From a very young age, I had always understood businesses as entities that bring value to society in meaningful ways that otherwise it would not receive – and that’s one of the many reasons why the bookstore had always stood out to me as one of the ultimate business forms; after all, what could deliver more value to society than the transmission of knowledge itself for the profit of mankind, far above and in excess the monetary value that is paid for them?
There is a huge camp out there of people who think that knowledge should be free and fairly accessible – I don’t dispute this to be a valuable point of view, but I also consider it to not be tenable; sure, we can say that society is the core issue and that knowledge *should* all be made available to the universe, but the fact remains that creating and obtaining knowledge is a costly effort, and if nothing else, the process of assembling something together whether through study or physical organization is something that manifestly should be rewarded.
A critic might very well say that that’s the capitalist in me speaking and fighting against all the tides of justice, but I believe that life is about managing circumstances, finding spaces in the interstices of ideals and reality where there is a happy balance, and pushing forward in the thrust for existence.
In my ethical system and paradigm, that bookstore is the most moral of the businesses out there – maybe a little strange if you consider that Amazon had started out as an online bookstore perhaps, but that’s what we’re working with here x)
Anyway, I’m very happy to announce that I have a brand new partnership with the online bookstore GerakBudaya, for whom I’ve begun writing reviews – most immediately, a review of Dr. Toh Kin Woon’s “Malaysia’s New Economic Policy In Its First Decade”, casually titled “The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions” (not by me, but by the admin!!!)
It was super fun to reflect on the New Economic Policy, to meet a thinker who had dedicated his academic career to something so crucial to Malaysia’s society, and to become sufficiently capable of understanding as to develop a viewpoint valuable to society.
There are many things that have been happening recently – too many to contain within the margins of this page alone. Can’t wait to see how things will develop in the days ahead 🙂
