kingpaul said:
Wait, lemme see if I have this right. The EU has disallowed capitalism? ... Why can't corporations sell their material for whatever price they want? ... If the distributors did not want to be shackled with those up-front restrictions, then they did not have to choose to accept them. As it is, they did so choose.
No, they are not disallowing capitalism, they are trying to force competition in much the same spirit that most American laws that restrict 'free-range' capitalism do (ie, anti-trust laws). Remember that competition is something that generally has to be looked after and enforced.
We have price-fixing laws in the US, too. Several record labels and retailers were fined under these laws at the first of October of this year, charged with keeping CD prices artificially high. Sotheby's and Christie's were indicted under the same laws.
Price-fixing is... Establishing the price of a product or service, rather than allowing it to be determined naturally through free market forces. Often illegal. [Def. InvestorWords.com]
Another definition: Horizontal Price Fixing is a conspiracy by retailers, wholesalers or manufacturers to fix prices. General Use: Horizontal Price Fixing is a method of stifling competition or taking advantage of customers.
Read those again. In other words, Price-fixing is not a capitalistic (ie, free-market) tactic. It's a way for a corporation to control prices. Remember that competition generally has to be enforced and looked after because companies, by their very nature, abhor competition. Every company wants to be a monopoly, the sole source for a product or service.
Hasbro, according to the AP story... enter[ed] into price-fixing agreements that prevented the distributors from selling Hasbro toys and games below Hasbro's list price without permission.
Distributors may or may not have had the option of not carrying Habro if they wanted to stay in business. After all, 'choice' in business is often the choice between keeping your doors open or not, with little wiggle-room there.
Distributors (I have no idea how the contracts are constructed for most retail distributors, so I'm assumung here that they have free choice in what and who they carry) could either chose to agree to the Hasbro orders or not carry Hasbro.
Hasbro has the largest market share of any toy maker in Britain, and the British spend more on toys than any nation in Europe (
http://www.thisismoney.com/20011212/nm41673.html) . Retail outlets want to carry Habro products, so they are going to order from distributors that ship those products. Therefore, for a distributor to stay in business, it's a pretty fair assuption that he 'has' to carry Habro products or (1) somehow make up all that lost revenue with other products or (2) lose out to the other distributors that do carry Hasbro. Yes, they do have the right to choose not to carry Habro, but is any distributor going to be able to carry out that choice? Can they justify that choice to their stockholders or whatever controlling entity runs the distributor? Rarely, if ever.
By the way, this is not the first time Hasbro has been accused of price-fixing. In 1997, Toys 'R' Us, Mattel, Little Tykes and Hasbro were charged with conspiring to fix prices by withholding popular toys from discount price warehouse clubs.
What does all this mean for D&D?
Look at it this way: doesn't a retailer want to be able to sell the product for what HE wants? If I run ABC Toy Distributors, should I not be able to price my Player's Handbook for $1.00 less than CDF Toy Distributor down the street? The retailer, in all likelihood passes those savings on to you.
Price-fixing means that I have no choice between retailers for the best price, which means no competition between retailers. Competition is one of the cornerstones of capitalism.
[Edit][An Addendum: Another question that might be asked is 'Why can't Retailer X buy some toys from Distributor A, and the rest from Distributor B?' They can, but that element of 'choice' enters into it again. I'm not sure how most retail distributors work, but I do know how most comics distributors work -- I am assuming they are roughly the same, but I also know that different industries sometimes have very, very different policies. If someone in the know can make a definate statement, I'd love to know for positive. But, as far as comics distributors, the discount a retailer gets depends on how much he orders from a particular distributor. If he splits the order, he doesn't order as much from either source, thus his discount is probably not as great, thus the order costs him more. He passes that increased cost on to you, either in the form of increased prices, or the inability to compete with the retailer across the street who DOES order all from a single distributor. This might cause your FLGS to go under.]
Admittedly, that's partly due to the level of VAT in the UK, but even when you factor out the tax difference, they're still priced about the same. That's one of the reasons why I rarely buy GW products. Someone should report them to the Office of Fair Trading.
