The level of chaos caused by a major economic change caused by automation is not fixed. It is a variable. If law, social policies and social services develop sensible policies there should be no distress at all. It is only if we wait and try to patch the harm done after it occurs that problems will be severe. For example we currently have Unemployment Insurance and retraining as our mode of social response. That is no longer a valid path. for example currently if a fifty year old worker suffers job loss we offer a few months of poor pay from Unemployment followed by retraining etc.. Now that is a foolish path to take. Retraining will be useless as more and more jobs yield to automation. So in essence we need to retire that worker and provide a reasonable income for him so that he can make purchases and support businesses. It' s like the old Boy Scout motto "BE PREPARED".
Something about this article must be getting away from me. I would think that wealthier places than Africa where wages and benefits are high would be targeted sooner than low wage companies. If a $25.00 per hour employee is eliminated the savings is obvious but if you remove a worker who earns one dollar a day or whatever the economics are unclear to me. The new issue is whether my automation can do better and cheaper than the competitors automation. That leaves poor nations and businesses in a very bad position as the funds to automate a production facility are a huge barrier.
Fast travel and long distance travel spreads disease at very high speed. You might sit next to a sick person and never get sick but then you go to the store and four people get sick and take it home and it goes from there. It is a very serious problem and short of stopping travel and tourism it is a hazard we all must bear.
The article states the "assumption" that science can keep up with our problems. Time makes it a bad bet. For example anyone who came down with AIDS or HIV infection in 1984 need worry about anything while in their grave. Now there is real hope of dealing with AIDS in developed nations as science and medicine lag behind needs. Then other facets of an issue come to light. How much energy must we expend to remove carbon dioxide from the air? How much heat is generated doing so? If we go with solar or wind or tide how much land will have to be dedicated to CO2 removal? As people in the Arab nations evacuate into other regions how many wars will break out/ are any of those players equipped with nuclear or other advanced weapons? Then we need to know how much money will be gobbled up putting all of this in place? What other major issues will we be forced to fight while global warming is being beaten down. American farmers already warn that the US may not be able to feed itself right now. and anyone thinks gold or silver will bail them out they are being childish. Ever tried to eat a gold bar? With enough starving people out and about a ton of gold could be worth less than loaf of bread. WE ARE IN DEEP !
Pollution is a consequence of human activity. It's that simple. The more people you have the more pollution you get. It does not take a rocket scientist to get that digested as a fact. There is a common fantasy that science can sort of leap frog along thus saving humanity in the nick of time. That is a really bad bet. Obviously we have had decent science around for at least 100 years and the world still has hunger, disease, homelessness and numerous wars that have to do with poverty. Science is wonderful but it is not our salvation. That is compounded by a population that fights to resist change. As far as global warming not threatening all of us consider just a tiny bit of the consequences. First expect home insurance to vanish. For example the Miami area represents at least 10 million people. The buildings and homes in Miami would either be standing in water or destroyed by water. That would mean billions in losses to the insurance market. Then we have the issue of insurance companies owning banks. If the insurance industry crashes our banks will crash as a consequence. Then consider that home sales will be impossible as no mortgage company in their right mind would write policies. Next consider where your drinking water will come from. Sure we could desalinize salt water but that is expensive and then one must safely dispose of the salt. You can't simply dump salt in a small area as it will kill off ocean species if the salt content is too high. So maybe you live at altitude and think you will be OK. One example is that south Florida is about the only heavy producer of fruit and vegetables throughout the winter and those farms are very, very close to sea level. And just where do you think the water will come from to use to grow crops. Has anyone considered what the Mississippi River might do if the ocean rises? At what point would that river simply stop flowing into the ocean? We are at huge risk yet the public sort of yawns and resists all change.
For the government as well as the public to have the ability to severely observe all people at all times would be interesting. There would be huge benefits as well as losses. We are now about to confront new realities. Between cams and computers and standardizing electronic money as the only means of exchange we could bring crime to a very close to zero event. The catch is what would we do with the millions of people who currently commit crimes? Most people actually commit serious crimes but often are completely unaware that they are doing so. Examples include a bit of fudge on income tax. Or how about smoking pot? Worse yet businesses commit more crimes than individuals. Can the American public withstand such revelations?
