Also, instead of saying it has a right to try to make a more complete product, Microsoft said their “priority is to keep the regulatory authorities and sector informed” and that it is “creating Windows Vista in order to offer unprecedented opportunities to other companies,” that is, to competitors.

 

If Jerónimo Castillo de Bobadilla could see what is going on, he would faint. The scholastic Spaniard from the 16^th century was the first person to define economic competition as possible only in a dynamic and free market. He did so in 1585 when he noted that competition consists of emulating the competition.  In addition, he established one of the main benefits of competition: product prices fall thanks to emulation and the concurrence of sellers, as well as to abundance.

 

This dynamic concept of competition started to come under near the end of the 19 century with the first antitrust legislation in the United States. The 1890 Sherman Law appeared states as a result of the privileges given to the inefficient farmers and livestock ranchers lobby in the central states as opposed to the modern and competitive production centers that were flourishing near Chicago. Since then, anti-monopoly legislation has become the weapon of choice for inefficient producers to use against competitor that better served consumers.

 

Anti-trust laws came to Europe in the mid-20 century. In the beginning they were brought because the European Community governments did not trust the public monopolies of other member countries. However, it wasn’t long before struggling businessmen unable to attract consumers and politicians intent on imposing their vision of what future products and business plans should look like started to take advantage. From then to now, the Brussels-crats have been combining the idea of static competition, in which companies act in a market free from real competition and sell the same product as their competitors for the same price, with anti-trust laws that grant them arbitrary power over penalizing and forbidding business operations.

 

Microsoft is the main hostage of European politicians. First, it was accused of having gained a large portion of the market, then of adding Media Player to the Windows platform and lastly for not revealing all their secrets to the competition. In other words, the Commission on Competition is after Microsoft because it competes. These threats to Microsoft’s new operating system show Politicians, and not consumers, are the ones deciding about products in the European Socialist Republic, where competition is a crime and political incompetence stops socioeconomic advancement.