Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Uh, seriously, you are comparing a print book POINT-OF-SALE retail site to a *general purpose* merchandise distribution *warehouse*?  Some might suggest that is a grape to watermelon comparison |
And some might suggest you were being willfully obtuse.
As should be obvious, no one is suggesting that Amazon maintain the same conditions in their warehouses as exist in a standard book store.
My staggeringly obvious point was that supporting local book stores means supporting the people who work in them and therefore allowing those people to work under better conditions than exist in Amazon's warehouses.
Supporting Amazon alone and telling local stores to go to hell means supporting the imposition of a Metropolis-ready work environment and the demise of better conditions in local stores.
Here's where someone will likely raise the point I've already mentioned: That there aren't many book stores left. To which my answer was and is, bingo -- the slow death of local stores is precisely why I mentioned this. We're heading toward a model of commerce which disincludes them. That's why we should perhaps reexamine the supposition that warehouse-based booksellers are always better. Convenience and better pricing for the consumer do not come without other kinds of prices -- to the worker and to the local economy.