John Caudwell Quotes
When I came into the mobile phone business, I was really the upstart who pretty much took the business, not quite by storm, but really made an impact on it quite early on. But it was from a position, really, of feeling that I was a last mover.
Patents, copyrights, and franchises are but 3 common (and legal) ways of obtaining a onopoly position.See Adam Smith {627790} for a similar thought.
This is an important quotation because Ellison, one of the best businessmen in the world is also much more candid than most others. Here he admits that he strives to achieve monopoly status for his company. Almost all large businesses try to become monopolies so that they do not have to compete on price, quality, and service. Few will admit publicly that much of their effort goes towards an objective that is detrimental to the nation and society and in is in large part illegal.
When Bulgaria transformed from a Communist nation to a free market, competitive economy, most of the Bulgarian businessmen assumed that the competition was to get a favored position with the government and have the government then interfere with their competitors or some other government organized advantage for them as opposed to better products, better prices, better marketing. Ironically, there are still a few areas where the modern American system is much like Bulgaria was. Local telephone and electric monopolies are two of the worst.
John David Caudwell is a British billionaire businessman who founded the mobile phone retailer Phones 4u. He also invests in fashion, real estate and other industries, and chairs Caudwell Children, a children's charity, and Caudwell LymeCo, promoting chronic Lyme disease beliefs in the UK. He is known for being the UK's largest taxpayer.
