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This sounds to me like they are saying "Their business model is more efficient, and therefore it will be hard to compete with it, so let's ban it instead".
by mnx 10y ago
This sounds to me like they are saying "Their business model is more efficient, and therefore it will be hard to compete with it, so let's ban it instead".
- pauletienney 10y agoIt is a part of the reflexion but not the whole. Everything is not about business.
- mnx 10y agoSure. But this really comes off to me as a self-interested move by the people who have the time, and money to shop in expensive local shops, and want their existence to be subsidised by those who would prefer to save time & money by choosing Amazon, but will be forced not to. I can get restrictions to business sometimes, this just does not seem at all justified.
- pauletienney 10y agoThe local discount supermarket is less expensive than Amazon.
- mnx 10y agoAfter taking time, effort and - importantly - differing product quality into account?
- elthran 10y agoYeah, seems to be the general French modus operandi
- toyg 10y agoWell, it's a respectable point of view. Efficiency is not the be-all-end-all of life, or we'd have gas chambers instead of hospices.
- mnx 10y agoSeriously? You have a fair point, but did you really not have a more subtle way to phrase it?
- toyg 10y agoMy mother works in a hospital and is constantly going on about the disproportionate amount of time and resources dedicated to older patients. European media is obsessed by the cost of pensions on public finances, and is equally obsessed with clamoring for all sorts of experimental cures (which disproportionately benefit the elderly) to be paid by the public purse. Old people are inefficient, and a weight on competitiveness. I bet Chinese pensions are pretty meager, right? That is, if they get one at all. Follow those arguments with coherence, and you can quickly and painlessly reach the conclusion that older people "had a good life but it's time to go now". Why don't we do that? Because we hold other values apart from economic efficiency and other systemic measures. This is just a very quick and direct way of stating it.
- mnx 10y agoYeah, but going from "This seems like an anti-competitive intervention without much justification" to "If we are all about efficiency, let's kill old people" is an example of slippery slope fallacy, if I've ever seen one. It's unreasonable to assume I see economic efficiency as the only value. So it would be a better argument to point to what important benefits (not in an economical or easily measured sense) are gained from forbidding people to choose how they want to obtain groceries. Instead I feel like you are trying to attack me, and paint me as a ruthless homo-economicus, who eats babies, because they are nutritious.
- toyg 10y ago> It's unreasonable to assume I see economic efficiency as the only value Then it's unreasonable for you to assume any intervention to stop Amazon is unwarranted. You've already read the motivations, so there is no point in me re-stating them; but you prefer efficiency above Parisians' quality of life and economic stability. So I say fine, let's prefer efficiency above everything. I've not attacked anybody, I've just shown you the limits of a system of thought based on economic efficiency. It's not my fault if they look bad.