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Well we have Carrefour (second largest retail store chain after Walmart).

I understand your position from an American point of view but I don't agree with it. What you see as unnecessary regulation we see as the right way of governing, and what you see as protecting dying industries we see as preserving a way of life.

Since 1981 (or so) the price of books has been fixed by law. Nobody can sell them lower than that price. If you walk through Paris (or most cities) you'll see a number of small library shops that contribute to local economy and culture. I find that very nice!

Other retail industries have not been so lucky. Many smaller towns (10-50k inhabitants) have seen their city centers die out because of large outlets opening outside of town, and because of Amazon. I guess you could the say that the free market has decided what was the future. But these cities have become dead towns, people have moved to the suburbs, contributing to sprawl and car pollution. Social life has been reduced, and a recent study showed that the far right/protest vote was higher there. Today the political opinion is starting to shift and there's talk of more regulation to try and preserve smaller cities.

Anyway, there's a lot more that could be said in this eternal debate between the "American" and "European" point of view. But I mean we're not Soviet Russia. We may not have Facebook (I can live with that) or Apple (that would be nicer), but regulations are only part of the issue. And we're not clinging to some antiquated world view, we're just trying to make sure change doesn't crush people too fast.

But the French public chose to shop at the large outlets. But there are some that find it ok to restrict freedom to essentially subsidize a “way of life” that they value — despite other people not also valuing it as much (otherwise, why would they shop at Auchan?)

The individual should be trusted to enjoy their own way of life without government forcing people into some idealized way of life devised by politicians who have tax-payer funded hairdressers making €11,000 per month as Hollande did.

Meanwhile a typical French person has to deal with crazy-expensive taxes and ridiculous protectionism that, for example, prohibits buying aspirin at a supermarket. Or even a supermarket that stays open past 9pm. Allowing people to buy aspirin at a supermarket isn’t going to “crush people too fast.” Except maybe pharmacists. But solving my headache is worth more to me than saving a pharmacist’s “way of life.” Pharmacies do just fine in the US despite not having a monopoly on over-the-counter medicine. But, attempt to change the law, which rational French have suggested, and pharmacists go on a national strike.

https://m.france24.com/en/20140930-french-pharmacists-strike...

There is a reason the French economy is stagnant — and stagnation crushes a country far more profoundly than innovation or market liberalization.

French wine is the “best in the world,” (according to the French,) yet they have high tariffs on US wines to “protect” an industry they claim is the best? French winemakers hijack Spanish trucks and dump thousands of liters of wine into the streets to protest. And the French public allows these policies to continue — despite, ironically being fully in control of the wine they purchase at the supermarket. It’s a great illustration of people wanting to “preserve” a way of life — until it inconveniences them. Market liberalization doesn’t change anyone’s way of life unless they want it too. People could still avoid shopping on Sundays, buy only French wine and reject all things foreign. However, that isn’t what the public wants: they want freedom to live “their” way of life, not some idealized way of life imposed upon them. French people aren’t characters in a movie and they deserve the freedom to buy what they want, when they want and from whom they want. They deserve the freedom to engage in commerce in a way that optimizes for their needs. Certainly have some common sense regulation such as health and safety, but what business is it of the government if I want to buy aspirin at a fucking supermarket at 10:30pm and some supermarket is willing to sell it to me? If such freedom would “crush” people, then let the. Be crushed. I have a headache and don’t have time the desire or inclination to hunt around the countryside for the government-designated overnight pharmacy just so I can wake up a reluctant pharmacist to buy aspirin or whatever I need.

For those not aware of the overnight pharmacy system in France, here is some interesting reading: https://excuseme-whereis.com/site/d58c88a9255a4289a5b812d3b3...

My point is that France is being crushed already — not from liberalization but from stagnation. Liberté sure — as long as it doesn’t piss off the pharmacists or farmers

In many cases, self-optimization by individuals is nefast in a socio-economic environment that actively seeks out concentrating benefits and externalizing detriments.

Let's take cars as an example. For every 'individual' owning a car is better than not owning a car. After all, whether you own a car or not, you live in the same pollution and discomfort caused by everyone else having cars. So you might as well part-take in the benefits rather than only suffer the downsides.

HN readers are a smart analytical crowd so they are not afraid of models and numbers. Here goes:

Take a toy world with 1000 'people'. In this toy world, you get 500 'enjoyment' points from owning a car, a huge benefit, and you get -1 'enjoyment' points from someone else owning a car, a small detriment. It is clear that when nobody would own a car, the aggregate sum of all 'enjoyment' points would be 0. Nobody cares about the aggregate as each 'rational' consumer is trying to optimize their own benefit.

For each and everyone, the 'optimal' decision is to get a car, even if they might notice at first the small negative impacts, as it immediately ups their 'enjoyment' by a serious amount. Sure, some other people buying cars brought my enjoyment to a small negative number, but getting one myself immediately offsets that.

