

Amazon says France's new bill is 'discrimination' - tareqak
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24383113

======
lkrubner
I have several friend who have left New York and moved to France, mostly
because they find the lifestyle so relaxed. The French work less than citizens
of the USA, and yet they manage to remain a highly affluent society:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(nominal\)_per_capita)

Consider these OECD stats on hours worked:

[http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=ANHRS](http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=ANHRS)

Average hours worked: 1,479 hours worked in France in 2012, versus 1,790 in
the USA. Over 300 hours, which is more than 7 weeks of full time work, which
the French avoid. That's over 7 weeks of vacation that the French enjoy, while
the people of the USA are working. The French accept a smaller per capita
income in exchange for a great deal of leisure.

My friends tell me that France is especially pleasant as a nation to raise
children in, as the relaxed lifestyle makes it easier to achieve something
like a balance between family and work. In the USA politicians, and movies,
tend to adopt a strong rhetoric about being pro-family, but having the leisure
to spend time with one's kids is, from what I'm told, easier to achieve in
France.

France manages its economy in a manner that is heavy handed, when compared to
the style that's been adopted in most of the English speaking countries. The
advantages of this heavy handed management should be carefully considered: an
affluent yet relaxed lifestyle.

~~~
skwirl
I really don't see the relevance of your comment. All of what you are saying
may be true, but what does it have to do with allowing Amazon to offer
whatever discounts they want? In what way does this law promote an "affluent
yet relaxed lifestyle?" Wouldn't being able to afford more books because they
are cheaper on Amazon make me effectively more affluent? Wouldn't the free
delivery make me more relaxed?

~~~
dionidium
_Wouldn 't being able to afford more books because they are cheaper on Amazon
make me effectively more affluent?_

I think the argument is that cheaper books might make you more affluent in the
sense that you'll have more money, while at the same time promoting a
competitive work culture in which it's not possible to use that money to buy
time off. In the U.S. I can't trade my money for more vacation. My job is all
or nothing. If what I value is time off then what good is money if I can't use
it to purchase time off?

~~~
jordanthoms
Sure you can buy time off in the U.S, you just need to work that out with your
employer rather than the Government determining the right amount of time off
for everyone.

~~~
dionidium
You're right that I am free to do this in that it is not illegal, but you're
pretty out of touch with most jobs in the U.S. if you think that means I
actually can do this.

------
noarchy
'Everyone has had enough of Amazon'

By "everyone", they undoubtedly mean the ones who could not compete. Amazon's
customers are probably not complaining.

~~~
adrianb
I guess you're not familiar with the social-minded European person. They often
prefer local businesses with a personality (I go to the book store and have a
chat with the owner and other customers... maybe drink a tea, read something
right there...) to the big corporation, even when the big corporation offers
the same products cheaper.

~~~
GeorgeOrr
If that's the case, why do they need to pass a law preventing giving the
customers a discount? Apparently, it's the competition that doesn't like it.
Oddly, customers like discounts and free shipping. Good thing the French
government is there to set them straight.

~~~
rustynails
Should we ban anti-dumping laws? Think about your post for a moment - if a
company can afford to run at a loss long enough to destroy the competition, is
that good in any way? There is always a balance between service and price ...
If there is competition and a level playing field.

------
GeorgeOrr
They gave their customers a 5 percent discount AND free shipping. Thank
goodness that evil isn't allowed to continue.

~~~
shiftpgdn
A mono-culture is never healthy for an environment. Letting Amazon destroy all
competitors would eventually allow for a monopolistic business. Where do you
think book prices are going to go once Barnes and Noble finally bankrupts?

~~~
mseebach
Protecting market incumbents from competition isn't exactly great for an
environment either.

~~~
gutnor
France is selling globally (tourism) its atmosphere, lifestyle and culture.
Cities around Europe are spending enormous amount of money to revitalise their
city centers after the devastation caused by huge mall and supermarket built
in the 80's. So that make sense for the country to try to preserve them
_before_ they are destroyed.

Also considering the simultaneous threat coming from the ebook that is also
not such a bad idea to give physical shop some breathing space to adjust their
business model. From France perspective again, it is choosing between having
to pay social security to those failing business owners with tax money, or let
Amazon clients foot the bill instead.

