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Money rules everywhere. Courts in the German state of Baden-Württemberg also recently forcibly privatized the State Forestry Service's logging operations becau
by lima 7y ago
Money rules everywhere.
Courts in the German state of Baden-Württemberg also recently forcibly privatized the State Forestry Service's logging operations because they were considered a monopoly (the "Forstkartell") and the sawmill industry sued in hope of lower timber prices.
This forced the regional Forestry Service departments to split into two organizations - the logging operations and the government authority, now regulating its former self. Government and state forestry services are now supposed compete with each other on prices.
Of course, this ended up increasing timber prices due to the resulting mountains of paperwork, the organizational chaos that would be expected from splitting up a hundreds of years old government organization, and the extra personnel/training required.
Lawyers got paid and tax payer money was burnt, and the main purpose of the Forestry Service - environmental protection and research - suffers from the overhead.
Oh, and the state-ran broadcasting organizations need to delete productions - paid for by everyone's broadcast tax money - from their online media libraries after a few weeks because private media organizations sued because it supposedly competes with their for-profit streaming services.
- dmix 7y agoGermany also killed Walmart there via existing entrenched shops simply complaining about the price competition. That seems far more German to me than something the US would tolerate. They rank below the US in economic freedom, but not by much: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom As you mentioned it might be a regional thing. But maybe I'm being idealistic considering the US's general shift away from markets and the cronyism in certain pet industries.
- toohotatopic 7y ago>Germany also killed Walmart there via existing entrenched shops simply complaining about the price competition. Do you have a source for that? My impression was that Walmart couldn't beat the already low prices of the German market.
- Faark 7y agoSeems like they sold products below cost to drive out competition, with this apparently not being allowed in some US states / Germany, at least for staple food. https://ilsr.org/walmart-charged-predatory-pricing/ https://ilsr.org/walmart-charged-predatory-pricing/
- iforgotpassword 7y ago> Germany also killed Walmart there via existing entrenched shops simply complaining about the price competition. First time I heard that. The generally accepted explanation over here is that they couldn't match prices of established chains that had well optimized supply chains, and that they absolutely failed to account for cultural differences regarding how to deal with customers and employees. Edit: https://youtube.com/watch?v=58_BZjnbMyw https://youtube.com/watch?v=58_BZjnbMyw
- sitkack 7y agoGrocery stores in Germany are 1/2-1/3 the price of the US. I could see Walmart botching a German operation.