251–260 of 301 posts
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so the consumer loses here
No, Jeff Bezos loses. Everyone else wins. Yes, the consumer pays more for a book but he also lives in an economy with better paid jobs, free healthcare, free education, and more competing bookstores. Amazon's low costs is only possible because they externalize their costs to society.
I don't even think Amazon wins on cost. It also wins on convenience and completeness. If I need to find a book or research on a subject, I'm not going to peruse a local book store, I'm going to use a Library Catalog, Amazon Search, or Google Search, from the convenience of my phone or desktop. Local book stores being the same price, or even cheaper, isn't likely to influence my initial tendency to preview on the Web…
Now the world is my oyster.
But people are desperate to save the local Waterstones that stocks nothing but sports biographies and celeb cooking books...
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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!
To prevent a tragedy of the commons type situation. I may think that local businesses are better than online monopolies. However, my purchasing decisions, whether I change to local or buy online, will have a negligible effect on the market. Might as well save myself some money if I won't be saving local businesses. If everyone thinks like this then the tragedy of the commons occurs. Everyone prefers local businesses…
What’s the commons in this case?
Other people’s bookshops? Other people’s books? They aren’t commons.
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No, Jeff Bezos loses. Everyone else wins. Yes, the consumer pays more for a book but he also lives in an economy with better paid jobs, free healthcare, free education, and more competing bookstores. Amazon's low costs is only possible because they externalize their costs to society.
There is no such thing as free health care or free education. You pay it through heavy taxation where France is the champion.
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No, Jeff Bezos loses. Everyone else wins. Yes, the consumer pays more for a book but he also lives in an economy with better paid jobs, free healthcare, free education, and more competing bookstores. Amazon's low costs is only possible because they externalize their costs to society.
No, Amazon's low costs are because of scale economies and physical network effects. Exxon's low costs are because they externalize the costs to society. Let's be accurate. They may have some externalities but it's not a big part of their business. Also price fixing the books doesn't imply better paid anything, there's no large causal connection there. Overall this is a win for pirates, inefficient booksellers and Ama…
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is actually protecting the small book stores, right? Big stores like the Fnac could offer the same shipping prices as Amazon (and maybe they're already doing it). Publishers don't care much who is selling the book as long as it's selling. Obviously this only applies to physical books. Ebooks only account for about 15% of books sold in France unlike the US where it's close to 5…
> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is actually protecting the small book stores, right? Looks like it's protecting everyone except the book buying consumer.
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…
> Most centralization incrementally kills local industry And it makes the world more fragile and less diverse and interesting. Capitalism is founded on the idea of many producers competing for many customers. Amazon model steps as middleman so producers have only one buyer, and consumers have only one seller. That gives them a lot of power to control prices, and what is produced or consumed.
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Physical books are valuable. Some people just prefer them over ebooks. As physical items, making and distributing copies is non-trivial and costs money. Due to their scarce nature, it actually makes sense to sell them.
Right, but without copyright, anyone can copy and reprint any book that gets written, and the original author doesn't get paid.
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To prevent a tragedy of the commons type situation. I may think that local businesses are better than online monopolies. However, my purchasing decisions, whether I change to local or buy online, will have a negligible effect on the market. Might as well save myself some money if I won't be saving local businesses. If everyone thinks like this then the tragedy of the commons occurs. Everyone prefers local businesses…
The commons are resources that are owned and shared by all. What’s the commons in this case? Other people’s bookshops? Other people’s books? They aren’t commons.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem
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No, Jeff Bezos loses. Everyone else wins. Yes, the consumer pays more for a book but he also lives in an economy with better paid jobs, free healthcare, free education, and more competing bookstores. Amazon's low costs is only possible because they externalize their costs to society.
No, Amazon's low costs are because of scale economies and physical network effects. Exxon's low costs are because they externalize the costs to society. Let's be accurate. They may have some externalities but it's not a big part of their business. Also price fixing the books doesn't imply better paid anything, there's no large causal connection there. Overall this is a win for pirates, inefficient booksellers and Ama…
When you use temps in stead of real employees, you externalize their healthcare etc. as well.
When you sell books in Europe, but you don't pay taxes like European bookstores, you externalize that as well.
When you use predatory pricing for more than a decade, and it kills off real bookstores, that's an externality as well.
When you ship items one by one with trucks and planes, you have a large CO2 footprint. Again an externality.
Amazon is not some genius new high-tech business model, winning because they are smarter than everyone else. It's just low wages, predatory pricing, tax avoidance and disregard for the environment.