It sounds like he knew just enough chemistry to kill himself. Chemical reactions can be oddballs simply because following exactly the same mixtures and methods can have more than one final result. So if you do not know that you may have either a good result or an explosion you just might try certain experiments. My bet would be he was trying to cook up a batch of meth.
In the 1970's there was such a device put in use and it worked. perhaps this new device works better or something but the older one did save lives. The device was used in places like power plants where steel is 99% of a tall structure and would allow workers to take shelter before the strike occurred. I knew the electrical technician who helped create the device.
First you simply can not stick to dumb TV sets. You need a smart TV and they are not expensive these day unless you buy a huge one. i have Netflix that is sent by wifi in my home. It can appear with no problem on three TVs in my home. You simply need the Netflix plug in on each TV. With a smart phone all you need is my password and user name and you can watch movies anywhere you want. A TV has to plug in anyway. Plugging in a wall wart is no problem and the wires are quite tiny so you should be able to make it pleasant to the eye. With computer tech advancing the way it is i think we could have strong computers inside our TV sets much like the all in one desktops we see these days. It would be just an extension of what we already have going from mild all in one units based on acomputer console to a tV with really strong and fast PCs behind the screens.
The all seeing eye on top of the pyramid on your dollar bills seems to be becoming a reality. Sadly that eye seems to be the CIA controlled by a demented pervert we call the president.
All of us should expect social turmoil due to technology. Preparation is the key. Our economic system and social systems must make serious changes or we will suffer greatly. The answer is not to hold back technology but to make certain that all people are reasonable happy. Permanent unemployment is one near future problem. In the past the criteria for a family being happy with their daughters getting married was either wealth or the prospects of wealth. Have you ever seen a knowing nod when some parent says their daughter was marrying a doctor? Social status and money are ideas that we currently value but will be discounted when everyone receives payment from the government. It also means that almost all taxes will be paid by businesses rather than individuals. Entire trades will almost certainly vanish. Also consider the effect of items like motorcycles and mopeds. How many people would purchase a motorcycle that was self driving? To me that would be a terror trip. The motorcycle industry may almost vanish. On the other hand boats that could fulfill a trip without a human pilot might be much more profitable and desirable than boats that one must manually control. The effects of AI will be much greater than most people could imagine.
Anyone either unbalanced enough or ignorant enough to be attracted to Nazi beliefs needs to be swept up and sent into a secured institution until their mental health or education improved enough to allow them to converse with the rest of the world. Facts matter ! Hitler was the worst disaster to every hit Germany. His beliefs caused Germany to commit horrors that got their nation beaten down like a bug under a shoe. Preaching hatred drove Germany into a rabid group of savage filth. Not top even mention the at least 40 million dead caused by Nazi beliefs it also took a wrecking ball to the German economy that lasted quite some time after WW2 ended. The militarization of Russia was one response to Nazi behavior. Russia was in great fear of Germany and that fear was instrumental in creating a huge communist effort to take over the world. If anyone out there thinks they agree with Nazi ideas they need to rush to a mental health facility and get help. In the end Hitler said that Germany deserved death as they obviously were not fit enough to win the war and a more hearty people deserved to prevail. A mad man expressing the ultimate treason and then the gutless idiot commits suicide. Our current US president is a mess and corrupt but even Trump is better than Hitler.
The capacity for thought seems to be totally absent in many if not most Americans. On top of that there is a really bad history of the brightest among us predicting the future. AI has the capacity to be far more intelligent than humans. Machines are already superior in many day to day functions. That will become more obvious in the near future.
Are you aware that a large Russian army was on the coat of China staged to invade Japan? If we had gone in on foot there would have been hundreds of thousands of American soldiers killed not to mention we might be at war with Russia trying to drive them out of Japan. If we simply surrounded them they would have times to make more weapons and train civilians to fight us. Dropping two atomic bombs was the most merciful available option. Even some Japanese have praised us for those bombings as the authorities in their nation were so murderous and barbaric. I'll have to search for the date of the first hydrogen bomb but I suspect that it was a couple of years. And yes it is awful that innocents suffer in wars but it is always a problem.
All war is negative and evil but the truth is that we are forced to live with wars just as our ancestors were. If an enemy creates or improves an element of war that you do not have you will be defeated. If there are AI drones on this planet we must be certain that we have the best drones and more drones deployed than an enemy. We can only hope that the drones will be sophisticated enough to eliminate more death of non combatants than current equipment. Think what would have happened if we did not have the first atomic bombs.
