20 February 2011

book shopping

On the way home from Stitches, we stopped at our local Borders bookstore. It's a national chain, but going bankrupt, so everything in the book is reduced. Most books were 20% off, romance books were 30% but I don't know why they were an exception, magazines were 40%. The line for the registers went halfway around the store. When we arrived, my wife went to the end of the line and we started looking around. When I was finished, I took my turn in the line while they went looking. People were buying large stacks of books, which I thought was odd considering they were only 20% off. I suppose the time wasted in line is more worthwhile then.

There is a Barnes and Noble a few blocks away from the Borders store. They will have less competition now, but I wonder how well they will fair as more books go digital.

Of course this means a little more unemployment as our society shifts to more technology. One thing I don't understand is why people continue to have so many children when there's no reason for all these people. Prior to the industrial revolution, people were needed as labor. With the ongoing information revolution and most manufacturing jobs outsourced to other countries (primarily China) or done by robots, jobs are shifting to the technology creators and those that service them. The service sector is shrinking because more of those tasks are shifting. Retailers, like the staff at Borders, are not needed due to online shopping (e.g., Amazon). Other tasks are going to computer analysis, for example, paralegals. They search legal documents for information on current cases. Because that information is becoming computerized, it can be searched by computer. Other fields are being computerized or replaced by machine too.

While I've been trying to find a new job, I may be stuck where I am until the funding runs out. We live where we are surrounded by technology creators (Silicon Valley), so it's expensive and crowded to live here, but have no way out and I might soon be unemployed.

1 comment:

  1. We have a couple of good bookstores in Galway, Charley Byrne's sells new, second hand and out of print books and is arguably the best book store in Ireland, big enough to have a good rummage, small enough to still feel personal. Eason's and Dubray are book chains and are pretty good too, Dubray is slightly smaller but are more selective with the books they buy so the quality is higher...I guess we are pretty darn lucky to have so much choice!

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