6 ms·

As a Parisien, I can give you my humble opinion. I totally like Amazon move, I am sure it can be convenient and save me ton of time BUT I will never trade this

As a Parisien, I can give you my humble opinion. I totally like Amazon move, I am sure it can be convenient and save me ton of time BUT I will never trade this time for the liveliness of my neighborhood. I love having a walk from my flat, go to the butcher and my vegetable seller. I like it because I can see the products, because it creates a sense of community in the neighborhood, because I know the butcher and he knows me. Performance, convenience and business is a part of my life but it will never be my whole life. Btw, I would be very interested by different cultural point of view on this whole story.

insertnickname 10y ago
If that's what you prefer, that's perfectly fine. If other people prefer to shop with Amazon, that's also perfectly fine. Let the market decide rather than government bureaucrats.
- pauletienney 10y ago
  I totally agree it is fine to prefer either solution. However I disagree with your proposition about "market" vs "bureaucrats". I think (imho) business logic and free market are not efficient enough to guarantee quality of life.
  - 6502nerdface 10y ago
    So, even though you "agree it is fine to prefer either solution," you are willing to use literal, blunt force against your own neighbors to prevent them from using the solution that they prefer? That's neither self-consistent nor very neighborly.
    - pauletienney 10y ago
      It is absolutely fine to let Amazon come in Paris, I would strongly be against a ban. The issue is their economic power might erase a bit of the charm of Paris and lower my quality of life. That's why the political power counterbalances this.
      - insertnickname 10y ago
        If enough Parisians prefer to buy from local shops rather than Amazon, the local shops will stay. Amazon can only outcompete local shops if Parisians prefer Amazon's offering.
        pauletienney 10y ago
        I guess it is not that simple. The immediate price signal is a stronger incentive than the longterm diversity of the neighborhood. Humans are not very good for long term thinking. Often, people needs immediate consequences of their action to judge them.
- chii 10y ago
  Or the existance of the super efficient mechanism will kill the inefficient one, and hence, those who prefered the local butcher/grocer will not get their preference served.
  - insertnickname 10y ago
    If they want an inefficient system, they should pay for it.
    - emp_zealoth 10y ago
      They already are with higher prices. How about Amazon paying for traffic caused running bits and bobs back and forth?
      - insertnickname 10y ago
        They are already doing that by paying taxes. If Parisians will accept higher prices at local shops, then those shops will continue to exist. Amazon cannot "kill" them unless Parisians prefer Amazon.
- toyg 10y ago
  "Government bureaucrats" are democratically elected, so everyone actually gets a say in their decisions; whereas "the market" is just "people with money". So when you say "let the market decide" you're actually saying "let people with money decide". That might not be the optimal approach in all things.
  - dmichulke 10y ago
    No, a majority gets a say in democracy. That is usually almost 50% less. Oh and then there are those governments who don't care about votets after election. That's why I prefer the market, YMMV
  - ci5er 10y ago
    No. A democracy says that 51% of the people get to decide for everyone. One size fits all. A free market says that anyone can buy any product/service any way that they (as an individual) like, as long as that product/service is available at a price they can afford. To me[fn], #1 sounds like "mob rule" and #2 sounds like "freedom to choose". [fn] I am certain that many will disagree with this formulation.
    - x5n1 10y ago
      Yes freedom to choose what the sellers choose to sell which is determined by what is most profitable. Those things can include many things that are not in any way optimal from the perspective of the consumer. For instance fatty addictive foods. Sure you get to decide, but go to a grocery store. Most of the things there are garbage. Why? Well they are profitable to sell. They are addictive. They are cheap to produce so you can get a high margin. They are loaded with salt, sugar, carbs. They are made of corn. That's a parable for the whole economy. People only produce profitable things, and that profit has to be significant, i.e. 3x for many food items. So you get a few corporation with billion dollar budgets that dominate the market with variations of the same thing, 100s of kinds of potato chips or whatever. And shut out variety, health and so on. You have choice to buy, but the seller has the choice to sell you whatever and destroy smaller competitors through competition and limit variety. Those shelves cost a lot of money and only the most profitable things stay on them, that's by design. You can not compete with these guys because they have an economy of scale and you will no matter how hard you try achieve the same level of efficiencies to have any significant impact on the market. And even if you do, they will copy you or buy you out and then slowly turn whatever you were trying to do in the profit objective, corrupting it.
- pyrale 10y ago
  Being from Paris too, there is a huge boom in delivery services. While I'm fine with this, the negative impact on traffic safety, fluidity, the pollution etc. are currently not priced in, and it's a huge problem. So while I'm not really agreeing with the reasons quoted by the mayor, I could definitely see a severe tax on this kind of business, because I'm sick of getting almost flattened by scooters driving on sidewalks.
