Walk into gentrified neighbourhood

Bookstores are for browsing new shit

Amazon is for getting exactly what you need, when you need it.

>literally 0x the price on a torrent site

Daily reminder that both Amazon and bookshops exist to artificially enforce scarcity.

This. I hate these losers that whine when small businesses are try to make a living.

>I'm too poor and autistic to go out in public to a nice book shop so I'll buy something from a soulless internet conglomerate to save myself the embarrassment

Daily reminder: Amazon is not only killing small book stores, they're not only killing small publishers, they are killing the whole literature szene because they skim an obscene amount of revenue - this hinders publishers to invest in promising but unknown authors and instead publish the same shit over and over again.

amazon isnt killing shit. the consumers make their own decisions, blame them if anyone

>muh market
Kill yourself faggot. Some of us don't live in a rural hellscape and understand the threat posed by Amazon is analogous to the one posed by WAL-MART before it

Fucking this. Anyone ITT who denies this is delusional, and should check the NYT bestsellers to see why insipid airplane trash like Girl on the Train or another Grisham rag are the only things that ever make it there.

>shooting the shit with the crotchety owner
Why the fuck would I want to waste time talking to some smelly old jew? Do you even go to book shops to buy books, let alone read them, or to gossip as if you were some sort of woman? You're the vermin that op was taking about, so why don't you take some inspiration from the op pic and literally shoot the shit by pulverizing the better part of your bony brain bag, you literal shit-for-brains.

That's true.
Nevertheless, the contracts Amazon forces the publishers to sign are bizzare: the guys who produce literature (publishers and authors) get 30% of the revenue while Amazon gets 60+% of the profits (not revenue!) and moreover, the publishers bear quite the whole entrepreneurial risk.
Everyone who buys books via Amazon should be tarred and feathered.

And WAL MART only became big because consumers decided to shop there.

>being this autistic
Local bookshops are a great resource insofar as they'll promote lesser known writers and put on poetry events. They're a great place to meet people and talk about what you've read with knowledgeable people from your local community. Has nothing to do with muh Jews you reclusive faggot

Nobody is forcing consumers to use amazon.

I'm glad my neighborhood gentrified. Sure, prices have gone up but at least it's clean, safe, and beautiful now.

Literal retardation right here, folks.

Enjoy your soulless, inbred like-click-subscribe corporate cesspool of a culture.

Amazon should be heavily taxed in a major city to protect local businesses, similar to major cities barring Wal-Mart (which had great results). The successes of Amazon and Wal-Mart are multifactorial but have as much to do with wage stagnation as anything else. Most of us in cities want to protect our unique identity, which includes local businesses (and local bookstores!).
You'd think an anti-globalist, anti-immigration board like Veeky Forums could understand this impulse but apparently we have underage ancap suburban retards as well.

Walmart is banned in my city but not the city next to it. Everyone goes to the neighboring city for Walmart's low prices.

Congrats. Saving 75 cents on a tub of mass-produced potato salad by supporting a conglomerate who treats their workers like ants is what will be the death of our culture at large.

Hope you like King, Grisham, Patterson and Danielle Steel, cause 15 years from now that's all that there will be to read because of inbred retards like you.

Walmart is banned in my city and no one I know travels to shop at another one. Which "city" do you live in

Most of the edgy isolationist xenophobes here are, a) crossposters from /pol/, who are b) 23 years old, at the oldest.

If they're not angsty wage slaves who still love at home with mommy and their stepdad, they are NEETs who think money is a finite resource and panic at the thought of not getting anything for the lowest possible price. Saving a couple bucks on a Blu-Ray box set of a harem anime doesn't mean anything to them other than saving a couple bucks. It's not a proclamation of a socioeconomical stance, it's the same case of the gimme-gimmes making them just as entitled as anybody they look down upon.

>Liberals fight for decades to institute "urban improvement" in destitute areas
>Succeed
>Draw businesses
>Improve housing and economic opportunity
>young multiracial population begins taking advantage of vibrant upcoming community
>Liberals decry gentrification

>anti-globalist, anti-immigration board like Veeky Forums

t. someone who has never traveled to /k/ or /pol/

>"city"

What sort of shitty ass attitude is this? You don't even know the person you're responding to so why question their story's veracity? Cities are filled with the same vile, worthless trash as the rural areas.

