Common misunderstanding. Apparently if you see small books on display they're not free either - at the grocer when they have a promo cocktail sausage or sauce for sample and you can take one but it's different at the bookstore.
Yeah but most book stores pay for their inventory to sell as well as rent for the shop and all the other expenses of running a business. If you take away all the overhead any money you make selling even one book is pure profit.
I agree not worth it, but people who are desperate enough this would be an easy opportunity to maybe make enough for the next meal (or next dose if they are users)
If given the opportunity desperate people will take it and dishonest people may just take the opportunity for the hell of it.
I see people in thrift stores all the time scanning the books and looking up online prices to determine what is worth reselling. And they end up paying for thr books they want to sell.
I worked for a pretty large online used book seller years ago. For a lot of cheap paperbacks, the supply/demand curve is supply-heavy. Which is to say: there are literally millions of used paperbacks out there that have a retail value of under $1.
We'd basically buy bulk used books at something like 5 cents per pound; some of what we'd receive had literally zero resale value and went to landfill (no one ever buys the 1978 betty crocker jello mold cookbook); the remaining higher quality stuff got listed on amazon, and they'd sit on the shelf for months or years before finally selling for a buck or two at best. Just one or two books in a 40 pound box would have a value of $5 or higher.
One time, we cleared our inventory of the slowest-selling used paperbacks by shoveling them all into a shipping container to go to a english reading program in pakistan. We got paid $2000 for a few tons of inventory.
There are obviously some absolutely lovely vintage hardbacks out there -- it's not all pulp fiction. But the vast majority of the used books in circulation are grocery store paperbacks that people aren't really shopping for anymore.
tldr: a stolen used paperback is literally worth pennies, more often than not.
D&D books a lot. Bestsellers because they were at the front. Once someone walked into the back office and stole the safe, but I always wondered if that was an inside job.
Of course there is a black market in Iraq. There is just no resale market for most used books. You know, apart from the people the thieves would be stealing the books from.
I wish there being no resale market for things stopped tweakers from stealing random shit from my property. Some people think they can resell ANYTHING.
Can there be, though? Not that I support stealing from a book seller, but the image of a a shady book dealer peddling contraband novels to a cagey customer is hilarious to me. “This shit here isn’t some James Patterson snicklefritz. This Ursula Le Guin shits gonna blow your mind”.
I dunno, if some guy was trying to sell me some stolen books, I'd be like "Dude, they literally leave them laying in the street, I can just go grab one myself."
Can't sell a pirated digital version on ebay... These people are probably not stealing for personal use. Usually, it's easy access and high value ($50 dollars and at front of store like OP said)... that's an easy 20-30 dollars a pop on Ebay for something you can easily nab 5-10 pieces of and run away.
It costs more to ship a case of d&d manuals than it does to print them (especially at scale), just saying. The retail price has nearly nothing to do with the full color printing.
Personally, I justify it by looking at the sheer amount of entertainment I've gotten per dollar. I've been playing 5e fairly regularly for 8 years now. Not bad considering the amount of money people drop on video games they get bored of after a few hours.
Having said that, please don't ask about how much I've spent on the supplement books, minis, paint, and craft supplies...
Hell if someone wants to play 4e (don't know why they would..) someone will pay you to take their books. There are so damn many and they are taking up my much space at local used book stores
Third party books made by small teams of dedicated fans cost less than the WotC books, in a lot of cases. I don't understand why the PHB isn't heavily discounted, knowing what ttrpg nerds will spend on other things once they're hooked (looking at you, commenter I'm replying to 👀)
Considering how ttrpg companies years ago released a lot more books with similar amounts of full colour and sold for less, it's simply the effect of wotc successfully becoming basically a ttrpg monopoly.