  - joshstrange 10y ago
    > While I'm fine with this, the negative impact on traffic safety, fluidity, the pollution etc. are currently not priced in Should brick and mortar businesses also be taxed extra for the increased traffic safety and pollution caused by citizens traveling to their stores to buy products? If anything I would expect delivery services to reduce both these problems.
    - pauletienney 10y ago
      People dont use cars in Paris to do groceries.
      - tropo 10y ago
        This is pretty strange. Do they eat less? Do they not have kids? That may be it; the rate is low in Europe. The thought of walking to multiple shops just to buy food is a nightmare scenario to me. Considering just milk, I probably go through roughly 2 gallons (eh, 9 L) per day. I probably go through twice that much in juice. There will be a couple loaves of bread, 2 or 3 kg of meat, a hand of bananas (don't bruise them!), several large tomatos, half a kg of chocolate... That's one day. Judging by filled grocery carts, it's about 0.2 cubic meters of stuff, a.k.a. 200 L of stuff. I think that comes to about 200 kg, given that the density of metal and glass (containers) kind of compensates for air pockets. I could make 10 trips. Ugh. I could enlist all the little children, marching them through whatever bad weather there may be and trying not to lose any along the way. While we walk, the ice cream melts and the glass bottles get dropped. Think how many little kids would be needed to transport 200 L weighing about 200 kg. I don't see how this is viable. Are you living on dried food? Milk powder is just not the same, and I've never even seen real juice powder. Assuming juice powder even exists, I'm sure it won't be like not-from-concentrate orange juice with extra pulp. I'm imagining a family trudging through the winter snow in Paris. Everybody has a huge aluminum-frame hiking pack, including kids who are barely old enough to walk. To avoid losing any kids along the way, they are roped together kind of like a chain gang. It still takes multiple trips.
- btbuildem 10y ago
  Thats why we have different countries, with different cultures. You can stay in America with your market, he can stay in France with his local community.
jssjdhfuriu 10y ago
I think this comment about sums up why Europe/France is no longer a force in the emerging powers of the world and has mostly been stagnant in recent memory. People have become content in their ways and are no longer hungry for improvement/change.
- mfoy_ 10y ago
  To be fair, what's wrong with valuing community over economic growth? If the country has enough to support a high quality of life, why sacrifice principles and values for more? Economic growth is not the be all end all of human existence.
- toyg 10y ago
  There are many different ways to be "a force". France is still very much an active force in military terms, well above "rising tigers" like India or China in terms of deployment abroad and engagement in crisis scenarios. Their economy might be slightly stagnant, but they are still very, very rich in aggregate. Just because they don't agree with English-speaking media and their vision of the world, it does not mean they are not hungry for change. They are so hungry for change, in fact, that they've been rioting for weeks. What they are not hungry for, probably, is the obsession for worldly riches and conservative consumption-driven lifestyle that Asian and American interests keep pushing. That might not be a bad thing.
  - pauletienney 10y ago
    Good summary. I feel Europe has has a culture of dominance until 19th century, then we changed for a culture of balance. US and Asia still have this culture of dominance.
- Brakenshire 10y ago
  Honestly, what nonsense. More like, the reason why the French obesity rate is 17%, compared to 23% in the UK, and 34% in the US. These are some of the factors which maintain health - to do exercise as part of your daily routine, and to be able to buy good quality food and cook it yourself. Then, to have enough time to spend with friends and family, and to have access when necessary to good quality healthcare. It is valuable to have a culture which makes these fundamental requirements accessible and normal. There is no point in squeezing out every short term marginal improvement in economic efficiency regardless of the health of the people who are supposed to be reaping the economic rewards.
arebop 10y ago
I live in San Francisco, and I think these delivery services are great for all the things I do not enjoy buying: soap, paper towels, socks, bicycle pump. Having those things delivered gives me more time to peruse the cheese shop, the farmer's market, the butcher shop, and the bakery. Also sometimes, like holidays, I find I need some ingredient and it's better to have it delivered than to quiesce all my cooking activity, roundtrip to the store, and resume without breaking my timeline.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- x5n1 10y ago
  I think this is the biggest selling point of online merchants. People are so rushed for time, i.e. jobs take most of their day and leave them exhausted, they don't want to make unnecessary errands for things that they know they want. They want to press a button and be done with it. That's why big department stores are screwed they waste so much of your time making you walk all over the place in hopes that you will make additional purchases.

