On the Difficulty of Communicating Libertarian Views to the Broader Public
Monday, May 7th, 2007Ten days ago, the Swiss Federal Council refused to exert its statutory power to exempt the Swiss price fixing scheme for German-speaking books from the general prohibition of cartels. (Before that, the Federal Supreme Court had confirmed its illegality according to the Swiss Law against Cartels.) To sing a counterpoint to the massive PR campaign by the (former) cartel members–publishers and bookstores–, I decided to write a letter to the editor of our local newspaper.
Hereby, I experienced how difficult it is to put forward libertarian arguments in a persuasive way. It seems easier to argue why the still many small bookstores need to be protected against “ruinous” competition by Amazon and the big chains. Plus, in a situation where prices for bestsellers will fall, but not those for books that are less popular but considered to be of greater cultural value, it is much easier to stress the (unfounded) danger that the latter book will become more expensive than to justify why “vulgarish” bestsellers should be cheaper.
After all, I tried my best. If you happen to speak German, you may want to form your own opinion about the result. Here it is.
Fearing that straightforward economic arguments are not convincing to most people, I decided to add a cultural (and slightly patriotic) point: First, I observed that more people will be able to afford more books when prices fall as they already do. Then, I pointed out that–contrary to a popular argument by the cartelists–it is not the cartel that was responsible for the broad range of books Swiss consumers can enjoy to choose from, but rather our vivid “book culture”. For the latter, not only authors and publishers should take credit, but all of us, as we buy their books. I went on to say that the cartelists rightly point out that books are cultural assets. If books become more affordable, enabling more people to buy more of them, this will strengthen our book culture, to the benefit of all of us–not least the publishers and authors who make a living from them.
