There’s also an argument called the “tyranny of the masses”. Remeber the Depression, when there were runs on banks? Everyone scrambled to withdraw their money before everyone else got there first and cleaned it out. They knew it wasn’t in anyone’s best interests for the bank to fail, and they knew that their selfishness would ruin many of their neigbors. In an “every man for himself” situation, people’s short-term desires can cause devastation. We need institutions that can maintain stability so people can afford to be civil and trust one another a bit.
This is just nonsense. First of all, there’s more than just desires, there’s *needs/i]. Should parents feed their kids only what they want to eat, no vegtables? Should a schoolteacher conduct only those classroom activities the students want to engage in?
As for society as a whole, there are some problems that can only be dealt with on a societal level. Phil’s reponse to Gadarene’s point about national defense, well, wasn’t much of a response. An enemy threatens the nation as a whole; the people must pool their resources to field a military capable of defeating the enemy’s military. If individuals or small communities are responsible for their own defense, an enemy could waltz in and sack them one-by-one. And what’s to stop one armed community from attacking another?
I imagine this government-by-contract model also includes a choice of paying for police or having them not respond when you call. But police work isn’t just helping individuals who call the cops, it’s also patrolling, making crime riskier and therfore the entire community safer. How would a libertarian society protect us from drunk drivers?
In answer to your poll, Lib, I would donate to the library, but if tyhey didn’t take in enough and still had to charge a fee, then I probably wouldn’t donate.
There’s also a basic assumption in economics (essentially the same as what you’re saying) that people will decide things irrationally, sometimes injuring themselves (monetarily of physically or in utility…). Well what if their irrational decision affects their neighbor? Do I have a right to choose not to pay for defence even though it weakens my neighbor’s security?
Back to libraries, I’ll officially add my vote to the survey: I would pay for one, but only because I wouldn’t have a choice.
Yes, there is an argument in economics called revealed preference.
And it has nothing whatsoever to do with thisregardless of any questions about the rationality of agents.[sup]*[/sup]
The problem here is to do with price-excludable jointly-consumable goods (shorthand “club goods”).
An effective private library would have a membership fee and a small borrowing fee.
Whether this would be efficient would depend partly on whether users valued other people’s knowledge and/ or welfare.
If they did, the market would fail to some extent due to free-riding if all players were rational.
Libraries funded by private donors would be underprovided and very likely “nosey”: they would probably provide books in a pattern to interfere with individual preferences. (Visit a union library or one funded by a religious organisation and see.)
Government-funded libraries “solve” the free-rider problem by compulsion. They too may try to manipulate reader preferences.
Which method is preferable? Depends how big the externalities (unpriceable valuations on others’ library use or access) are and how manipulative you think librarians are in choosing material.
[sup]*[/sup]Revealed preference allows inferences about the utility of different bundles in the budget set given behaviour which satisfies the axioms of consumer theory (completeness, reflexivity, transitivity, local non-satiation).
Where the choice facing the consumer is strategic, rather than parametric, no inference about preferences may be drawn. In other words, one cannot take a person’s wish for lower taxes as any indication that he wishes lower library expenditure unless that is the actual choice he faces.
Hoping we can move away from one more libertarian shouting match…
Heck, I’m a libertarian. Can’t really be a registered one in Virginia as state election laws don’t allow for party registration. I throw some bucks their way when I can. Hey, I’m a medium rich guy as it is.
All that said I would support a private library. How would it pay for itself? Fee for services, baby! If it cost a buck to check out a book for a week we’d find whether they had enough value to the public.
Jonathan Chance: so the poor are less deservi9ng of access to books? There’s a reason that all these philanthropists and the govt created free public libraries (incidentally, the Enoch Pratt lib in downtown B-more is really cool). Library are a means to educating and entertaining the public–even those who can’t afford to pay. Sure a dollar isn’t a lot, but what if it goes up? And at the rate that I ceck out books, it would add up quickly.
