Resale Price Maintenance - Maybe DBC Was Right All Along.

Spotted by Lola at the ASI, a fairly long article on a relatively minor but nonetheless interesting topic.
My view is, manufacturers can (or should be able to) dictate the retail price contractually - by simply not selling to shops which sell their products for less than the set price, and it's not up to the government to ban this.
It's all down to market power anyway. If you make a generic product (white sugar, toilet paper), shops can simply switch to a lower-cost alternative; if you have a reasonably well differentiated/distinct product (a Porsche, or a specific book or music CD), you can probably enforce this.