"First, books are a special kind of products, they do not obey the same rules as commercial products, they are culture. To explain a little, I am french and we have a law for the unique price of books: the price you will pay for a book will be the same on amazon, at fnac, in your local bookshop or in a supermarket."
You can pay as much or as little as you wish. They are not gouging you, how could it possibly be objectionable that they are not forcing you to spend more money?
The "Lang Law" [0][1] (Lang is in reference to Jack Lang who proposed it, as opposed to language) isn't meant to stop price gouging. It's to stop larger book sellers from being able to make special deals with publishers for bulk purchase discounts.
It stipulates that the publisher's book price on the back may only be discounted up to a further 5% by the retail store.
There are also other fixed book price laws [2] around the world.
I see. I suppose I understand that, even if I don't agree it is good.
However I can't wrap my mind around why he would simultaneously want Humble Bundle to raise their price to "protect" local bookstores and want them to license the books with permissive licenses that permit free redistribution.
Would he presumably be okay with the Humble Bundle if they were non-commercially distributing the books for only free with permissive licenses? Wouldn't that cause even more harm than merely allowing people to pay what they want?
Or does he want the privileges granted by permissive licenses, but doesn't want Humble Bundle to have the same?
You can pay as much or as little as you wish. They are not gouging you, how could it possibly be objectionable that they are not forcing you to spend more money?