I'm in Florida and since we do get hurricanes frequently I have to say that ninety mph winds are hardly a breeze to us. The idea that 90 mph winds would cause much loss of power to our homes would invoke hostility from the public. The idea that a home would come apart in 120 mph winds is absurd. Apparently the construction requirements for these northern states is set way too low.
We now have so many disorders that any three letters floating up in your alphabet soup are likely to represent some disorder. Perhaps it is time to simply classify problems that are obsessive behaviors as simply mental illness. It doesn't matter if its duck hunting or sticking heroin in your veins, if you are doing things that are against your best interests you have a problem. Problems tend to cascade into larger problems. If a person is absurdly attracted to video games you can bet that things like social interaction are effected and as the person becomes more and more isolated becomes some kind of social menace. Values and function tend to be locked together thus we see young people obsessed with cars getting a hold of way too fast cars and causing wrecks that effect many others. Questioning the value system of a young male who is car crazy is not likely to reset the values that cause the behavior. What we consider as normal is often an indication of lousy mental health. That means that since most people have such issues that society as a whole is a bit of its nut.
There are times in which hate speech is called for such as when an administration is corrupt and filled with criminal activities that approach a charge of treason. What amounts to a call for patriots to be active in driving out such an administration may seem like vile hate speech to others. Yet the last thing we would want is to have the public not contacting each other and help to wind ways to force such people out of office. Look at the hate speech that was used in the denial of Obama being born in America or the supposed crimes of Hillary Clinton. All of those lies were hate speech but could people no longer debate or accuse the liars of wrong doing? Censorship is as dangerous as any wrongs done on communication systems.
Flat demand creates all kinds of mischief but flat demand is nothing compared to declining demand. As more and more homes are able to go off grid the problem will become dramatic. Imagine being the only home left on your block connected to the power grid. Your electric bill will go through the roof as you are supporting more and more of the power companies needs. The use of solar roofs and solar walls may also collect enough power to supply our vehicles as well. That points to two other big events. Normal cars and trucks will suddenly be obsolete. And homes and apartment houses that are not up to date with solar roofs and solar walls will need at the very least a complete remodeling. even getting a mortgage for a on the grid type of home will probably become impossible. . Getting a car loan could also become a huge problem for conventional vehicles as investors may correctly think that conventional vehicles have no real value and that borrowers will walk away from car loans financed when normal vehicles were desirable.
I'll bet that we see companies spring up to do nothing but convert specific vehicles to modern, electric units. For example there are plenty of Ford F 150 pickup trucks that could be converted to electric or hybrid trucks.
Sometimes forces combine to create situations that are menacing. One such issue is a total lack of choice. Modern nations survive on trade. Those that offer the most for the least tend to prosper. That means that if China or Japan replace human workers with machines that they can compete in the modern world. In the past the argument was over the price of labor in foreign lands compared to workers in the US who earned far higher wages. But that is becoming an invalid point. Now the question is whether my automation is better than their automation. We have no choice at all. We must compete and if competition requires running totally automated businesses we have no choice other than going with the trend. Further the speed of change is increasing thanks to our new machines. Yet our politicians and even our business leaders are offering very little to buffer the effects of all most zero human employment in the very near future.
Here we have an article that points out that the law can be a joke. It has always been true. Imagine that a poor person seriously wrongs you. The poor are exempt from most civil suits. After all, it costs money to win a suit and if you win there is no money to collect and likely may never be money to collect. That means that a large section of law only applies to people who have something to lose. In a way it is the opposite of criminal law. In criminal law the person who is poor will suffer a lot more than a person who can afford good lawyers. Income and wealth diversity have taken the idea of equal justice for all and dumped them in the trash can.
All technology exists to eliminate human effort or labor. We have finally reached that magical toggle point where we can expect AI to eliminate almost all employment. We will need a new and totally different social structure, laws etc. to deal with the era that is beginning now.
Providing good books at very low prices makes for a boom. Providing good books for high prices ensures failure. This happens all across all elements of the economy. Inflation is one issue and greed is a real kicker. For example anyone that can make a really good mid size motorcycle will earn billions if the machine is $1500 new out the door. Build a similar machine at $18,000 and you will struggle to stay alive. Many items would be more of a profit if it were simply much less expensive.
