As usual, everyone is taking it as axiomatic that supermarkets have been selling alcohol below cost, which I don't actually think has ever been proven to be the case. I'm open to correction here, of course.
But, for the sake of argument, let's assume that there has been some below cost selling going on.
The independent offies are still deluded if they think they can compete with the supermarkets on price, even with a ban on below cost selling.
The supermarkets have vast central purchasing power, so they can buy their beer cheaper than the independents can. They can then sell that beer at cost (if they are willing to sell below cost they would certainly be willing to sell at cost), which is actually lower than the cost price of the independents.
As the independents want to make a profit on the beer they sell they would have to mark up their beer from their already higher cost price.
Independents quite simply cannot sell their beer as cheap as a supermarket which is willing to forgo profit on such a sale.
