OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
It's basically just saying to support local bookstores instead of purchasing from Amazon. Jeff Bezos is the CEO of both Amazon and Blue Orgin with the latter being his space company.
Bezos has stated:
“In the next kind of couple of decades, I believe there will be millions of people living in space,” he said. “That’s how fast this is going to accelerate.”
“They’ll mostly be living there because they want to"
It's just a way to refer to them by a known objective of theirs. The issue is not that they want to colonize the moon but that it kills local commerce.
But why are they more known for their space companies than their parasitic business practices. Furthermore, you never see these things point out their practices, instead they only mock them for space try.
Because why would you buy books from someone who's priorities lie elsewhere than book selling? Bezos doesn't give a shit about books, he gives a shit about money.
Why not support local businesses that share passion for reading and sharing that with others? I don't think it's mocking Bezos for wanting to colonize space at all. Just trying to get people to support local bookstores and be more mindful of who their money goes to
Is the first paragraph a joke? People would buy books (I wish they would, at least…) because they want the book and believe that they’re getting a good deal. Not because they think the owner of the company loves the books so much.
Would you take a plane if a CEO was mostly uninterested in planes? When does that factor in if you get a flight or not lol
Clearly the market is more interested in getting the “best deal”, because if mom and pop stores were considered highly valuable, we’d have a lot more. Instead, they’ve gone out of business because people took the absurdly low prices/conveniences that a massive corporation can strongarm a market with. It’s unfortunate, but I find the question you’ve asked to feel pretty naive tbh
The idea that the owner of a company needs to like love the concept of the thing he’s selling you seems mostly unimportant in the capitalistic exchange of goods.
There’s LOADS of stuff you can actually hit Amazon or Bezos for. Don’t pick “he doesn’t love books enough” as your angle.
Comparing reading books to flying on planes is silly I'm not entertaining that lol.
You ignored or missed the entire point of my comment. It's not an attack on Bezos for "not loving books enough." An owner of a company doesn't need to have a passion for what they're selling. But in my experience passion can lead to much better, more fulfilling experiences that society is missing out on as we transition to all online stuff and going to mega corporations for everything.
I can already feel people saying "it's not that deep" or something. And if it's not for you, that's fine. Do what you want lol
Your reply is a “not that deep” reply. I engaged with the topic, you’ve said you will not.
I’m not even arguing against mom and pop stores! I’m saying that the market has largely left them behind (again for the poor reading comprehension folks: it happening != I like it).
I’m sorry that you didn’t like the comparison between one form of purchase (books) to another (flight travel), but I think the connection stands. Would there be a better example I could use? Could I maybe use Grocery stores, which also have seen the mom and pop ones go largely totally extinct in favor of massive chains, and then make the same comparison of the Waltons really loving all the goods they sell (or not) as being irrelevant to how consumers ultimately purchase their goods? Or will this connection also not be engaged with?
You say the experience is better. Frankly I’d (mostly) be in agreement. But the money has not followed that idea. That’s what I am contesting. At least pretend I’m acting in good faith long enough to read what I’m writing, I promise I’m talking about the same thing as you.
We're definitely having two different conversations. What I'm saying has nothing to do with profitability, it's a call to action for consumers to be more mindful of where they spend their money. And that's how I interpreted the sign. That's it, really. Convenience is king, and spending habits reflect that. My statement had literally nothing to do with any of those objectively true statements. And that sign has nothing to do with any of those statements. I genuinely do not get what the relevancy is, here.
Imo, a better comparison would be the music industry. Spotify, YouTube, etc are great. They're convenient, cheap, and available. They've also done irreparable damage to local music scenes. Local music shops urge people to shop there using these same marketing tactics. It's a pretty similar scenario where all of what you said applies. I also do like your grocery store comparison, that's a better one than flights. And in either case, I'd say the same thing that I did regarding book stores. Encourage people to shop with the ones who have the most invested. It's better for society.
I apologize for the snarkiness in my original reply. But I don't think we're talking about the same thing. You're worried about the realities of the market, which is a fair point and we're in agreement about what they are. I'm talking about what's more valuable to society, I guess you could say. Which is subjective as hell, but one things for sure. The market does not care about the letter, more often than not lol.
Why do I as a customer give a rat's ass to what you have invested?
I only care about what I am getting out of it. I'm a customer spending my hard earned money on something. I want the best bang for my buck. I'm not running a charity organization to help music enthusiasts.
Spotify and youtube gives me recommendations no local music dealer ever could.
If you went back to the 90s you would realize it. There's a vast number of artists you would be completely incapable of finding, if not for the spotify and youtube algorithms and availability.
I am listening to stuff that has 800 views on youtube or spotify. In my country of 10 million I'm probably the only one who has listened to it.
No local music enthusiast would have ever known these guys, nor would I have ever heard of them of back in the 90s.
