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The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

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Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#141

Post by ryanwaggoner »

zipwitch wrote: post #105
yock wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, it's definitely sad when people lose their jobs, but that's kind of the devil's bargain we've made with capitalism. It's not so much a "bargain" as it is how we discover which jobs are useful. Capitalism is very efficient at exposing useless labor, and this is a good thing. Having a bunch of humans laboring at jobs no one needs or wants is wasteful.

You are making the completely unwarranted (and demonstrated false by modern history) assumption that decisions coming from capitalism are made objectively and rationally.

"Capitalism" doesn't make any decisions. It's emergent behavior. People make all kinds of decisions and bets and tradeoffs, some of which work better than others and "win".

That doesn't mean we always like those outcomes, hence the need for regulations, social safety net, etc.

Overall, it's a pretty shitty system, since it means that some people are always losing, but it also seems to be the best we've got.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#142

Post by CodeWriter23 »

goofingaround wrote: post #135
emodendroket wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel that you've really engaged the arguments of the post, particularly the failure to hire any seasonal employees for the holiday season and the "ship from store" change.

The "ship from store" argument does not make sense. Many healthy retailers use omnichannel, ship-from-store, buy-online-fulfill-in-store, etc. These methods can improve fulfillment, increase inventory utilization, and reduce stale inventory. If a retailer wants to draw down inventory, then just cut replenishment. I believe Target Canada was accused of doing so. Implementing "faux omnichannel" and the associated IT, s…

What the author is saying is they used the “closer to customer” argument as a smoke screen to cover the fact that they performed a logisticextomy last year.

The fact of the matter is logistic operations in the Midwest are favorable for the medium range retailer. In the post-warehouse age, when the book your NYC customer wants is in Seattle, you’re paying Zone 8 rates to USPS instead of Zone 3 from Indiana to NYC (or Seattle).

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#143

Post by mrep »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #36

This is the flip-side of creative destruction. Amazon and ecommerce in general have given us a world where brick and mortar retail often just can't compete. 99% of these layoffs and restructurings, etc. are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The writer of this article seems to think that the executives are just trying to milk the company all the way down, but it's not even clear to me there's a better o…

Haha, you literally just came upon the realization for the economic use cases for unemployment benefits and also the main reason our government has one. You should read some economic textbooks as the world will make a whole lot more sense once you do.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#144

Post by xlii »

ivraatiems wrote: post #44
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #36

This is the flip-side of creative destruction. Amazon and ecommerce in general have given us a world where brick and mortar retail often just can't compete. 99% of these layoffs and restructurings, etc. are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The writer of this article seems to think that the executives are just trying to milk the company all the way down, but it's not even clear to me there's a better o…

> It sucks, but I'm not sure there's a better option. Maybe the best we can do is try and structure a society where getting laid off from a decent job isn't so damaging and scary on a personal level. Maybe we need to acknowledge that we're moving towards having a society where "everyone has a job that earns them their living" is untenable, because there will be less work for humans to do than humans to do it, and we…

> we have to find a different kind of social contract to survive on

I do believe we already have that. Open any kind of news website and it'll be all over you.

This new social contract is entertainment. I know it is right now considered "work" as well, but to think about it, most of it doesn't contribute in any other way that helps other people (most often - workforce) kill time. Celebrities, tv & internet personalities earn not because they do only because they are.

Some time ago being a celebrity or internet personality would gain you a huge pile of cash. Right now that starts to get watered down. You can get reasonable known YouTuber show on your sons or daughters birthday party for reasonable amount just because there is so much content that fan fragmentation starts to show up.

What I believe we're seeing is world transitioning from "live to work" to "live to work or entertain those who work" with sad turn to "entertainment through hate" happening lately...

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#145

Post by Johnny555 »

pfisch wrote: post #125
ruytlm wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, tons of jobs are going away (although I think it'll be 10-20 years for most of these, not 3-5 years like many seem to think), but what new sectors, opportunities, jobs, etc. will be created? How many of the people whose jobs are destroyed will be able to move into the jobs that are created? In something like 30 states [0] 'truck driver' is the largest single occupation; where would those skills be re-applied?…

I think we are pretty far from truly replacing truck drivers. There will be a long period where the truck driver is in the car but not really driving, maybe even a very long time depending on if it is enshrined in law. Even if the truck did drive itself, would it also load/unload and deal with flat tires and other vehicle damage conditions? I don't think these problems are insurmountable but I do think they will furt…

I think that replacing long-haul drivers will happen sooner than you think.

Self-driving (though human monitored) trucks are already operating:

https://www.wired.com/story/embark-self-driving-truck-delive...

I think the first step will be replacing long-haul truck drivers with autonomous trucks, they'll start at a depo near a freeway and end at a depo at the other end, then a human will drive to make the local delivery. Freeways are (relatively) easier to navigate than local streets.

That takes a 30 hour long haul job and turns it into a 30 minute job -- a single driver can do 10 of those a day.

Autonomous trucks will handle flats and other roadside breakdowns the same way many human drivers do -- pull over and wait for the repair service to come.