It is not until fairly late in this cycle, in this model when the number of cars exceeds 500, that the individual perception that the world was better off without cars altogether might set in. However, even when this occurs, the 'rational' decision for every consumer is still to buy/own a car. If everyone has a car, then everyone's enjoyment sits at an abysmal -500, yet getting rid of your own car immediately brings you enjoyment down to -999.

These systemic 'race-to-the-bottom' scenarios exist in many forms in the real world, and are the underlying mechanic in many of the most detrimental situations we find ourselves in, environmentally, but also socioeconomically. They can only be curbed by collective restriction on 'freedoms', something that is blasphemy to many, I know, and nearly impossible to achieve through our current political organization.

There are no easy answers to this. However, every time you hear someone utter things like 'vote with your wallet' when you object to the negative externalities something has , know that they are promoting a system that inherently leads to disaster.

For the wine part, I don't know if you are aware but foreign wine still have a very bad reputation in France, foreign wine account for 5% of the total sales in France, so you have 5% for Spain + Italy + Portugal + the new world all together, that's pretty much nothing. The only common foreign wine I've ever seen is maybe Porto, that's the only exception and probably a good part of these 5%. They are an absolute niche and a tough sell even without any regulation. I know a lot of people who would not trust foreign wine at all. Additionally, France has not adopted the English way to categorise wine and still uses the French way, which does not help to sell foreign wines there.

And for the pharmacists, I'm living now in Asia and I appreciate the French system even more because at least in France you can trust pharmacists without any doubt.

This reflects my experience with France (living just next to it, spending most weekends there). It is truly a beautiful country, but system and mentality is something I will never ever want to live in.

They don't have democracy, they have anarchy - when any industry decided it wants more money, they take rest of the country as a hostage and they don't give a fraction of a fck about consequences to others lives (trains, airlines, taxi drivers, farmers, anybody). In other couturiers those people at one point would go to jail. You want to fix a broken heater in an apartment? Well it took 1.5 years, ping pong excuses, with ridiculously high costs. Trade jobs are ridiculously protected, to the point where there is no competition and end user pays eye-watering sums for mediocre services. French colleagues, patriots they may be, prefer much more hiring Portugese or east European workers to french ones. And its not only about prices, quality and motivation is worlds apart.

I mean, many young still think communism is some ideal to strive for, that tells you enough how good spirited but desperately naive and out of touch with real world this country is. This gap is going to widen much more before it will get better. To think they want to create startup hubs is a joke, and a very bad one. I mean, even Macron has some pretty sour statements about how messed up and unfixable French state and mentality is. And he has nothing to win to publicly state those things, only to lose.

It's a typical place which has huge potential, due to its location, beauty and human 'capital' (highly educated masses), but never will come even close to realizing this potential for many reasons. The system is broken, everybody is doing whatever they want and fck the rest, rules and law are a joke to ignore and resist, corruption is very high (and like ie marital cheating, is semi-accepted as 'a french way').

The only sane discussion about these with a french person can be if that person has lived outside France for some time. Otherwise its always 'France is the best country in the world, end of discussion'.

You think these are some outsider's sour opinions? No they come mostly from my french colleagues.

> Since 1981 (or so) the price of books has been fixed by law. Nobody can sell them lower than that price. If you walk through Paris (or most cities) you'll see a number of small library shops that contribute to local economy and culture. I find that very nice!

How many times have you bought something in one of those shop this year?

I see lot of people trying to defend the postcard way of life. Even if people living there don't want to be part of the postcard and want to enjoy modern things. Like cheap books so you can read a lot for not too much. There's only one kind of shops offering the postcard dream for cheap concerning books: used book stores. You can enjoy trying to find some specific book but you usually end with a dozen books you never heard of and can discover new authors.

I've bought a few books in a physical store... well, last year at least. My go-to place to buy books is online but not Amazon: booklooker.de has a very nice no-nonsense user interface to buy used (and new, but I prefer used) books from... mostly small bookstores.

By the way, small bookstores in Germany have incredibly good logistics and had them even before Amazon: Order a book until 15:00-18:00 (not sure / may also depend on location) and it's there for pickup next morning. Faster and more reliable than Amazon. Whether it's more or less convenient than Amazon depends.

In France I'd buy online at Carrefour and cdiscount. (I'd do that a lot, because businesses in France tend to close on Sundays.) Online marketplaces do exist and in addition to those two they have smaller, niche marketplaces for specific markets such as electronics, biking or outdoor sport equipment, etc.

People in France do not shop (online shopping included) as much as Americans. They have less access to credit and less credit card debt. We don't hear about the French Amazons because, in part, the market, which is a smaller market that spends less, doesn't support Amazon-sized things by itself. (The EU market is a bigger fish, and Carrefour in particular has spread across Europe and to Asia and Africa... it really is "Walmart for the rest of the world".)

