Quote:
Originally Posted by wizwor
Ethical<>Legal. Ethics are open to interpretation. People who work solely on ethics are vulnerable to the law and competing ethics.
|
Which is where the personal responsability part comes in.
You decide what to do and you own the outcome.
Law is also open to interpretation, btw. That is at the heart of common law legal systems.
http://ppp.worldbank.org/public-priv...n-vs-civil-law
Having a personal code of ethic is nothing special: everybody has one.
The law is just the code the state wants you to live by; morality is what the community wants you to live by, but ethics is what you *choose* to live by.
Living to the code of the law *only* is surrendering personal choice and personal responsability, especially in states with Napoleonic Law ("Everything not expressly permitted is forbidden").
Combine the two and you get good little serfs.
And getting back on topic, B&N's customer service is run on Napoleonic law with the phone bank staff scripts requiring special variances and escalation for all but the most trivial issues. They don't trust their staff much apparently, nor the customers.
As to exploration and discovery of new books, there is this to consider:
http://activitypress.com/2012/11/30/...=Google+Reader
A Bowker study found 19% of people rely on bookstores for their new reads. That is somewhat less than the number that actually buys their books there instead of other sources. To me it reinforces the point that bookstores (and B&N) are important but hardly irreplaceable. It's all about personal choice in the end.