Socialism strikes again!
In France, an internet book retailer has to pay for provding free shipping:
"The company decided to pay the daily fine worth $1,500 rather than eliminate its offer of free shipping on book purchases, said Xavier Garambois, director of Amazon's French subsidiary.
The law in question "was passed at a time when booksellers were losing sales to supermarkets and other new competitors. It was meant to assure that the French public had equal access to a wide variety of books, both high-brow and low-brow, not just heavily marked-down publications.
"In the Amazon case, a union of French bookstores won its lawsuit against the company last month over the free-shipping offer, which applies only to deliveries within France on book orders of more than €20.
A company comes in and wants provide books at a lower cost upsetting the bookstore union. Because their prices are lower, that means their company is more efficient, saving labor and energy, in comparison to bookstores. So the bookstores via the government want to make a minimum price which means that the French have to pay more for their books, diverting money that would have gone elsewhere in their economy.
It appears justifiable since in France, which has chronic high-unemployment, the bookstores employ so many thousands of people whereas a few distribution centers employ considerably less. Also I can understand because streets of small shops in France are quaint.
A reason for the law might be that the French dislike a non-French company doing well against their own. Ironically, either the cost of the penalty and the legal fees or the loss of competitiveness of not being able to sell as low as possible keeps a small French company with Amazon's model from starting up.
More likely though, it's because France and Europe have taken the socialist way to fix things; they really don't care what's going on just as long as lots of people are always employed. By trying to keep an online distributor out, they are forcing thousands of people to manually do the work that perhaps a few hundred in a warehouse and a some additional mail carriers can do.
I don't care what other countries do, but it worries me that we're trending towards being more socialist. I can't stand to watch the democrats debate because that's all they are and increasingly the republicans seem to be drifting that way, for example the President trying to do something for the people who took out mortgages on houses they couldn't afford. Any time the government intervenes on someone's behalf, it helps one group at the slight disadvantage of everyone else.
Back to France, the extra money customers have to pay to get the same book could have gone elsewhere in the economy--people would have taken that money and bought an additional item or invested it, both of which facilitate innovation which could give rise to new products and industries, which would create new jobs, new technologies, and greater efficiency which makes products' costs decrease, raiseing the standard of living. Instead that money maintains people doing the same old job in shops.
The nice thing about socialism, if you're a socialist, is that the problems it creates can be solved with more socialism. In France the laws that 'protect' workers make them very expensive and hard to fire, making employers reluctant to hire new people causing greater unemployment. From an article about the riots in 2005:
an incredible 21.7% of 15- to 24-year-olds in France were unemployed, compared to only 11% in the U.S. and 12.6% in Britain. France isn't alone -- other European countries, such as Belgium, Spain, Greece, Italy, and Finland -- also have persistent youth unemployment rates above 20%.
To alleviate unemployment, they've started to realize that they need to start repealing existing laws. The socialist safety net doesn't just protect people, it ties them down to the point of strangulation.
"The company decided to pay the daily fine worth $1,500 rather than eliminate its offer of free shipping on book purchases, said Xavier Garambois, director of Amazon's French subsidiary.
The law in question "was passed at a time when booksellers were losing sales to supermarkets and other new competitors. It was meant to assure that the French public had equal access to a wide variety of books, both high-brow and low-brow, not just heavily marked-down publications.
"In the Amazon case, a union of French bookstores won its lawsuit against the company last month over the free-shipping offer, which applies only to deliveries within France on book orders of more than €20.
A company comes in and wants provide books at a lower cost upsetting the bookstore union. Because their prices are lower, that means their company is more efficient, saving labor and energy, in comparison to bookstores. So the bookstores via the government want to make a minimum price which means that the French have to pay more for their books, diverting money that would have gone elsewhere in their economy.
It appears justifiable since in France, which has chronic high-unemployment, the bookstores employ so many thousands of people whereas a few distribution centers employ considerably less. Also I can understand because streets of small shops in France are quaint.
A reason for the law might be that the French dislike a non-French company doing well against their own. Ironically, either the cost of the penalty and the legal fees or the loss of competitiveness of not being able to sell as low as possible keeps a small French company with Amazon's model from starting up.
More likely though, it's because France and Europe have taken the socialist way to fix things; they really don't care what's going on just as long as lots of people are always employed. By trying to keep an online distributor out, they are forcing thousands of people to manually do the work that perhaps a few hundred in a warehouse and a some additional mail carriers can do.
I don't care what other countries do, but it worries me that we're trending towards being more socialist. I can't stand to watch the democrats debate because that's all they are and increasingly the republicans seem to be drifting that way, for example the President trying to do something for the people who took out mortgages on houses they couldn't afford. Any time the government intervenes on someone's behalf, it helps one group at the slight disadvantage of everyone else.
Back to France, the extra money customers have to pay to get the same book could have gone elsewhere in the economy--people would have taken that money and bought an additional item or invested it, both of which facilitate innovation which could give rise to new products and industries, which would create new jobs, new technologies, and greater efficiency which makes products' costs decrease, raiseing the standard of living. Instead that money maintains people doing the same old job in shops.
The nice thing about socialism, if you're a socialist, is that the problems it creates can be solved with more socialism. In France the laws that 'protect' workers make them very expensive and hard to fire, making employers reluctant to hire new people causing greater unemployment. From an article about the riots in 2005:
an incredible 21.7% of 15- to 24-year-olds in France were unemployed, compared to only 11% in the U.S. and 12.6% in Britain. France isn't alone -- other European countries, such as Belgium, Spain, Greece, Italy, and Finland -- also have persistent youth unemployment rates above 20%.
To alleviate unemployment, they've started to realize that they need to start repealing existing laws. The socialist safety net doesn't just protect people, it ties them down to the point of strangulation.
Labels: Books, France, Free Market, government, socialism
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posted by Mike F at 6:50 PM
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