Nick Gillespie wants to outsource public libraries to private companies. Anything to save a few dollars, I guess. Apparently “everyone from Marxists to libertarians” will tell you that a library is a hugely regressive institution, subsidizing people who like to read with the hard-earned tax dollars of the illiterate. This is also, apparently, a new front in the private/public sector class war (a war Gillespie seems only too eager to cheerlead, with lines like “ask yourself whether you want to have enough disposable income to fund your own health care and retirement or do you want to pay more in taxes to make sure that public sector workers who make more than you can retire younger and in Cadillac style?”)
Interestingly enough, I’ve written two posts recently that touch on these very subjects:
- First, my defense of the public library.
- Second, my discussion of this new class war, and why it’s so bloody wrong-headed to begin with (alas, we will likely be suckered into it anyways).
Full disclosure: I have never been an advocate of privatizing libraries. I think it’s an abominably stupid (and regressive) idea. But I have written critically of public sector unions before. My post is an attempt to point out where I’ve gone wrong, and where the thinking on this tends to be entirely upside down.
P.S.
I never answered DougJ’s questions.
1) Yes I believe in evolution. Even my conservative Catholic grandma believes in evolution. I recall days in college anthropology classes arguing with creationists and trying to explain why I thought evolution and God were compatible. I always thought science made religion more meaningful, not less. The beauty of biology does nothing to diminish God – quite the opposite. No dice. The lines are drawn in the sand for some people.
2) I also believe in global warming and think that we are responsible for the recent uptick in global temperatures. We should pass a carbon tax. I’m not at all swayed by cap and trade, however. Seems like a corporate giveaway waiting to happen at the public’s expense. Don’t we have enough trading schemes already? I am more sympathetic to critics of global warming than critics of evolution, just because global warming is a comparatively new phenomenon in the public consciousness. Still, the implications of global warming are dire, and the way politicians and pundits on the right exploit the issue for political gain is a real problem.
Will
Honestly man, you conservatives have been so wrongheaded about everything and have hurt this country so badly, and are trying to sell our whole nation to corporations so that god-forbid rich people don’t pay a little bit more in taxes…..it’s really hard for me to even think of conservatives as Americans at this point.
E.D. Kain
@Will: you didn’t read any of this did you?
Ash Can
Nick Gillespie gets way, way more attention than he deserves.
ETA @Will: Uh, wrong thread…?
me
Calling out the Fonzie of Freedom? Apparently you’ve found out how to get on the good side of this blog.
Just Some Fuckhead
I read this and thought it was really good. Welcome to the other side.
numbskull
I’ve never understood an argument for privatization based on saving money in terms of cost per unit of work product. I can understand other arguments that might support privatization, but not this one. Further, even if there are hypothetical savings, we now have a large dataset on outcomes of privatization of many, many formerly-public activities. The results are so clear. Privatization only works in one direction: Privatization of profit, socialization of risk.
Are there examples of privatization that show otherwise?
Ronald Reagan
So long as one of us, somewhere, is covered by a collective-bargaining agreement, how can any of us, anywhere, truly be considered free?*
*Poles not included.
Jane2
Gillespie has obviously not been in a public library in decades. Who does he think is teaching literacy, offering citizenship classes, running employment centres, managing volunteers teaching English as a Second Language, ensuring sight-impaired people have reading choices, offering premium genealogy sites for free, ensuring people have free access to computers, etc etc etc etc? Oh yes, and people who like to read are served, too.
Guster
I’m a certain kind of Republican when it comes to public libraries: the kind that wishes for powerful lobbyists to do my bidding in Congress.
One of my fantasies is that the big publishing houses hire a soulless lobbyist company to institute a more, well, European take on libraries, where writers get a few pennies in royalties whenever someone checks out their book. (Right now, while I’m a huge supporter of libraries, I’ll admit it’s just a tad galling that I spend my life trying to create products that people will buy, and the government has a services in almost every town that lends my product for free.)
Jay B.
From the League post:
The hell you say!
I mean, obviously and of course you’re right. I just always find it funny when something that plainly uncontroversial comes to people like an epiphany. Hey, you know what, maybe there was something to this whole “liberals aren’t really Marxists” thing!
New Yorker
You know, I’m sympathetic to a lot of libertarian ideas: ending the drug war, ending the war on terror surveillance state, opposition to free-speech zones in public places, etc.
Where I and Gillespie (ugh, I hate that he and I share the same last name) diverge is that I haven’t made a fetish out of privatizing everything. Once you’ve decided that public libraries are a problem, then you’re crossed the line into religious fanaticism.
Guster
Oh, and that said, there are privatized libraries. They’re called bookstores, and they’re doing tremendously well. Just look at Borders.
DougJ®
Cadillac style? He couldn’t resist could he.
Young bucks buying T-bone steaks with money from their big gubmint library sinecure.
jayjaybear
My only possible conclusion, especially with the way this has been ramping up the last few years, is that these folks (not you, E.D.) hate poor people, and especially hate poor women. Anything that makes a poverty-stricken person’s life just a little bit more bearable, whether it’s food stamps, medicaid, libraries, job training, whatever, is bad, bad, bad and needs to be stopped.
I don’t understand their thought processes. I really don’t. Are they THAT lacking in empathy that they can’t even articulate “There but for the grace of God go I”? They can’t ever imagine that someday THEY might be the ones who need help? It just puts me into an incoherent rage!
agrippa
Privatizing public libraraies is a stupid idea. The LSSI company is a UK company and is accountable to no one for anything. That is one small matter.
A few other insignificant matters: What are the criteria for buying books? Will books with unpopular subject matter be kept out? Will staff have the proper academic credntials? Will branches in unedifying areas be kept open?
As for ‘overpaid’ and ‘lazy’: two fairly common imprecations that are hurled at enemies. Does not make it so, though.
DougJ®
It scares me how close glibertarian rhetoric comes to parody these days, in general.
agrippa
@DougJ®:
Quite so. Glibertarian rhetoric is, usually, parody. Interesting how some do not recognize it.
Guster
” … public sector workers who make more than you can retire younger and in Cadillac style?”
Doesn’t that mean that rational libertarian-type job-seekers will become public sector workers? Far as I can tell, we’re already living in a libertarian paradise; it’s just that some rational actors have banded together to form thing these things called ‘government’ and ‘public sector workers’ and shit. But at bottom, you’re welcome to opt out of all of that. They’ll just send their goons after you, and there’s nothing more libertarian than that.
Bulworth
Reason’s readers are members of the underclass? Who knew? Shouldn’t Reason’s readers be up by their bootstraps spankin rich? Or I guess they would be except they’re oppressed by The Socialist Man.
E.D. Kain
@Jay B.: what do you have against Marxists?
evinfuilt
Too bad Governor good hair doesn’t listen, since he’s looking at cutting all funding to public libraries in Texas. All, 100%, there will be no public libraries at all in that state. It’s up to the university funded libraries to take up the slack.
Sad day for knowledge, but that’s what this is about. Privatizing/shutting down libraries is all part of the de-education of America.
shaun
I have been patronizing public libraries since my mother first took me to one at age 5, while I have worked at a major university library (3 million books, zillions of database and electronic resources) for the last eight years that is open to anyone from the community. A consequence of this commitment is that there are a goodly number of townies mingling with the students.
