Creative Destruction and the Death of Borders Books

At the Independent Institute's blog, Anthony Gregory celebrates today's announcement that the Borders bookstore chain is nearing extinction:

Several years ago book stores like Borders were  the subject of leftist animus. How dare they crush the smaller competition. Little book stores of all sorts were being pushed aside as these gigantic buildings that featured all sorts of titles, new and old, were being introduced into the strip-mall landscape, town by town, neighborhood by neighborhood. Surely these corporate giants, undercutting the competition from mom and pop shops, would dominate the sector forever, having consolidated their share of the market and defeated the poor small stores forever.

But today Borders is on the verge of collapse. It seems the business model is losing out, especially to online sales at Amazon.com….

The failure of Borders is a beautiful thing, coming as it does from the market process. If voluntary competition should one day bring Amazon.com down, in the midst of a competing commercial success today unimaginable but even more friendly to consumers than that wonderful online store,  we will again have reason to celebrate.