There's less incentive to replace train/subway drivers due to the high driver to passenger/cargo ratio (plus union rules get in the way) -- 1 truck driver to 40 tons of cargo versus 1 train engineer to 10,000 tons of cargo

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#146

Post by curiousg »

mrep wrote: post #143
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #36

This is the flip-side of creative destruction. Amazon and ecommerce in general have given us a world where brick and mortar retail often just can't compete. 99% of these layoffs and restructurings, etc. are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The writer of this article seems to think that the executives are just trying to milk the company all the way down, but it's not even clear to me there's a better o…

Haha, you literally just came upon the realization for the economic use cases for unemployment benefits and also the main reason our government has one. You should read some economic textbooks as the world will make a whole lot more sense once you do.

Nothing about the comment gave the impression that the author isn't familiar with those concepts.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#147

Post by ryanwaggoner »

mrep wrote: post #143
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #36

This is the flip-side of creative destruction. Amazon and ecommerce in general have given us a world where brick and mortar retail often just can't compete. 99% of these layoffs and restructurings, etc. are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The writer of this article seems to think that the executives are just trying to milk the company all the way down, but it's not even clear to me there's a better o…

Haha, you literally just came upon the realization for the economic use cases for unemployment benefits and also the main reason our government has one. You should read some economic textbooks as the world will make a whole lot more sense once you do.

Believe it or not, I didn't just "come upon" this realization and I've taken multiple econ classes (though I'd like to take more). Also, our unemployment benefits are a pretty sorry excuse for a social safety net, which is why I wasn't specifically talking about them here.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#148

Post by joshpadnick »

The thing that frustrates me most about the slow, drawn out demise of first Borders and now Barnes & Noble is that there has never been a bold vision for the future. The mega-bookstore was a great model in the 1990s, but post-Internet, they really needed to leverage their space to do something magical.

One idea I would have loved: Browse your books in store, but buy them for Nook or Kindle -- at the same prices you pay on Amazon. Maybe that's even a loss leader and you upsell $5 lattes.

Or perhaps they double-down on really awesome kids sections, where you want to try out a book on you kid before buying. Or maybe they aim to make the store more like a "community center" and build in meeting rooms, or make certain stores specialized in a particular topic (e.g. the "tech" store downtown).

But running the same, tired playbook year after year ultimately is, just as the author suggests, a way for current executives to milk the cow until it falls over. I hope when my son is old enough to enjoy sitting down to read on his own, I'll still have a nice book store to enjoy with him.

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#149

Post by visarga »

ivraatiems wrote: post #44
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #36

This is the flip-side of creative destruction. Amazon and ecommerce in general have given us a world where brick and mortar retail often just can't compete. 99% of these layoffs and restructurings, etc. are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The writer of this article seems to think that the executives are just trying to milk the company all the way down, but it's not even clear to me there's a better o…

> It sucks, but I'm not sure there's a better option. Maybe the best we can do is try and structure a society where getting laid off from a decent job isn't so damaging and scary on a personal level. Maybe we need to acknowledge that we're moving towards having a society where "everyone has a job that earns them their living" is untenable, because there will be less work for humans to do than humans to do it, and we…

> Maybe we need to acknowledge that we're moving towards having a society where "everyone has a job that earns them their living" is untenable

No, we need a society that guarantees everyone a job, a job that will generate the income necessary for survival. We shouldn't give up agency and become simple wards of the state, waiting hand stretched ahead for the UBI to fall from the crumblings at the tech billionaires table. UBI without jobs is humiliating and lacks vertical mobility. Self reliance is good.

The slogan should be "Give us jobs or give us the means of production!"

In the future it will be easier to be self reliant by using solar energy, agro-bots, 3d-printing and various biotech and materials research technologies. We can be self reliant, we don't need no stinking BHI. We don't like to be passive and hand our dignity out for a penny.

As a final argument, think about this: what is cheaper? what is more tenable - to hand out free money to everyone, or to create jobs that pay for themselves? The jobs could be - cultivate your own food, raise your own house, educate the children of your community, repair cars and electronics for local people, etc. Most of the jobs emerge from the needs of the community, so the community can hand them to itself. Then only a small amount of external aid could go as far as a huge amount of UBI.

The name of this philosophy is Local Self Reliance and it is related to Distributism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism).

A list of related concepts: community ISPs, credit coops, anti-trust, buying from local businesses.

This is a promo video from the Institute of Local Self Reliance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDw4dZLSDXg

Re: The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

#150

Post by ballenf »

paulcole wrote: post #119
ballenf wrote: post #22

Amazon's primary customer has shifted to the 3rd-party seller, i.e., it's not profit off water coolers that allows low prices. Looking at Amazon's financials, they make more profit off of selling advertising (lightning deals, search ads & "related" sponsored listings) than margin off sales. It really shows when you look at the lightning deals and find product after product with artificially inflated reviews. Amazon h…

> Amazon has zero interest in fixing this because customers are its product not its customers. If you think 3rd party sellers are Amazons customers and get much better treatment than end buyers, boy are you barking up the wrong tree.

Not just any 3rd party seller, only the ones willing to systematically spend ad dollars to promote products.

But even non-spending sellers send a lot of transaction revenue Amazon’s direction. You don’t get good treatment however because you're a disposable commodity. Treating you well doesn’t increase revenue.

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