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Comment by gutnor | Hacker News Reader

France is selling globally (tourism) its atmosphere, lifestyle and culture. Cities around Europe are spending enormous amount of money to revitalise their city centers after the devastation caused by huge mall and supermarket built in the 80's. So that make sense for the country to try to preserve them before they are destroyed.

Also considering the simultaneous threat coming from the ebook that is also not such a bad idea to give physical shop some breathing space to adjust their business model. From France perspective again, it is choosing between having to pay social security to those failing business owners with tax money, or let Amazon clients foot the bill instead.

So depending at what level you look at: Book Market, Global Economy, US Economy or France Economy, there are many readings you can have.

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As a francophile european not living in France, I'm absolutely thrilled that France again and again volunteers to make their country both quaint and poor (thus cheap for tourists).

As a human, I can not get behind a policy that makes food and books more expensive and harder (or at least less easy) to get at.

It makes me wonder, does anyone know if the Model T customers where charged a Buggy Whip welfare fund surcharge?

Just curious.

Model T vs Buggy Whip is a radical change. The closest that could apply to this case would be EBook vs Physical book.

But that's not what this is about. France has a regulated market for book. When stuff happen, like a player that manage to dodge the regulation thanks to specific circumstances, regulation need changing.

If you want to wonder about something, wonder why does France regulate book market ?

> Cities around Europe are spending enormous amount of money to revitalise their city centers after the devastation caused by huge mall and supermarket built in the 80's.

What cities are you thinking about? I don't know if you're right or wrong, but my data point is a noticeable increase in malls/big chain shops in the three cities I mostly lived in (rome, milan, budapest) in the last ten years.

Many cities in Belgium (Mons, Charleroi), UK (Manchester, Liverpool ), France (Lille) are like that. Major work is done in the center, with peatonal areas, cleaning up of buildings, parks, rework of public transports, ...

That being said I don't know what France is doing here. I just suggest that at country level there are more concern than just the physical book market.

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