The fact that you know about all of those public works projects proves that you must be pretty intelligent. And if you’re pretty intelligent, you should have long ago resigned yourself to the fact that taxes don’t work that way. They never have and they never will. So putting it out there as an argument against libraries just makes you look silly.
I’m a librarian. Of course my livelihood depends on the existence of libraries.
People have a right to information. That access to information requires an intermediary of some kind. The public library is the best way for that intermediary to exist.
As I said earlier. A Netflix subscription requires an outlay of at least $108 a year. This is a pretty good comparison to the fees required of a private library. That’s nearly four times more than the cost would be through taxation. Not to mention the fact that donations would dry up without the library’s non-profit status.
Secondly, why do you keep harping on the un-literate needy? A library is not only for poor people and assuming it is really shows off your biases. As I’ve said, the library is for everyone and everyone can benefit from it if they want to. There have actually been studies done that show the poor don’t use the library as often as middle class people because the poor feel they’ll be looked down upon as stupid in a library. If you make it private (and thus more exclusive), you’ll push away the poor even more.
How nice for you. It doesn’t change the fact that public libraries provide convenient access to a huge variety of information sources to people who might not otherwise be able to access them.
If you’re coming at it from a libertarian standpoint–you only want your government to provide defense from foreign powers–then there’s nothing anybody can say that will change your mind. Can you give an example of local government spending that you do support?
Also, someone jacking off in the library is committing a crime and will be promptly arrested. So let’s not bring up the discrimination of the perverted shall we?
Taxpayers likely would be more likely to support learning than non-learning (gaming can be educational, if you can’t see that, I can’t help you). But your flailing at windmills. Separation of computer terminals like that isn’t done because there’s really no way to enforce (basically, you have to take the word of the person who wants a computer and doesn’t have one who is trying to bully a child). And on top of that, there’s little need to as its a rare day that all of the computers are taken up by game playing patrons (patrons, not kids, as adults game too) and the only people waiting all have important research to do.
In your world are there firemen? And if you don’t pay do they let your house burn? If you’re getting raped do the police ask for your Police Coverage Card™ before they stop the attacker? Do you have a letter that lists the roads you’re eligible to drive on because you paid for them? Do you get killed by a tank while the man next to you is spared because you decided that you didn’t want to pay for an army?
I don’t think you really understand how a government works. I think you’re enamored of the idea of self sufficiency and taking it to ridiculous extremes.
As for privatizing libraries being cheaper… that’s insane. Of course lending books out for free isn’t a successful business model.
The Free Market is useless when it comes to providing services for free. It contains no profit motive. A government agency not working for a profit is inherently more efficient because a private industry needs to factor profit into the picture. Every cent of profit is something that is subtracted from service. I can’t believe that anyone needs this explained to them.
Justin. Dude. Here’s one more shot at it. My reponse to each paragraph, in turn.
P1. That’s just the way taxes are. Live with it. You’re smart, IdahoMauleMan, so I don’t know why you’re arguing this at all.
Boy, it’s tough to argue with that line of air-tight reasoning.
P3. I hereby declare that citizens have a right to something. I hereby declare that my employment, at your expense Mr. Taxpayer, satisfies that right.
Good gracious. You should actually be a staffer for a Congressman on the Ways and Means, or Appropriations committee. That’s more-or-less the logic they generally use.
Response to P4. Dude, you keep confusing supply with demand. You’re on the supply side. There are costs associated with your supply. I would contend that those costs, divided by the actual demand for your service, are wayyy too high for the mission at hand and could be accomplished more efficiently through private means. Not to mention giving back taxpayers more of their money, which is also nice.
‘But everyone has access to libraries! They can all use it if they want to! It’s a great service!’ seems to be your cry. Well, then…why don’t they? Because THEY DON’T WANT TO. They are making other choices in their life about what to use their time and resources to achieve. And that’s even after they’ve already ponied up $27 per year into the kitty. They’ve already written that off.
So your cost of $108 is a meaningless figure. That is a figure in a free market that matches supply with demand for a particular product or service. There is no comparable figure for a library. The closest match on the demand side would be the number of people who actually ‘need’ to use the library for its services, about which I hazarded a guess above.
Whining about how more people ‘could’ use the library is meaningless. It’s the same logic that the Soviet planners used when they opened up their markets to imported automobiles, and everybody stopped buying the Trabant and started buying more expensive BMWs and Mercedes.
‘But the Trabant is so much cheaper! Everybody can have one!’ they shouted in disbelief. But pushing supply doesn’t matter when there is no demand. Even when the product that people want is more expensive. But you probably wouldn’t know anything about matching supply with demand, because you work for the government.
P5. The reason I keep harping on the un-literate needy is it the only possible justification I could see for continuation of libraries. And for a long run of posts on this thread, it was the justification used by most SDMB posters for libraries’ existance.
If people with means want Internet access or want to read books, they should do it on their own dime. There are already private alternatives like ‘book sharing’ and such sprouting up on the Internet to take care of the ‘one and done’ problem of reading certain books cited by some posters.
And even then, I threw around some numbers to demonstrate how private foundations could probably serve this segment much more efficiently than the current system.
Cite? I’d say based on my experience alot more people then that use the library.
Anyone who’s poor and needs to use the internet for one. For another reading books is something alot of people enjoy. Most kids use the library. I can’t think of friend I had growing up who didn’t go to the library sometimes.
Uh even if we except your made up number of 1/10 that’s $270 not $2700.
So people can grow ever illiterate? Fuck that. Why does $27 matter so much for all the good it does? The voters obviously want libraries. It isn’t against their collective will or they wouldn’t exist.
Actually correcting for your math error on your made up number reducing by 90% is $27. Your local library has books on math if you want to take advantage of them.
