General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Tampa Bay Times Bill Maxwell laments "slow death of bookstores." I'm with him on that. [View all]HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)is dying. when i was a kid there were lots of independent bookstores, & each one had its own character. the same for restaurants. now there are no bookstores at all in my town, just a few racks at places like target, just the best-seller crap. otoh, you can find almost anything online, but i don't like to shop online, and i resent that a big corporation is taking a cut out of anything i buy online.
this is what bothers me about the whole online thing; giant corporations control it, which means they're controlling markets that were once mostly closed to them, i.e. the secondhand market. it means they're controlling even more of the economy, reaching further and further down to the grassroots, and removing more 'means of production' from the hands of ordinary people.
life seems increasingly gray because so much more of it has that corporate, mass-produced feudal stamp on it.