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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

#81

Post by supertrope »

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…

In the United States Robert Bork advanced the “consumer welfare” philosophy of anti-trust policy. It allows for monopolies that provide lower prices or better products/service even if competition is crushed. In the European Union loss of competition is a harm per se.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#82

Post by Seattle3503 »

Shadonototra wrote: post #36
Waterluvian wrote: post #16

Not a big fan of Amazon but I also find it ridiculous and self-sacking to fixate on obsolete ideas. If you have to force a business to exist, maybe it doesn’t need to exist.

It's more than just a "business" The reason of the downfall of our civilization is because of that specific problem, you think about everything as a business, including countries

It doesn't seem like much of a downfall when you look back at history.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#83

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

Waterluvian wrote: post #16

Not a big fan of Amazon but I also find it ridiculous and self-sacking to fixate on obsolete ideas. If you have to force a business to exist, maybe it doesn’t need to exist.

There’s a wide gap between “forcing a business to exist” and 100% unfettered capitalism. My preference is to be somewhere along that spectrum, not at either end.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#84

Post by black_13 »

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…

Power? I miss book stores.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#85

Post by ineedasername »

Hokusai wrote: post #72
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.

producers have only one buyer, and consumers have only one seller.

Monopsony and monopoly all in one.

For international HN'ers, a question: is the boardgame "Monopoly" popular in your country? Here in the US it's an old classic.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#86

Post by bryanrasmussen »

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.

>Is there a word for laws that disproportionately affect people in rural areas so that a government can play protectionist for urban companies?

how much of a difference does urban / rural divide make in France regarding such effects?

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#87

Post by ineedasername »

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.

They may not be subsidizing shipping at all beyond the amount they would normally discount new books, but law prohibits such discounting as well. Books could be a loss leader here, but I'm not sure of it.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#89

Post by notriddle »

xattt wrote: post #78
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.

I think the point is about the era before railroads, which is also the era before personal automobiles.

Cars are post-railroad. It can be true that car-centric places are less interesting, while it is also true that the railroad killed local culture.

Re: France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon

#90

Post by caslon »

WalterBright wrote: post #17
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.

> I hate Amazon as much as anyone The fashionable thing to say, indeed! Yet the anyones are all covertly buying from Amazon, working for Amazon, and investing in Amazon.

I hate Amazon because of their refusal to free their stack despite using and distributing plenty of AGPL software. I hate Amazon because they push software patents. I hate Amazon because they're anti-union. I hate Amazon for lots of reasons.

At the same time, I also realize that there are plenty of good things about their existence, as someone who grew up in an area without a good library.

Being good for a specific thing that is partially their fault (Amazon supports terrible intellectual property laws as much as any big company with their political donations, which prevents the market from being able to function efficiently; there's no reason Chinese sellers shouldn't be able to print out-of-print technical books, for example) doesn't make them good, or make me hate them any less.

I don't buy from Amazon, and I don't invest in Amazon, and I don't work for Amazon. I'm relatively consistent, but even people who aren't consistent aren't hypocrites for participating in society when they disagree with how it functions.

I think that voting isn't ideal, but I still vote, because it's available. This is pretty natural; it isn't some shocking abandonment of moral principles. Nor is using a company's services despite it being an awful actor in society because you can't afford anything else (partially because of their position and participation in society, which is worth pointing out).

I'm as capitalistic as anybody, but Amazon's a bad actor that's contributing to the destruction of capitalism by encouraging intellectual property laws and making political donations encouraging ending things that actually help the market like ePacket.

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