Brickbat: Never Low Prices

The French government has banned supermarkets from offering discounts of more than 34 percent on shampoo, toilet paper, toothpaste, and other personal items. The law effectively bans "buy one, get one" discounts, and it has applied to all food items since March 2023. Supporters of the law say it protects small stores that cannot compete on price with large retailers.

Comments

[MWAocdoc]

There will always be someone who needs protection from Big Brother. Democracy is just another way of saying that simple majorities and powerful pluralities can impose their vision of society on everyone - for at least a little while anyway. Until the power shifts to a different group and someone else gets to impose a different vision of society on everyone. Democracy doesn't "protect" anyone by itself. Democracy is simply a tool that we accept as less bad than a wide range of other tools such as dictatorship, monarchy or anarchy. The thing that tends to protect the most people most often are constitutional, but only if there is a clear consensus that NO ONE has the authority, no matter how large a majority they have, to impose their preferences on everyone. Only if the Constitution lists a small number of necessary rules that cannot be changed without a very large consensus will a stable government protect each person's individual rights against the chaos which is evolving currently. It takes a deep understanding shared by a vast majority of Americans that my best protection against becoming tomorrow's victim depends on my protecting today's victims against the mob.

[sarcasmic]

‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’

--Churchill

[Fist of Etiquette]

Supporters of the law say it protects small stores that cannot compete on price with large retailers.

Just wait for Pandemic 2.0 where it's the maman et papa stores that get shut down in favor of big chains again. (Unless the eurotrash didn't do that last time in which case figure your own joke out.)

[Chumby]

Thankfully, France allows each customer to make the decision where to shop and what prices they want to pay. Oh wait.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Never been to France on a Sunday, I see...

[AT]

lol, punish the consumer. Make them take it on the chin.

"For the greater good, they emphatically say, always meaning someone other than yourself."

[Roberta]

Yes, yes, their prices may be low, but are they...Sofa King low?

What stores can do with their overstocks is what they do in the USA: donate them to food pantries.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Didn't Bernie already tell us the proper woke socialist policy about shampoo and deodorant?

[Medulla Oblongata]

Bernie also said that bread lines are a good thing.

[n00bdragon]

I predict new temporary permanent price decreases.

[Ajsloss]

shampoo, toilet paper, toothpaste, and other personal items

Wait, we're talking about the French, right?

[Chumby]

French trannies don’t shave their balls.