Recent quotes:
In Europe’s democracies, small producers and retailers have proven to be more resilient politically. The Czech Republic, Marc Levinson notes, passed a law in 2010 requiring minimum price markups by retailers to prevent “chains from undercutting mom-and-pop stores.” The patisseries and florists of Paris benefit from regulation with similar intent. The conviction within Europe that a thriving culture depends on small, diverse enterprises that may warrant special economic protection is exemplified as well by France’s ardent defense of its film industry. Crucially, these patterns of resistance to the digital age’s speed-of-light patterns of creative destruction have a political foundation—they are popular at election time. This is not the case in the United States, which lacks a politics favoring small- and medium-sized cultural producers, whether these are authors, journalists, small publishers, booksellers, or independent filmmakers.