Amazon.com has decided to pay fines worth $1,500 day rather than comply with a court order prohibiting the company from offering free shipping to its customers in France.
According to the article at the International Herald Tribune, the French law prohibits discounting books by more than 5 percent (and Amazon’s free shipment counts as a discount). Supposedly, this law “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.”
The French need a a lesson in Econ 101. It doesn’t work that way. Government-imposed price floors most emphatically do not guarantee consumer access to a greater choice of products; rather, they generally result in fewer products and less consumer choice, and at higher prices.
You go, Amazon! I’ve been a satisfied Amazon customer for many years. I might just hop over there right now and buy some more books. Because one can never have too many books. Thanks to Amazon’s great prices and free shipping, I can buy a lot more books than I could if I had to pay artificially inflated prices imposed by the government.
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