Does anyone remember this controversy? In 2009 computer chip manufacturer Intel Corporation was fined a record setting $1.45B USD. They were found guilty by the European Union for anti-competitive tactics, a decision which is being appealed.
What exactly constitutes “anti-competitive” practices? Some of tactics under question include predatory pricing, paying assemblers to exclusively make products using Intel chips, and using crafty computer code to harm the performance of competitor’s chips.
As the article puts it, some may view the tactics malicious and anti-competitive, while others view them as clever and creative. The laws surrounding the issue are designed to prevent any single firm from attaining a monopoly. But are these strategies unethical? For example, when a company temporarily sells a product at a loss to drive competition out of business can attain a monopoly to later sell the product at an inflated price. Many countries have laws against this, even relatively capitalist nations like the USA. As someone who strongly values a laissez-faire economy, I cannot personally conclude whether unethical decisions were made by Intel. Instead, the controversy left me with a paradox:
It is through Intel’s relentless competitiveness that they are labeled as anti-competitive.