>I'm such a bourgeois stuckup hipster I can't emphatize with the fact that a few dollars might matter to some people

That's not how it works. The liberals decrying gentrification are the multiracial people who are being driven out by the increased prices.

I realize this. If we may start a gentlemen's conversation, how do you have Urban Renewal in ghettos or post-industrial urban wastelands without gentrification?

inb4 mass incarceration, deportation or genocide

>I'm an entitled working class hero who would gladly work at the same company that is completely fucking over the town that I live in
>haha but it's cool bro I'm saving 4 precious dollars on a copy of Lolita, so epic

You don't. I'm not opposed to gentrification, but I get the impression that a lot of those people opposed to it would prefer their ghettos.

Theyre morons. Gentrification is just a side effect of the endless growth espoused by modern society. Nobody wants to address the elephant in the room of population growth.

the only ones LARPing as a working class hero is (as always) the bourgeoisie, trying to artificially raise prices and gentrify communities in their quest for "identity". nobody that works for a living could give less of a fuck about this. I, for one, welcome Amazon.

But in the late 60s and up to the Giuliani era they were decrying the fact that corporations and the state were pulling money out of ghettos and not reinvesting or offering incentive to businesses.

Now they are claiming there are barbarians at the gates.

Reminder that (as always) communists are the ones that read marx, anti-communists are the ones that live under a system created by him.

>tfw the neat mom-and-pop bookstore 10 minutes from my house will never be able to afford to hire anyone
>my only other option is to work at a Books-A-Million in the mall and sell Minecraft t-shirts, fidget spinners and Harry Potter books to 11 year olds

Yup. The lesson to be learned here is that when you're dealing with people who view themselves as victims there's no possibility of appeasement.

its almost as if reactionaries are always going to be reactionary or something

I will never understand people like you
what is it about the experience of "a nice bookshop", a "nice coffeehouse" or whatever that makes it worth paying twice/thrice the price for some product? do you have THAT much disposable income? do you identify with what you consume that much?
I love good deals. when I buy some book I've been mirin for months at 50% off, it fills me with warmth

Except I'm not fucking "bourgeois," you humongous faggot. I live in a share house and make not even $10k a year. The only thing that makes me any different from you is that I'm not a brainless consumerist sheep.

When I buy books I go to my local bookshop. If they don't have the book I want, I ask them to order it. I try to support local/indie authors as much as I can because I don't want to live in an insipid world where my only options are Amazon or B&N.

some people value community over small change

books even brand new RRP are cheap as shit, maybe you should reevaluate your life if thats a big expense to you

You are 17, poor, with social anxiety

Capitalism kills culture

Liberal corporatists like Mark Zuckerberg want gentrification

*materialism kills culture
ftfy

Materialism is a direct product of capitalism

>nobody that works for a living could give less of a fuck about this. I, for one, welcome Amazon.
It never ceases to astonish me how happily people are digging their own graves. Why do you think half the Silicon Valley occupies themself with the idea of an unconditional basic income? Maybe it's because they know they'll kill millions and millions of jobs in the not so far future?

Marxism is also Materialist.

I don't think we're using the same definition of materialism

I'll break it down for you and all the other plebs ITT.

>Independent bookstores
>Run by educated, friendly people from the neighborhood
>free readings from local writers or touring ones
>fresh coffee and pastries (the woman who works the one near my university makes delicious little book-shaped sugar cookies and sandwiches named after authors)
>always courteous and friendly, will always try to help you for the sake of their business because they care
>have regulars who are passionate about the store, can meet people there
>almost always have a great atmosphere, designed for comfort

And now here we have Barnes and Noble, or soon, Amazon outlets.
>The corporate "bookstore"
>Run by angry, tired, hungry wageslaves who only work for a paycheck
>coffee is served to you by a fat SJW with blue hair and a septum piercing who doesn't care if she fucked up your order
>the pastry you get with it is dry because it came from a box that got shipped in a truck across the country
>only thing to sit on there is those hard plastic tables that are likely dirty and covered in crumbs because the corporate slaves don't care enough to clean them
>the couches there are old and dirty, likely stained with baby piss and homeless people farts
>more than half of the actual stock is only the lowest-common-denominator shit that sells: Stephen King, GoT, John Green, Veronica Roth, James Patterson, Jonathan Kellerman
>no indie books or authors
>half of the store is dedicated to Legos, DVDs and superhero toys
>dedicated section of public toys so all the niglets can run around and destroy the place and ruin any chance of immersion you have while reading

This is the future you choose every time you order a book from Amazon.

