Barnes & Noble is about to go under brehs

[Field Marshall Bradley]

It's not great for consumers. Consumers need jobs in order to purchase the produced goods. The jobs being automated are not being replaced at the same rate they are being extinguished and the jobs that once allowed you to live a decent life on are being replaced with low wage alternatives.

Furthermore the products aren't getting any cheaper in proportion to your income and the quality is taking a nose dive. You ever try to buy furniture made out of real wood lately? How in the hell did my grandmother, whose existence relied upon watching white families kids, afford furniture made of legit hardwoods that still holds up 60 years later but today you have to go to a specialty store to find something not made of particle board, pine, and thin veneers. Everything is made to be as cheap as possible quality wise to the point where nothing is repairable, you just throw it away and buy a new one.

Real shyt

 

[010101]

they just gotta downsize and emphasize the starbucks connection*

 

[FlimFlam]

It is entirely great for consumers.
There are more potential consumers for goods than there are workers in any single field so to claim its bad is simply ignorant of economics.
I would suggest you read Frederic Bastiat "That Which is Seen" or Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" because your faulty logic is what was used to argue against automation and mechanization of production of goods when the industrial revolution started.

Producers are cheaper and quality is an option you can pay more for if you want.
You want craftmans handmade furniture there is a market for it, it cost more than machine made furniture, the choice is up to you on what you want to buy. There was no choice before, so complaining about things that used to be confined to very expensive prices being open to everyone at varying price points, is a bad road to take when trying to argue that it works against consumers.

You kinda dancing around the crux of his point to tackle particulars

Where's the 20 yr tvs washers fridges etc, and 50 yr lasting cars? Hell food and water quality ...

 

[David_TheMan]

You kinda dancing around the crux of his point to tackle particulars

Where's the 20 yr tvs washers fridges etc, and 50 yr lasting cars? Hell food and water quality ...

Not dancing around anything, I addressed his points entirely.
You take care of your car it will last 50 years still to this day. You can buy a honda, kia, hell even suzuki car with more horsepower and torque than the cars only the richest could by 20 - 30 years ago.
You want to spend money on hyper expensive appliances you can do that today, again the only thing is now you don't have to do so to enter the game.
You say food and water quality, and that literally makes no sense, seeing that we have a higher food quality in the industrial sense than we had 20 years ago thanks to improved technology, on top of that, you still have your local suppliers who never left that you can go to, to source your meat and vegetables.
As for water, my family on my mom's side had a well, today my parents, my sisters, and I have filtered water that is a lot better than the hard well water my mother's side had are the unfiltered city water my dad had.

This strange nostalgia you all have for the past makes no sense, things weren't better in the past, they were more expensive relatively, and they were more exclusive to get.

Hell look at tvs in just 15 years. I bout a flat screen CRT tv 15 years ago, toshiba, cost me 550 dollars. 21 inch tv. 3 years after that I bought a 51 inch Rear Projection tv a hitashi ultravision cost me 999 dollars, because it was refurbished. Now last year I bought a 65 inch LED 4k tv for $699. Is it ultra high end plasma Oled nope, but thats how fast prices are dropping and opening up entry into markets that previously were just for big bucks only. Thats a good thing for all consumers, because again, you want ultra exclusive high end, its still there, but now everyone can eat. That is nothing but a plus to society as a whole, and that is thanks to the competition of capitalism.

 

[FaTaL]

Seeing that ebooks are growing every year in sales and disrupting established publishers in the market
Despite What You Heard, The E-Book Market Never Stopped Growing

I would say millions of people are reading books on screen and its becoming the norm.

I don’t know how u guys do it

It just seems so artificial to me

 

[Wild self]

It's really sad and we are doing it to ourselves.
Laziness combined with Social Networking means we don't have to go outside unless it's to go to work.
What happens when online sales plummet because nobody has jobs at retail stores that provided income to them. There's not enough "high skill" jobs for everybody. There has to be "low skill" tier in order for a society to not collapse.

How many people actually have career jobs that you can retire from. A very low percentage I would imagine. The poor will grow poorer.

That is where BASIC INCOME will come in and save humanity.

 

[The_Sheff]

It is entirely great for consumers.
There are more potential consumers for goods than there are workers in any single field so to claim its bad is simply ignorant of economics.
I would suggest you read Frederic Bastiat "That Which is Seen" or Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" because your faulty logic is what was used to argue against automation and mechanization of production of goods when the industrial revolution started.

Producers are cheaper and quality is an option you can pay more for if you want.
You want craftmans handmade furniture there is a market for it, it cost more than machine made furniture, the choice is up to you on what you want to buy. There was no choice before, so complaining about things that used to be confined to very expensive prices being open to everyone at varying price points, is a bad road to take when trying to argue that it works against consumers.

Bruh are you seriously trying to say the deterioration of the availability and affordability of durable quality goods is better for the consumer? It's good for the average Joe that products that used to last decades and were repairable are now unaffordable for the masses only to be replaced by cheap pieces of junk that are better off trashed when their functionality diminishes?

