I don't feel that bad since Guitar Center put almost all their competitors out of business. I remember being furious on the days I had to go to Guitar Center because I needed something that afternoon and there was nowhere else to go.
As companies like this are grabbing market share the story is always that if they fail the market can just go back to what it was. It rarely does.
Interesting is that some of the businesses that GC put under might have been able to compete in markets where GC can't, where customer loyalty is important. There's no reason to buy something from Guitar Center that you could order online unless you need it immediately. But a locally owned music shop where you've known the owner for 10 years and always go play guitars on your days off? It feels good spending money there.
My main issue is that they've become the only place (locally) to shop for a lot of music gear. With things like musical instruments or sound gear, I don't want to order from Amazon, not get to play/hear it in person first, then pay for shipping a large item where I need to be home to accept delivery.
If I want a guitar I've actually got some OK options with a handful of pawn shops (the thrift store solution where you have to hunt but can get a deal) and maybe one or two smaller music shops with limited inventory. Then there's craigslist where I can look around and hope someone's selling what I want but at least I can go check it out in person.
But for stuff like PA systems and amp cabinets I don't want to just read reviews and order some massive shipment from Amazon or hope someone is selling the thing I need on Craigslist. New, current model audio gear isn't always easy to find that way and it's just too big and expensive to ship conveniently. I want to drive to a shop, listen to the different options, feel their build quality, and ultimately load something into the car.
For the past several years, GC has been the only place in my area where I can get that stuff. Granted it's not a problem I run into often since I don't go buying PAs with subwoofers every year but when I do need that stuff, I hate only having one store with any chance of carrying what I want.
A large bricks and mortar chain coming to grief isn't an enormous surprise. It's happening throughout retail. Radio Shack, Best Buy, Office Depot, Borders Books; everywhere you look chains of brick and mortar retailers are collapsing, closing, or merging.
But of course, selling musical instruments is different, for unspecified reasons. Guitar Center's problems aren't just because of a changing retail environment but a searing indictment of modern capitalism that is somehow linked to the housing crisis (what?), and somehow to the declaration of martial law (huh?) and the destruction of the US dollar (uh...) that apparently happened over the last few years.
Fine, the author thinks Guitar Center is about to declare bankruptcy. He's not alone; rating agencies have deemed their bonds to be junk. But neither is Guitar Center; there's a lot of failing companies around. Unless you're unlucky enough to own some of their debt (or, worse, the company itself), I have no idea why you'd care.
(...which kind of makes me wonder why the author cares. If he ownd a bunch of Guitar Center bonds, I'd assume he'd just sell them. What's his angle here?)
> "Second, it did so just as the housing fraud and financial insanity which characterized the late 1990s and early 2000s nearly destroyed the U.S. dollar and left us with martial law."
Er, what? Martial law? I guess I wasn't around for that one.
By the time it gets to this, it's hard to view the writer as anything other than a quack.
Second, it did so just as the housing fraud and financial insanity which characterized the late 1990s and early 2000s nearly destroyed the U.S. dollar and left us with martial law.
Seconded. This seems like a way-too-dramatic writeup of private company which comes to the same conclusion folks have been coming to for a while, based on my 30 second Google search.
I guess it's relevant for musicians and Bain Capital, but he does come across as a hyper quack.
If the financial system had collapsed, and it very nearly did, that would not have been hyperbole.
I'm not happy with how the bailouts happened and bankers and others who engineered the disaster not only walked scot-free but made a killing on the situation, but increasingly I'm convinced we dodged an asteroid there.
I'm painfully aware of 2008, but the martial law piece is a stretch. It's like the folks who answer every question with "Let's get back on the gold standard."
At the very best it would have been uncharted territory. Given the civil unrest that's been seen in parts of the U.S. without overt financial system collapse, I really don't see it as a huge stretch.
What you're discussing is that the House (which under the constitution can set their own rules) decided to create a rule XIII(6)(a) that said that bills couldn't be passed by the House without a day to consider them except by a 2/3 vote. Later, the House changed that rule to waive the requirement to wait a day. Later still, they reinstated it.
Colloquially, the waiver of the rule is sometimes referred to as "martial law", in much the way that proposals to repeal or reform the filibuster rules in the senate are called the "nuclear option". The nuclear option does not involve nuclear weapons, and the so-called "martial law" rule in the senate does not involve martial law. It's not even related to martial law.
Martial law would be a suspension of civil liberties and an injection of military personnel over civilian authorities; it would also necessitate a repeal of habeas corpus and the posse comitatus act. What you're discussing is a minor (and long since reverted) rule change governing when and in what circumstances draft bills could be brought to a floor vote in the house.
The bottom line is this: The minority party in the house wanted to delay and debate the bailout bill. The house—which is charged with setting rules about delays and debate by majority vote-set rules which didn't allow the minority party to delay and debate as much as they wanted. Some members of the minority party, in a fit of hyperbole, analogized the rule change to martial law. It wasn't. It wasn't even sort of LIKE martial law.
TL;DR: You're so wrong, you didn't even understand c-span.
Haven't had that experience. They might ask about price range which only makes sense, no point showing you a $1500 axe when you won't spend more than $300. But I was in GC about a month ago and spent an hour fooling around with different guitars and got no pressure from the salesman at all. He knew I was looking at the $300 stuff but he was fine with me trying out the $1500 too.
Back in the 80's, Guitar Center was AWFUL. I'd go in to buy a pack of strings and the salesman would want to negotiate the price. Hated the place and would never go. I rediscovered GC a few years ago and was pleasantly surprised at the changes.
Funny, I just got a flier from them in the mail today. They recently (not quite 1 year ago) opened a second store in my area, about 20m down the road from another bigger Guitar Center. I thought it was a bit strange that they'd put them so close together.
As companies like this are grabbing market share the story is always that if they fail the market can just go back to what it was. It rarely does.
Interesting is that some of the businesses that GC put under might have been able to compete in markets where GC can't, where customer loyalty is important. There's no reason to buy something from Guitar Center that you could order online unless you need it immediately. But a locally owned music shop where you've known the owner for 10 years and always go play guitars on your days off? It feels good spending money there.