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Comment by bawolff | Hacker News Reader

Ah yes, mein kampf is ok [1], but dr suess is a bridge too far.

[Before anyone makes assumptions about my political views, i'm fine with publishers no longer publishing if tastes change, but i can't abide banning the sale of books in general. I don't really care what the content is]

[1] https://www.ebay.ca/itm/MEIN-KAMPF-1939-Complete-Unabridged-...

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Nobody banned the sale of these books. The only argument any of the people who are crying their eyes out could make here is: we need open source decentralized bookselling to ensure that people who don't care about the bad feelings people have about these books can still buy these books. Every other argument is just weak and quite frankly, herdmentality of the right wing political sphere.

What are you talking about? eBay banned the sale of these books.

They banned the sale of these books at other places?

When there's one company (due to network effects) that does something, that company's a de facto arm of government for that thing.

So yes, we do need distributed everything.

So. You think all the companies in the world are defacto arms of the government? I don't get what you are saying

Monopolies are de-facto government bodies. It isn't that Ebay is administered by USG (although I'm sure Ebay has an NSA/DHS detachment); it's that it makes no difference to the user whether a government bans the sale of books on online flea markets or the only practical online flea market does.

If the only store within a 2-hour drive is walmart, walmart is your equivalent of the soviet centrally-planned economy.

That is not a children's book.

People getting that book have some idea what they are getting I hope.

I do not want racist stereotypes in books I read with my children

Sure. i wouldn't suggest stocking it in the children's literature section (although i think you would be shocked how racist some books aimed at children can be once you start looking for it, including many written not just long ago but in the last 30ish years).

However children aren't the only people who read books like this. Dr Suess is one of the most influential children's authors. All of his books are certainly worthy of study from an academic perspective due to their long lasting influence.

I have literally just had the experience of stumbling on one of these racist dr Seuss books while reading with my kids, and I can tell you that I would have at least wanted a warning. It’s just not what I expected, and not something I would have wanted to expose my kids to. Which is kind of a shame, because scrambled eggs super is (aside from the overt racism) an awesome example of seussian prose.

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