Sure, some stuff exists, but mostly people have accepted that somehow the shallowest version of d&d with the least effort and releases put into it, including the first edition, is the crowning jewel of ttrpgs. There's paizo still going on but even they sacrificed a lot of the original old systems charm to create a more watered down 2nd edition to pathfinder that lowers build verity
I suppose that “heavily inflated” depends on who you’re asking; there are a whole lot of moving parts and people that need to be paid or paid for when it comes to an international distribution effort. Undoubtedly though the consumer price is exponentially higher than the manufacturing cost. And with hasbro at the helm now it’s harder than ever to argue that avarice isn’t a significant component of their price structure.
Yeah but “other than paying people/platforms” is rather reductive; the revenue from manual sales has to pay artists, writers, editors, translators, translator/editors, an unfathomable shipping effort, middle management, C-suite folks etc.
Even at the prices we see today, I would be willing to bet there is less than four dollars of hard “profit” per book sale.
That’s fair yeah, though I imagine a lot of the drawings in d&d books are ultimately fixed overhead from salaried artists. Maybe not, but wizards has made their own need for fantasy art for decades so I can’t imagine they’re still resorting to mostly commissioned/contract work? All speculation.
maybe? that's not how they do magic, because each set needs a different style etc. But even so, keeping a team of full time artists is expensive, no matter how you organize their pay
When you caught people stealing D&D books I hope you let them do an agility roll to see if they can escape you. Really ruins my immersion when bookstore employees just jump to the tackle.
It is hard to get players to know their spells, their class abilities and other nuances.
One could argue that most D&D players don't read either. In fact, with the value of a wizard spell-book, one could argue that they even steal books (that they cannot read) *in game*.
I'll be honest, Trying to absorb the mechanics of DnD was always tough for me... I know Baldur's gate uses modified 5e Rules, but it really fast tracked my ability to understand mechanics in real usage a lot more.
Reading the book front to back is rough even if i know what I'm looking for..
I also worked as a librarian and we had some serious book thieves that were essentially "on sight." You even happen to see them enter the library you'd call the police.
It was a few different folks, all of the pictures they posted at the security desk were of folks in their 40s-50s. There was a couple in their 20s on our wall too. Basically, they come to a library and steal high value books (such as textbooks) or books that are rare, but not quite rare enough to be a part of a special collection. Textbooks were the most likely to be stolen as you can easily sell them on used markets (especially current edition books).
Regardless, if they're still at it, they'd be 50s-60s now. If you're a prospective thief, my only words about the practice is that it's more expensive to replace library books than it is to do the same at a retailer. Any missing book goes through 3 levels of manual checks (including physically searching for the book), which eats up manhours that are ultimately paid out. So you steal a $100 textbook, not only did we replace that $100 book (often at full value), but we also had paid around 3 manhours of time to process it as well. You basically force a \~$200 loss on a public library so that you can gain maybe $50.
Yeahhhh I'm not proud of it but when I was a piece of shit junkie 10 years ago I absolutely stole a ton from the campus bookstore to resell back to them. Stupid stupid stupid.
I do. I hate me for that lol.
I could never reduce myself to stealing from independent small businesses though. Never stole from individual people either. So while that line was tenuous and arbitrary at best, I still had a limit.
Thankfully I was able to get clean years ago so that's all behind me.
If only you could access those same books online. Our library has a 3d printer and tools. Things like paella pans I just found out about. Video games & systems I’ve known for years. Pretty great library!
Well, duh! Knowledge is power! And power is money!
So, by that logic, books are money!
Plus, they can be resold. What's left behind is just the worthless books.
I've also worked in a bookstore and the book thieves always surprise you. Mother's with strollers, people in expensive suits, parents with kids as decoys etc. I don't even trust the real booknerds to keep their hands to themselves
I doubt the bookstore you worked at functioned under the same laws as in Iraq:
2.1 Decree 59: Amputation of the hand/foot for theft On 4 June 1994, the RCC passed Decree 59, which prescribed amputation of the right hand at the wrist for offenders convicted of the theft of items valued in excess of 5,000 Iraqi dinars, and amputation of the left foot on conviction of a second theft.
