Chris

No, it was me not engaging in the issues by refusing to give a proper reply to your post. I was criticising myself at that point, not you!

I am suggesting you are naive because you are thinking in extremely black-and-white terms. As Philip J Fry has since pointed out, you can have a totally controlled economy, like the USSR, anything goes capitalism (which nobody has) or varying degrees of regulated competition. Both the EU and the USA have regulated competition; the EU's regulation is more evident than that in the USA, but don't kid yourself that the States has a completely free market. Your anti-trust laws have seen to that.

The essential difference between a regulated market and a controlled market is that in a regulated regime, competition is encouraged and legally protected, as it is held to be the best way to safeguard the long-term interests of the consumer. In a Soviet-style controlled economy, competition is not allowed, on the (IMO sorely mistaken) assumption that it is more efficient if everyone works as a collective.

Ironically (and to try to keep on topic), M$ has fallen foul of the regulated market in both the EU and the USA. Remember it was a US judge that was asked to rule in the 'browser wars', and a number of US states are still pursuing the company through the courts. Here in Europe M$ has been accused of doing things with its media player that are contrary to our own, admittedly more stringent, competition regulations.