I don't know if you missed a point I made previously but my grandparents were POOR yet the items they did own were made to last because that's how things were made back then. It wasnt "pay extra for a good product" it was "buy our product because it is good". Producers are cutting corners everywhere and they aren't passing the savings on to you. It runs from things like washers and dryers using plastic parts that snap under stress instead of steel, to shoes that can't be re-soled when they become worn. Pretty much every "consumer grade" product is becoming shyt and somehow you are convinced you are better for it.

 

[David_TheMan]

I don’t know how u guys do it

It just seems so artificial to me

Same way you look at this site.
I mean I grew up reading shyt in books, having to buy books or go to the library.
When I got Microsoft Encarta and Prodigy and could read anything I want, it was a wrap.

 

[David_TheMan]

Bruh are you seriously trying to say the deterioration of the availability and affordability of durable quality goods is better for the consumer? It's good for the average Joe that products that used to last decades and were repairable are now unaffordable for the masses only to be replaced by cheap pieces of junk that are better off trashed when their functionality diminishes?

I don't know if you missed a point I made previously but my grandparents were POOR yet the items they did own were made to last because that's how things were made back then. It wasnt "pay extra for a good product" it was "buy our product because it is good". Producers are cutting corners everywhere and they aren't passing the savings on to you. It runs from things like washers and dryers using plastic parts that snap under stress instead of steel, to shoes that can't be re-soled when they become worn. Pretty much every "consumer grade" product is becoming shyt and somehow you are convinced you are better for it.

There is no deterioration of availability nor a price increase on affording durable quality goods for the consumer.
Prices for goods have dropped even as the dollar has inflated and high quality goods are still offered while mid range and low teir goods are also offered.
Cheap is realitive, but the processor in a DLP chip is more advanced and quality in controlling the mirrors than a CRT tv could ever be.

You grandparents being poor doesn't change a thing, if you grandparents were like mine they probably didn't let anyone sit on their fine furniture and rarely used their fine silverware and china. I'm glad my parents and my generation have broken the habit of buying things to not use them because you put some much money in them. I want to buy quality menninite furniturre I buy it. I want to buy midrange I buy it. You want to splurge buy high end hand made furniture you can get it. Nothing has changed, as a matter of fact increased competition makes it so even the high quality folks have to lower those prices or atleast cap them because of the benefit of modern machining, automated wood carving, and etc.

As for the complaining about plastic parts, there are manufacturers of all metal part shyt, people don't buy it, because regardless of what people like to say, they prefer in action to spend money for a plastic part washer and dryer that they can buy for 2000 for the pair, than spend 10 years buying an all metal washer and dryer on finance like they used to. Same with refridgerators and tvs.

No matter how you try to spin it, today is so much better for the average person than it used to be with regards to buing material goods and enjoying a far higher standard of living for a far lower price.

 

[Ironman]

BN held me down with the comics

 

[Field Marshall Bradley]

This strange nostalgia you all have for the past makes no sense, things weren't better in the past,

This is where you're wrong... and you're going to need context to explain your stance..... "things" were better back then, relatively speaking.... but you need to quantify what you mean when you say the "past:"

 

[David_TheMan]

This is where you're wrong... and you're going to need context to explain your stance..... "things" were better back then, relatively speaking.... but you need to quantify what you mean when you say the "past:"

What am I wrong about.
Things meaning material goods and products, past, means past a time period before the present.

 

[Field Marshall Bradley]

What am I wrong about.
Things meaning material goods and products, past, means past a time period before the present.

Material items were built to last back in the day.. that's a fact... and no, no car made in the 2000s will last 50 years.... there won't be a market for it...

all you have to do is study classic cars.... there is a reason why 67/69 camaros, 71 chevelles, 68 Novas, 65 Falcons and those of that ilk fetch 30 to 50 grand(depending on how the numbers matching) pre restoration....

you'll never see that market for a 2014 mustang..... or 2015 camaro........etc...

 

[The_Truth]

Going to Barnes and Noble is more than just about going to get a physcial book. It's about the experience of wandering the hallways, sitting down to read something that catches your eye, hanging out and meeting up with friends, etc.

The store itself just has this serene atmosphere that makes you feel at peace. To me it almost feels like an escape from reality, a place where I can go in and temporarily forget about any troubles I got in the outside world

As far as the battle between E-Books and physical copies is concerned, there's one thing that an E-Book will never have over a physical one. A physical book can age and become part of history itself, making it more valuable. Throw in the ability to write signatures and other notes in a book and you can literally hold history in your hands.

Exactly. B&N to me is like the Toys 'R' Us of books. And even Toys 'R' Us is going under now too.

 

[The_Truth]

We gettin funneled into a reality where our lives are going to revolve around nothing but working and going str8 home where all our shyt we need will be waiting on us.....just to repeat the same shyt the next day.....and the shyt is ugly.

People already think u on some slick shyt or trying to hide cause u aint on social media

Yeah, I'm not down with this "just do everything online" wave that most people are on nowadays. I actually like to go out and interact in different environments. I think society is getting too digital.