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No one buys books

elysian.press

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Re: No one buys books

#721

Post by Cthulhu_ »

cafard wrote: post #628
yardie wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carnegie: “I’d like to avoid being remembered for having a bunch of labor strikers shot and killed. How can I launder my reputation?” PR: “sir, with enough money you can make the public believe whatever you want.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewashing_(censorship)

Quite. Do you refuse, on principle, to visit the Frick when in New York City? For that matter do you avoid the Rockefeller Center?

Straw man argument; the person you're replying to did not mention any boycotting. See also "Mr. Gotcha".

Re: No one buys books

#722

Post by Cthulhu_ »

creole_wither wrote: post #630
j45 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Limiting or undermining literacy remains important to those who benefit from it.

A literate population that reads what you want them to read is even better.

Hence book bans and torching, although it's backfiring because they're being too general to try and avoid coming across as too totalitarian, so things like bibles are being banned too. Whoops.

Re: No one buys books

#723

Post by Cthulhu_ »

linuxftw wrote: post #569
al_borland wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm continually shocked by the number of people who forget that libraries exist, and what they are.

It's almost like it's a totally unnecessary public expenditure at this point, and those funds could be used for, IDK, feeding the homeless?

That is a false dichotomy; both are easily affordable by the richest country in the world.

Re: No one buys books

#724

Post by hollywood_court »

vik0 wrote: post #711
hollywood_court wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I plan on showing him alternatives so he doesn't have to learn about them they way that I did. I moved out of my mother's home when I was 16 and I managed to graduate high school. But I left town two days after graduation and I've only been back three times in 24 years. Had I not left Alabama, and the US, I would have likely ended up just as bigoted and close minded as most of my family. The ten years I spent outside…

Mind sharing where you moved and how that prevented you from going to the road, from as you say: "just as bigoted and close minded as most of my family.", to whatever you became afterward? Do you think had you moved to another place in the US, a similar change would not have occurred, or did it have to be outside the US?

I moved to the Caribbean for 10 years. Then on to SF and later PDX. I also spent about 6 months in both NYC and Chicago in between SF and PDX. Living in the Caribbean introduced me to so many different cultures.

I ran a bar before I became a carpenter. My neighbors around my bar included people from India, Senegal, all over Europe, and Japan. I become close friends with a much older couple from Senegal and also an Indian family. They welcomed me into their homes and fed me and taught me about their music and food and such.

I likely would not have had those experiences if I remained on the mainland.

Re: No one buys books

#725

Post by loup-vaillant »

bumby wrote: post #719
loup-vaillant wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You seem to imply they are a higher rate of rich assholes, no? It seems likely. But that's a detail, because I believe the more important effect is the contempt higher-class people can have towards lower-class people. Some of it may even come from cognitive dissonance. See, barring a few exceptions, one does not get rich just by working. One also has to exploit other people, to spoil them of a fraction of their add…

You certainly did say those things. They are quoted from your posts, but abbreviated to be less verbose and wandering. I used ellipses to show where words were cut, and I think you understand this so you seem to just be difficult/obtuse out of a desire to argue. To be generous, you said they are the "largest contributors" which I agree is different than being "most likely." But the research does show they are more li…

> Just as a counterpoint to your late-stage capitalism-esque viewpoint, wealthy are also shown to over index in conscientiousness in some studies.

I fail to see how this is a counter point. Sure, conscientiousness, and I would add work ethics certainly explain some inequality. But even if they explained most of it (exploiting people does require work, and I'd expect the more conscientious capitalists are better at it), they would still come far, far short of morally justifying the level of inequality we observe today.

No billionaire ever deserved to be that wealthy.

Now we can discuss incentives, and I can accept that a good system may need to allow some people to accumulate undeserved wealth. Still, I will note that the mere existence of billionaires is a threat to democracy. (Or a blocker: our representative governments aren't very democratic to begin with, and we have studies showing that when billionaires and the people disagree over a piece of legislation the billionaires win most of the time.)

My current opinion on this is that putting a hard cap on individual wealth is a good thing. Furthermore, I think this hard cap should be well under $1B, almost certainly below $100M.

Re: No one buys books

#726

Post by Jerrrry »

dfxm12 wrote: post #576
vik0 wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you're rich, powerful and an unethical asshole those are two things you definitely do not want. This smells like a half-baked conspiracy theory. It's not like the overwhelming majority of people want to get smarter in their free time. I'm not sure how it is in the rest of the world, but in American and all (individual) European cultures, most people don't pursue self-education. I would not be surprised if this ap…

[flagged]

Liberals are trying to ban books too.