So depending at what level you look at: Book Market, Global Economy, US
Economy or France Economy, there are many readings you can have.

~~~
GeorgeOrr
It makes me wonder, does anyone know if the Model T customers where charged a
Buggy Whip welfare fund surcharge?

Just curious.

~~~
gutnor
Model T vs Buggy Whip is a radical change. The closest that could apply to
this case would be EBook vs Physical book.

But that's not what this is about. France has a regulated market for book.
When stuff happen, like a player that manage to dodge the regulation thanks to
specific circumstances, regulation need changing.

If you want to wonder about something, wonder why does France regulate book
market ?

------
koalaman
France is the text-book example of a country falling into irrelevancy through
the protection of the status quo.

~~~
vacri
The French believe that culture is important, and that weighs into their
economic decisions. I'm not sure why that should be ridiculed.

~~~
noarchy
If the French really believed this, as a people, then the government would not
need to intervene. Amazon would lose on its own merit. This is a vocal
minority at work, comprised of the losing side (smaller bookstores), and
sympathetic legislators.

~~~
vacri
Governments have longer vision than the general public, and see knock-on
effects much further down the track. It's not to say that governments are
visionary, but they're used to thinking in the longer term. One example is
that the usual time to pass all your unpopular legislation is right after
you've been elected, because it will have been forgotten about by the next
election, unless it was a real stinker.

Another example is that governments have to be aware of growth patterns to
plan infrastructure - they're operating at a different scale. Individuals
often don't see the forest for the trees.

The 'free market' argument is really bad at long-term planning.

~~~
GeorgeOrr
So above when you said "The French believe that culture is important" you
meant the French Government. Not the short sighted People of France, who you
believe need to be protected by the long sighted wise government.

Governments never make short sighted political decisions to protect entrenched
interests. The People on the the other hand have to be protected from getting
discounts and free shipping. Because that would be a bad financial option for
them.

Thanks by the way, I needed a laugh today.

~~~
vacri
Myopic comments like this are really irritating. Who do you think votes the
French government in? The Germans?

Democracies tend to gravitate around the center of what their people want. If
the people consistently vote to one side, then the centre will move to that
side. This is a cultural process of years - and yes, you're exhibiting exactly
the forest-for-the-trees thinking I was talking about.

~~~
GeorgeOrr
Sorry, didn't mean to be so myopic and iritating.

To answer your question, I think the same people voted for the French
governement as the ones who are daily clicking on Amazon quite happily.

Do you think they are mistaking forests for trees when clicking on Amazon, but
expressing great wisdom when voting?

Do you think that when the politicians voted on this particular law, they were
thinking of the people or the business interests that fund them?

~~~
vacri
If you can't take derision of your comments in stride, then you shouldn't
start that ball rolling yourself.

 _mistaking forests for trees_ \- That is not what that idiom means. It has
nothing to do with being confused or being mistaken.

 _but expressing great wisdom when voting_ \- No, but what you're doing here
is reclassifying my attempts at discussing nuance into a silly dichotomy of
extremes. Even if nothing else, I never said the French were _wise_ \- nor
unwise for that matter. That's you trying to strawman me into a ridiculous
position. I said that long-term, over the course of years, democracies settles
around certain tenets. For the French, the importance of culture is one of
them.

You're free to have the last comment, as I'm done here.

------
smackay
Ah France, the land of contradictions, but mostly political posturing. My
excellent, French, local, FNAC* store, competes spectacularly well with Amazon
and often undercuts them on price - certainly for electronics and probably for
books too. This law is probably going to hurt them as well and may ultimately
be to Amazon's benefit.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fnac](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fnac)

~~~
bambax
Mmm... no. FNAC is not excellent, doesn't compete "spectacularly" \-- or at
all, is laying of hundreds _just this week_ and in general is a horrible place
to shop.

------
nhebb
We all owe the French a great deal. After all, they voluntarily act as the
world's test tube, running bad economic experiments for the edification of the
rest of us.

------
mseebach
It's funny how it's styled as an "anti-Amazon" bill (I don't know if it's
styled like that in France, or if it's BBC editorializing, but I think it's
pretty safe to assume).

Usually when laws "stick it to the corporations", there's at least the
expectation that the cost will come out of the corporation's profits. Then if
the corporation raises prices, they can be derided for that. But this is
actually not possible here - this mandates a direct, customer-facing price
increase. I wonder what will happen to support for the law when consumers
realise this.

