US Still Declining

[Chris Beggy]

"Charles Jannuzi" <jannuzi at edu00.f-edu.fukui-u.ac.jp> writes:
>  Charles Jannuzi wrote:
>
> As for free trade, no one talks the talk in such an effectively
> propagandistic way as the US, but it also ruthlessly pursues strategic
> interests in a way no other OECD country does. One difficulty in stably
> describing this pursuit, though, is it does vary in specifics and emphases
> from administration to administration.
> 
> For example (and this is just one example) , this, and not free markets, is
> why MS and Intel got to be such profitable monopolists in the 90s. Back in
> the 80s, at the same time it was decided that the yen should gain value
> against the dollar, it was also decided that the Japanese would stay the
> hell out of processor chips and computer OSes (though I use the Japanese OS
> Tron, which was an open standards OS when Linus Torvalds wasn't even at
> university) .
>

I agree MS and Intel became profitable monopolists.  I'm not
clear from your post about the mechanism though.  Who decided
that the Japanese would stay out of processor chips and computer
OSes?  Who enforced this?


>  Moreover, even as Japan was forced not to invest government money in
> developing processor chips and the OSes to go with them, the US government
> invested in a big way. And all those guys like Larry Ellison and Scott
> McNealy who complain about Bill Gates and MS were of the same ilk and lined
> up at the same feeding trough.
> 

Again, I'm not clear on who forced Japan not to invest.  How did
the US government invest, or change from past investment patterns?

Chris