Of course the poor aren’t less deserving of books. As stated previously I spend time and money supporting our local library (Go Purcellville!). All I’m saying is that I’d be willing to pay for the services I receive from them now.
I am not going to be dragged back into why pure libertarianism cannot work, because this is the wrong forum; because the OP’er asked us not to; because it’s all been said and done before; and because I can obtain the same effect by smashing my thumb with a hammer. As far as the OP is concerned:
Private libraries exist now, and have existed for centuries; certainly they pre-date public libraries. The major problem with them is that they do not very well combine the two functions currently performed by the public library – access to materials for recreation and access to materials for research or education. A private library would probably either focus on providing entertainment materials – renting books the way we now rent movies – or on providing research materials for a specialized field, as many private libraries currently do today. A person probably could not go to one facility for all the resources currently obtainable at your average public library. So I don’t think we’re talking about supporting one private library, but about supporting many. Would I personally support it? Honestly, I don’t know. The research materials I need are provided by a (public) library to which I would probably still have access if it were privatized (because I am an employee of the library’s owner – the State). If I were a private citizen, trying to do my job and having to pay to belong to that library – I don’t know that I could afford it. As far as a recreational lending library, I, like someone else who posted above, tend to buy paperbacks I want to read for fun (and then keep them or donate them to the library), so I would NOT subcribe unless the fee was a very reasonable one. The problem, of course, is that there is no provision for access to recreational/research/educational materials by those too poor to afford to belong. The libertarian answer, of course, is that we’ll all have lots more money when we get our taxes back, which takes us back to why libertarianism couldn’t possibly work, which is where I step back out.
I would contribute what money and books that I could to a library, but my fear is that such a library would be full of nothing more than Harlequin romances, pro wrestling magazines, 16,000 copies of the Bible and not one copy of Origin of Species, or any other naturalistic science text and I’d have to back out.
They’d probably also charge $1 for five minutes’ worth of internet access.
In California, the Orange County Library requires you to be a resident to borrow materials and to use the internet for free. If you are not a resident, you must get a non-resident card and it costs $45.
The Long Beach Library does not require you to be a resident of the city, but you must be a resident of Los Angeles County to get a card. Internet access is limited to one hour per day.
The Los Angeles Public Library requires you to be a resident to borrow materials, but you do not have to be a resident to access the internet. Access is limited to two hours per day per branch, except for the Central Library downtown. There, access is limited to two hours per day per floor, and there are seven floors. IOW, you can be there all day even if you’re not an American citizen. Just show an ID, and foreign IDs are acceptable. You do, however, have to be over 18 to use a computer without a parent or guardian present.
The Seattle Library restricts both borrowing and internet access to card-holders.
I’m sure y’all can think of other places. And I definitely prefer public libraries over private ones.
When I was growing up, one of my great pleasures when visiting relatives in Princeton, NJ was to go to the Princeton University library and look over the radio history books. That came to an abrupt end when they instituted a new policy charging the public to use the library. I believe that at first the cheapest plan was $35 for 2 days of access – note this was just to go into the library, it didn’t include borrowing privileges. As a high schoool student there was no way I could ever afford this, and I’ve never darkened their doorway again. (Acording to their web site, currently the cheapest pass is $21 for one week).
I don’t know of any other university libraries which charge outsiders an entrance fee. However, a more common way to recoup costs is variable photocopy fees. Most copiers now use debit cards, and often the student/faculty cards charge a lower rate. NC State charges students/faculty 6 cents/page, while the cards sold to the public were charged 20 cents per page last year, although this was dropped to 15 cents this year. I find this to be reasonable, and I hope that other libraries don’t adopt Princeton’s high fees. (By now I have some fairly rare radio history books of my own, and I’d be a lot more inclined to donate then to NC State than Princeton).
Oh, yeah. Many public libraries charge for use of the copier and for printing pages off the 'net. Most charge ten cents a page, though some charge fifteen.