Privatizing libraries is a horrible idea that inevitably will lead to savings that inevitably will cut into a library’s core mission as a community center with books. Penny wise, pound foolish.
ant
This. I agree with, very much so. Cap and trade is crap.
Pangloss
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is already working on putting those fat-cat state workers in their place, and if they don’t submit to his proposed pay cuts and mandatory furlough days, he’s going to send out the National Guard.
Uh, all the public employee unions EXCEPT for the Police and Firefighter unions, which just coincidentially supported Walker last election.
PurpleGirl
Before the thread gets longer… (and I haven’t read the post yet). Great Britain is also playing with library funding in its austerity program. Making Light had a post referencing a speech by Bill Pullman about the funding for his local library system. It was an interesting thread and Pullman’s speech was very good.
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/012830.html
Pullman’s comments:
http://falseeconomy.org.uk/blog/save-oxfordshire-libraries-speech-philip-pullman
morzer
That was Gillespie on
Reasona public library. Does this ignorant, greedy little glibertarian fuckhead even know why you have to air-condition libraries? Does he have any concept that libraries often function as community centers? That they supply computer time to people who couldn’t get online otherwise? That they help with job searches, tax forms, reading groups for kids, literacy classes?The sooner scum like Gillespie are castrated, gutted and hanged for the worthless traitors to humanity that they are, the better.
cyntax
Wow. Nice job reevaluating your ideas. I think your point about the necessity of organized labor is 100% correct. No one else is going to provide the necessary counterweight to the clout that corporations currently wield… course that explains why so many people on the right have spent so much time trying to tear down unions.
Elvis Elvisberg
@DougJ®: Wow. And there’s someone to greet you with the up-to-the-minute spin, that Bulgaria proves that low taxes = nirvana, just like Ireland proved it up til a few months ago.
Thanks for the post, EDK. And yeah, Catholics ought not have any problem with evolution, it’s been a-ok for some time.
brendancalling
In 2009, Mayor Nutter told Philadelphia he was shutting down a huge percentage of our public libraries due to the budget crisis. he came to my neighborhood for a “listening session”, which as he defined it mean “Mayor talk, people listen.”
I am proud to say we chased that motherfucker out of the neighborhood. He could not get a word in edgewise to the people, the majority of who are dirt poor and elderly.
This ain’t gonna fly.
Zifnab
@numbskull:
My parents worked for Exxon. Whenever Exxon commissioned a project, the company would request quotes from all its prospective contractors. It would then request a quote from within the company. If the company believed a contractor was more efficient, it went with the contractor. Otherwise, it billed the work internally.
This is the model form of government outsourcing, and one that rarely is approached in government projects because the system is so damn corrupt.
So yes, privatization has its merits. But no, the post-Reagen outsource-everything movement hasn’t remotely lived up to expectations.
JPL
One thing that struck me while reading about Mubarak was that the illiteracy rate was 30% in Egypt and Mubarak was credited for improving that number. Can we assume that they don’t have free libraries?
Public libraries and public education have existed since the mid 1800’s. As my mother would say, why throw out the baby with the bath water. Although I never really understood that statement while in my teens, now that I’m sixty, I do.
Kain, Why are you a libertarian?
Ash Can
@Pangloss: I’ve heard of rewarding friends and punishing enemies after getting elected, but holy crap.
ETA: And great timing, too, with Egypt all over the headlines.
morzer
@Elvis Elvisberg:
Actually, it’s usually flat taxes that are nirvana, and Latvia used to be the poster-child, until it became clear that all was not well in Baltic paradise.
mr. whipple
Jeebus, I am SICK of these nutters.
Bulworth
@PurpleGirl: Philip Pullman. Bill Pullman is an actor. (although I imagine there are a lot of non-actor Bill Pullman’s around too).
Scott
@Jane2:
Gillespie has obviously not been in a public library in decades. Who does he think is teaching literacy, offering citizenship classes, running employment centres, managing volunteers teaching English as a Second Language, ensuring sight-impaired people have reading choices, offering premium genealogy sites for free, ensuring people have free access to computers, etc etc etc etc? Oh yes, and people who like to read are served, too.
Yes, and you’ve just summed up some of the reasons why Gillespie is opposed to public libraries…
Bulworth
@morzer: Oh Dear. Moore Award!! Moore Award!!
Barb (formerly Gex)
Excellent post(s), EDK. I need to ratchet down my m_c towards you. Apologies for past dickishness.
Zifnab
@evinfuilt:
That’s twenty years of Republican government, brought to a final crescendo of triumph. Rock bottom tax rates and rock bottom government services.
Given that he’s also talking about making deep cuts to the primary and secondary education funds, it’ll be fun seeing how long university libraries last.
Pretty soon this whole state will pay for nothing but tollways and prisons.
J.W. Hamner
I’m actually sort of amazed that publishers/record companies/movie studios haven’t really tried (AFAIK) to shut down libraries. I mean, my girlfriend hasn’t bought a book or a movie in ages… she gets everything she wants from the library. Yeah, sometimes she has to wait a couple of weeks to read the latest book, but so what? I am too immediate gratification for this strategy most of the time, but she’s saved me tons of money by just saying “Hey, why don’t we get that cookbook out of the library and try it out before you buy it?”
I suspect the reason is that these corporations realize that attacking libraries is the moral equivalent to stomach punching grandma and stealing her teeth.
DougJ®
@JPL:
He’s not a libertarian.
Chuck Butcher
Oh jeeze … nev…er minnnd
Ah, can’t help myself
Given an economic system like capitalism you can have one of two things – managed capitalism or laisse fair capitalism. Once you walk away from the free for all version it becomes a matter of degree of management.
Capitalism is (like any econ system) a rigged game – it is rigged to work for those with capital hence the name. You are then faced with a choice – how to minimize the damage of the rigging. If you start out approaching that with the idea that there is or ever was such a thing as a free market and free trade you’re going to have problems. Promoting the acutality of ideas that have never existed as a basis for analyzing policy is GIGO.
It might pay to remember that A Hamilton died thanks to a fight about in whose favor the economic system would be rigged. Ah well, diss the magic words and become disregarded…
Svensker
During bad economic times, libraries should be expanding their hours and services, not cutting them.
Reminds me of a recent discussion between David Gergen and Ari “Don’t Call Me a Nazi, You Fascist” Fleischer, when Ari said that due to the bad economy, school budgets should be cut. Gergen was appalled and suggested that maybe educating our kids was not a luxury. Ari disagreed vehemently and you could see Gergen looking at him and seeing the mask had slipped for a bit.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Let me remind you that extremism in defense of libraries is no vice.
PurpleGirl
The New York Public Library (serves the boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island) has had its budget cut every year for some time. The Brooklyn Library has ramped up its fundraising and I don’t know it’s current status. The Queens Borough Library has stopped buying new books for the current fiscal year so it could keep branches open close to past hours. Each system is asking the public to make contributions.
I’ve been a library user since I was a child. Saturday mornings were spent at my local branch, reading for hours and bringing the most books I could. For a few years I had stopped using the library but I’ve begun using them again. I wish I could contribute to them. They are so important to everyone.
