• Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      23
      ·
      3 months ago

      But she wouldn’t have?

      Before Netflix I wasn’t buying hundreds of DVDs per year. It doesn’t make sense to claim that use of a service, even a free one, constitutes “savings” based on hypothetical behavior where you would have bought all the content individually at list price.

      • Soup@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        24
        ·
        3 months ago

        That’s the thing, in a lot of cases you’d simply go without whether you wanted to or not. They use “savings” to illustrate how much it would have cost to buy all those books on their own, that’s it. They clearly wanted to read those books but they wouldn’t be able to afford them without a library. If they had the money to spend on them I’m sure they would have but they didn’t and that’s literally the whole point.

        Not being able to afford something and not wanting that something are different and calling this “savings” is fine and makes complete sense.

        Example: I’ve seen 1085 episodes of One Piece. Without Crunchyroll(and it’s low fees, compared to buying box sets I’d never rewatch) I’d never have been able to see all that content. I would have wanted to, but I couldn’t.

        Or to mirror your own words more: Before Crunchyroll I never would have seen it as without the service to offer these savings I’d be shit out of luck.

      • penquin@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        3 months ago

        This person has read 40 books. They must love those books so much that they would have definitely bought them if this library didn’t exist. It’s not saving per se, but it’s money that could have been spent. They got the books they love and they didn’t spend the money. Win win, right?

        • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          3 months ago

          They wouldn’t have spent 60k on books over that time, they’ve only saved that much because the books were free. If they had to pay for the books they would have been more selective and less liberal in the amount.

          Spending $150 a week is just a lot of money to spend on books, it’s only that much because of the free price tag, so it’s extremely disingenuous to use that amount as people wouldn’t realistically spend that.

          • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            13
            ·
            3 months ago

            Yeah, libraries are so deceitful! It’s all a big conspiracy to promote literacy and give people books that they don’t even need!!! I can’t believe they’re forcing us to take advantage of them like this!

            • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              edit-2
              3 months ago

              A more realistic metric would be used books (also reflects the quality of all but brand new fresh books which are a rarity obviously), but you can’t quantify that price, so yes using new is disingenuous, but go off on a rant I guess? I think it’s a great idea, but let’s not kid ourselves that people would actually be spending that amount on books. It’s great for a feel good story though, I’ll give you that.

        • Taiatari@lemmynsfw.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          3 months ago

          Why does everyone assume books equals novels. The books loaned might have been text books or even journals.

      • uis@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        3 months ago

        Before Netflix

        Before Netflix there were such obscure things called libraries.

      • lunarul@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        3 months ago

        I prefer to buy books to own. But books are expensive, so if a particular book feels like it’s not something worth the money to keep, I just borrow it from the library instead. That’s literally money saved for me. Yeah, you could argue that if the library wouldn’t have been an option then maybe I wouldn’t have bought the book at all, so no difference there, but it’s still the difference between reading the book for free or not reading the book at all.