WHAT GOES AROUND- COMES AROUND

I’m a huge fan of poetic justice, retribution, or whatever you choose to call it. Although I am pretty short-tempered, I enjoy hearing the admonition “Don’t get angry – get even.”

The latest bittersweet vindication for me is the bankruptcy of Borders, America’s second largest book chain after Barnes and Noble. Of course I hate to see the wreckage that follows: the inevitable downsizing, the closing of stores, and the layoff of thousands of employees. In the movie “You’ve Got Mail” Meg Ryan is the proprietor of a neighbourhood children’s book store that is put out of business by the “big box” book store created by Tom Hanks. Everything works out Hollywood-well in the end of course. But that’s Hollywood. The reality is that the big box book stores, which themselves suffered some huge setbacks - remember the near failure of Indigo and its rescue by Chapters and a very deep-pocketed owner? It was these book supermarkets that devastated the “real” bookstores, you know, the ones where you could actually talk to book lovers. The big box stores have it all of course, but the people behind the counter only have to know how to access their computers. My favourite fantasy is that I go to a computer-driven information station and ask for – say - “A Tale of Two Cities” and tell them to look under Dickens. The person at the computer would ask:” “And how would you be spelling that name?” I’m exaggerating of course.

Payback almost always happens where the winners who cared nothing for the destruction of their smaller competition, are themselves open to the same kind of annihilation.

One of the classic examples is how the textile industry in America kept migrating to new cheap labour locations. Small towns throughout New England were the centre of America’s thriving textile industry. There were cotton mills everywhere. There were garment factories all over. New York was the garment capital of America. (Just as Spadina Avenue in Toronto was, along with Montreal, our own clothing hub.) In the U.S., under “right to work” legislation enacted during the Truman years, the factories moved to the Old South where they didn’t have to put up with troublesome unions and other barriers to capital success. The irony of course is that because many industries are bottom-feeders, and chase after the lowest possible wage levels, they quit Carolina and headed for Central America. Even there, they left El Salvador for Honduras where they could pay even lower wages. The delicious but tragic irony was magnified during John Edwards failed run for the Presidential nomination. He promised to revive the battered textile industry. Of course, it was too late. Technology and corporate greed made it impossible to get that toothpaste back into the tube.(An interesting sidebar is that statistically, about 20 years ago about 50% of the clothing bought by Americans was made in America. Now the number is down to 2%.)

So now, Borders, which, along with the other big box book stores, devastated the small book stores, is now feeling the pain as E-Books take over. They were already in trouble because Amazon could outsell them and Amazon had no real estate to worry about. All they needed was to be the back-end to an interment order system and to run warehouses. And warehouses don’t need expensive Big Mall addresses. You may be saying that times change and those who can’t keep up will fall by the wayside. Agreed. But in the case of Borders, “he who lives by the sword etc….”

Who’s to blame? People like me I guess. Having access to book review sections in the Globe and Mail and New York Times, why would I do anything else but download books to my E-Reader? For the dinosaurs who insist that there is still nothing like the feel of a “real” book as you cuddle up to your favourite author, I thought so myself, until I discovered the wonderful portability (especially for travel) and absolute convenience of having Kobo do all the work.

As they say – it’s a jungle out there. Ordinary people get chewed up by the machinery. I’m just as ordinary as the next person and my taste in reading can be handled best by my portable electronic system. So there goes Borders. And who will be next?