Here’s a bourgeois inner-city faux-boh statement for you: The death of bookstores is another win for capitalism.
Sounds like something people in fisherman pants said in the uni refectory back in 1993. But actually New York writer Adam Gopnik did. He argues that capitalism grew up with smaller, intimate institutions existing alongside – cafes, bookstores, etc – to keep things in check and keep humans connected to true progress.
“These intermediate institutions were where the real work of eighteenth-century mind-making got done. Enlightenment happened more often in a café than a classroom. It still does.”
“Markets don’t make men free; free men (and women) have to have the confidence to accept the instability that markets make.”
And confidence… where do we get this? I truly believe we get it from quiet moments where we get closer to