The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble
This is the flip-side of creative destruction. Amazon and ecommerce in general have given us a world where brick and mortar retail often just can&#x27;t compete. 99% of these layoffs and restructurings, etc. are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The writer of this article seems to think that the executives are just trying to milk the company all the way down, but it&#x27;s not even clear to me there&#x27;s a better option. You can&#x27;t lose money indefinitely, you can&#x27;t compete in the sector you grew huge in (because it&#x27;s rapidly dying), and so what&#x27;s the end game here? Yes, they could handle this better, and maybe they overpay their executives (although what experienced executive would even want this job unless the pay was awesome?), but this is just quibbling. Whether it happened now or happened in six months or two years, this is inevitable.<p>Now, it&#x27;s definitely sad when people lose their jobs, but that&#x27;s kind of the devil&#x27;s bargain we&#x27;ve made with capitalism.<p>Some of the startups that grow out of HN will be in new sectors that only add to the economy, but many will replace, supplant, cannibalize, and dominate companies and industries that aren&#x27;t strategically or operationally capable of adapting. That means a LOT of people are going to lose their jobs in the process.<p>It sucks, but I&#x27;m not sure there&#x27;s a better option. Maybe the best we can do is try and structure a society where getting laid off from a decent job isn&#x27;t so damaging and scary on a personal level.