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.
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 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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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)