[ExI] Private and government R&D

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 7:57 AM, Stathis Papaioannou<stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/7/23 Max More <max at maxmore.com>:
>
>> Actually, no, it won't. I'm sorry that you had a bad experience, Damien.
>> Private companies sometimes (too often) do crappy things. But it's just not
>> right to react to one personal instance to damn companies in general. Some
>> companies understand that making things difficult for customers is really a
>> bad idea (in competitive markets).
>
> Yes, this is the point. A company will decide to engage in good or bad
> behaviour depending on how it believes it will affect profits. We
> might hope that good behaviour is more likely to increase profits than
> bad behaviour, but there is no reason to believe that this must be
> true in general.

### I am convinced that you are missing the point, Stathis. What
matters is not whether a small entity may in principle decide to
engage in bad behavior, but rather the relative frequency and
destructiveness of bad behavior in general under various legal
regimes. I keep insisting that a regime based on monopoly and violence
will always generate more bad behavior than a polycentric regime based
on a principled refusal to initiate violence.

Rafal