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.
I don't think books are obsolete, many people still enjoying reading them, and buying them. Also, there are plenty of government subsidized programs that are popular with people. No economic model can perfectly match our sensibilities. We as a society protect things that we think need protection. It's really as simple as that.
I wouldn't go as far as saying that in this case they're "forcing" business to exist, rather help existing (and often struggling) local business against bigger (mostly foreign) business who use economy of scales (or willingness to not take a profit for a few years in order to corner a market) to offer the same service cheaper
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.
Fettered capitalism seems to just be whoever is closest to government getting special protection from competitors offering better prices and services. In this case, French book stores.
Unless you own a French book store, the fettering of capitalism is making you poorer.
A “poorly” example (IMO): requiring licenses for beauticians.
The French bookstore case can certainly be argued logically on both sides. Is our society best served (in every sense of the word) by a monoculture of highly efficient megacorps, or an array of smaller businesses?
Maybe that exact thinking paved ways for corrupt monopolies. There is a thin line between trying to force a business to exist vs forcing a huge conglomerate from extinguishing businesses with its money.
It’s forced obsoleting. Forced existence is the pushback. There are better methods though I agree. When we finally bring more manufacturing back to the US I think that’ll be a natural way to put a damper on Amazon’s harm to our country
I was in B+N last summer, and as I recall they had 6 full shelves of "Trump Is Bad" books. I amuse myself by collecting them, and have 36 so far (all different). I pick them up at the thrift store for a buck or two.
I started a Biden collection, but only one book so far. Things that make you go hmmmm....
Presumably there are more "Trump is bad" (weird simplification, but ok) books than ones on Biden because a) Trump has been president longer and b) Trump's actions harmed more people.
Nothing weird about it. Allow me to grace you with a smattering of some of the titles: "Above The Law", "A Warning", "American Carnage", "Collusion", "Commander In Cheat", "Devil's Bargain", "Disloyal", "Fear", "Hoax", "Fire and Fury", "Rage", "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump", "Unbelievable", ...
Yeah. So many problems caused by businesses who simply refuse to die. Their time has passed but they simply refuse to go away and let humanity move on. The entire copyright industry for example.
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.
Under a no-copyright model, people willing to pay for physical books isn't directly linked to publishers/printers still willing to pay the author, though.
While I understand what you're getting at, how do you determine the actual value of the author's labour in advance, though?
Copyright allows you to speculatively publish a work and let that determination of how valuable your work actually was happen afterwards, by taking the number of people willing to pay for it as a proxy for your labour's value.