And places where charities don’t step up, or areas where times are rough for everyone? The poor and their children just supposed to do without? Fuck that. There’s places you have to apply online for jobs. You can’t even get a mcdonalds job without internet access these days.
Libraries are a common feature of every first world country. Ever think about why that is?
Maybe their attitudes regarding free access to information where what educated the population so they could improve their lot?
Also the library gives kids somewhere to be instead of out getting in trouble with gangs and drugs. That alone is worth $27.
There’s over 9,000 public libraries in the US. (now we all finally know what /b/ is on about) cite You expect amazon to fill all those libraries?
Or I could let the Philly political system handle this. From the sounds of reading up on it the mayor committed political suicide. See the voters of Philly appreciate their libraries.
Libraries made a big impact on me growing up. I used to read a book a day. The only reason I threw all my savings and work into getting a computer when I was younger was the internet promised to be that unending book where there’s always more to read.
It hasn’t disappointed, and getting that computer lead to computer skills and interest which is what I’m studying in college. Gonna get a job in IT and make something of myself, and coming from a poor rural family that means something. It all started in the library.
I don’t have a cite (they’re internal reports), but between 60 and 70% of the people in my county system have library cards.
$29 a year is too much money to have direct access to thousands of books, movies, audiobooks, music CDs, video games, reference databases and countywide access to millions more?
I repeat, there is no way the free market could do that for cheaper.
As you can see above, your guess was way, way off.
As the OP mentioned school libraries-my college library wasn’t all that great. I used our public library system here for all of my papers and studying. The school library I mostly used for reading magazines (scholarly ones, though), and quiet study-time.
I love going down to Oakland and coming home with a huge backpack full of books (even though I usually end up with a killer back-ache). As for purchasing books, most of them I don’t even know I WANT until I see them in the library.
(Oh, and whoever mentioned combining museums and libraries-that’s what we did here in Pittsburgh-the Carnegie Library and Museums?)
Look, where does the OP live? Do you have a link to your library’s website? Perhaps we can check it out. I’m insanely lucky to live here in Pittsburgh, home of Andrew Carnegie.
There have been subscription libraries in American history – libraries where you either paid to rent each book, like videos from Blockbuster, or where you paid a monthly fee for unlimited use, or some combination. There still are some. They do not offer the range of important public information services we expect of a public library; they never did. Subscription libraries are a niche-market service and that niche is already filled.
OK, let me rephrase it. That’s what happens when you elect a government. You won’t be consulted on each and every little detail of policy and expenditure.
Of course, you could launch your own political party and make the abolition of libraries a point on your manifesto… Given that it’s such a fantastic idea, the election should be a landslide.
Just out of interest, does anyone know if there are any governments anywhere in the world that have abolished public libraries, their reasons for doing so, and the effects, if any?
As long as we’re passing around anecdotes – I grew up lower middle class, and I went to the public library regularly, from the time I was very small. We always had lots of library books in the house. Whenever we moved to a new house, one of the first things we did was get a new library card.
All over the world, wherever I’ve been, public libraries are considered an important part of the public education system. And all over the world, wherever I’ve been, the public libraries have been heavily used.
I don’t believe there are any – only Third-World countries that never built a public-library system in the first place because they couldn’t afford it; they’re the same countries where you won’t find public education systems, for the same reason. Or countries that had one but allowed it to languish because of disturbances. See the touching and heroic story of the Librarian of Basra.
I’m shocked at the very idea of not having public libraries. They are a big part of my and my children’s lives.
There is so much going on at our local library!
We go every week just to check out books and some DVDs. My 4 year old son gets read a picture book every night, so we would have to buy 7 a week just to continue this! Plus my other children love to read and go through a lot of books.
When the kids were toddlers we very often went to Story Time in which other families hear stories, sing songs, and interact. It’s a great way to meet other kids and a great precursor to school.
We get books for school research. My oldest got a book on the battle of Dunkirk and my 2nd son got information on Chinese New Year.
They have summer programs which help pass the time when there is no school. For example first they had a juggling show, then they taught the kids simple juggling techniques with scarves. Another day we made vinnegar and baking soda volcanos. It’s a great thing to do on the impossibly hot days of a Tucson summer.
And they have homework help that we utilize when the kids have questions that I just can’t answer.
And they have event parties like ‘Harry Potter Night’ where you could go and be sorted into one of the Houses, have your fortune told by Prof. Trelawny, drink pumpkin juice, etc. Last week the kids went and made Christmas cookies there.
I can’t imagine life without the library. It enriches our family several times a week. The idea of them not doing anything useful is so bizarre to me.
One of the ways that free public libraries assist us is by increasing the efficiency of the job market. As noted many individuals who do not have the resources on their own use those at the library to find jobs and prepare resumes in order to seek the jobs. This means that employers have a better selection of candidates and candidates have a better selection of potential positions, thus helping the job market get a little closer to the ideal of a free market that so many prize so dearly. Even before computers and the internet, they could be used to search multiple papers’ ads for jobs and there were in some at least typewriters available for use.
Public libraries are one of the key resources that transformed me into a net tax payer, and I am not alone in this.
The same holds for all the more radical elements of the Libertarian agenda. Look around the world at places where things in general go as well as or better than the U.S. – what you won’t find in any of them is minimal government. Minimal government is to be found in failed states or in states where government is simply a kleptocratic racket indifferent to its people – not places where any rational person, nor any Libertarian, would choose to live. All the Libs have to fall back on is the same thing die-hard Marxists have – “But it’s never really been tried!” An argument I seem to recall Crafter_Man making on this Board, in fact.
My God. Are you really equating the list of Failed States on this link (which is great, by the way) with Libertarianism? You must be out of your mind. I can’t think of anything that has less to due with Libertarianism than the systems in place on this list.