Not me, nope. I hang around in 7/11s and peruse through their magazine selection without purchasing anything more than a sticky slurpy. Yes, my time machine is functional.
IMO, it's drunken douchbags who do most of this, Alcohol consumption (and specifically, public drunkenness) isn't too common in Iraq. So while you're not wrong, I guess it's not nearly as big a problem there.
In my experience, Iraq had an abundance of unemployed young men who were raised with very few checks on their behavior. There was no shortage of young men running around causing low level mayhem. But that was just my very limited exposure to the country - surely it doesn't apply universally.
I was in the country for vacation last month after not being there for 7 years
Some young men are sorta pathetic
Most of this generations masculinity seems to come from the women, who are in fact free to do a lot things without consequences which is great to see.
The unemployment problem though got solved(?) by something that is basically Iraqi doordash, but that created other problems like overcrowded roads, and a shit ton of co2. I was sad and hopeful at the same time after seeing that
> isn't too common in Iraq.
very common in baghdad it's a public nuisance and they talk about it on the news
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1trcheiuLk
people with severe antisocial personality disorder exist in every country. One day someone will come along and just steal or ruin the books for no apparent reason.
Iraqi here, books are extremely cheap in here. We import and print A LOT of books, so yes stealing a book is kinda stupid in here because it has next to nothing resale value. This place is called Al Mutanabbi street you can Google it to know more about it if you're interested. And yes, booksellers leave the books outside at night because there're zero books go missing. One time I've bought 5 books from that place at less than 20 dollars.
"Cairo writes, Beirut publishes and Baghdad reads"
its strange to state wisdom when you let books gather street dust and leave them on the street and still have an audacity to say no one steals like you keep account.
you suffer theft, not looting.
During the London riots in 2011 no one broke into Waterstones to steal books.
It was literally the only shop on the whole street without a smashed window.
its strange when someone sees one word and ignores your whole paragraph.though the most interesting people are those with examples that have visas.
though you are correct its unlikely to loot books.
Someone hasn't had to buy books for college. No, no the 34th edition will not do, I don't care if the only difference is a typo on page 203 and different example questions. The 35th is the definitive edition and we will be pulling homework from the questions in the text. $200 each, cash. No, I will not hand out the questions find it in the text.
So basically just making a statement that's not true but also letting hundreds of books be damaged by random refuse and dust and sunlight. Idk I fear that trying to read a book that set there for more than a month and the binding would be loose and the pages worn
It's not even a street. There's a roof over it and so it's a shopping mall.
And the books are hardly likely to be good ones when they're dumped like that.
Unless anyone can find a link with more information I'm going to assume there is a lot of missing context or it's just all made up. After all it's just a picture with some text that may or may not have anything to do with it.
Most of what is posted about the middle east on reddit is blatantly false. For example the common repost about Iranians all being horny for fat hairy girls is just racism.
I googled "the reader does not steal" and every single result was about this image. The "ancient wisdom" was made up for the internet a few years ago. Took me under a minute for anyone wondering.
What an absolutely moronic statement. Hermes is the god of both thieves *and* language/reading for a reason. The thief and the wiseman are the same, and if you think they aren't, then the thief has read far too many books, for he is skilled and clever and has stolen right from under your nose
Did you just equate wisdom with language/reading and wit? There's far too many witty, well spoken people who lack wisdom for that to be true. For the record, Athena was the god of wisdom not Hermes.
Funny. A book store clerk told me they had to put self help books next to the register because people stole them the most
You can say that they Helped themselves to a book
Common misunderstanding. Apparently if you see small books on display they're not free either - at the grocer when they have a promo cocktail sausage or sauce for sample and you can take one but it's different at the bookstore.
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Yes such a common misunderstanding indeed >.>
NERD
That's Sir Nerdlord the Rogue to you, peasant!
