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Comment by jbooth | Hacker News Reader

As a happy Amazon customer: That line is bullshit. Employment law exists for a reason, we don't just accept "oh, that's what the market will bear" for things like unsafe working conditions or workplace sexual harrassment.

Europeans feel that underpaying your employees to the point where they rely on welfare programs to subsidize their paycheck is not only wrong (that's fine, life's not fair) but distorted and not-free-market. I have to agree with them on the distortion part.

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I was careful to say, "assuming they're a US company," because I was trying to point out that, yes, employment law exists for a reason, but Amazon's competitors operate under the same employment laws as Amazon. In fact, I said this explicitly.

Edit: Maybe you're trying to say that Amazon's competitors pay their employees more than Amazon because they have bigger hearts and are willing to crash their businesses before paying (legal, but unfair) low wages. That's a pretty big claim that requires some evidence. I think it's more likely that they are losing for other reasons.

Well, Amazon's French competitors have to comply with French labor law. So there's a mismatch and market distortion there. If they don't want to change their labor law, you can see why they'd take other, ameliorative measures, even if banning low prices seems silly.

At least Amazon can still compete on service and convenience, which are their strengths anyways.

I'm not even saying I agree with labor law in France, I can just see, things being what they are, why this is more reasonable than it looks for them.

Actually, it seems that amazon has 5 warehouses in France, which it ships from and which have to comply with French labor laws. The technology is probably still mostly developed in the U.S, but those workers aren't the ones we're talking about here.

And "hard working strivers" to borrow a line from David Cameron don't like their taxes subsidizing tax dodging foreign companies.

And given the Poujadist nature of french society you can add an order of magnitude at least to how this is considered in France.

Just to bring things back to the article in question ... this law being passed has nothing to do with fair labour pay or practice.

It just makes sure that customers aren't allowed to get 5 percent discounts and free shipping.

> we don't just accept "oh, that's what the market will bear" for things like unsafe working conditions or workplace sexual harrassment.

I would.

And why is that?

Because he's a white male at a non-physical job, presumably. Pretty brave of him.

Speak for yourself @jbooth, I'm opposed to government interference in the employment market.

When haven't they? Ever heard of Lewis Hine? The Factory Acts?

When haven't hasn't who done what? Did you somehow interpret my comment imply that I thought there wasn't government interference in employment markets? silly billy.

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