Radio Shack is not gone because America doesn't need resistors and capacitors any more. The management of Radio lost their way and it was their outlook that went bad. When they started blister packing their parts, it was all over. There are plenty of things they could have done to adapt and survice.
Arduino has been around plenty long enough for them to have joined up with it. Also, the whole smart home movement. In addition to Arduino and Raspberry Pi, they should have had X10 stuff all over their stores in the nineties, then Insteon and all kinds of bluetooth components and now Intel Edison.
They could have been selling 3D printers for years now. When they were robust, they sold stuff that cost real money and only a few people used it (you don't think that everyone was a radio engineer in the fifties, do you).
No, Radio Shack lost faith in their customers and their idea. They thought that their mission was technology and sold all kinds of iPhone accessories. Their mission really was to be the center of the Maker Movement. Imagine how cool it would have been if, instead of seeing all kinds of glossy point of purchase stuff in their stores, they had a greasy haired hippy working a Cube 3D printer, the place smelling of hot plastic. Someplace else in the store, were kits for making an auto winder for your window blinds out of an Edison and every other kind of home network and hobby computing widget. Big parties and events during MakerFaire. Style themselves like a comic book nerdland or gaming store for people that like to make things.
They could have done this, https://www.sparkfun.com/ ...
Some suggest that they didn't react quickly enough to market changes. Not so. They need to be dead because they lost their spirit long ago. It's tragic because it is lost to us forever.