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The level of chaos caused by a major economic change caused by automation is not fixed. It is a variable. If law, social policies and social services develop sensible policies there should be no distress at all. It is only if we wait and try to patch the harm done after it occurs that problems will be severe. For example we currently have Unemployment Insurance and retraining as our mode of social response. That is no longer a valid path. for example currently if a fifty year old worker suffers job loss we offer a few months of poor pay from Unemployment followed by retraining etc.. Now that is a foolish path to take. Retraining will be useless as more and more jobs yield to automation. So in essence we need to retire that worker and provide a reasonable income for him so that he can make purchases and support businesses. It' s like the old Boy Scout motto "BE PREPARED".
Something about this article must be getting away from me. I would think that wealthier places than Africa where wages and benefits are high would be targeted sooner than low wage companies. If a $25.00 per hour employee is eliminated the savings is obvious but if you remove a worker who earns one dollar a day or whatever the economics are unclear to me. The new issue is whether my automation can do better and cheaper than the competitors automation. That leaves poor nations and businesses in a very bad position as the funds to automate a production facility are a huge barrier.
Fast travel and long distance travel spreads disease at very high speed. You might sit next to a sick person and never get sick but then you go to the store and four people get sick and take it home and it goes from there. It is a very serious problem and short of stopping travel and tourism it is a hazard we all must bear.
The article states the "assumption" that science can keep up with our problems. Time makes it a bad bet. For example anyone who came down with AIDS or HIV infection in 1984 need worry about anything while in their grave. Now there is real hope of dealing with AIDS in developed nations as science and medicine lag behind needs. Then other facets of an issue come to light. How much energy must we expend to remove carbon dioxide from the air? How much heat is generated doing so? If we go with solar or wind or tide how much land will have to be dedicated to CO2 removal? As people in the Arab nations evacuate into other regions how many wars will break out/ are any of those players equipped with nuclear or other advanced weapons? Then we need to know how much money will be gobbled up putting all of this in place? What other major issues will we be forced to fight while global warming is being beaten down. American farmers already warn that the US may not be able to feed itself right now. and anyone thinks gold or silver will bail them out they are being childish. Ever tried to eat a gold bar? With enough starving people out and about a ton of gold could be worth less than loaf of bread. WE ARE IN DEEP !
Pollution is a consequence of human activity. It's that simple. The more people you have the more pollution you get. It does not take a rocket scientist to get that digested as a fact. There is a common fantasy that science can sort of leap frog along thus saving humanity in the nick of time. That is a really bad bet. Obviously we have had decent science around for at least 100 years and the world still has hunger, disease, homelessness and numerous wars that have to do with poverty. Science is wonderful but it is not our salvation. That is compounded by a population that fights to resist change. As far as global warming not threatening all of us consider just a tiny bit of the consequences. First expect home insurance to vanish. For example the Miami area represents at least 10 million people. The buildings and homes in Miami would either be standing in water or destroyed by water. That would mean billions in losses to the insurance market. Then we have the issue of insurance companies owning banks. If the insurance industry crashes our banks will crash as a consequence. Then consider that home sales will be impossible as no mortgage company in their right mind would write policies. Next consider where your drinking water will come from. Sure we could desalinize salt water but that is expensive and then one must safely dispose of the salt. You can't simply dump salt in a small area as it will kill off ocean species if the salt content is too high. So maybe you live at altitude and think you will be OK. One example is that south Florida is about the only heavy producer of fruit and vegetables throughout the winter and those farms are very, very close to sea level. And just where do you think the water will come from to use to grow crops. Has anyone considered what the Mississippi River might do if the ocean rises? At what point would that river simply stop flowing into the ocean? We are at huge risk yet the public sort of yawns and resists all change.
Keep in mind that the state has all kinds of inspections and that bridge surely was declare it safe for use/.
For the government as well as the public to have the ability to severely observe all people at all times would be interesting. There would be huge benefits as well as losses. We are now about to confront new realities. Between cams and computers and standardizing electronic money as the only means of exchange we could bring crime to a very close to zero event. The catch is what would we do with the millions of people who currently commit crimes? Most people actually commit serious crimes but often are completely unaware that they are doing so. Examples include a bit of fudge on income tax. Or how about smoking pot? Worse yet businesses commit more crimes than individuals. Can the American public withstand such revelations?
