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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

I just tried the first two titles I thought of on both.

Art of Electronics, Bookshop.org $128.70, Amazon $94.03 (list price $117)

SICP, Bookshop.org $90, Amazon $53.77 (list $75)

Both Amazon titles will be in my hands tomorrow for no additional shipping cost to me. Bookshop suggests that for SICP if I pay $8 extra, I can have it expedited (3-6 days) or for $9 extra can cut that to 3-5 days with priority, though there is a free shipping option available (with no timeframe indicated).

SICP comes up on Amazon when searching for “SICP”; it does not on Bookshop.org, so I need to search by the longer title.

In case “nerd books” is a particularly weak spot, I tried the first book on NYT Best Seller list, Perfect Divorce. Bookshop $28; Amazon $21 and they can have in my hand between 10 and 3 today.

As a consumer, I see at least two hard downsides (cost and speed) and one soft downside (selection/browsing ease).

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I think it's entirely fair to point out that Amazon often wins on price and speed.

One question I've been asking myself lately: are single to maybe double digit price optimizations on books such a dominant concern that I should prioritize them over other values?

For an activity I have to do daily, maybe. That order of savings on meals adds up fast enough to be a triple digit number in a month.

Book purchases are weekly to monthly events, any savings on the order that amazon can give me tends toward a rounding error in a monthly budget. Or if my budget shrinks to the point they're not and I need to conserve funds that badly, I will use a library system.

Speed is nice but it's rarely crucial (and these days publishers themselves can get it in your hands pretty quickly).

Lots of us software engineers know "premature optimization is the root of all evil" -- when you overoptimize early, you commit resources in particular attention towards optimizations you may not know serve your ultimate goals.

Maybe your goals begin and end with getting the book in your hand at the lowest price in the shortest time period.

Maybe your goals include what kinds of businesses, activity, people and therefore society you support economically.

You can try

Https://thriftbooks.com

Admittedly, they’re not Amazon fast. But using their Wish List scores me plenty of great deals on things I don’t need ASAP.

Pro tip: For used stick to Like New and Very Good. I’ve had bad luck with Good, and have never tried below that.

Thanks! That site is far more competitive than Bookshop.org and is in the neighborhood of Amazon price-wise on 2/3 of those titles.

  Amazon   Thriftbooks   Bookshop.org   Title
  $94.03     $94.52         $128.70       Art of Electronics
  $53.77     $89.49         $ 90.00       Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
  $20.98     $22.97         $ 27.89       Perfect Divorce

Betterworldbooks is also very good for used books especially textbooks but more generically anything

Amazons worst contribution to the world was leaving people with the expectation that they need to have 2 day shipping for every single item they purchase. The climate impact alone is insane.

In most cases where I choose Amazon for shipping speed reasons the alternative I'm considering is making a special trip to a brick and mortar store by car. I don't know how to do the math to figure out which of those is worse for the climate, but Amazon is definitely not strictly worse.

By focusing on local maxima you’re ignoring that both of the behaviors you’ve described, on a societal scale, are terrible for the environment. Sure, it’s on Amazon or Exxon or whatever other company at the end of the day. But it’s individual human behavior that gives companies the impetus and the air cover to destroy the planet. But like so many other things, humanity, and especially Westerners, won’t learn these lessons until they’re on the doorstep.

Sure, I'm fine to focus on the individual human behavior, but that's a completely different argument than your original post made. To review that comment:

> Amazons worst contribution to the world was leaving people with the expectation that they need to have 2 day shipping for every single item they purchase. The climate impact alone is insane.

Here you're very clearly not discussing "individual human behavior that gives companies the impetus and the air cover to destroy the planet", you're directly blaming Amazon for creating high expectations for delivery times.

Your argumentation here feels like a motte and bailey to me. You attack Amazon for offering 2-day shipping because that's bad for the environment, I point out that the alternative that I would have used in the pre-Amazon world likely wasn't any better, you retreat into a more general attack on large-scale societal problems stemming from individual human behaviors.

I engaged with your bailey and found it lacking. I don't disagree with your motte, but that's not the conversation we were having.

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