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France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

reuters.com

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Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#71

Post by bduerst »

saddlerustle wrote: post #38
bduerst wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, we've successfully reduced spending on Amazon by >90% in our household. There are still some obscure items that, due to the sheer spread of Amazon, are incredibly difficult to get anywhere else, online or off - but that was Amazon's original market benefit to begin with. You could always get that weird book on Amazon that you couldn't get in the book store.

Good for you. For me, after the local grocery store went to shit, with Prime Now and Amazon Fresh I've shifted almost all our spending to Amazon.

Yeah, we were lucky in that we had a couple good options locally for produce other than Whole Foods too. The Safeway has gotten really bad, and the mail services I tried were all over the place.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#72

Post by Hokusai »

throwaway789257 wrote: post #50

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.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#73

Post by idiotsecant »

throwaway789257 wrote: post #50

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, including the local culture industry. TV, railroads, chain stores, Wal-mart, you name it -- they are all killing something local.

This is probably true, but also probably inevitable. As the world shrinks we lose local flavor but gain a more commonly held homogeneous culture. I'm not sure that this is new, just faster than it was before.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#74

Post by downWidOutaFite »

arthurcolle wrote: post #26

Oh wow, Amazon is such a threat! Whatever will Larousse and Hachette do... maybe remain competitive? </3

For 2019, before the pandemic, parent company Lagardere made about $200 million on $7 billion in revenue. Amazon made $11B on $280B in revenue. So 40-50 times bigger.

In the last 4 quarters Lagardere lost $376M on $4B in revenue. While Amazon exploded to $29B on $443B in revenue. So more like 100 times bigger.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#75

Post by yellow_lead »

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #20
caslon wrote: post #3

Is there a word for laws that disproportionately affect people in rural areas so that a government can play protectionist for urban companies? I hate Amazon as much as anyone, but in this case they're definitely not wrong , even if they're probably lying about their reasoning.

Specific quote is: > Imposing a minimum shipping cost for books would weigh on the purchasing power of consumers. The other side is a bit more complex, but Amazon is definitely subsidizing shipping costs from their yearly subscription and seller fees. The argument is that this is unfair to smaller companies which don't have capital to burn... and that is kind of true? I think there are valid points on both sides.

Predatory pricing

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#76

Post by [deleted] »

WalterBright wrote: post #47
bduerst wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, we've successfully reduced spending on Amazon by >90% in our household. There are still some obscure items that, due to the sheer spread of Amazon, are incredibly difficult to get anywhere else, online or off - but that was Amazon's original market benefit to begin with. You could always get that weird book on Amazon that you couldn't get in the book store.

Resistance is futile.

[deleted]

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#78

Post by xattt »

throwaway789257 wrote: post #50

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…

> railroads

Would you be able to elaborate on this or was it hyperbole? Personal experience is where there is passenger rail service are inherently more interesting.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#79

Post by bduerst »

WalterBright wrote: post #64
saurik wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this somehow supposed to be inconsistent? One normally doesn't hate Amazon because they are successful, but because they are too successful. This is like claiming making fun of someone who says they hate cigarettes or alcohol because they are "covertly" still using both all the time, or someone who says they hate the food at their school cafeteria despite "covertly" eating it... this "you don't get to say you hate…

My meaning is a bit subtler than your interpretation. I was commenting on the practice of virtue signalling. For example, Seattle rebuilt and renamed the old Key Arena into Climate Pledge Arena. While I am a more ardent environmentalist than most (my virtue signalling duly noted) this name is a local pinnacle of vacuous virtue signalling nonsense.

Just FYI, Virtue Signalling is a pejorative that implicitly marginalizes and accuses someone of abnormal behavior. The GP here is calling that out even if you didn't specifically use the term "virtue signalling" in your original comment - the behavior here is entirely normal.

The phrase's roots come from the alt-right looking for a replacement for SJW accusations not being taken seriously:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior#.22Virt...

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#80

Post by markus_zhang »

throwaway789257 wrote: post #50

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, including the local culture industry. TV, railroads, chain stores, Wal-mart, you name it -- they are all killing something local.

Although I agree with this, but I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing for the customers. Some industries are best centralized and some are not. For the business of selling books I think it's best to have a lot of sellers.

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