Matt
@jayjaybear:
They can’t imagine being poor because they’re either complete assholes or (very common) have inverted the “Prosperity Gospel” into “People are poor because they are sinful” and they know *they* aren’t sinners like the gheyz and so on.
Or in other words, they *do* think “there but for the grace of God go I”, but they’re fully convinced that they are ENTITLED to that grace because of how super-awesome lily-white they are.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
a war Gillespie seems only too eager to cheerlead, with lines like “ask yourself whether you want to have enough disposable income to fund your own health care and retirement or do you want to pay more in taxes to make sure that public sector workers who make more than you can retire younger and in Cadillac style?
God knows that’s why I became a librarian – the big salaries and outrageous benefits…
One of my fantasies is that the big publishing houses hire a soulless lobbyist company to institute a more, well, European take on libraries, where writers get a few pennies in royalties whenever someone checks out their book. (Right now, while I’m a huge supporter of libraries, I’ll admit it’s just a tad galling that I spend my life trying to create products that people will buy, and the government has a services in almost every town that lends my product for free.)
You’re forgetting, Guster, that the government also creates your income by defending your intellectual property right, a right which exists only in law and not in nature. The same law that allows libraries to loan books (and, incidentally, requires your publisher to deposit copies with the LoC) also prevnets anyone from simply copying and flogging off your book themselves.
I’m also pretty certain that any serious reserach shows that libraries encourage writers, and encourage readers to buy books. Without your books being borrowed from library shelves, fewer would be bought from bookshops. (which is probably true of every author save Stephen King and John Grisham).
MattR
@Pangloss: No chance that the people at GOS could be overreacting? Gov Walker may be an asshole for the way he is “negotiating”, but this is nonsensical fear mongering about the National Guard. If anything, discussions with the National Guard are what any decent, proactive governor would do.
PurpleGirl
@Bulworth: Yeah, I checked the web site to copy it but didn’t double-check his name. {blushing}
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Phoenician in a time of Romans: That point on IP always gets lost with the copyright holders, doesn’t it? Fair use is a benefit to them versus an anything goes free for all.
morzer
@Bulworth:
Too high an honor. I seek only the post of public executioner when the revolution comes.
J.W. Hamner
@Guster:
Do you get any royalties for used book sales?
RSA
Gillespie’s post gives the impression that his dislike of all public libraries is largely based on his experience with one as a teenager. He seems to take it personally.
losingtehplot
Our tiny public library was axed late last year – and people in the village (pop. around 400) rallied round. The local gov’t council left us with all the books (most of which hadn’t been replaced for years), but took away the professional librarian, and the computers and internet connection. We’ve applied for grants for the intertubes and computers, and have a timetable for volunteers to do 3-hour stints in the library (open about 22 hours a week). I like volunteering for my tiny library – and the book donations pour in (we aren’t on the gov’ts interlibrary loan service anymore), but what I hate is that my (UK) gov’t will be pleased with our ‘contribution’ to the Tory ‘Big Society’ plan, of handing over vital services to volunteers. I do this because I believe people in my community, esp. not-wealthy, children should have access to books, but I am totally pissed off that I am replacing fully trained librarians because it’s more important that bankers get bonuses.
Jules
@morzer:
You make the mistake of assuming that he gives a shit about those less then he.
The glibitarian wonders why the fuck should he have to pay taxes so that other folks can sit in a library with ac? Why should he have to give of his hard earned money to help people who don’t have computers get online (they’ll just be looking for porn anyway) or provide tax forms or literacy classes.
Can’t the unwashed just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and teach themselves to read. WTH were they doing in school? Being lazy little slackers, that’s what…they made their bed and should now lie in whatever box under the freeway it might be located in.
And kids? The little fuckers should be out working not being parasitical freeloaders expecting a taxpayer hand out in the form of story time.
Will
@E.D. Kain: Sorry, I got to ‘privatizing libraries’ and that’s about it. Sick of conservatives wanting to destroy the public state and give our nation away to the fatcats.
Been listening all morning to conservatives whine about Egypt….most of whom seem mainly concerned that any kind of good news from there might reflect well on Obama.
Paula
Libraries, aka Free access to information, are soci.@list, after all; also, public parks. At least, I heard a conservative say that they had “a liberal bias” on Warren Olney’s Which Way LA? (PRI) a few years ago.
goblue72
Courtesy of those little Google text ads at the top of my gmail, I discovered today that the Koch’s fund a Wingut University/Job Training program:
http://www.cgkfoundation.org/associate-program/?gclid=CPit1ZWRgacCFQUSbAodQyg5eA
Its worth a read – its like reading Scientology literature or from some other mad cult.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
From the link
Why, it’s almost as if the public values libraries more than it values tax-cuts! Inconceivable!
numbskull
@Zifnab: I’m just a numbskull, but I don’t see how your Exxon example is a an example of privatization. I’m not being glib, it’s just that it’s late Friday afternoon, I haven’t eaten since 6 this morning, and I just ain’t gleepin’ it. Please ‘splain slower and with smaller words.
morzer
@J.W. Hamner:
Well, libraries are a pretty solid revenue stream, for one thing. Anyway, where books are concerned, people can just browse them in bookstores. Some people have even been known to regard Borders etc as public reading rooms and catch up on the latest mysteries etc there. Shutting down libraries wouldn’t help the book trade much, if at all.
morzer
@Phoenician in a time of Romans:
Well, good for them. I find that rather encouraging, in a country seemingly devoted to a war on human intelligence.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@RSA:
Gillespie’s post gives the impression that his dislike of all public libraries is largely based on his experience with one as a teenager. He seems to take it personally
Consider for a moment how obnoxious a strongly libertarian teenager would be. Now imagine him in your workplace when you’re trying to help people.
So, yeah, I can see that he might have had his little fee-fees hurt.
morzer
@Jules:
No, I don’t make that mistake. Gillespie’s War Against Intelligence is well-known to me, alas.
va
Full disclosure: I have never been an advocate of privatizing libraries.
Thanks for letting us know.
The Moar You Know
Shut down the libraries, already. They mainly serve as daytime homeless shelters, and as far as I’m concerned the more stupid, helpless, illiterate, stuck-at-the-bottom with no way out folks we have in this society, the better off I am.
/wingtard
In all seriousness, something must be done about the homeless in the libraries. Some of them are threatening, some violent, and I know that a lot of parents won’t take their kids to our local library anymore because of them. Which is sad, as the kids should view the library as a source of knowledge, not a daytime holding cell for parolees.
Bulworth
OT but here’s the latest McMeagan post:
Seriously? Second home? WTF?
Mark S.
Fonzi is a terrible writer, mainly because he thinks he’s hilarious when he is not. Regardless, this is a pretty stupid paragraph:
That sounds like a pretty progressive tax . . .
(Use a spell-check, Fonz)
I doubt every Marxist would tell you that, and even if higher income people use libraries and museums disproportionately, it doesn’t follow that poor people would be better off with no museums and libraries. And the example he uses in this paragraph is a tax that would hit almost exclusively middle and upper class people. That’s a lot of fail there, Fonzi.