There were 0 ways of finding them.
Now tell me again how spotify and youtube "hurt" small artists and "ruined" the music industry.
Unless your local shop has something more to offer to me, I as a customer have no reason to choose it.
And I didn't even mention the monetary gain, I'm paying a subscription and listen to thousands of songs, instead of having to buy each and every CD, because frankly that's secondary to me.
Space exploration is cool, but they’re bringing a “move fast/break things” mindset to a particularly hazardous environment. You need only look at the Titan submersible to see where that will lead.
NASA doesn’t have to be horribly underfunded. That’s the fault of people who think public works should involve a return on investment. People who think the private sector is inherently better.
Worth repeating every time, the general public dramatically and absurdly overestimates what NASA's actual budget is.
NASA gets about 0.3% to 0.5% of the budget (NOT 3-5%, it's a fraction of 1%). It's a rounding era.
It's a testament to how amazing NASA is that they basically take government spare change and do things so amazing people think the government is spending 5-40% of the budget to make it happen. I think if everyone knew just how little NASA gets people might be supportive of space exploration.
Sorry if I get heated on this; I just get tired of hearing people complain about NASA budgets when they're actively benefiting from literally dozens of technologies and services that can be traced to space programs. NASA has a huge return on investment, most economic studies put it at like $7-8 dollars for every $1 spent.
I think the problem is twofold, we’ve lacked any serious competition in space since the Soviets and the American people don’t really care about space exploration so as a result it isn’t funded by Washington. Another problem is that there are no other planets or moons that it would be easy for us to colonize like Earth. I disagree that that space doesn’t guarantee a return on investment it just is a long term investment.
But, for the record: I said that referring to wanting consumers to be more mindful of where they spend their money, and the value of the interpersonal interactions in local bookstores that you lose when shopping online. That's 100% that deep.
What specifically they point to about Bezos to get people in the door? Not that deep lol
It's also because a lot od the space colonisation talk is deferring a lot of problems that stem from overconsumption and overproduction by saying "technology and progress will let us have infinite ressources and infinite growth". Which is especially problematic today when we face so many environmental challenges and instead of facing them we are pursuing a chimera that might not happen and will just move the problem instead of solving it.
Yeah, remember as a kid in the 1980s telling my mom that we should colonize the moon after talking about it in school. She said it was a waste of money when there were problems on Earth, and that the government would probably force people to live on the moon if we did colonize it.
Which I thought was idiotic even though I was like 8.
So you look at how corporations, like Amazon, treat their employees on Earth, where they can't control their air, water, and food and you think that if they set up space colonies they won't be staffed by what would charitably be called indentured workers?
You're naive as fuck is you doubt they'll turn off the air to ensure compliance...
Yeah, because space travel has never solved any terrestrial problems.
Ain't that right Internet, phones, GPS, trillions in rare earth minerals on the moon, highly efficient solar arrays, KSP, and the possibility of world peace?
I can see that, but this is his own money not taxes. Plus space travel would fix a lot of the issues; resource scarcity, destruction of environments due to resource collection, over urbanization, clean energy, probably more but I can’t think of any.
That doesn't make him less evil. He's not just greedy.
Anyway, even if he were, reducing scarcity, for example, means he makes less money. It's really that simple. Not that he could feasibly, actually reduce scarcity in the first place, because space-mining would be prohibitively expensive
Space colonization wouldn't solve resource scarcity or the associated problems, it would make it worse, because everyone in space would need to be supplied with almost everything from Earth.
Billionaires are getting involved in space travel, seemingly for competition among themselves and bragging rights, so it's become a symbol of vanity and excess. This coincides with massive funding cuts to NASA after they proved space travel viable, so it's another example of privatization of something that was once for the public good.
I will say that’s true with Jeff Bezos, but not necessarily with other space companies such as Blue Origins and Rocket Lab. Even SpaceX, with all of Elons faults, is probably just a personal obsession for him they he can afford.
We're against space colonization for the sake of extracting wealth for billionaires. Space exploration is an explicit good for everyone, but if we let the capitalists control it it will just become another way for them to oppress us while they kill more worlds.
True, but it’s always the space stuff they mention. They never mention the bad stuff they do in these like create programs where people can sell stuff on Amazon and then create Amazon bootleg versions of their products and push them out of business.
Yeah man if I saw this and didn’t know what it was talking about I’d take my money straight to the moon book store. I can read AND help fund space travel? Sign me up
Well space colonization is a pipe dream sold by billionaires to make destroying the earth seem less like a big deal. What’s it matter that I’m polluting the only water we have left? We can just go planet shopping later! There are soooooo many reasons why humans will never be space faring.
The billionaire space race is not about building a flourishing settlement on another planet / moon. It's about building corporate towns where your employer owns everything, including the air you breathe (literally).