>he isn't looking forward to NEETing it up in a post-scarcity future
'Sup, reddit

>my futile sense of coziness and some abstract communal identity is more important than material progress, with widespread cheaper products for everyone

Marxism is anti-family, anti-culture, anti-nation, anti-religion, and anti-art. It also chalks up the entirety of human history to materialistic struggle. Marxism is perhaps even more materialistic than capitalism in this sense. Though both capitlaism and communism are horrendous abuses of human nature, and we'd be better off without either of them.

you're all conflating three very distinctive senses of materialism

1. Scientistic materialism, which reduces all mental/social phenomena to neuroscientific/biological causes.

2. Consumerist materialism, which finds meaning and value in the acquisition of commodities or "material goods."

3. Historical materialism, which finds the cause of systematic ways of thinking about the world in the social structures and economies they reflect and reproduce.

>abstract communal identity
Kill yourself you autistic moron.

>anti family

Good. Moral alarmists are brainlets

>Marxism is anti-family, anti-culture, anti-nation, anti-religion, and anti-art

Wrong. Read a book.

>my very exploitable desire to save as much money as I can on books means more to me than the culture/industry I enjoy

Congrats on saving $2 on a copy of Lord of the Flies, only available at our Amazon retail outlets! If you have any questions about books, please schedule a consultation with BookBot5000 and join or email listing!

>Maybe it's because they know they'll kill millions and millions of jobs in the not so far future?

You say that as if it's a bad thing. Leisure is the basis of culture. Since the industrial revolution people have been working an unhealthy amount.

>meeting and conversing with other people who love books is "abstract"

fucking kill yourself my guy

>what are book clubs, libraries, universities and so on
But no, the only way to achieve any sense of belonging is through consumption. Let's all buy $100 paperbacks from cozy, local bookstores and eat pastries! culture wahoo!

refer to , you fucking delusional hipster

>anti-culture, anti-art

You have no idea what you're talking about. It couldn't be more pro-culture and pro-art.

Nope, I was talking about a single materialism from the very beginning. Sorry mr Brainlet couldn't realize that

he's right. I think you are the ones who should read a book

Mom and Pop stores were only coopted by affluent white liberal hipsters in the first place because corporations took over yet another market

I don't give a shit about comfyness or whatever, but when the same bookstore is in every small town in America and only sells Stephen King and manga you probably have a big factor as to why most Americans are illiterate

The Barnes and Noble by me doesn't even carry Joyce. Most of the store is a jungle gym for small kids, and the rest is a Starbucks

>I am against local buisinesses AND globalism, tell me how I'm a moron
Bleed out

>the only way to achieve any sense of belonging
Way to miss the point entirely, smartass.

>Detracts someone else for choosing to consume in a way that preserves culture and identity
>acts superior for buying books from warehouses and sitting inside on his ebin gaming PC
>too poor to afford USED books from a USED bookstore

Lmao the only delusional person here is you, pal. Leave your cheeto cave and come outside once in a while.

You're totally right theoretically.
Problem is: I doubt it will happen that way.
Our technology has become a lot better since the days of my grandparents. Nevertheless, I'm working at least three times as much as they did, produce at least 50 times as much as they did (due to technological progress) but have to earn at least ten times as much as they did to have the same standard of living. But I'm only earning three or four times as much as they did, despite being a lot more productive and working a lot more efficient as they did. Technological progress didn't give me more leisure, it didn't give me a better standard of life, it just gave me more and harder work and a lower standard of living.
Therefore, I doubt an unconditional basic income will give me any leisure at all - instead it will be so low myriads of unemployed people are barely able to stay alive while they are searching for one of the few left jobs 24/7 instead of being idle. And the companies will pay even fewer for even more work because there's so much request for it.
Don't get me wrong, I hope it won't be that way but I honestly doubt it.