E.D. Kain
@JPL: I really don’t think I am.
Ash Can
@MattR: No, any decent proactive governor would realize how it looks for him to be announcing that he’s putting the National Guard on alert within the context of essentially busting the public-employee unions. And that’s putting it at its mildest. According to the Madison press, Walker “alerted the National Guard just in case they are needed to ensure state services aren’t interrupted.” What state services? The Guard can’t do everything. Even if all he has in mind is having the Guard drive snowplows, he’s going about it the wrong way.
Zifnab
@numbskull: Consider Exxon the government and consider contractors as private outsourcers.
In an ideal setting, the government would determine whether it is cheaper to do the work internally (publicly) or outsource the work to a private business.
For instance, it could be cheaper for an FBI Office to contract with an IT firm to provide tech support than it would be to hire its own IT guy. Hiring an IT Firm would be a form of privatization, since the contractor would be self-employed or employed by his firm and not by the US Government.
morzer
@Mark S.:
I must remember that next time I encounter the assembled millionaires in our rather good public library. It’s funny, because an awful lot of the people there look distinctly poor/lower middle class. I guess the rich are just wrapping themselves in rags to hide their wealth from the soci.alist hordes. Again!
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
Public libraries struggle enough with funding as it is to add to their collections and services. Now add a profit motive to this equation. Cut staff + cut collections + cut operating hours + cut services = break even?? Seriously, even if I supported this notion in principle, show me the fucking business plan. My God…
Or is ‘privatization,’ like it usually is, code for getting a gov’t contract to administer the library (take the funding) and then adding a profit motive (cut everything and pocket the difference). How does that benefit anybody except the asshole that sold it to the gov’t office holding the pursestrings?
Makes me wonder how much actual profit there is to be had in any privatization scheme that isn’t just tax dollars skimmed off the top. But this method is ok to conservatives because it’s ‘free enterprise?’ Ideology fail…
E.D. Kain
@Barb (formerly Gex): no worries!
morzer
@E.D. Kain:
How’s the mohawk, EDK? Out of interest, how are library services in your part of the world?
morzer
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink:
It would be interesting to know whether Reason ever makes a profit without subsidies. Surely Gillespie couldn’t be a moocher?
Mark S.
@morzer:
They don’t hide it at my local library. The last time I was there, I couldn’t concentrate because everybody’s jewelry was clattering so loudly. So I took my tophat and monocle and told the driver to take me to the nearest Barnes & Noble.
Ash Can
@Mark S.:
Is there anything Fonzie doesn’t get ass-backwards?
Guster
@J.W. Hamner: Well, um, I don’t actually get any royalties for anything. I’ve never earned out an advance. But no, nobody gets royalties for used book sales. That’s lower down on my wish list, though. I mean, libraries (and again: I love ’em) are basically to publishing what a free, government-funded rental car agency would be to car companies. But GM doesn’t get money on the re-sale.
E.D. Kain
@va: hey, you’re welcome!
R-Jud
@losingtehplot:
Good on you for pitching in, but it really makes me livid that you have to do it. Watching these two strains of demented conservatism– Zombie Reaganism and Zombie Thatcherism– play out in both the countries I call home is so depressing.
Chuck Butcher
@E.D. Kain:
Think about it – you use their words as though they have meaning.
Guster
@Phoenician in a time of Romans: Oh, God, yes. I wouldn’t be a writer at all if not for libraries. My first books (all nonfiction) wouldn’t have been possible without ’em. I really am a huge fan, I’m not just saying that. I’m only saying there’s room for improvement, and I dream of publishers paying a lobbyist enough to ensure that $60 million is in the budget to pay writers the royalties for check-out books, that’s all.
As far as copyright goes, I’m probably unusual in that I prefer the original scheme, which was something like 14 years of copyright protection, extended upon request to another 14 years. The current copyright regime is friggin’ ridiculous. My kid should have to make his own money, even in the weepily unlikely case that I hit the list.
morzer
@Mark S.:
Was that you in the elegant barouche with the blonde Russian Countess?
Sir, you made my own humble equipage seem unworthy to contest the streets with you. I have instructed my staff to add more chromium to the hubcaps instanter!
morzer
@R-Jud:
Where were you from in the UK?
E.D. Kain
@Chuck Butcher: I’m not following you.
morzer
@Ash Can:
Just wait until he denounces Harvard and Yale.. and whatever that little place is in New Jersey.
morzer
@E.D. Kain:
He’s trying to say that you think it worth responding to libertarians, and therefore must be one.
MattR
@Ash Can: I am pretty sure that if the prison guards went on strike because of Walker’s stance/legislation and there were no contigency plans in place, Walker would be getting bashed for not realizing the consequences of his actions and for not having made alternate arrangements.
But really my biggest objection to the GOS piece was the title that Gov Walker was going to set the National Guard on state workers. That brings up images of Kent State (and Egypt) when the reality of what is being proposed is far more innocent and mundane.
Suffern ACE
We’re not supposed to have illiterate. We do, but we’re not supposed to and libraries and public schools are supposed to help counter that tendency of human beings to remain illiterate when left on their own without access to schools and libraries. Once we achieved literacy, we no longer should have to pay for the institutions that supported it in the past since nothing ever goes backwards.
I suppose that libraries are really meant to be a stop gap during the transition between the time when information was deposited in the heads of people who memorized epic poems and stories and the time when “evertying” was available online. A holdover from the period of books and magazines. But hey. Everyone has access to the internet now apparently.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@jayjaybear: No one would be poor if everyone just paid their fair share. And someone would invent a machine that created all the energy everyone needed for free.
I wonder if John Galt charged for that. If he didn’t then he was violating the very libertarian creed of paying for what you consume. If he did, what did he charge? Wouldn’t you, based on market forces, have to charge nearly zero for something you don’t have to work to create? Otherwise, like Bill Gates, you get a large concentration of wealth.
gex
@Ash Can: Well, if the National Guard can just shoot college students, it’s probably okay to shoot public sector union members.
J.W. Hamner
@Guster:
I have no idea what the numbers are… and would love for someone to supply them… but I was suggesting that there might be more “royalty loss” on used books than on libraries. I also suspect if libraries ceased to exist, people like my girlfriend would work exclusively on the used book market.
Sloegin
There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.
-Andrew Carnegie
Pretty obvious why Gillespie is such an avowed enemy of them.
KG
Here’s the big problem I have with movement libertarians… they have a binary view of the world, it’s liberty or tyranny. It’s like they missed the part in the Declaration of Independence about “that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…” Or they never read Hobbes, to understand what life in the Natural World is. The movement never matured beyond the initial thought process of deregulation (which, in the 1970s made sense).
I call myself a libertarian because I believe in promoting liberty above all else. But I also recognize that liberty, in the form of a liberal society, is the fulcrum between tyranny and anarchy.
The Fonzi of Freedom and his ilk, they just want to make another quick buck.
morzer
@KG:
How do you deal with the conflict between liberties? How does one adjudicate cases when your freedom conflicts with that of another?
R-Jud
@morzer: I am from the US. I currently live near Birmingham (the original Birmingham, not the one in Alabama).