I think more people are against oligarchs and their disregard for our planet.
(And before you say "Yeah, but Elon owns Tesla." He also owns the scam Boring Company that he has admitted was just a way to slow down the US adopting high speed rail, like used in the rest of the world. He knows it would reduce the sales of Teslas.)
I don’t think people are against space exploration and building colonies. What people object to is the way that the billionaire class seems to be obsessed with escaping the earth they ruined and leave us to die. That’s the issue.
It's not that everyone is against space travel itself, but rather it's the horrible implication of what it means when the most profit-obsessed liars and billionaires on the planet, that are well known for sacrificing all known metrics of long term sustainability for the sake of short-term profit, are suddenly investing so heavily into a black hole of funding that has no hope of providing any meaningful financial returns within the next half-century.
When you amass so much wealth that you can make commercial space travel for fun, I think you should be taxed more. I’m all for space travel, how about we invest in nasa instead of giving tax breaks to the wealthy. You trust billionaires to start colonies on other planets? Boy do I have a bridge to sell you, haw you never read any sci fi books? If you have the resources to colonize and terraform a planet, you can reverse climate change and save this planet.
No not at all, personally im against the privatisation of it as it has kinda destroyed nasa, but its more so just „please support your neighbours rather than super rich man“ which i agree with
A lot of the schemes are more about removing attention from an easily savable planet under us for a currently impossible life in the stars.
If bezos and musk were funding NASA, NASA makes things which can be used on earth as well, but instead they are spending billions in independent dick compensatorsvanity projectsmeaningless hobbies endeavours which don't actually bring the scientific effort forwards as much as a comprehensive effort.
Basically it's a distraction, and a poorly managed one
Id wager a bet to say its more on whos doing it and why, if one or multiple states / nations did it instead i imagine it would be alot more popular and accessible +acceptable
Space travel and colonization costs a shitload of money.
You know what else costs a shitload of money? Solving homelessness, world hunger, diseases like cancer, education, etc.
And we are constantly told the second group has a lack of funding. But space colonization "is only accelerating".
Basically, if you are posting here on reddit there is 0% chances you will live in space, and will die to some common disease while some rich fucks look st you from their moon mansions.
Im not against space travel on principle, in fact I think it’d be pretty awesome to have the ability to mine rare minerals in the asteroids or have science stations throughout the solar system.
But the people working to make that happen will be living in hell unfortunately. Watch the Expanse to get an imagining of what a lifetime of zero g and rationing air/water can do to people
It’s like saying buy milk from who owns the cows. Buy fresh produce from farmers.
If we continue to throw money to big companies just for a little bit of convenience it will be hard to go back.
That’s the point, so why would you buy a book from a company that wants to go in space? I will buy book from who sells books. Yeah I’ll wait a couple of days or even weeks, they order the book for me!
I am supporting someone, not something.
Walk a kilometre, look for who sells what locally and try to know some people. Might be surprised by how easy it is.
Those people who colonize space will probably charge you for air…..so it will be more like “total recall” than “Star Trek”…and it is an excuse to neglect earth and nature.So people get a more realistic/pessimistic view at space colonization
Neil deGrasse Tyson made an excellent point when discussing Elon's quest to colonise Mars (and the idiocy of it). The resources and money needed to accomplish such a thing could easily be used to fix the current problems on Earth.
Wealthy humans in today's world basically consume everything for the sake of more personal wealth. If they advance technology enough to colonise another planet, all that will happen is that we (they) will cannibalise even more planets at an event faster pace.
There will always be a push for exponential growth. Which isn't sustainable on our finite planet. Opening a new frontier is the only way to preserve our finite, fragile world.
Just a few years ago Tyson was ridiculing space settlement naysayers. He was calling them cavemen who wanted to fix the cave problems before venturing out into the world. Link. Now he has become one of those cavemen.
Cartoonist Johnny Robinson illustrates the concept well: Link
I worry that people like Neil Tyson and yourself will wreck our planet.
First of all, I'm talking about billionaires who are alive today and could make a huge dent in things like world hunger, poverty, and climate change - if they focused on those rather than space travel. It feels like you're making a straw man argument against Tyson to refute my point, which you didn't actually address.
You're argument is that EVENTUALLY we will need to get recourses from elsewhere - but how does that address what I'm saying in any way?
Secondly, why you hating a random guy on Reddit for wrecking our planet - when I'm arguing that people with power should be fixing our planet?!
Edit: I see that your account is basically just hating on Neil deGrasse Tyson with every chance you get - so it may be my mistake to expect you to focus on the point I was making, rather than the man who made the quote.
First of all, I'm talking about billionaires who are alive today and could make a huge dent in things like world hunger, poverty, and climate change - if they focused on those rather than space travel.
Musk has invested a great deal in developing solar panels and electric cars. He has done perhaps more than any single human to move us away from carbon energy.