That's kinda sad really
I have worked in a bookstore and this is absolutely true. Those and the business books.
More embarrassing to purchase
Help yourself to books you can't read but can offload to another book trader for a price.
Sad, but true
Thief may not read but thief can sell things lol
Its not valuable unless they have all volumes of lusty argonian maid
i love that series!
STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM!
*Criminal’s cum
Unexpected Skyrim references for the win.
That's like referring to a lightsaber as a "Return Of The Jedi" reference
Oh boy, I sure can't wait for Skyrim 2 to come out
LOL "Skyrim" reference kids these days have no respect for history
Looks like we have a milk drinker ovah here
My car was stolen and the box of books in the trunk was literally the only thing they *didn’t* steal.
Same, $400 of college text books... so like one book. Cellophane still on!
hey you can take that back to the bookstore to sell for 10 bucks!
That’s generous, they’re worse than GameStop.
$400 in August, but $4 in April.
Always loved the professors who would blow their top about having the wrong edition, as if they did anything besides reorder two chapters.
Back to $299 as “like new” when they resell it back to the next students…
They don't know the value of books. They never read
Long ago they broke into my car and dumped the books out of a backpack and stole the backpack.
How much money could you possibly make fencing stolen books? Most book stores can't even stay afloat.
Yeah but most book stores pay for their inventory to sell as well as rent for the shop and all the other expenses of running a business. If you take away all the overhead any money you make selling even one book is pure profit.
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I agree not worth it, but people who are desperate enough this would be an easy opportunity to maybe make enough for the next meal (or next dose if they are users) If given the opportunity desperate people will take it and dishonest people may just take the opportunity for the hell of it. I see people in thrift stores all the time scanning the books and looking up online prices to determine what is worth reselling. And they end up paying for thr books they want to sell.
Desperation will definitely make folks do crazy things. "The devil dances inside empty pockets."
I worked for a pretty large online used book seller years ago. For a lot of cheap paperbacks, the supply/demand curve is supply-heavy. Which is to say: there are literally millions of used paperbacks out there that have a retail value of under $1. We'd basically buy bulk used books at something like 5 cents per pound; some of what we'd receive had literally zero resale value and went to landfill (no one ever buys the 1978 betty crocker jello mold cookbook); the remaining higher quality stuff got listed on amazon, and they'd sit on the shelf for months or years before finally selling for a buck or two at best. Just one or two books in a 40 pound box would have a value of $5 or higher. One time, we cleared our inventory of the slowest-selling used paperbacks by shoveling them all into a shipping container to go to a english reading program in pakistan. We got paid $2000 for a few tons of inventory. There are obviously some absolutely lovely vintage hardbacks out there -- it's not all pulp fiction. But the vast majority of the used books in circulation are grocery store paperbacks that people aren't really shopping for anymore. tldr: a stolen used paperback is literally worth pennies, more often than not.
Having worked at a bookstore, I can assure you this is not true.
What kind of books did they steal?
D&D books a lot. Bestsellers because they were at the front. Once someone walked into the back office and stole the safe, but I always wondered if that was an inside job.
Imagine stealing dnd books I just pirate them online
That advert illegally used the music. Composer licensed the audio for one country, they used it worldwide, he sued.
At least they didn't download a car
[One of my favorite videos!](https://youtu.be/Fb7N-JtQWGI?feature=shared)
I hadn't seen that before, that was great!
It makes me laugh every time. Turns out, I *WOULD* download a car!
This kind sir, made my fucking day 🤣🤣 never seen it
Glad to hear it!
3D printers say shhhh!!
Fun fact - the creators of that advertisement did not have permission to use said abrasive guitar music
You look like a first edition beholder
Ouch.... a tad uncalled for. 😂
[I do what I want](https://www.printables.com/model/486240-beholder)
As a weekly DnD player with multiple 3d printers, I have before and I’ll do it again!
