Quote:
Originally Posted by dickloraine
But it is:
As you can see the statement above would make no sense if you would replace "generic book" with simply "book". So he does say, that some books are consumer goods, but real books are not. Maybe you can make such distinctions without falling in a fallacy. But in this context, it is evasive. To discuss further with him, we must accept his distinction. We do not use the word "book" in its normal use anymore, but this restricted use.
There are other problems with his statement, for example, that just because something has a brand name it is still a consumer good. But it is not even necessary to talk about that, because of the fallacy.
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It is not a fallacy, it is pointing out a simple fact, i.e. that most people buy books based on the author or brand name. This, of course, causes the "authors don't matter" crowd, all sorts of grief, so naturally you try to throw out a strawman so you can ignore that simple fact.
The authors make a simple point, which is that books are not the same as toilet paper, DVD players and the like, where one brand isn't much different than the next and people buy generics (a technical term that has a specific meaning, BTW). When the authors refer to consumer goods, they are talking about this type of good when people are much more interested in price than they are in the specific brand or quality of the item. It's really not hard to understand, but that doesn't fit some people's preferred narrative.