Drawmack
First Post
I just found and read through This Thread
The afore mentioned thread was closed due to people turning the discussion into a political discussion, socialism vs. capitalism, instead of keeping the focus on topic, price fixing good or bad and what do you think of Hasbro doing ing.
First I would like to ask that we all keep this thread on topic.
Second I would like to ask that at the first sign of degeneration the mods close this thread.
Now onto my opinion.
First something that was not mentioned in the old thread is that price fixing involves both floors and ceilings. It is illegal because it can very easily be used to create unfair competition.
Example 1: WotC books are at a floor of the MSRP on the cover. So Bob's discount RPG shop must sell the books at that price. Then a WotC store opens up in the mall across the street from Bob and sells all their books at 85% of MSRP. Now Bob cannot resonably expect to sell a single book unless he, at least, meets this price. But Bob cannot meet that price. Now Bob is stuck swallowing inventory which we all know small businesses cannot afford to do.
Example 2: WotC books have a set maximum price of MSRP. Now WotC knows that they sell to a distributor who must, on average, make a 25% profit off of merchandise in order to stay afloat. So WotC sets a ceiling on their books and then sells them for 73% of the ceiling, thereby forcing retailers to make a slim 2% profit off of their goods.
A producer of a product does have some say in what their products sell for, they do this by setting the price that they sell it at. If I want my books to sell for $30.00 I should hire some accountants to figure out what I need to charge a distributor in order to make that the normal price which a retailer would charge anyway.
Okay so far it sounds like you're ensuring profit so why is this illegal. Let's say that instead of ensuring profit I ensure loss. The PHB must be sold for $5.00 at the most. I then sell it to distributors at a price that makes this a reasonable retail price. At the surface this looks like dumping and therefor should fit under those laws, but it is now. You see I have dumped one book of the line but not the entire line, which is what MS is doing with the Xbox. So now I have this player's handbook that is very attractivly priced at $5.00 so every one is picking it up. Then reasonably most of those sales are going to lead to other sales of other books. So I'll make the money back, but not until I have forced many other RPG companies out of business because GMs like telling their players to but a $5.00 book instead of a $30.00 book.
On a side note: In the US the government price fixes everything that is government subsidised cigarettees, milk, etc. The reason that they are allowed to do this is that in the laws for a legal monopoly the holder of the monopoly is allowed to price fix, with government approval of the prices being fixed upon. Since the way government subsidies work is that the government buys the stuff and the government is a monopoly, they are allowed to price fix as long as they approve of the prices they are fixing.
Just my 2 coppers
