Theos-Talk Archives (February 2004 Message tt00045)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Bart Lidofsky <bartl@s...> wrote:
> There is evolution, and there is crabgrass. If you are not into 
> gardening, crabgrass is an extremely hardy plant which grows very 
> readily in the late spring

Thanks for the botany lesson. So what do you think about 
dandelions? They are edible, whereas crabgrass is not. Or not 
unless you are very poor, anyway.

> This is the danger of many of these megastores. And it HAS happened 
in 
> the past. For example (and I know, the vegetarians here will say 
this 
> was a GOOD thing), in a neighborhood in which I used to live, there 
were 
> 5 barbecued chicken places. Boston Market moved in, and, because 
they 
> were able to undercut these other restaurants on price, put them 
out of 
> business. But then Boston Market found that there was a reason why 
the 
> other places charged higher prices, and closed down the branch. The 
> result: No barbecued chicken places at all.

Yes, as a vegetarian I think that is excellent.

Fans of organized crime make the same case with regard to the Mafia. 
In New York there are or were five Mafia families. Unfortunately 
there is only so much crime to be committed. The result is that a 
few years ago many of the members of the Colombo crime family got 
bumped off, and now with aggressive prosecutions there is not that 
much crime anymore. I have no Italian ancesyty so I am frankly 
constipated on that subject, though.

> As long as there are independent bookstores to put out of business, 
> Amazon and Barnes & Nobles will continue to carry a large variety 
of 
> books. But, once they have a monopoly, they will have no motivation 
to 
> keep the less profitable lines going.

If they want a bookstore and not a news stand they will keep best 
sellers and midlist books in stock. It is the backlist books which 
will go more swiftly to the remainder bin. They will also be stocked 
until their poor item velocity indicates them to be in the backlist 
category, then they will disappear. That process has already been 
started by changes in the tax laws which motivate publishers, not 
amazon, to remainder backlist books more quickly than before. If 
nobody wants to read them anyway (rejection by the market is what 
makes them backlist books in the first place) it is perhaps just as 
well. I never have understood why publishers watse money on some of 
the crap they publish anyway. Anyway, you are right that the 
changing market will change the dynamic of failure. As a radical 
conservative you should applaud or at least appreciate that. 
Libraries can support very limited editions of some titles no 
bookstore would carry. As for would-be independent booksellers, they 
can still have the used book market. I suspect there is not much to 
worry about.

So what are your thoughts on the process underway of exporting the US 
economy to low wage countries> Some woman commentator (I forget whp) 
said recently that the object of the exercise is to create what 
everyone is calling the "two-tier" socierty - a third world model in 
which there are the very, very rich and the absolutely destitute. 
Economists are very excited about this and believe the US can be 
successfully turned into a third world country within ten years. Of 
course their joy is predicated on the belief that they will be on the 
upper of the two tiers, looking down on and gloating over those who 
fall into the lower, like Abraham and Lazarus gloating over the fate 
of Dives. If their assumption is incorrect and they end up on the 
lower tier, I predict that, given that self-interest is all there is 
to human motivation, their economic theories will undergo radical 
transformation.

Anyway, this effort will have an effect far more profound than a 
failing bookstore finally going tits up, although failing stores of 
every sort will be part of the phenomenon. There will be a boarded 
up storefront where Boston Market used to be in your neighborhood, 
but Boston Market will be overseas, where the money has been exported.