"Education", as you have used it, is a measure of collegiate accomplishment, not of merited learned-ness.

It correlates more with socio-economic class.

The same argument can easily be made about Democrats and their inability to repair trivial household items, or empathize with those outside of their privileged groups.

You just pick a characteristic and then label it "good" measure of [x]. Ironically the same thought process is too blame for "telling too many people to goto college"

The lack of self-agency, accountability, and ability to empathize on the left is astounding.

Re: No one buys books

#727

Post by kasey_junk »

makeitdouble wrote: post #704
kasey_junk wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ebook sales have trended down in the US since 2013[0]. They got a pandemic bump in 2020 which didn’t put them over the peak years in 2013/14 and like many things had a correction downwards afterwards[1]. Amazon maintains 70% of the US ebook marketplace and keeps a much bigger portion of the money from books published through their publishing arm than they do book published through the traditional publishers. They als…

I'll take your point: there seems to be a US specific problem with ebooks. In particular, the lack of numbers from the dominant player (Amazon) makes trend analysis all the more difficult. Yet there's still an increase after 2020: https://www.tonerbuzz.com/blog/paper-books-vs-ebooks-statist... On Amazon, are you merging publishing and distribution as a single activity ? I thought Amazon in the US only accepted self-p…

Amazon has both a self publishing arm (kindle direct) and a traditional publishing arm (amazon publishing). Like most traditional publishers they have a variety of imprints (e.g. 47North for Scifi/fantasy). They compete for authors via the same mechanisms other publishers do and have notable non-self published authors (Greg Bear jumps out to me as a scifi fan).

I don't know the specific legal contracts involved with 50 Shades of Grey's ebook distribution but I'd assume that Vintage Books bought those rights after they became the publisher for the book.

Re: No one buys books

#728

Post by gameman144 »

defrost wrote: post #702
leonroy wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t Andrew Carnegie, the very definition of rich and difficult to work for spend a huge chunk of his fortune funding 3000+ libraries? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library

The criticisms were telling though, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and many others claimed he had a rich mans agenda, seeking fame rather than improvement, paying for buildings and not books, maintaining segregation rather than open access, paying for bricks was "cheaper" than paying taxes, etc. Not undercutting the role of libraries, just pointing out that philanthropy from the wealthy can be a mixed bag of indirect co…

It's always fair to criticize, but it's also very plausible that Carnegie paid for buildings instead of books so that his charity would improve things for the longer term.

Also, as long as the outcomes are good, I personally don't care one iota whether a person is doing them for the wrong reasons.

Re: No one buys books

#729

Post by gameman144 »

atoav wrote: post #705
leonroy wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t Andrew Carnegie, the very definition of rich and difficult to work for spend a huge chunk of his fortune funding 3000+ libraries? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library

Then he isn't rich, powerful and an unethical asshole. People can be rich and try to do the right thing even if there seems to be no direct economic incentive to do so — and I applaud them if they do realize that money alone doesn't create a meaningful life. Yet I don't need to wonder whether a normal tax rate on billionaires would do even more for the libraries.

> Yet I don't need to wonder whether a normal tax rate on billionaires would do even more for the libraries.

I agree that tax rates should be higher, but I have absolutely no faith that politicians will do a better job stewarding money toward good causes than a billionaire who cares about them (and/or wants to brag about their philanthropy for clout)

Re: No one buys books

#730

Post by vik0 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #713
vik0 wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not surprising that this push comes amid the understanding that the less educated one is, the more likely they are to vote R [2]. I saw the article, and it does indeed show this, however, I'm not sold that education is the only criterion when it comes to how someone votes... or does anything else, for that matter It's far too simple of a cause-and-effect type of deal for this to be the only factor, or even, for…

> however, I'm not sold that education is the only criterion when it comes to how someone votes... or does anything else, for that matter It isn't, however if your education or world view is superficial, you're more susceptible to right-wing talking points, like a broad spectrum "fear of ones that are different to you". But when you're more educated, more worldly, less blinkered you won't be as afraid of the other an…

Sure, and superficially what you're saying does make sense... except that it's using deductive reasoning. There are plenty of cases where people with academic credentials vote for the same people you say dumb people do. Dumb people, of course, are people who have no academic credentials, because they're only for very smart people

I recommend giving Who Voted for Hitler? by Richard F. Hamilton a read. The world is infinitely much more complex than our story-making minds would have us believe

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