MattR
@gex: And this is exactly my point. Based on the post at GOS and comments elsewhere you would think that Gov Walker was suggesting some kind of confrontation involving the National Guard, but there is absolutely zero evidence to support that.
@KG: Well said. I think most Americans have strong, libertarian tendencies. The key thing is how you balance those with the other realities of the world. Personally, I have come to the point where I think corporations, and not the government, are the biggest threat to the liberties of individuals which is why I am fine with using government power to reign those corporations in.
Viva BrisVegas
@jayjaybear:
As far as I can tell the rarely stated rationale is that if you can make the life of the poor unpleasant enough, they will cease choosing to be poor.
kay
He lives in Oxford, Ohio? The home of Miami University?
Does he know his entire city is built around and completely dependent on a public university?
A university that is commonly referred to as a “public ivy”?
Tell me he doesn’t live there. Jesus.
numbskull
@Zifnab: Thanks for the clarification; I unnerstan more. But, it’s not an example of successful privatization, it’s an analogy (which is fine in and of itself) for what governments have always done at every level.
Privatization, as meant in this discussion, is a little different. To hold with your Exxon analogy, what is meant by this type of privatization, which is the type that libertarians and “conservatives” have been calling for since Uncle Ronnie escaped Cali and infected the rest of the nation, would be more along these lines:
Exxon is trying to decide whether it’s more profitable to drill the last potential oil field in what was once Yosemite National Park using their own people and equipment versus outsourcing to local wildcatters. Exxon has already invested in all of the earth-moving and drilling equipment, they currently employ the personnel that would clear the area and those that would do the actual drilling. But, these latter are ongoing costs. Their analysis indicates that, since they’ve already made the capital investments and have experienced personnel, it makes more sense in the 5 year projection to drill using current equipment and personnel. However, the 1-year projection is that they’d make more money by firing all of their experienced (read “expensive) personnel and hiring the lowest bid wildcat firm poke holes in the ground. ‘Cause all the deciders are retiring this year anyway. Or could if they wanted to.
This latter course, of course, is what they’d do as Exxon. Hey, it’s the post-80s American way.
But here’s where the analogy can be taken to a new level. If Exxon were not run by the regular run-of-the-mill greed heads, but rather by the privatizing fetish crowd, then not only would they fire their expensive employees and hire a wildcat operation, they would make sure that the wildcat firm chosen is owned by buddies, they would also give all of their expensive capital equipment to those buddies, AND, since everyone eventually wants the oil, they would make sure that their buddy wildcatters hired the fired former Exxon employees, since, at the end of the day, the only people who actually know how get the oil are those expensive expert and experienced employees…
Now THAT is what Exxon would do if it wanted to be a municipality that “successfully” privatizes core functions…
morzer
@R-Jud:
Well, damn. I used to live near Wolverhampton. How are you faring with the Black Country dialect? How is the city of Birmingham? It used to have pretty good public services and transport, as I recall, and has a very interesting place in British political history with the Chamberlain family.
Guster
@J.W. Hamner: Yeah, I understood. But my point was that the used market exists in plenty of industries: the ‘government lends your shit for free,’ on the other hand …
I think the solution isn’t to badmouth libraries, though, but to increase the funding to recompense writers. Granted, I’ve got skin in this particular game …
morzer
@kay:
Please tell me he isn’t a Dolphins fan. I want nothing in common with that human paraquat.
Ash Can
@MattR: And I’m saying that he’s tone-deaf at best for even mentioning it. If he isn’t smart enough to realize that it makes him sound like Augusto Fucking Pinochet then he and Wisconsin have a long, long four years ahead of them.
J.W. Hamner
@morzer:
Assuming that I’m not flashing back to arguments I had in high school, I think it’s safe to say that most libertarians support “government” as long as its sole purpose is to protect their stuff (aka property rights).
kay
@morzer:
I’m just amazed. I don’t read libertarians. Is that really where he lives?
Boy, oh boy. Some chutzpah, bitching about a local library levy, in a state-sponsored town.
I must have read that wrong.
morzer
@J.W. Hamner:
I am just genuinely curious to know what KG thinks about it. Individual perspectives and all that good stuff.
R-Jud
@morzer:
It’s a lot more comprehensible to me than the Geordie accent. However, it’s getting its claws into my toddler. She said “babby” yesterday for “baby”, and the husband and I cringed. “We have to move before she starts school,” he said.
Birmingham’s doing okay for now: they’re still building away at Longbridge, where the Rover plant used to be, but the council just announced 7,000 jobs will go this year.
I actually took the day off today– sunny, about 50– and spent the afternoon in the city centre, looking at all the Pre-Raphaelite stuff at BMAG.
We keep saying we’ll move to Chicago, but we’re dragging our feet.
morzer
@kay:
I suspect Gillespie is the kind of person who tries to charge you money for being in the vicinity when he cuts his toenails, on the grounds that entertainment should not be free.
MattR
@Ash Can: Sure it is politically tone deaf to mention it, but the way it was reported (Esp at lefty blogs) was over the top paranoia and I chose to focus on the group that I actually have higher expectations for (and perhaps even some sway over)
Whammer
A carbon tax is theoretically better than a cap and trade system. However, a carbon tax is much much easier to unwind/reduce/repeal than cap and trade.
Plus, global warming is a global issue, and implementing a carbon tax across the world doesn’t really work.
Hence, cap and trade is about the best long-term alternative. Not perfect, as you say, and it does have the negative side effect of creating yet another class of scum-suckers making money by trading the credits.
However, realistically, I think cap/trade is the most likely approach to make a long-term impact.
Ash Can
@kay: His educational background consists of Rutgers, Temple, and SUNY-Buffalo — all public schools — so I’m sure he’s very well versed in how those nefarious institutions roll.
kay
@morzer:
When he’s strolling through the pretty little village of Oxford, sneering at the deadbeat children in the public library, someone should tell him his “current hometown” wouldn’t exist without that state school.
Ailuridae
It is always about breaking unions when these privatization schemes are pushed. Always. Read more here about LSSI the main company taking over municipal libraries.
Also, when a municiaplity hires a private company to pick up its trash it is a coercive monopoly according to Kain.
Where is the libertarian argument that hiring a single private company to run libraries is a coercive monopoly? Oh, wait, both of those statement are fucking stupid.
Ailuridae
@kay: @kay:
No you didn’t read that wrong. Nick Gillespie is really just that clueless. I’ve had conversations with libertarians in Madison that would leave you absolutely shaking your head.
kay
@Ash Can:
Oxford is something else entirely, though. This is no ordinary state school. Not gritty, Ash Can. Not a commuter school. No, sir.
I think that’s my last time reading Nick. He might not know where he lives.
Zifnab
@numbskull:
Except that then Exxon would lose shit-tons of money on the deal. From a stockholder perspective, it would be a lynchable offense. But the “wild-catters” (who just happened to be ex-Exxon Execs) would make out like bandits.
And that’s why modern government privatization is so terrible. Because it practically begs for corruption. Unfortunately, the same game can be played with a publicly insourced company. The Exxon project manager could hire a bunch of his wild cat buddies on as salaried employees and set them up so that they could never get fired. The company guys would pledge there support to the manager and cover for him so that he keeps his seat indefinitely, while they pillaged and sabotaged lesser neighboring managers to make the big boss look better. They’d all pay themselves exorbitant wages, drag the project out for decades, and foot the company with the bill.