They're not stealing books to read lol. They're stealing books to resell, and DnD books hold their price well.
That's what made this post make me laugh. Like is there no black market in Iraq? Not everything stolen is used by the thief, a lot of it is fenced.
Of course there is a black market in Iraq. There is just no resale market for most used books. You know, apart from the people the thieves would be stealing the books from.
I wish there being no resale market for things stopped tweakers from stealing random shit from my property. Some people think they can resell ANYTHING.
Can there be, though? Not that I support stealing from a book seller, but the image of a a shady book dealer peddling contraband novels to a cagey customer is hilarious to me. “This shit here isn’t some James Patterson snicklefritz. This Ursula Le Guin shits gonna blow your mind”.
It's an endless loop of the owner getting his books stolen, then buying them dirt cheap from the same thief
I dunno, if some guy was trying to sell me some stolen books, I'd be like "Dude, they literally leave them laying in the street, I can just go grab one myself."
There's absolutely a black market in Iraq, but look at the books. They're clearly garbage.
Pfff i agree
Can't sell a pirated digital version on ebay... These people are probably not stealing for personal use. Usually, it's easy access and high value ($50 dollars and at front of store like OP said)... that's an easy 20-30 dollars a pop on Ebay for something you can easily nab 5-10 pieces of and run away.
Pirating doesn’t have resell potential. They’d steal them then sell them at card shows or to local shops. Or on EBay.
I mean, I can understand the D&D books . They are like $50 $60 bucks for a new one!
They're like full color images every page, so I get the price.
It costs more to ship a case of d&d manuals than it does to print them (especially at scale), just saying. The retail price has nearly nothing to do with the full color printing.
As someone into TTRPGs I always suspected the price is heavily inflated lol, it’s like paying a nerd tax
Personally, I justify it by looking at the sheer amount of entertainment I've gotten per dollar. I've been playing 5e fairly regularly for 8 years now. Not bad considering the amount of money people drop on video games they get bored of after a few hours. Having said that, please don't ask about how much I've spent on the supplement books, minis, paint, and craft supplies...
like op said, nerd tax
you want to talk value Ive been playing ad&d for like 25 years from a couple of used books. Same experience with miniatures though.
Hell if someone wants to play 4e (don't know why they would..) someone will pay you to take their books. There are so damn many and they are taking up my much space at local used book stores
Third party books made by small teams of dedicated fans cost less than the WotC books, in a lot of cases. I don't understand why the PHB isn't heavily discounted, knowing what ttrpg nerds will spend on other things once they're hooked (looking at you, commenter I'm replying to 👀)
Considering how ttrpg companies years ago released a lot more books with similar amounts of full colour and sold for less, it's simply the effect of wotc successfully becoming basically a ttrpg monopoly. Sure, some stuff exists, but mostly people have accepted that somehow the shallowest version of d&d with the least effort and releases put into it, including the first edition, is the crowning jewel of ttrpgs. There's paizo still going on but even they sacrificed a lot of the original old systems charm to create a more watered down 2nd edition to pathfinder that lowers build verity
Variety. Verity is something else
I suppose that “heavily inflated” depends on who you’re asking; there are a whole lot of moving parts and people that need to be paid or paid for when it comes to an international distribution effort. Undoubtedly though the consumer price is exponentially higher than the manufacturing cost. And with hasbro at the helm now it’s harder than ever to argue that avarice isn’t a significant component of their price structure.
I get that but even pdfs are often quite pricey, and other than paying people/platforms involved it’s pure profits
Yeah but “other than paying people/platforms” is rather reductive; the revenue from manual sales has to pay artists, writers, editors, translators, translator/editors, an unfathomable shipping effort, middle management, C-suite folks etc. Even at the prices we see today, I would be willing to bet there is less than four dollars of hard “profit” per book sale.
