. However as they are enforcing the competition rules, I have to stand behind their actions. Just because theres a recession, doesn't give companies a free reign to break the rules as the more companies which get away with it the more who will do it, its simply sending the wrong incentives to not act. Their actions don't effect each other, they are doing it to benefit themselves at the expense of their workers.

The reason why what they are doing is a bad thing is this. If they reduce worker mobility they can afford to pay them less, if they pay them less then fewer people will have the incentive to work in that field and in the end fewer people will be trained with high end qualifications in the computing industry and America will be less competitive internationally.