A la the Bell City, California city council scandal.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/09/22/us-california-payscandal-arrests-idUSTRE68K40N20100922
The problem isn’t really the system so much as it is accountability, transparency, and oversight. Representative governments have a much harder time managing those elements than private corporations, because low info voters are more easily bought off, brushed off, or bamboozled than majority shareholders or C-level executives.
What’s really at stake here isn’t “private” versus “public”, it’s “efficient” versus “wasteful”. Either system can be made wasteful if the government is in the hands of a shitty administrator.
losingtehplot
@R-Jud: R-Jud: What cracks me up about our ‘Save the library’ coterie is the variation in amateur librarians – from hard-core Tories to hard-core soshullists – as long as we don’t talk about politics. We just want local people to have access to books, audio books, and the intertubes. It’s not worth getting into the political arguments just now – but boy do I have to bite my tongue sometimes. Serves me right living in a beautiful waterfront village down the road from Britain’s ‘independent’, i.e. unable to be launched without the US guidance system, submarine-based nuclear ‘deterrent’.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ash Can:I’ve heard that argument about symphony orchestras and art museums as well.
kay
@Ailuridae:
No wonder he doesn’t want to pay 25 dollars for a library. He has free access to a full roster of university events!
He’d be slumming in the public library.
E.D. Kain
@morzer: The mohawk is fine. Orange now. Our library system is excellent, too.
KG
@morzer: we’ve been dealing with that for centuries, there is a lot of case law on the subject, and I think the court’s have been mostly right in balancing the equities… historically speaking. A great example is the law of nuisance in both tort and property law. There are ways it can be done legislatively as well… as a general rule, I don’t have much of a problem with zoning laws (if only because I don’t want a meat packing plant to move in next to my house). I think most of the big issues have been worked out in that regard… though funny business like Kelo still happens.
kay
@Ash Can:
I think it’s bullshit. Pure politics. The conservative argument against public employee unions is they could strike, and leave essential services understaffed. That’s why they made up the lie about the NYC workers not clearing snow in an emergency. It’s central to the bigger lie.
Nice touch, though, scaring people with the prisoner release nonsense, and that he “might” have to call out the Guard. Scumbag.
kay
@Ash Can:
Walker said Friday that he updated emergency plans and alerted the National Guard just in case they are needed to ensure state services aren’t interrupted. His plan would remove collective bargaining rights for prison guards
Scary! That’s why he announced it.
Odie Hugh Manatee
This Fonzie is a real fuckwit, eh? Jeez, you have to be pretty stupid to suggest something like this.
He probably hasn’t spent much time in one either…lol
Regarding your #1 postscript:
When I was a practicing (and believing) Catholic I had no problem fitting evolution in to a frame that included a god. As it was explained to me, while the bible stated god created the earth in six days and rested on the seventh, his days are much longer than ours. As I grew and learned basic astronomy, learning that other planets have their own years that are distinct from ours, it made even more sense that this could be.
Now that life has thoroughly disabused me of the idea that there is some magic sky-guy we are supposed to worship while financing his ‘servants’ gaudy existence, I still have no problem with evolution. :)
Emma
J.W. Hamner: Because they sell hundred of thousands of copies to libraries every year. For every best-selling writer there are a hundred midlist writer whose sales are partly to the public library.
KG
@morzer: @J.W. Hamner: I am not anti-government. I want government strong enough to protect individual rights but not so strong as to threaten them… that is a delicate balance. I do think that right now the threat to liberty is not from government but from, as a commenter above mentioned, large corporations. Much like the start of the 20th century, when monopolies/trusts dominated life… I think the last decade showed us what happens when we allow a “benevolent trust” to exist (there were those who argued that breaking up Standard Oil wasn’t necessary because it was a benevolent trust), when shit it the fan, we got sprayed.
I’m even willing to support a social safety net. Stability is a good thing, crucial in fact to a liberal society, and a good social safety net can provide stability. The key, to me, is making sure that the safety net is not so extensive as to undermine the need/desire to work and innovate.
ETA: I should also say, I’m a big believer in building consensus. I think that is what our constitution was really designed to do. Some times I won’t agree with the consensus, but that’s the price we pay for not living in a world where I am supreme emperor.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@MattR: I had only seen the uh, *embellished*, phrasing. You are spot on to call them on that, it is deliberately and misleadingly inflammatory.
DonkeyKong
Libertarianism has alway been a trojan horse for Medievalism.
In both the North and the South during the later 19th century, public schools, secret and other private schools, informal apprenticeships and special treaty requirements provided an education to a few motivated free blacks and whites.
The first compulsory education laws were not passed until 1865, with the last coming in the mid to late 20th century. It is certain that many whites and blacks were illiterate until fairly recent times.
We are making a U-turn on the progress of the 20th century.
And another thing…..Fuck Kochhead Nick Gillespie.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@J.W. Hamner: Just never mention the genocide and slavery that were the building blocks of this nation and this economy. Only after white people stole the entire value of this nation did property rights mean anything to white guys. (All due apologies to all non-libertarian white guys). Property rights only became super important after they make a killing. And it is often used to accumulate more wealth and private property, at the expense of the majority of Americans. But they have theirs.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@KG: I would say the social safety net is crucial for capitalism. If industries and companies should rise and fall according to the market, displaced workers are necessarily a factor. Add to that the fact that the fed raises rates whenever unemployment goes down – in essence capitalism *requires* unemployed employable people. A system that would then blame these folks for that situation is utterly pathetic, but that seems to be what the right wing extremists have managed to do. And more often that not that seems to be the underlying attitude of libertarians as well. (Not that I am assuming your stance on the issue is that the unemployed are to blame for their situation.)
El Cid
The problem with public funding of libraries is that nobody don’t need to read no damn books no way.
Some magazines is okay, but if you got all those books there that anybody can just go up and borrow, you guarantee that you’re gonna have a bunch of damn egg-head cultural elitists wandering around.
We don’t need no more of that.
Chuck Butcher
@E.D. Kain:
Then I guess you haven’t had the chance to read much of any comment I’ve left for you.
The words “free market” and “free trade” are meaningless in the respect that they do not and have not ever existed in fact. They are rhetorical devices devoid of real meaning other than the Libertarian nonsensical theoretical bullshit. That’s a bunch of perjoratives, but look at them. You use those words as though they have meaning, granted they pop up all the time in popular discourse – but you’re intelligent enough and hopefully well educated enough to know better. You don’t seem to since you use them quite freely. History laughs at that. It is a Libertarian construct reasoned backwards from to reach their pre-determined results.
Every form of capitalism we’re familiar with, from A Smith on, has been managed capitalism.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Jane2:
Because he hates to see stuff that governments finance being given away to the lazy, undeserving public when there are some really nice capitalists out there who would be more than happy to take it over and milk it for profits while exercising total control over what is offered.
That and it would cut taxes. It’s the perfect glibertarian wet dream!
Ash Can
@MattR: OK, I getcha. I actually never did look at the DKos story — it was plastered all over the WI press (Chicago too), so I didn’t need to bother. I tend to avoid DKos these days anyway; the smell of burning hair over there makes my eyes water.