insertnickname 10y ago

If that's what you prefer, that's perfectly fine. If other people prefer to shop with Amazon, that's also perfectly fine. Let the market decide rather than government bureaucrats.

pauletienney 10y ago
I totally agree it is fine to prefer either solution. However I disagree with your proposition about "market" vs "bureaucrats". I think (imho) business logic and free market are not efficient enough to guarantee quality of life.
- 6502nerdface 10y ago
  So, even though you "agree it is fine to prefer either solution," you are willing to use literal, blunt force against your own neighbors to prevent them from using the solution that they prefer? That's neither self-consistent nor very neighborly.
  - pauletienney 10y ago
    It is absolutely fine to let Amazon come in Paris, I would strongly be against a ban. The issue is their economic power might erase a bit of the charm of Paris and lower my quality of life. That's why the political power counterbalances this.
    - insertnickname 10y ago
      If enough Parisians prefer to buy from local shops rather than Amazon, the local shops will stay. Amazon can only outcompete local shops if Parisians prefer Amazon's offering.
      - pauletienney 10y ago
        I guess it is not that simple. The immediate price signal is a stronger incentive than the longterm diversity of the neighborhood. Humans are not very good for long term thinking. Often, people needs immediate consequences of their action to judge them.
chii 10y ago
Or the existance of the super efficient mechanism will kill the inefficient one, and hence, those who prefered the local butcher/grocer will not get their preference served.
- insertnickname 10y ago
  If they want an inefficient system, they should pay for it.
  - emp_zealoth 10y ago
    They already are with higher prices. How about Amazon paying for traffic caused running bits and bobs back and forth?
    - insertnickname 10y ago
      They are already doing that by paying taxes. If Parisians will accept higher prices at local shops, then those shops will continue to exist. Amazon cannot "kill" them unless Parisians prefer Amazon.
toyg 10y ago
"Government bureaucrats" are democratically elected, so everyone actually gets a say in their decisions; whereas "the market" is just "people with money". So when you say "let the market decide" you're actually saying "let people with money decide". That might not be the optimal approach in all things.
- dmichulke 10y ago
  No, a majority gets a say in democracy. That is usually almost 50% less. Oh and then there are those governments who don't care about votets after election. That's why I prefer the market, YMMV
- ci5er 10y ago
  No. A democracy says that 51% of the people get to decide for everyone. One size fits all. A free market says that anyone can buy any product/service any way that they (as an individual) like, as long as that product/service is available at a price they can afford. To me[fn], #1 sounds like "mob rule" and #2 sounds like "freedom to choose". [fn] I am certain that many will disagree with this formulation.
  - x5n1 10y ago
    Yes freedom to choose what the sellers choose to sell which is determined by what is most profitable. Those things can include many things that are not in any way optimal from the perspective of the consumer. For instance fatty addictive foods. Sure you get to decide, but go to a grocery store. Most of the things there are garbage. Why? Well they are profitable to sell. They are addictive. They are cheap to produce so you can get a high margin. They are loaded with salt, sugar, carbs. They are made of corn. That's a parable for the whole economy. People only produce profitable things, and that profit has to be significant, i.e. 3x for many food items. So you get a few corporation with billion dollar budgets that dominate the market with variations of the same thing, 100s of kinds of potato chips or whatever. And shut out variety, health and so on. You have choice to buy, but the seller has the choice to sell you whatever and destroy smaller competitors through competition and limit variety. Those shelves cost a lot of money and only the most profitable things stay on them, that's by design. You can not compete with these guys because they have an economy of scale and you will no matter how hard you try achieve the same level of efficiencies to have any significant impact on the market. And even if you do, they will copy you or buy you out and then slowly turn whatever you were trying to do in the profit objective, corrupting it.
pyrale 10y ago
Being from Paris too, there is a huge boom in delivery services. While I'm fine with this, the negative impact on traffic safety, fluidity, the pollution etc. are currently not priced in, and it's a huge problem. So while I'm not really agreeing with the reasons quoted by the mayor, I could definitely see a severe tax on this kind of business, because I'm sick of getting almost flattened by scooters driving on sidewalks.
- joshstrange 10y ago
  > While I'm fine with this, the negative impact on traffic safety, fluidity, the pollution etc. are currently not priced in Should brick and mortar businesses also be taxed extra for the increased traffic safety and pollution caused by citizens traveling to their stores to buy products? If anything I would expect delivery services to reduce both these problems.
  - pauletienney 10y ago
    People dont use cars in Paris to do groceries.
    - tropo 10y ago
      This is pretty strange. Do they eat less? Do they not have kids? That may be it; the rate is low in Europe. The thought of walking to multiple shops just to buy food is a nightmare scenario to me. Considering just milk, I probably go through roughly 2 gallons (eh, 9 L) per day. I probably go through twice that much in juice. There will be a couple loaves of bread, 2 or 3 kg of meat, a hand of bananas (don't bruise them!), several large tomatos, half a kg of chocolate... That's one day. Judging by filled grocery carts, it's about 0.2 cubic meters of stuff, a.k.a. 200 L of stuff. I think that comes to about 200 kg, given that the density of metal and glass (containers) kind of compensates for air pockets. I could make 10 trips. Ugh. I could enlist all the little children, marching them through whatever bad weather there may be and trying not to lose any along the way. While we walk, the ice cream melts and the glass bottles get dropped. Think how many little kids would be needed to transport 200 L weighing about 200 kg. I don't see how this is viable. Are you living on dried food? Milk powder is just not the same, and I've never even seen real juice powder. Assuming juice powder even exists, I'm sure it won't be like not-from-concentrate orange juice with extra pulp. I'm imagining a family trudging through the winter snow in Paris. Everybody has a huge aluminum-frame hiking pack, including kids who are barely old enough to walk. To avoid losing any kids along the way, they are roped together kind of like a chain gang. It still takes multiple trips.
btbuildem 10y ago
Thats why we have different countries, with different cultures. You can stay in America with your market, he can stay in France with his local community.