------
misnome
It's been a few years since I've heard of it, but didn't france always have
crazy bookseller-protection laws? I definitely remember there being some law
against selling books (or anything?) below the listed RRP, or something
similar.

~~~
plerophoria
They have had "Lang Law" in France since 1981 apparently. This prevents
individual booksellers from undercutting publisher prices and essentially
establishes a price fix on books. It protects booksellers from big bookstores,
which is basically the same issue that this article is talking about.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Law)

~~~
LanceH
And it protects customers from getting too many books.

~~~
teamonkey
It's in the publishers' best interest to set a suitable RRP value. Too high
and their sales would be eaten up by used copies (which aren't subject to this
same law).

~~~
FeloniousHam
How would this play out in the current ebook marketplace? There are no used
ebooks to put the squeeze on printed "new" ebook price.

~~~
teamonkey
ebook prices are moderated by the same price-demand rules as everything else.
Availability of a cheaper hardcopy of the book vs. utility and desirability as
an ebook; availability of a pirated version vs. the desire to own a legal
copy; etc.

------
lindaverse
"Today, everyone has had enough of Amazon, which, by dumping, slashes prices
to get a foothold in markets only to raise them once they have established a
virtual monopoly."

Not to say they might not do that in the future; but aah, generally Amazon's
modus operandi has been to continue reducing prices even when they have a
'virtual monopoly'.

~~~
LanceH
Also illegal as a monopoly.

1\. high prices - price gouging 2\. low prices - anti-competitive 3\. same
prices - collusion

Once a company becomes a monopoly -- even if it's because they are the only
sane choice -- everything they do can be construed as illegal.

~~~
mimiflynn
Not unlike Walmart.

------
bane
Of course this isn't "fair". In countries without competitive industries
(either because those industries are growing, or because they're fading), the
domestic lawmakers want to give local business a leg-up over foreign
businesses. For example, this kind of protectionism was a major strategy of
South Korea's industrial growth policy.

A more specific example, for _many_ years (and perhaps still today), to help
foster the domestic film industry, foreign movie imports (which were usually
American films, Japanese media has been entirely illegal until very recently)
were artificially limited at some small number. The idea was to provide a
little competition in the form of high-budget, high-quality films but give
enough room for local film makers to figure out the top-to-bottom of making
competitive movies. It was a garden fence to let air and light in, but keep
damaging critters out. It worked, the Korean film industry is booming, growing
and has started exporting and Korean TV dramas are watched heavily all over
the region.

So, it's no surprise that France, with a strong literary heritage, wants to
protect the entire domestic market and supply chain, from writers to publisher
to retailers in order to keep such a cultural activity "French". The question
is, is it just a wall to keep outsiders out, or is it a garden fence with a
growth plan to grow and eventually export French literary culture like Korea
exports Movies and Dramas?

------
spindritf
> The BBC's Paris correspondent Christian Fraser said the bill "might be seen
> as payback" for Amazon's practices of reporting European sales through a
> Luxembourg holding company, to take advantage of comparatively low corporate
> tax rates.

God forbid Amazon pays less in taxes and then passes the benefits over to
consumers. How will we then finance the so needed new EU armed forces? Or
welfare for third world immigrants who come here after we bomb their
countries?

~~~
startupLover420
Elon Musk should create a new startup to rival Amazon, based on open source
technosocial interactions and entrepreneur-focused javascript, if the EU
shackling Amazon like this.

~~~
yesplorer
_open source technosocial interactions_?

Holly Molly! what the heck is that? please enlighten me!

~~~
startupLover420
bitcoins

------
tareqak
Why did this post get bumped off of the front page? The article is not spam,
it got upvoted by a decent margin within in an hour, and it had almost fifty
comments in an hour.

~~~
gutnor
Load of heated comment like "France is shit" ?

I think I read somewhere that it was a feature of HN to remove article from
the front page when those kind of things happen. (take that with a grain of
salt)

~~~
CrazedGeek
I believe that a post is pushed off the front page quicker if it has more
comments than upvotes. (likewise, grain of salt)

------
AlisdairO
It's interesting.