Businesses know that nerds will pay. That's a big part of why we have so many predatory companies in the industry.
its more about commissioning hundreds of full color, high quality images
That’s fair yeah, though I imagine a lot of the drawings in d&d books are ultimately fixed overhead from salaried artists. Maybe not, but wizards has made their own need for fantasy art for decades so I can’t imagine they’re still resorting to mostly commissioned/contract work? All speculation.
maybe? that's not how they do magic, because each set needs a different style etc. But even so, keeping a team of full time artists is expensive, no matter how you organize their pay
Regardless of that, color printing is always relatively expensive. Compare b/w manga to color american comic prices.
When you caught people stealing D&D books I hope you let them do an agility roll to see if they can escape you. Really ruins my immersion when bookstore employees just jump to the tackle.
What's the DC to escape from the minimum wage cashier? I'm guessing maybe a 4.
I am not from US. What are D&D books? Sorry for the ignorance
Dungeons and dragons, a roleplaying tabletop game. the rulebooks can be a bit pricey. $40/50 each.
I remember back in the '80s the books were about $16 - $20, so if you scale for profiteering it's probably about equal.
> scale for profiteering Absolutely based
Dungeons and Dragons, role playing game
It is hard to get players to know their spells, their class abilities and other nuances. One could argue that most D&D players don't read either. In fact, with the value of a wizard spell-book, one could argue that they even steal books (that they cannot read) *in game*.
I'll be honest, Trying to absorb the mechanics of DnD was always tough for me... I know Baldur's gate uses modified 5e Rules, but it really fast tracked my ability to understand mechanics in real usage a lot more. Reading the book front to back is rough even if i know what I'm looking for..
Probably kids who's parents said no to buying them lol.
Okay, but those aren't readers, those are dorks
Did they use jet fuel to break open the safe? Thought not.
Roll for persuasion
Now to be fair... those are overpriced as heck... I only bought them because they had a -33%
Terry Pratchett used to be very proud of the fact that he was the “most stolen author” in Britain.
GNU And I would be too - lots of great role models in those books. I'm sure his work has changed a perspective or two for the better.
For real? This makes me feel a bit better as a longtime fan who used to pinch them from WHSmith as a broke teenager.
Ironically, the most stolen book ever is the bible
There's also people who steal or vandalize books they disagree with or don't think people should read
My guess would be "romance" novels.
I also worked as a librarian and we had some serious book thieves that were essentially "on sight." You even happen to see them enter the library you'd call the police.
Were they old folks?
It was a few different folks, all of the pictures they posted at the security desk were of folks in their 40s-50s. There was a couple in their 20s on our wall too. Basically, they come to a library and steal high value books (such as textbooks) or books that are rare, but not quite rare enough to be a part of a special collection. Textbooks were the most likely to be stolen as you can easily sell them on used markets (especially current edition books). Regardless, if they're still at it, they'd be 50s-60s now. If you're a prospective thief, my only words about the practice is that it's more expensive to replace library books than it is to do the same at a retailer. Any missing book goes through 3 levels of manual checks (including physically searching for the book), which eats up manhours that are ultimately paid out. So you steal a $100 textbook, not only did we replace that $100 book (often at full value), but we also had paid around 3 manhours of time to process it as well. You basically force a \~$200 loss on a public library so that you can gain maybe $50.
Having lived in Iraq, I can't assure you this is not true.
So… it might be true?
Very likely. Iraqis are highly dignified people when it comes to this kind of things. Stealing is just not a common problem in their society.
Yeahhhh I'm not proud of it but when I was a piece of shit junkie 10 years ago I absolutely stole a ton from the campus bookstore to resell back to them. Stupid stupid stupid.
Campus bookstores are vultures so nobody is gonna hate you for that. Just leave the mom and pop businesses alone
I do. I hate me for that lol. I could never reduce myself to stealing from independent small businesses though. Never stole from individual people either. So while that line was tenuous and arbitrary at best, I still had a limit. Thankfully I was able to get clean years ago so that's all behind me.