Anyway, assuming you have never lived in France or any EU country for any length of time, you'll have to take me at my word that the locals don't wish they lived in a deregulated market where they, too, could work 5 part-time jobs for less than minimum wage.

(French wine and cheese are, in my personal opinion, not actually better than some wines and cheeses to be found in America. However, I greatly appreciated that their kooky laws on acceptability of other countries' wines and cheeses meant that I could get 100g of any of about 50 cheeses for $4, something impossible most supermarkets in the US -- Walmart if you're reading... cheap Brie please, thank you. As a consumer of cheese, I found French laws more pro-consumer. As a consumer of flat screen TVs, there is no beating America, although those of your states that still do sales tax need to get on with the program.)

Somewhat related. I'm a huge bookworm. I think there is a healthier, in the sense of promoting newer authors, leaving less decisions in the hands of gatekeepers, etc book industry on your/our side of the Atlantic. But I kind of miss the fixed price for paperbacks France has (used to have, I don't remember). I used to buy books all the time there, whereas here, I can't really afford that too much and just go to the library.

> the competitive and regulatory environment doesn't seem allow for it. Laws on hiring and firing workers[...]

Well that's the philosophical standpoint. To put it bluntly (and oversimplifying just for the sake of getting my point across) do we want a society where economy serves the well-being of people or is the economy is the end goal and or we willing to crush the workers for it? Lately, inequalities in wealth distribution and quality of life are intensifying in developed countries.

France has Carrefour.

Europeans would typically object to tax avoidance and sidestepping labour regulations; Amazon should compete equally with the existing businesses. If like to see much more done by the EU and national governments to close loopholes.

Economic or business efficiency is also not the only goal of Europe.

There seems to be some philosophical disagreement here: what obligation is there beyond the letter of the law? If the tax code and labor regulations permit a legal maneuver, and that something is generally accepted as being legal, how is taking advantage of that maneuver sidestepping regulation?

In this context being upset at an organization for "tax avoidance and sidestepping labour regulations" seems to me to be about as rational as being upset at water for flowing downhill. What's more, there's nothing inherent to these loopholes that favors American companies, and yet it's almost universally American companies that are being targeted for this regulatory mob justice.

I call sour grapes and attempt to reformulate my original point: American companies, the most vigorous of which have emerged victorious from the survival-of-the-fittest meat grinder of the American business environment, have set their sights on the comparatively sclerotic European continent, and are on a tear. To which the European system responds not by encouraging competition, thereby strengthening its own offerings in the long run, but by backdoor regulatory protectionism.

I'm sure it's satisfying in the short term to siphon off a fine here and a tax there from these companies, but they're just going to keep coming. Either the EU steps up its approach to competition or it drowns in American tech prowess.

The entire point is that having mega-corporations like Amazon or Walmart is not the goal, their very existence should be prevented.

The entire point is that profit at all costs, the very system you defend when you describe it like a natural law, is a pure dystopia, and shouldn't exist.

Having many small, independent stores is desirable not even just because of competition, but also to provide an environment that allows a certain kind of society to exist in the first place.

A society where american mega-corporations are dominating while avoiding taxes kills competition because smaller competitors don't have the same advantages. You end up with huge stores at the edge of town, as walmart often does in the US, and as result destroy walkability and accessibility of the entire urban environment.

I live in a city in Germany where exactly that is happening. I'm now 22, in my childhood we had dozens of stores nearby. Two small supermarkets, a drug store, two pharmacies, three bakeries, a post office.

Nowadays out of all these, one pharmacy and one bakery are left.

The next supermarket is 2km away, and everyone drives there.

Instead of parents sending children to go by foot and buy that loter of milk they forgot, they drive every time.

As result, roads got more congested and had to be widened. Sidewalks were the first to be removed or made smaller to give way for more lanes. Also, walking to the stores you'd always meet other people, and walk together and talk.

In 18 years, this district went from being a walkable place with a healthy social environment to a suburban hellhole, just because larger chains built ever larger supermarkets and killed the small competition.

I'm moving to a different city in a few months, one where this hasn't happened yet, where everyone, child or adult, can still reach everything by foot, and where the streets are still calm enough that children can walk on the wide sidewalks without much risk. A place where there are still many smaller stores, each selling different stuff, giving together much more choice than the big retailers do.