jssjdhfuriu 10y ago

I think this comment about sums up why Europe/France is no longer a force in the emerging powers of the world and has mostly been stagnant in recent memory. People have become content in their ways and are no longer hungry for improvement/change.

mfoy_ 10y ago
To be fair, what's wrong with valuing community over economic growth? If the country has enough to support a high quality of life, why sacrifice principles and values for more? Economic growth is not the be all end all of human existence.
toyg 10y ago
There are many different ways to be "a force". France is still very much an active force in military terms, well above "rising tigers" like India or China in terms of deployment abroad and engagement in crisis scenarios. Their economy might be slightly stagnant, but they are still very, very rich in aggregate. Just because they don't agree with English-speaking media and their vision of the world, it does not mean they are not hungry for change. They are so hungry for change, in fact, that they've been rioting for weeks. What they are not hungry for, probably, is the obsession for worldly riches and conservative consumption-driven lifestyle that Asian and American interests keep pushing. That might not be a bad thing.
- pauletienney 10y ago
  Good summary. I feel Europe has has a culture of dominance until 19th century, then we changed for a culture of balance. US and Asia still have this culture of dominance.
Brakenshire 10y ago
Honestly, what nonsense. More like, the reason why the French obesity rate is 17%, compared to 23% in the UK, and 34% in the US. These are some of the factors which maintain health - to do exercise as part of your daily routine, and to be able to buy good quality food and cook it yourself. Then, to have enough time to spend with friends and family, and to have access when necessary to good quality healthcare. It is valuable to have a culture which makes these fundamental requirements accessible and normal. There is no point in squeezing out every short term marginal improvement in economic efficiency regardless of the health of the people who are supposed to be reaping the economic rewards.

arebop 10y ago

I live in San Francisco, and I think these delivery services are great for all the things I do not enjoy buying: soap, paper towels, socks, bicycle pump. Having those things delivered gives me more time to peruse the cheese shop, the farmer's market, the butcher shop, and the bakery. Also sometimes, like holidays, I find I need some ingredient and it's better to have it delivered than to quiesce all my cooking activity, roundtrip to the store, and resume without breaking my timeline.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
x5n1 10y ago
I think this is the biggest selling point of online merchants. People are so rushed for time, i.e. jobs take most of their day and leave them exhausted, they don't want to make unnecessary errands for things that they know they want. They want to press a button and be done with it. That's why big department stores are screwed they waste so much of your time making you walk all over the place in hopes that you will make additional purchases.