It sounds like he knew just enough chemistry to kill himself. Chemical reactions can be oddballs simply because following exactly the same mixtures and methods can have more than one final result. So if you do not know that you may have either a good result or an explosion you just might try certain experiments. My bet would be he was trying to cook up a batch of meth.
In the 1970's there was such a device put in use and it worked. perhaps this new device works better or something but the older one did save lives. The device was used in places like power plants where steel is 99% of a tall structure and would allow workers to take shelter before the strike occurred. I knew the electrical technician who helped create the device.
First you simply can not stick to dumb TV sets. You need a smart TV and they are not expensive these day unless you buy a huge one. i have Netflix that is sent by wifi in my home. It can appear with no problem on three TVs in my home. You simply need the Netflix plug in on each TV. With a smart phone all you need is my password and user name and you can watch movies anywhere you want. A TV has to plug in anyway. Plugging in a wall wart is no problem and the wires are quite tiny so you should be able to make it pleasant to the eye. With computer tech advancing the way it is i think we could have strong computers inside our TV sets much like the all in one desktops we see these days. It would be just an extension of what we already have going from mild all in one units based on acomputer console to a tV with really strong and fast PCs behind the screens.
The all seeing eye on top of the pyramid on your dollar bills seems to be becoming a reality. Sadly that eye seems to be the CIA controlled by a demented pervert we call the president.
All of us should expect social turmoil due to technology. Preparation is the key. Our economic system and social systems must make serious changes or we will suffer greatly. The answer is not to hold back technology but to make certain that all people are reasonable happy. Permanent unemployment is one near future problem. In the past the criteria for a family being happy with their daughters getting married was either wealth or the prospects of wealth. Have you ever seen a knowing nod when some parent says their daughter was marrying a doctor? Social status and money are ideas that we currently value but will be discounted when everyone receives payment from the government. It also means that almost all taxes will be paid by businesses rather than individuals. Entire trades will almost certainly vanish. Also consider the effect of items like motorcycles and mopeds. How many people would purchase a motorcycle that was self driving? To me that would be a terror trip. The motorcycle industry may almost vanish. On the other hand boats that could fulfill a trip without a human pilot might be much more profitable and desirable than boats that one must manually control. The effects of AI will be much greater than most people could imagine.
Anyone either unbalanced enough or ignorant enough to be attracted to Nazi beliefs needs to be swept up and sent into a secured institution until their mental health or education improved enough to allow them to converse with the rest of the world. Facts matter ! Hitler was the worst disaster to every hit Germany. His beliefs caused Germany to commit horrors that got their nation beaten down like a bug under a shoe. Preaching hatred drove Germany into a rabid group of savage filth. Not top even mention the at least 40 million dead caused by Nazi beliefs it also took a wrecking ball to the German economy that lasted quite some time after WW2 ended. The militarization of Russia was one response to Nazi behavior. Russia was in great fear of Germany and that fear was instrumental in creating a huge communist effort to take over the world. If anyone out there thinks they agree with Nazi ideas they need to rush to a mental health facility and get help. In the end Hitler said that Germany deserved death as they obviously were not fit enough to win the war and a more hearty people deserved to prevail. A mad man expressing the ultimate treason and then the gutless idiot commits suicide. Our current US president is a mess and corrupt but even Trump is better than Hitler.
The capacity for thought seems to be totally absent in many if not most Americans. On top of that there is a really bad history of the brightest among us predicting the future. AI has the capacity to be far more intelligent than humans. Machines are already superior in many day to day functions. That will become more obvious in the near future.
Are you aware that a large Russian army was on the coat of China staged to invade Japan? If we had gone in on foot there would have been hundreds of thousands of American soldiers killed not to mention we might be at war with Russia trying to drive them out of Japan. If we simply surrounded them they would have times to make more weapons and train civilians to fight us. Dropping two atomic bombs was the most merciful available option. Even some Japanese have praised us for those bombings as the authorities in their nation were so murderous and barbaric. I'll have to search for the date of the first hydrogen bomb but I suspect that it was a couple of years. And yes it is awful that innocents suffer in wars but it is always a problem.
All war is negative and evil but the truth is that we are forced to live with wars just as our ancestors were. If an enemy creates or improves an element of war that you do not have you will be defeated. If there are AI drones on this planet we must be certain that we have the best drones and more drones deployed than an enemy. We can only hope that the drones will be sophisticated enough to eliminate more death of non combatants than current equipment. Think what would have happened if we did not have the first atomic bombs.
