Suicidal competition. Sports cards went off that cliff, where they lay twitching on the rocks below. Comics went off that cliff, but caught their suspenders on a branch half way down, and since the competition quit throwing rocks at them, they crawled back to the top of the cliff, where they lay gasping and hoping they don't get noticed.

Bookstores and record stores are hanging by their fingertips at the top of the cliff, while the Big Box stores stomp on one hand, and Amazon stomps on the other.

Card games sit at the edge of the cliff, hunkered down, hoping no one notices.

And so on.

And to what end? Barnes and Nobles and Borders succeeded in garnering a lion's share of the book business, and both are in trouble. Amazon has succeeded into doing to them what they did to the independents.

But here's the kicker. Amazon has a long plan. Good enough. I won't argue whether they are currently profitable, or whether they've been profitable enough to make up for all the years they weren't profitable. I'm talking about the supposed endgame.

Because in my experience, there is always a surprise at the end of a long plan. A long plan only gives the universe a chance to come up with something unexpected.

I'm sure Borders twenty years ago never saw Amazon coming. They thought their long plan was the one that would work. But the world turns, and things happen. Murphy's Law is just as deadly to the big guys as the little guys.

So....what happens if something even cheaper and easier and ultimately unprofitable to most of the industry comes along and knocks out Amazon?

And so it goes.