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South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

washingtonpost.com

11–20 of 166 posts

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#14
Isn't this because the US wouldn't export crypto software that supported keys > 40 bits to Korea in the 90s, forcing them to develop their own stronger algorithms?

Anyway, it's so bad that my (technophobe) wife refuses to shop online anymore because she is forced to use IE (and vastly prefers to use Chrome)

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't strange, most monopolies are born out of bad government policies, not the market.

> It isn't strange, most monopolies are born out of bad government policies, not the market. Citation needed. There are government mandated monopolies but you can also achieve a monopoly using purely free market tools and simply lock up all supply and/or distribution via aggressive investments. You seem to imply government-induced monopolies > free market monopolies, but provide no evidence or even an argument that t…

I would have to agree with the most monopolies are government created because, at least in the US, there are laws that actively try to prevent a free market monopoly. Plus, it's much more difficult to create a market-based monopoly because in a somewhat free market it creates an opportunity for a competitor to take advantage of factors that only monopolies tend to have if they are not government created.

But I don't see the claim of government monopolies > free market monopolies you reference.

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't strange, most monopolies are born out of bad government policies, not the market.

> It isn't strange, most monopolies are born out of bad government policies, not the market. Citation needed. There are government mandated monopolies but you can also achieve a monopoly using purely free market tools and simply lock up all supply and/or distribution via aggressive investments. You seem to imply government-induced monopolies > free market monopolies, but provide no evidence or even an argument that t…

> Citation needed.

Any real economist.

Inevitably, if any industry is profitable, competition will arise. Government regulation (often through corruption) is the only mechanism which ensures a lack of competition. This can be observed in any industry throughout the last 100 years.

You're right that companies can lock up the vast majority of a market by out-competing others, but this generally doesn't last very long (typically a decade or less).

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't strange, most monopolies are born out of bad government policies, not the market.

> It isn't strange, most monopolies are born out of bad government policies, not the market. Citation needed. There are government mandated monopolies but you can also achieve a monopoly using purely free market tools and simply lock up all supply and/or distribution via aggressive investments. You seem to imply government-induced monopolies > free market monopolies, but provide no evidence or even an argument that t…

Consider the fact that if you refuse to do business with a private-sector monopoly the worst that'll happen is that you'll get a slightly less-effective alternative or in the worst case go without the good. If you refuse to participate in a government-mandated monopoly you can face civil and criminal charges.

Also, a private-sector monopoly, no matter how seemingly entrenched, is always vulnerable to disruption (when was the last time you used a PC manufactured by IBM? Or were forced to use IE against your will, for that matter? And yet those were both at one time monopolies that came very close to being broken up by the justice department because people claimed the free market could never topple them). That's why that "distopian future scenario" the OP referenced didn't come about in most of the world. Other browsers came about that users liked better and despite the big advantage IE gets from being bundled with most PCs others have had success in the market. Contrast that with the difficulty in breaking a government-enforced monopoly like the one referenced in the article.

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#18
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It isn't strange, most monopolies are born out of bad government policies, not the market. Citation needed. There are government mandated monopolies but you can also achieve a monopoly using purely free market tools and simply lock up all supply and/or distribution via aggressive investments. You seem to imply government-induced monopolies > free market monopolies, but provide no evidence or even an argument that t…

> Citation needed. Any real economist. Inevitably, if any industry is profitable, competition will arise. Government regulation (often through corruption) is the only mechanism which ensures a lack of competition. This can be observed in any industry throughout the last 100 years. You're right that companies can lock up the vast majority of a market by out-competing others, but this generally doesn't last very long (…

> Inevitably, if any industry is profitable, competition will arise.

An industry can be profitable for the existing market participants and still have a high enough cost of entry as to have a negative expected profit over any meaningful timeframe for a prospective new entrant.

In practice, this is likely to change due to changing external conditions (e.g., technological progress that lowers the cost of entry or creates previously-impossible substitutes) but there is no theoretical reason why this must be the case.

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#19
Typical of most MS bashing articles - this article is troll-bait at best and false at worst. Internet Explorer is not mandated by law.

What happened was, the US had banned export of 128bit encryption software. The Korean government said screw that and created browser plugins - for BOTH Netscape and IE - to use 128bit encryption for online transactions. Netscape died and IE remained. I guess their implementation is proprietary enough that nobody else has managed to implement it on other browsers.

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#20
This is exactly what I was saying about [made-for-prison] software being unleashed on the public writ large:

> But those with Apple computers — for which IE isn’t available — have it harder. Some go to Internet cafes. Some rely on their office desktops. Some dash into hotel business centers. Some hold on to their old computers and boot them up when it’s time to make purchases. Still others depend on a secret weapon called Boot Camp, a software program that allows a Mac to run Windows.

Your bar code is your laptop.

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