I wonder if this kind of protectionism will become more common/useful as
lower-skilled jobs become harder and harder to come by. In the past, reduction
of prices via higher efficiencies (= fewer jobs) has generally been a near-
universal good: it freed up the workforce for other, more useful activities.
Nowadays, there doesn't seem to be any new segment of industry spurring lower-
skilled job growth. The flip side of prices getting lower is that job
availability/quality goes down.

One could see France's stand against higher efficiencies as, effectively, a
form of monetary redistribution. Perhaps the choice is between a society with
low prices and a large underclass of un/under-employed, or higher prices and
most people being able to make ends meet. If you're going to choose the
higher-prices approach, the French method of redistribution at least maintains
valuable cultural elements and a culture of needing to work - as opposed to
straight benefits.

------
jotm
Well, the French gov and the book stores can suck it, everyone can order from
neighboring countries. I still can't understand how they don't get that it's a
global economy (not to mention the EU, which each member country just
disregards when it comes to various laws)...

~~~
ernesth
Two things: 1. french books are more expensive in neighboring countries; 2. if
you order from another country, you legally still have to pay french tax in
addition to the tax from the source country...

~~~
jotm
Damn, I completely forgot that the books are _written in French_... In my
mind, everyone's reading in English, plus Amazon.de probably doesn't store
English and French books, either...

------
willyt
A lot of the discussion on this thread has descended into a slanging match
about French regulation and work life balance vs US libertarianism and
customer service. This is mostly missing the main point which is that Amazon
has an unfair advantage because they are large enough to take advantage of
loopholes in EU sales tax law to gain a ~15% price advantage over local
businesses selling the same products. France can't change the sales tax rate
of neighbouring countries so they have introduced a new law which is a hack
that tries to cancel out this unfair advantage in other ways, and they must be
careful to do this without infringing EU competition law. Hence the targeting
of certain business practises of 'internet retailers'.

------
wuliwong
If this was an article stating that the US govt. passed legislation which
ultimately made prices higher at IKEA, I would be furious. Footnote, I reside
in the US.

------
ffrryuu
Feel free to not do business in France then .

------
ianstallings
Because keeping things exactly the same is how a system thrives..

------
LekkoscPiwa
of course. Just making sure anti-business image the country has is emboldened
even more. 75% tax on top earners and now this. It's not that 75% tax hurts
many people. The only thing it really does is propagating france image as a
country that treats capitalism, investment and private initiative with the
highest dose of suspicion. Thats nit a society thats enetrprenually friendly.
It's almost funny how many french i know that prefer to do art and fashion in
new york than paris just because france would penalize them for being
succesful. And definitely it's not france that gains in the long term due to
short sighted and populist left wing policies like this.

~~~
tokenizer
That said, I don't see how another "non populist" argument could be justified
by a government...

Both the left and right of their government has approved this law. While I
understand this is more in line with authoritarian politicking than
libertarian politicking, they do make a decent locale/culture argument against
a cultureless behemoth like Amazon.

~~~
LekkoscPiwa
I'd rather have people vote with their money than having politicians making
people to pay more.

If they want to make France stronger they wouldn't be killing its enterprenual
spirit every time they can.

~~~
tokenizer
The way I see it, this is them simply penalizing a monopoly. While you could
argue some subsidize their income through Amazon, many more actual French
citizens earn their income through independent brick and mortar shops.

I honestly don't see how restricting Amazon alone affects the market that
much. It wouldn't affect my aspirations towards publishing a book or
marketplace.

~~~
LekkoscPiwa
Thank you for your reply.

>The way I see it, this is them simply penalizing a monopoly.

Starbucks has a monopoly to sell coffee in France? Amazon has a monopoly to
sell books in France?

What are you talking about?

>While you could argue some subsidize their income through Amazon, many more
actual French citizens earn their income through independent brick and mortar
shops.

And in the free market economy this would be a sign that maybe, just maybe,
they need to: A) Get much better at this OR B) Start doing something at what
they are good enough that people go there and pay them on their own for their
services of products.

I'm not saying it's easy. All I'm saying is that you won't be able to protect
them forever. It's good to treat them like gown-ups right from the get-go
without assuming that they are too stupid to do something useful for the
broader public.

>I honestly don't see how restricting Amazon alone affects the market that
much.

Then why to insist on doing it?

>It wouldn't affect my aspirations towards publishing a book or marketplace.

Good.

