And the reason why it's not "obviously" anti-competitive. A (non-monpolist) in manufacture could sell direct-to-consumer its own product at whatever price it likes. It could sell its products via consignment in many stores. So it's not obvious why negotiating a more complex agreement with its reselling parters is anti-competitive. As long as there are competing products in the store or at other local stores, there is competitive pricing. If stores also refuse to stock competing products, then you have a (local) monopoly, and that is when the price controls run afoul.

It's clearly anti-competitive. The reason RPM exists is to prevent resellers from competing with eachother on price.

What is controversial is whether this is something that should be allowed, not whether it is anti-competitive.

It also helps To reduce price descrepency between small and large resellers in both client base and market share which helps to prevent relative price hikes in lesser served areas.

The question should be if the outcome of this is or is not beneficial to the end consumer.

Manufacturers have an incentive to keep their prices as close to their MSRP as possible and there aren’t many ways of doing that that are not anti-competitive on paper.

However I don’t think that a reseller in London should be able to offer a bette deal than a reseller in say New Castle or Leeds because they are bigger.

> However I don’t think that a reseller in London should be able to offer a better deal than a reseller in say New Castle or Leeds because they are bigger.

While I agree a suburban / rural / remote customer shouldn't necessarily have to pay more, how do we reconcile this with the idea of economies of scale?

If a larger retailer moves more units and can negotiate a better price from the supplier shouldn't they be able to pass (some of) that saving on to the retail customer?

I thought this is, at least one reason, why franchises existed, so retailers can take advantage of bulk purchasing power?

>I thought this is, at least one reason, why franchises existed

Franchises are a licensing arrangement. You mean chain stores.

Actually many franchises do work in this model. They are licensing deals and buying clubs wrapped up together.

As a manufacturer it's really difficult to organize distribution. Especially with governments intruding in contracts between commercial parties. A company should be able to dictate or negotiate the margins in their distribution chain.

>A company should be able to dictate or negotiate the margins in their distribution chain.

No they shouldn't. A competitive market would continuously drive those margins lower. To the extent that a company is able to maintain or freeze margins it means they have too much market power. I'd prefer to break them up but in lieu of that we might as well just pass a law that mandates what a competitive market would do anyways: remove any negotiating power the company had.