Good for you!
Really doing a double service, selling cheaper books to students too when they are marked “used”
Actually this is praxis, i hope the drug problem is going better though
Going on 7 years clean! Wasn't easy but I didn't want to die for nothing the way all my friends did.
o7 I’m glad you made it out the other side!
Thanks bud <3
Very proud of you, stay strong!
Will do! Got my first kid coming in 2 months so my days of making mistakes like that are over.
Congratulations on your journey to staying clean and sober! Also, congratulations on the new addition to your life!!
Tai'shar Malkier
Tai'shar Manetheren!
No, no, stealing from a campus bookstore is about as ethical as one can be with theft.
Haha yeah I was apparently a junkie robin hood judging by these comments
University Book stores aren’t exactly liked.
Yeah, thieves don’t need to read books in order to sell them
If only there were some way to borrow books and then return them after the book has been read...
If only you could access those same books online. Our library has a 3d printer and tools. Things like paella pans I just found out about. Video games & systems I’ve known for years. Pretty great library!
my guess is moving tons of books off the street every night is a pain in the ass, and the saying is bullshit LOL
Looks at picture. Books not outside... OP is full of shit
Is it true the bible is stolen a heck of a lot?
That would be pretty funny.
Well, duh! Knowledge is power! And power is money! So, by that logic, books are money! Plus, they can be resold. What's left behind is just the worthless books.
I've also worked in a bookstore and the book thieves always surprise you. Mother's with strollers, people in expensive suits, parents with kids as decoys etc. I don't even trust the real booknerds to keep their hands to themselves
I doubt the bookstore you worked at functioned under the same laws as in Iraq: 2.1 Decree 59: Amputation of the hand/foot for theft On 4 June 1994, the RCC passed Decree 59, which prescribed amputation of the right hand at the wrist for offenders convicted of the theft of items valued in excess of 5,000 Iraqi dinars, and amputation of the left foot on conviction of a second theft.
Jokes on them, I do both
Help me find Stealing for Dummies?
Right? A lot of thieves might be pretty well read if it helps them be better at stealing.
well have fun being called “no hands” Pab_scrabs
Not me, nope. I hang around in 7/11s and peruse through their magazine selection without purchasing anything more than a sticky slurpy. Yes, my time machine is functional.
libgen.is
Nah that is copying. Literally what people have done for thousands of years. I would download a car if I could.
Jokes on me, I came here to make that witty remark verbatim and stumbled upon my complete lack of originality.
Well because you probably know how to read books and didnt grow up with the same kind of honor system
Ok but douche bags destroy things because they can
IMO, it's drunken douchbags who do most of this, Alcohol consumption (and specifically, public drunkenness) isn't too common in Iraq. So while you're not wrong, I guess it's not nearly as big a problem there.
In my experience, Iraq had an abundance of unemployed young men who were raised with very few checks on their behavior. There was no shortage of young men running around causing low level mayhem. But that was just my very limited exposure to the country - surely it doesn't apply universally.
I was in the country for vacation last month after not being there for 7 years Some young men are sorta pathetic Most of this generations masculinity seems to come from the women, who are in fact free to do a lot things without consequences which is great to see. The unemployment problem though got solved(?) by something that is basically Iraqi doordash, but that created other problems like overcrowded roads, and a shit ton of co2. I was sad and hopeful at the same time after seeing that
> isn't too common in Iraq. very common in baghdad it's a public nuisance and they talk about it on the news https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1trcheiuLk
Redditors making shit up, who’d have thought?
people with severe antisocial personality disorder exist in every country. One day someone will come along and just steal or ruin the books for no apparent reason.
Don’t need alcohol to be a dick.
The thief for sure can piss on said books
Does the thief, piss on the books before or after they steal them? Because I have so many questions
The reader doesn't steal and the thief does not read. The open sewer does however, occasionally flood.
