The funny thing about Americans is they don't realize that things like netflick or amazon or whatever is the basis for their crumbling economy.
You are ordering something that you could simply go a kilometer down the street for and then return the next day.
And why, because Americans tend to be lazy.
It your own stupidity that is causing your dollar to drop in value.
Yeah, that's great if you're renting Shrek or Iron Man 2, but say you want to rent all the seasons of any given TV show or something like that? You can't do that at a rental store. Or what about Doctor Who? Those DVD's cost thirty dollars an episode here, and you can't rent them because nobody in America knows what Doctor Who is. Yet Netflix has them all. How about independent films or documentaries? Good luck "walking a kilometer down the street" and finding something like that. Anyway, I refuse to believe that Blockbuster was supporting the economy, anyway. Good riddance to them.
Just remember that for every Blockbuster that dies that's at least a dozen people made unemployed and unable to support the economy while they collect benefits from the government (ie taxpayers). Every store that closes means a reduction in a city's tax base that pays for roads and sewers (so that money has to be made up in other areas such as higher property taxes once enough of them close). One shouldn't say "good riddance" to any business going under. Not these days.
That said, both comments above are valid points. I personally hate it whenever I order something from Amazon, because I would much rather give the money to a local business that provides jobs (and, from a selfish standpoint, gives me some place to go other than the grocery store). Even if it costs a bit more. And whether it's an independent operation or a Wal-Mart, it doesn't matter, it all adds up. Problem is so many "brick and mortar" businesses have decided to not bother bringing in DVD and Blu-Ray titles that I want - in many cases it's not even a case of "won't" stock the title, but that they "can't" because their distributor has its head up it's rear end. This also goes for rental places. Especially as brick-and-mortar rental operations die quickly, they're not going to risk the money on, say, a Doctor Who that might spark a dozen rentals compared with Iron Man 2 that might spark 100 rents.
So while I honestly feel guilty buying from online sources, at the same time many of the businesses did it to themselves by not providing the product I'm willing to pay for.
What I have always found weird about Netflix is that what made it so popular was the "rent by mail" option. Ignoring the more recent online streaming option, I always found this counter-intuitive in our "want it in 5 seconds" society. It was weird that a service that required people to wait a couple days for the DVDs they wanted to see would do so well, especially with regards to releases that one could just walk down the street and get in 5 minutes. And unless you have a mailbox out your front door, you still needed to make the effort to mail the discs back, which is no different from going back to the Blockbuster and dropping it in the return slot.
Now that the online version has taken off (coupled with the anti-consumerism culture that's being promoted where people aren't supposed to own anything anymore) this point is moot, but I honestly expected Netflix to crash and burn at the start because it didn't fulfill the instant gratification requirement.
Alex