@kay: True. Doesn’t make him look any better, but good point.
Wile E. Quixote
I’m just waiting for one of Reason’s backers to figure out that they could get scads of glibertarian horseshit cheaper if they just outsourced all of the writing to India. Finding well-educated Indians who speak and write better than Gillespie, Welch and the rest of the glibertards at Reason wouldn’t be hard, and unlike Gillespie and Welch those people have a work ethic. Of course that means that Gillespie would have to find a new job, he’s too old to be a rent boy, but with that haircut and the leather jacket he probably has a few years left in him as rough trade.
Oh, and as further proof of what a total douchebag Gillespie is he apparently got a PhD in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo, hey, way to suck on that public tit Nicky, get the taxpayers to subsidize your graduate education, and way to make that English degree pay. Instead of doing something hard, like becoming a teacher, Nicky hopped on the Wingnut Welfare Gravy Train. What a contemptible piece of shit. I don’t know who’s more of a useless, hypocritical asshole, Gillespie or, Matt “I get my health care in France” Welch.
Martin
Ideas like this are why bittorrent is so popular.
morzer
@Chuck Butcher:
By the standards you set, all words would be meaningless. Do you have an actual point for ED Kain to address?
Batocchio
Of all the poorly-argued, factually inaccurate pieces Nick Gillespie has ever written, that may be the worst. Librarians are not paid very well. And in many areas, libraries are hardly scams for the rich and middle-class – it’s the only access to computers, the internet and books some people have. Whenever social services in an area drop in funding, the homeless typically flock to the libraries, and librarians become de facto social workers, too. It’s often not an easy gig, and Gillespie couldn’t hack it. In this article, as always, he’s either ignorant or disingenuous (or some mix), but there’s no question he’s smug, callous and real asshole. Another genius idea funded by the Koch Bros., and brought to you by their useful idiots and eager shills.
HyperIon
@Jane2 wrote:
Don’t forget Homework Help which the Seattle Public Library has staffed with volunteers for over 20 years.
Paula
@Wile E. Quixote:
Collective English Majors of America should denounce this fucker. (Actually, the MLA — haha.) / I also work in a public university library btw
gex
@morzer: That is a bit extreme. The point is, there is no market without government. Period. So complaining about government interference in the market is just complaining about the existence of the market. It has always only been capitalism managed to varying degrees by the government that creates the marketplace.
Saying that there is no market without the government is a far cry from saying that all words are meaningless.
kay
@Ash Can:
Ugh. Seems manipulative and blatantly political to me. I wonder if it will fly. I think governors are different than any random Tea Party House member, spewing fear.
Usually, governors try not to scare people.
Chuck Butcher
@morzer:
Oh bullshit. Go ahead and step up to his plate and say what a “free market” or “free trade” is. I say they’re content free and you disagree? Point to one case and I’m discredited.
Llelldorin
@Ash Can:
Ass-backward is exactly right. He precisely reverses cause and effect in nearly every case, because he seems to believe that all the properties that result from our societal commitment to education (schools, museums, libraries, and the like)–properties like “middle-class”, “literate”, and “educated”–are in fact inborn, intrinsic, and immutable properties.
Thus colleges are sops to the educated, rather than the source of the educated. Libraries are toys of the (presumed immutable) middle-class, rather than tools that give people a better chance of moving upwards in the (fluid, when liberal policies are in place) class structure. It’s an incredibly feudal, depressing way of viewing the world.
Sheesh
@Guster:
Haha, a better solution to this socialized government stealing of your hard earned expression monopoly would be to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors the exclusive right to their respective writings for perhaps a term of no more than 14 years with a one time 14 year extension. THEN libraries could be stocked entirely with the works in the public domain and the monopolists would have at most 28 years to squeeze the blood from their expressions.
I think that would make us both happy.
cckids
@Guster: Amen! Hell, I’ve often thought that I would have no problem paying a nominal fee to check out books, say .10 – .25 or so. And I’m a person who is ALWAYS at the top of my 35 book limit at my local library. Given that I love to read & am homeschooling, I go through 10-20 books per week. It would be well worth it to help support the library. Also, I’m not a person of any level of wealth, but I’d eliminate some meals so as to be able to afford books.
zuzu (not that one, the other one)
@Guster:
Guster, you DO realize, don’t you, that libraries don’t get books for free? That they have to buy them? Which means that your sales, and then your royalties, are higher than if they didn’t buy them. That the government isn’t lending YOUR shit for free; the government is lending WHAT IT BOUGHT for free. It didn’t license your book, it bought it.
And you DO also realize that libraries have more shelf space, generally, than bookstores, so that they can carry a book like yours where a bookstore might stick to the known movers? That that means that someone who might not otherwise have been exposed to your book might get to know you and buy another of your books at another time?
As for Gillespie: if public libraries were good enough for THE GODDAMN ROBBER BARON TO END ALL ROBBER BARONS, they should be good enough for him.
Sheesh
@Guster:
And… when I’ve had a chance to read further down in the thread, it turns out we agree.
Unlimited copyright would be a farce, if it’s wasn’t an outright theft from the public domain — a pure violation of the social contract.
Cliff
Nick Gillespie wants to outsource public libraries to private companies.
That is so goddamned stupid it makes my head hurt.
How in the blue FUCK are you going to squeeze a single goddamn dollar out of a library?
They already have buildings full of books that people pay to read: they’re called bookstores.
b-psycho
If Nick Gillespie has such a problem with gov’t workers allegedly getting better benefits than private sector workers, then maybe he should advocate that private labor get their right to organize resurrected. Just a thought…
Andrew M
@Cliff: I imagine it would be like when they privatized the one and only toll highway here in Ontario….prices go up. Say hello to the $10 a day overdue fine! Want to print something off the computer, that’ll be $2 per page! Add a little creative bookkeeping with whatever funds the town council throws your way, and there’s your profit.
b-psycho
@MattR:
But the corporation is a legal construct created by government. So you’re turning to the gunman to protect you from his accomplice.
dcdl
I asked one of the local public librarians how many people on average come through the public library during the day. She told me about a 1,000 people come a day. That is in a town of 49,000 people. The parking lot is always packed, the computers and ports for laptops are filled,and there are always some event being hosted during the day and in the evening at the library.
Michael
Personally, I volunteer to stave in a Koch skull with a fucking baseball bat.
Nick Gillespie can line up behind them.
It wouldn’t be a loss to humanity.
mclaren
Public libraries not only represent a haven for parasites who want to freeload on the public weal, they’re massive nests of copyright infringement. The idea of loaning books out for free without charging for them is an abomination!
Not only must we abolish all public libraries posthaste, we should immediately pass laws requiring all books to be chained to the wall and monitored 24/7 with security cameras. Books contain valuable copyrighted information. No access to books should be permitted without providing picture ID, a sign-in sheet, DNA samples, fingerprints, a loyalty oath to John Galt, and of course recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
morzer
@Cliff:
And even those have trouble making a buck, thanks to Amazon and the brave new world of internet commerce.
morzer
@Chuck Butcher:
You expect me to spend time debating a non-issue that you threw up just to give ED Kain a hard time? Not worth my time, not even remotely.
