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While I'm not a fan of regulations like these, I do sympathize with their general goals. And there are, empirically, really only two outcomes possible:
(1) You allow competition on price. Big chains win, consumers win, small corner bookstores lose and vanish.
(2) You don't allow competition on price. Small corner bookstores win, consumers and big chains lose.
Note 1 - There is, of course, an argument to be made that consumers actually win when corner bookstores continue to exist. However, since history shows that consumers almost always choose the cheaper price when given the option, this counts as a "loss" for consumers.
Note 2 - The loss for consumers by disallowing price competition is much less of a loss than the loss the corner bookstores suffer: consumers can still buy the books that they want, they just have to pay more. Corner bookstores will go out of business. But still a loss for consumers.
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