I'm in Florida and since we do get hurricanes frequently I have to say that ninety mph winds are hardly a breeze to us. The idea that 90 mph winds would cause much loss of power to our homes would invoke hostility from the public. The idea that a home would come apart in 120 mph winds is absurd. Apparently the construction requirements for these northern states is set way too low.
We now have so many disorders that any three letters floating up in your alphabet soup are likely to represent some disorder. Perhaps it is time to simply classify problems that are obsessive behaviors as simply mental illness. It doesn't matter if its duck hunting or sticking heroin in your veins, if you are doing things that are against your best interests you have a problem. Problems tend to cascade into larger problems. If a person is absurdly attracted to video games you can bet that things like social interaction are effected and as the person becomes more and more isolated becomes some kind of social menace. Values and function tend to be locked together thus we see young people obsessed with cars getting a hold of way too fast cars and causing wrecks that effect many others. Questioning the value system of a young male who is car crazy is not likely to reset the values that cause the behavior. What we consider as normal is often an indication of lousy mental health. That means that since most people have such issues that society as a whole is a bit of its nut.
There are times in which hate speech is called for such as when an administration is corrupt and filled with criminal activities that approach a charge of treason. What amounts to a call for patriots to be active in driving out such an administration may seem like vile hate speech to others. Yet the last thing we would want is to have the public not contacting each other and help to wind ways to force such people out of office. Look at the hate speech that was used in the denial of Obama being born in America or the supposed crimes of Hillary Clinton. All of those lies were hate speech but could people no longer debate or accuse the liars of wrong doing? Censorship is as dangerous as any wrongs done on communication systems.
I am very glad that slashdot exists and thank all for their wonderful work at slashdot.
Flat demand creates all kinds of mischief but flat demand is nothing compared to declining demand. As more and more homes are able to go off grid the problem will become dramatic. Imagine being the only home left on your block connected to the power grid. Your electric bill will go through the roof as you are supporting more and more of the power companies needs. The use of solar roofs and solar walls may also collect enough power to supply our vehicles as well. That points to two other big events. Normal cars and trucks will suddenly be obsolete. And homes and apartment houses that are not up to date with solar roofs and solar walls will need at the very least a complete remodeling. even getting a mortgage for a on the grid type of home will probably become impossible. . Getting a car loan could also become a huge problem for conventional vehicles as investors may correctly think that conventional vehicles have no real value and that borrowers will walk away from car loans financed when normal vehicles were desirable. I'll bet that we see companies spring up to do nothing but convert specific vehicles to modern, electric units. For example there are plenty of Ford F 150 pickup trucks that could be converted to electric or hybrid trucks.
Sometimes forces combine to create situations that are menacing. One such issue is a total lack of choice. Modern nations survive on trade. Those that offer the most for the least tend to prosper. That means that if China or Japan replace human workers with machines that they can compete in the modern world. In the past the argument was over the price of labor in foreign lands compared to workers in the US who earned far higher wages. But that is becoming an invalid point. Now the question is whether my automation is better than their automation. We have no choice at all. We must compete and if competition requires running totally automated businesses we have no choice other than going with the trend. Further the speed of change is increasing thanks to our new machines. Yet our politicians and even our business leaders are offering very little to buffer the effects of all most zero human employment in the very near future.
Here we have an article that points out that the law can be a joke. It has always been true. Imagine that a poor person seriously wrongs you. The poor are exempt from most civil suits. After all, it costs money to win a suit and if you win there is no money to collect and likely may never be money to collect. That means that a large section of law only applies to people who have something to lose. In a way it is the opposite of criminal law. In criminal law the person who is poor will suffer a lot more than a person who can afford good lawyers. Income and wealth diversity have taken the idea of equal justice for all and dumped them in the trash can.
All technology exists to eliminate human effort or labor. We have finally reached that magical toggle point where we can expect AI to eliminate almost all employment. We will need a new and totally different social structure, laws etc. to deal with the era that is beginning now.
Providing good books at very low prices makes for a boom. Providing good books for high prices ensures failure. This happens all across all elements of the economy. Inflation is one issue and greed is a real kicker. For example anyone that can make a really good mid size motorcycle will earn billions if the machine is $1500 new out the door. Build a similar machine at $18,000 and you will struggle to stay alive. Many items would be more of a profit if it were simply much less expensive.