I have. It's called the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.
It uproots nationalities and suppresses culture and tradition, because those things provide opponents to the state. That is why both the Bolsheviks and the Maoists destroyed thousands of years of culture in their "Cultural Revolution." They are also anti-art as, according to the labor theory of value, art is only as valuable as the amount of time put into it. And if all men are 'equal' there is no difference in talent. So all art is of the same level, and has no objective parameters other than the amount of time it took to make it. Just look at the housing in communist countries, it's horribly depressing. And I encourage you to see stories of Russian artists being forced to only make state propaganda.

strawman

my point is we don't need local businesses at all to have a culture or communal identity. you're a retarded, empty, braindead consumer

Your way of consuming preserves shit. Culture exists outside customer relationships and businesses. I'm sorry your life is so empty you need your daily latte and overpriced literature to have an identity or a community

Amazon is a greater threat to culture, identity and tradition than yesteryear's spook of communism in 2017

American culture has been deeply intertwined with consumption for at least the past 150 years. Having drone-delivered SPQR flags hanging on the walls of your NEET den doesn't change the fact that you're part of the problem

I've already said that both capitalism and communism are materialistic and hurt culture. Both should be done away with.

>haha community and identity is for faggots, now if you'll excuse me I'm off to /pol/ to discuss the latest Trump memes and maybe if the night goes in the right direction I'll preorder a sixth copy of Milo's book

Consumption is american. You're not above it and you're not better than anybody. Hope you enjoy the walls of your basement cause that'll be your view for the next 30 years.

I see this all the time. Hipsterish looking book shops selling pristine books for RRP. What's the point?

why do you insist on the "NEET" accusation? I have a job
The ones with disposable income (read: daddy's trustfund) are the hipsters defending >muh mom and pop's overpriced shit. Get out of your bourgeois fantasy world, buddy.

Since you're so superior to us, how about you tell the class how fulfilling and great your life is?

>inb4 he doesn't respond because he knows he's a tasteless, textbook millennial who pirates video games and uses mommy's money to buy amiibos to hotglue

also, you're clearly arguing with a strawman. my post demeans notions of community and identity that are intrinsically connected to consumption; i'm not opposing the notions of belonging themselves

>"kultur" is relative pleb, just like morals ;)

I work, I have friends, we play live music every often and we also play sports (bball and soccer). I don't play any videogames besides Dota 2 and I buy my books from Amazon.
I'm sorry I'm not into the whole "buying overpriced shit for the benefit of our gentrified hellhole" thing, no need to get so salty tho

Because you're autistically screeching about used bookstores being too expensive, when in reality a book from a used bookstore is only priced at several dollars more than what you would get for a shitty, beaten-to-shit copy from Amazon. Spending several extra dollars on a book to support a business or an author I like isn't "bourgeois," and I bet you think that anyone who buys shoes at any store other than Payless is "bourgeois" too.

If you did have a job, you'd know a $10 book in good condition vs a $6 one in bad condition isn't gonna put you in the poorhouse.

Also, if you do have a job, you're probably one of those pretentious faggots who live home with mommy and daddy and squirrel all their money away into a savings account they'll never use, and act like anyone who actually spends the money they earn is dumber than you.

>we play live music
>refers to basketball as "b-ball"
>plays fucking Dota2
>thinks anything that you can get used on Amazon for less than the price of it being new is """overpriced"""

Yeah, you're not better than anyone here, bucko. Try again.

>refers to basketball as "b-ball"

I was referring to baseball, kid.

You're so fucking delusional. I literally saved thousands of dollars buying my college textbooks from Amazon instead of the local, hip bookstore. The price difference is astounding since these estabilishments disregard any notion of competitivity whatsoever. Just an example: I saved over $90 by buying my copy of Zettel's Traum from Amazon

You seem to never have visited any store in a gentrified area. Everything they sell is overpriced

not me

Holy kek, the hysterics coming from bookstorefags in this thread are a sight to behold.

On what planet do people call Baseball b-ball? It's the same amount of syllables

Were not talking about college textbooks, those are a fucking scam so I agree with you there.

>college textbooks
>hip bookstore
Confirmed underage dweeb. You don't have the life experience to have this conversation. No one is telling you to buy your $300 textbook at some locally owned shop that won't carry it.

What kind of fucking bookstore carries college textbooks? Jesus Christ user apply yourself

There's a used bookstore in my city with nothing over $10, and they've got a fantastic selection. Literally fantastic, like it's from a fantasy world. Just don't go to the gentrified parts of the city OP. What, are you afraid of the negros?

>what are you, poor?

greenlightbookstore.com/staffpicks

This is one of the most well-known bookstores in gentrified Brooklyn, and even their 15% off staff picks are invariably way more expensive than the exact same edition from Amazon. Stop supporting these people

doesn't really matter if you do or don't, yuppies will continue paying the prices cause they can and it's away from the filthies