How did those small stores get “killed?” Who’s fault is that? The town voted to kill those stores when they stopped buying from those stores. Nobody forces you to go to a large store. And, if the public actually wants cheaper products, how do you have any right to oppose them optimizing for their own situation? That’s democracy in action: people vote with their wallets. If they cared about their kids buying a liter of milk, they’d have their kids still buying those liters of milk. Big stores didn’t put the small stores out of business — the people of your perfect little town did by exercising freedom. And you seem to be arguing against freedom to assuage your selfish nostalgia? Perhaps vote for lower taxes so people could afford to shop in overpriced small shops? Perhaps vote to eliminate all tariffs so that consumer products could be cheaper? Perhaps vote for fewer regulations so small shops wouldn’t be crushed by taxes and Byzantine labor laws. Try starting a small shop in France and see how hard it is to even open the doors, let alone make a profit. But the same people that lament the death of the small shop have no trouble voting for leftist politicians that create the very regulatory environment that makes those small shops unprofitable.

Playing the devil's advocate here, but:

- Some people may relate democracy more to a vote-with-ballots activity (among others aspects of democracy of course), more than the "vote with your wallet" thing you describe. If a town both votes for big shops with its wallet and for small shops with its ballot, which option has it voted for?

- Some people may think that the outcome of indoviduals optimizing their own situation is often, but not always socially optimal. That's why for instance taxes are mandatory and not voluntary - otherwise no or few optimizing individuals would pay. Usually, the story is that central small shops have large positive externalities (sustaining what the comment you replied to call a "certain kind of society") and suburban malls have large negative externalities (congestion, decreased walkabikity for everyone else). Those exertanilities are not taken into account when people optimize their situation, leading to a suboptimal market equilibrium.

> A society where american mega-corporations are dominating while avoiding taxes kills competition because smaller competitors don't have the same advantages.

Here is an idea: remove the taxes so everyone is on an even playing field.

One of the worst example of this is in France is the crédit recherche, meant to help R&D. But you need people who know the system to get this money so who get it? Huge CAC40 companies like Orange. The small companies? They pay the taxes for this so the bigger ones can enjoy their money.

> There seems to be some philosophical disagreement here: what obligation is there beyond the letter of the law?

Spoken like a true sociopath. The world doesn't exist purely for each and everyone to scheme their way through, the world is generally a much better place if everyone works to improve the world instead of their own standing in it. Here is where the disagreement comes from (very broadly speaking): Americans hold the utilitarian point of view that if everyone chases their personal goals the world will improve, while Europeans think the world will improve if everyone works towards common goals. In the latter worldview, the law isn't the only boundary to observe, it's merely the option of last resort.

Here's where the utilitarian approach falls flat: it only works if everyone is of comparable power. Having one or two mega-corporations that have more power than entire countries is not going to produce a universally better society.

> I'm sure it's satisfying in the short term to siphon off a fine here and a tax there from these companies

I'm sure it's equally satisfying for American companies to siphon off European profits to overseas territories while giving nothing in return.

> what obligation is there beyond the letter of the law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law

> sidestepping labour regulations

The beauty of digital "self" publishing is that there are no labor regulations for Amazon to be side stepping. It's likely that the Amazon engineers and VPs that made self publishing possible are compensated more highly than their EU / French counterparts.

Now, maybe a Kindle isn't manufactured and shipped up to EU/French regulations or norms; but that isn't even directly involved; and I'd suggest that some of the traditional publishers do similar side steppings when sourcing or delivering hard copies. (And in the case of paper vs digital, there is simply much more labor to sidestep - if for instance, we assume 50% of Amazon's sales will be to existing Kindle owners)

> Europe in general but France in particular seems completely unprepared for the changes

No, that's not really true, but even so, sluggishness as opposed to wild progress is not a bad thing, actually.

You are missing the point. The traditional publishers didn't want to publish the book although it was good. This is a rhetorical: why? The consequences were: instead of following the traditional approach the author turned to other means of making the book available to the public. That's it.

The main problem I see isn't the speed of adopting changes as that can be a bit guesswork as to what will stick around as opposed to being a flash in the pan. It is that the cartels are wildly entitled and expect the hammer to be brought down on any who dare to enter their domain as a competitor. That doesn't have the best track record for success to put it mildly.

European Farmers have derailed a trade bill not because of the bad copyright clauses or the downright stupid corporate sovereignty portions that allowed for suing for lost profits /regardless of circumstances/ of legislation but because they wouldn't pass labeling laws that expected others who had produced Parmesan cheese and champagne wine for centuries to allow them to be the only ones to provide it to the world. There were many good reasons to oppose the bill yet the stupid one won out.

Agreed. The pace of change in most industries in France nowadays is very slow.

That is why innovation is just not happening in France anymore.

The money is not there. The market is small and people are broke due to the low wages/high taxes that the government keeps on increasing everywhere.

> That is why innovation is just not happening in France anymore.

Who cares ? It seems that France is a nice country to live in :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

"Innovation" is not everything.

References? I only see vague assertions...

> entire charade of fines for "anti-competitive behavior"

Isn't this the same sort of thing as the US anti-trust legislation?