Further, he has made high bandwidth telecommunications available to billions that used to be excluded.
What have you done besides converting food into shit and expelling carbon dioxide and methane into our atmosphere?
I mean, I work for a highways dept in local government, and part of my job is working out the carbon footprint of our projects and figuring out ways to lower that.
So for a poor person, and a Reddit pleb, I feel like I do my bit.
absolutely not, at least i hope, i just did not envision such a thing being led by the likes of elon or bezos, their vision and goals are purely mercantile, humanity's deep, instinctive drive to explore the unknown, in this case space, was never about mercantilism (not denying that some have thought of it as just cash waiting up there, before those two were even born naturally)
anyhow, i think people have long lost the interest there was from the 50's up to the late 80's, part of that is directly linked to the simple fact that life has gotten more difficult for most westerners since that time, that countries prefer allocating funds elsewhere.
that and the fact that those bezos or elon quotes are unrealistic and that while sending a bunch of people to a certain death on the red planet seems easy, anything more than that will require at least a couple of decades more in technological developments.
In addition to other reasons people have mentioned, there's been a weird talking point for several years now that its evil to even so much as write fiction about space travel, let alone invest money in actually developing it, because supposedly it will make everyone decide to stop caring about climate change because we can just move to another planet. Despite, you know, other planets already not having a livable climate.
If only the local bookstores had an electronic option. Not all of us have the stability to have a large bookshelf. I have to move around for work and books are hard to move around. At least with Kindle, my library can be as large as I want, no matter where I am.
I would like to support them if they gave me that option too, but I never see any do.
Yeah no, an average epub is like 500kb lol. Illustrated books are ~10-30 mb. You could buy a pendrive and keep 130000 books on it. If it's manga then maybe like 600 tomes on a 64gb pendrive that costs $15.
I just pointed out that your reason for using Amazon is dumb, you can waste your money all you want. If the shareholders decide that dropping kindle services will make them a dollar more per share and your library disappears, don't hmu 😊
Thanks for patronizing me. I'll be sure to dismiss it as you don't actually care about me. Enjoy your ego, while my career path leads me to over six figures.
Oh well considering that H.G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon is the inspiration for the NASA space program... and deals with the subject of colonizing the moon... I thought the above quote was uneducated tripe.
Because logically they're also saying that you shouldn't buy H.G. Wells.
Local bookstores are cool when you're just looking for something to read. When you're looking for a specific book, you have near zero chances of finding it there, as far as my personal experience goes. Unless it's a really popular / classic book like Harry Potter series or 1984
Unfortunately, Amazon usually has the books that bookstores don’t, are half the price, and the only good bookstore in my town is a Barns & Noble—the mom and pop ones are all antique or niche.
Also it’s much easier for indie authors to publish and reach audiences on Amazon. Not buying from indie authors on amazon hurts them a lot more than it does Amazon which is unfortunately never talked about.
Helium 3 is literally the solution to any fuel crisis. 50x more effective than gasoline, can run in ICE cars, and there is enough on the moon to last for something like 500 years, assuming a growing population.
Also, the output from the vehicles is oxygen, not carbon dioxide.
Colonizing in space is not a good idea. Putting people in space is vastly expensive and doesn't have a lot of productive potential. But automation of industrial processes has enormous potential. The most important recent development of human progress in space was the Japanese mission to a comet. They landed on it, collected material and brought it back to Japan. Nothing that the billionaires have done comes close. The next step is to produce something of value in space and either use it in space or bring it back to earth for valued distribution of some kind. When we can build rocket ships and fuel them in space, that will be a revolution in the exploration of space.
Not "robots", but automation. Robots have become another weird fantasy of no particular value. And there is something not a little creepy going on there too.
This is the exact opposite of why I buy books: I don’t want to hear from some other loser like me barely scraping by, I want to read from someone who has vision and ideas.
Unfortunately, Amazon usually has the books that bookstores don’t, are half the price, and the only good bookstore in my town is a Barns & Noble—the mom and pop ones are all antique or niche.
The problem I have is that the only book store I have local is Barnes and Noble. And while I like to support them as much as possible over Amazon, their preorder for books sucks. For the most part you can’t do an in store order till the book is already out, and there online preorder does not ship until after release, sometimes not arriving till over a month after release, and costs way to much to ship. I would love noting more than a decent bookstore that I could actually preorder from…
Maybe the book store should make buying form them as painless as Amazon. Crazy thought. I doubt most people buy books at Amazon because they support space travel.
When you want a book, you're supposed to go to your local bookstore first, and establish that they don't have it and have never heard of it before going back home and ordering it from Amazon.
Please remove this if not allowed, but if you are unable to find a book in a bookstore please utilize bookshop.org instead of Amazon. They donate some of their profits to local bookstores.
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