221–230 of 301 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
one could argue that in the long term book buying consumers are protected from a monopoly that would probably appear
Does that monopoly result in increased cost for the customer? I assume there is harm to the general economy the problem is quantifying that and also convincing people to pay more for something.
France has a long history of attempting to protect its cultural industries, including film and publishing. It's not wrong. There are other things that are important aside from customer purchasing power. Amazon is using its economies of scale to drive out smaller businesses. It is not unique in that. But the industries that Amazon affects may be unique to the nations that wish to preserve them. Most centralization inc…
> Amazon is using its economies of scale to drive out smaller businesses. It is not unique in that. But the industries that Amazon affects may be unique to the nations that wish to preserve them. Another way of phrasing that: France’s local book sellers are so bad at serving their customers that an American company that’s existed less than 30 years can totally undercut them, despite the local sellers’ massive advanta…
It seems obvious but nobody ever calls that behavior what it is, along with "cultural protection" which is really an attempt to treat the choices of others like your own property in what would be called overwhelming arrogance in most other contexts.
A lot of comments don’t seem to get the context of this. Book prices are regulated in France [0] and you can’t just discount willy-nilly, in particular new book publications have selling prices set by the publisher. This proposition is coming on top of that: it will block sellers from artificially discounting books by subsidizing shipping cost. It is basically closing a loophole that still allowed Amazon to have lowe…
so the consumer loses here
Amazon's low costs is only possible because they externalize their costs to society.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If people wanted it anyway why would they need a law to enforce it? I want to shop locally. I don’t vote for a law to require myself to shop locally. I just go ahead and shop locally. The only need for a law is to force someone who doesn’t want to shop locally to do so against their will!
People are driven by biological impulses. It seems reasonable to me to want to protect yourself from your own future impulses. I remember reading about an experiment at Google where they reduced snacking by simply putting an opaque cover on the snacks. When people see chocolate bars, there is a chance they'll turn and get one. They may consider they made the decision rationally but they didn't. In moments of rational…
A lot of comments don’t seem to get the context of this. Book prices are regulated in France [0] and you can’t just discount willy-nilly, in particular new book publications have selling prices set by the publisher. This proposition is coming on top of that: it will block sellers from artificially discounting books by subsidizing shipping cost. It is basically closing a loophole that still allowed Amazon to have lowe…
so the consumer loses here
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It just removes the price out of the equation. I too welcome our post-scarcity future :)
This feels like a joke, but deciding on where/how to buy something completely ignoring the price (same everywhere) is refreshing. There's few similar experiences, perhaps movie theaters before they started monthly plans/membership programs. I can't think of any other day to day instance where price comparison is explicitly rendered moot.
Similar to cell phone service in Canada. Prices are carefully negotiated with carriers and as a results Canadians pay some of the highest cell phone fee in the world.
France has a long history of attempting to protect its cultural industries, including film and publishing. It's not wrong. There are other things that are important aside from customer purchasing power. Amazon is using its economies of scale to drive out smaller businesses. It is not unique in that. But the industries that Amazon affects may be unique to the nations that wish to preserve them. Most centralization inc…
> Amazon is using its economies of scale to drive out smaller businesses. It is not unique in that. But the industries that Amazon affects may be unique to the nations that wish to preserve them. Another way of phrasing that: France’s local book sellers are so bad at serving their customers that an American company that’s existed less than 30 years can totally undercut them, despite the local sellers’ massive advanta…
It's funny that we still pin Amazon against bookstores - I was under the impression that Amazon is shipping _everything_ those days, and that books are not what most people go to Amazon for any more.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Physical books? No.
How do physical books not depend on copyright? The author still needs to get paid, and printing is fairly cheap.