On Saturday morning Forbes published an opinion piece by LIU Post economist Panos Mourdoukoutas with the headline “Amazon Should Replace Local Libraries to Save Taxpayers Money.”
It quickly received enthusiastic backlash from actual American libraries and their communities.
“Forbes advocates spirited dialogue on a range of topics, including those that often take a contrarian view,” a Forbes spokesperson says in a statement.
If libraries closed, he wrote, taxpayers would save money, and Amazon could open bookstores to provide those communities with physical books.
The functions of the library, Mourdoukoutas said, have been replaced: community and wifi are now provided by Starbucks; video rentals by Netflix and Amazon Prime; and books by Amazon.
As critics have pointed out, the communities that would be hardest hit by libraries closing would be the underprivileged.
Writer Kashana Cauley responded to Mourdoukoutas in a tweet with 14,000 likes at time of writing, “Let me clarify something. »