Monopoly Australia - Books

Australia has a long history of creating wealth by contrived scarcity licensing. A government licence enables wealth transfer from consumers of the resource to holder of the licence.

Here is a letter to the SMH editor about lack of competition in the book business:

Cheaper by the dozen
According to David Harris (Letters, September 3) books appear to be cheaper in the United States. They don't appear to be cheaper, they are cheaper. And it's not because of exchange rates. The Australian dollar has fluctuated by over 50 cents in the last 10 years but books have always been cheaper in the US.
The reason is that the wholesale price of books in the US has been consistently cheaper. And the reason they are substantially cheaper at the wholesale level is competition.
What is really different from here is the competition that brings the price of books down, as opposed to propping them up through protection for local publishers and authors.
Don Grover Chief executive officer, Dymocks