Josh (the blog)

I’ve delivered simple, clear and easy-to-use services for 20 years, for startups, scaleups and government. I write about the nerdy bits here.


@joahua

There are some things money can’t buy

(in Australia). For everything else, there’s eBay and Amazon.

My money doesn’t go anywhere near as far on textbooks here as it would if we were fortunate enough to have books at the same price they are in the US. I’m trying to track down some Vygotsky works (and Fisher’s collection is categorised by emptiness, haven’t checked out UNSW yet but imagine it wouldn’t be much/any better) and don’t want to spend the earth to pursue what is, essentially, an entirely peripheral interest. So I can spend, you know, $190 on a decent text in Australia, or I can get that bundled with one other (also apparently excellent resource) for US$50 plus shipping from Amazon. It’s absolutely nuts.

One day someone will try to explain the economics behind this to me. And that day my head will implode with frustration.