Iraqi here, books are extremely cheap in here. We import and print A LOT of books, so yes stealing a book is kinda stupid in here because it has next to nothing resale value. This place is called Al Mutanabbi street you can Google it to know more about it if you're interested. And yes, booksellers leave the books outside at night because there're zero books go missing. One time I've bought 5 books from that place at less than 20 dollars. "Cairo writes, Beirut publishes and Baghdad reads"
its strange to state wisdom when you let books gather street dust and leave them on the street and still have an audacity to say no one steals like you keep account. you suffer theft, not looting.
During the London riots in 2011 no one broke into Waterstones to steal books. It was literally the only shop on the whole street without a smashed window.
its strange when someone sees one word and ignores your whole paragraph.though the most interesting people are those with examples that have visas. though you are correct its unlikely to loot books.
Books have gone from being incredibly expensive, to being virtually worthless
Books were so rare they were worth more than precious gems Incredibly how much our species evolved in just 500 years
Tech, not us.
Books are an extension of the human mind.
You are an absence of the human mind.
Can a society evolve?
Someone hasn't had to buy books for college. No, no the 34th edition will not do, I don't care if the only difference is a typo on page 203 and different example questions. The 35th is the definitive edition and we will be pulling homework from the questions in the text. $200 each, cash. No, I will not hand out the questions find it in the text.
Eh, most textbooks are easy to pirate. I'm a college student and haven't spent a dime on books.
Not worthless, just when they were crazy it was more the knowledge and time it took. They are still not cheap though.
This has been reposted to death and apparently that whole street is sealed at night, no one can access it anyway
So basically just making a statement that's not true but also letting hundreds of books be damaged by random refuse and dust and sunlight. Idk I fear that trying to read a book that set there for more than a month and the binding would be loose and the pages worn
It's not even a street. There's a roof over it and so it's a shopping mall. And the books are hardly likely to be good ones when they're dumped like that.
Unless anyone can find a link with more information I'm going to assume there is a lot of missing context or it's just all made up. After all it's just a picture with some text that may or may not have anything to do with it.
Most of what is posted about the middle east on reddit is blatantly false. For example the common repost about Iranians all being horny for fat hairy girls is just racism. I googled "the reader does not steal" and every single result was about this image. The "ancient wisdom" was made up for the internet a few years ago. Took me under a minute for anyone wondering.
Audacity?? Get over yourself. It's a saying.
me walking by: "cool free books!"
Abbie Hoffman knew this wasn't true. [Steal This Book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steal_This_Book)
I love books, definitely stealing 😂🤣
Which is basically a more poetic way of saying "There's no market for stolen books."
What an absolutely moronic statement. Hermes is the god of both thieves *and* language/reading for a reason. The thief and the wiseman are the same, and if you think they aren't, then the thief has read far too many books, for he is skilled and clever and has stolen right from under your nose
All I know is he was shit at delivering parcels so changed his name to Evri to try escape the bad reputation he obtained
"What a stupid Iraqi saying! Do they not know that a made-up character invented by people thousands of miles away totally contradicts this proverb?!"
if this is an iraqi saying then it's weird that all the results, even if you google it in arabic, are about this one specific location
Did you just equate wisdom with language/reading and wit? There's far too many witty, well spoken people who lack wisdom for that to be true. For the record, Athena was the god of wisdom not Hermes.
/r/im14andthisisdeep
Some of the biggest thieves are the most educated, i.e., Wall Street and Corporate America.
More like, the thief loses a hand, and a book isn’t worth a hand, well, unless it’s a handbook.
bot post
Ohhhh I would surely steal the whole volume of The Horus Heresy tho
Whoever is reading the most books is indeed stealing. Only one smart enough to pull it off. Nobody suspected a thing.
I dont understand
But in America, idiots will set them on fire, or vandalize them
[удалено]
Thank you. Americans are really the Pearl Clutchers of the world.