PaulW
As a librarian by trade, I can tell you that privatizing public libraries would do a great deal of harm.
A privatized library would most likely outsource cataloging and collection management, which will ignore local readers’ needs to answer to publishers who would overwhelm a library system with their latest titles and nothing more.
Specialized collections such as genealogy, small business resource centers, et al would most likely become fee-based services, which would hamper access. Private libraries would even make general library usage fee-based. Say goodbye to the ‘free’ library card in your pocket.
The poor and impoverished and elderly who DO use the libraries for literacy, computer use, and for their children WILL NOT BE ABLE TO AFFORD a fee-based library. The ones who can afford it (the diminishing middle class and the opulent upper class) tend not to use libraries. I can’t recall the last time a millionaire showed up asking for a copy of Danielle Steel’s latest. I can’t even recall the FIRST time.
Benjamin Franklin advocated free libraries. He has to be spinning in his grave with this privatized bullshit.
mclaren
Privatizing libraries is a start in the right direction, but we need to privatize police and fire departments too.
Can’t pay for police protection? Too bad, girly, you’re rape meat.
Welcome to the wonderful world of the 21st century!
Bill Murray
@Zifnab: seriously, did you sleep through the last 10-30 years?
The record of accountability of private corporations, particularly the large ones, is horrendous in these areas, while public governance isn’t always perfect but much better than corporations. Much privatization is done to get around accountability — certainly in your previous example of intelligence this is the case http://www.rieas.gr/research-areas/global-issues/transatlantic-studies/1319-privatization-of-intelligence-turning-national-security-into-business-.html
And the chimera of efficiency belongs with the free market and free trade in the lexicon of economics.
E.D. Kain
@Chuck Butcher: I think it’s more of a sliding scale than a one or the other. Sure, we have some degree of managed capitalism – but less than other countries. No, there is no such thing as purely free trade, but there are certainly economies that are much more controlled and some that are much less controlled. What’s your point, honestly? We can still be in favor of leaning on one side of the scale than the other. The Nordic countries tend to be pretty tilted toward freer market policies but place those alongside strong unions and strong safety nets.
Cliff
@Andrew M:
Well, that’s revenue, I’ll give you that. But how is that any sort of business model?
All the fines would do is ensure that people turn their books in on time, or steal them, or just not go at all.
And if you start charging for printing, at what point do you become competitive with Kinko’s?
Grover Gardner
LSSI saved the libraries here in So. Oregon. They were shut down for almost a year, then LSSI came in. Hours aren’t what they used to be but are reasonably convenient. Usage is up, acquisitions are strong. Services are okay, a lot of volunteers, but the self-serve check-out machines actually save time. Overall we’re grateful and they’ve done a pretty good job.
I would have been the last person to advocate privatizing libraries, but it’s worked out pretty well. The alternative was much worse.
E.D. Kain
@Grover Gardner: Why were the libraries shut down?
Wile E. Quixote
Nick Gillespie = McMegan McArdle in drag or is it
McMegan McArdle = Nick Gillespie in drag.
What a smug, pompous asswipe. What really pisses me off about assholes like Gillespie, Ross Douthat or McMegan McArdle is that not a single one of them has ever had anything that could even be construed as a real job. They scorn ivory tower academics without realizing that they’ve been living in ivory towers all their lives and would last about 10 seconds anywhere outside of the cloistered confines of Reason, The Atlantic or the NYT.
Whenever I read something by one of these lazy cretins I think of “Holiday in Cambodia” by the Dead Kennedys. Every single one of them would work better with a gun at their back for a bowl of rice a day. And why not, it’s what they’re advocating for everyone else.
Domergurl
I was a law librarian for a large international law firmin1995 when our entire staff was dismissed en masse in favor of an outsourcing library company. I found a job in 4 days, so no worries on my part. The idea of handing over th intellectual reigns of an organization, private, or public still, to this day, makes my stomach turn. These outsourcing companies don’t hire the best and the brightest. The people making the outsource decision are NOT librarians and the folks selling people on the idea of outsourcing are NOT librarians. They don’t realize just how much behind the scenes work goes on in order to make an item available to the public. Libraries are not the same from place to place. They aren’t like McDonalds.
The law firm I worked for until 1995 canceled their contract with the outsource company after 1 year and hired new librarians on their payroll. it was a disaster.
debbie
@ guster:
Well, then, isn’t it disingenuous to say you don’t get royalties from library sales? There are in fact royalties from library sales and you are in fact getting them; you’re just getting them up front. I’d consider that to be a lucky break, actually. Most of us have to do the work before we get paid.
Besides, the increased audience for your books that libraries provide, I think, would make libraries more than worthwhile. You should look at it as free promotion for your current as well as backlist books.
I’ve been out of work for more than a year, and my library, only 2 blocks from my apartment, has been my savior. Not only have I been learning about stuff I never had time for before, but I’m getting to read all the fiction I don’t have the money to buy for myself. As a life-long reader, I don’t know what I’d do without a library.
Knowledge is a gift, not a commodity.
E.D. Kain
@debbie:
That’s a nice line, but I’d say it goes beyond even a gift. It’s a responsibility also. Something you have to work to gather and work to preserve.
PurpleGirl
@Grover Gardner: Wouldn’t it have been possible to have self-service check in computers in a publicly-run library. It’s one of the ways the Queens Borough system has found to contain its costs. What profit does LSSI make on your formerly publicly-run system? They must be making a profit or how else does the company survive. What happens when LSSI decides it needs a higher profit margin? Does the city/county pay more or does LSSI cut services?
tesslibrarian
As indicated by my name, I work in a library. It’s a public library. I’m limited to part-time (under 20 hours/week) so they don’t have to pay any benefits at all, so not only do I not get to contribute to a retirement fund, I also don’t get any holidays or paid time off. When I work a Sunday, it’s regular hours, no different than a Tuesday, except after dealing with particularly rude and obnoxious people, I can’t pick up a bottle of wine on the way home because I live in Georgia where we “respect the Sabbath.”
Oh, and I get in trouble if I go over my hour count, even if it’s because I’m in the middle of helping someone when the shift changes. We are down now to only 2 full-time librarians to staff 2 desks; we’re open 70 hours/week. Both are in managerial positions, so have plenty of other duties besides working the desk.
But we all have other duties besides sitting at the desk: book clubs, writing grants for programs, wrangling speakers, weeding the non-fiction collection and finding the more reliable book to replace it that isn’t too expensive, testing databases we’re being offered to see if they’d work for our patrons if we can afford it, creating information sheets for elections or other community needs, outreach to the community which frequently involves going to Rotary Clubs and schools to do presentations we put together ourselves, keeping up w/the latest State Dept. rules for passports, since we offer those, too, etc.–all on computers that were considered too slow/krappy to keep available to the public.
And the main thing I’ve done in regular reference lately (as opposed to the genealogy room) is help people apply for jobs online. I can’t tell you how many people have told me that if they could just talk to the person hiring, they know they’d get the job.
But it doesn’t work like that anymore. It’s all online applications, all that work differently, require different logins, etc. Want to paint empty dorm rooms at the University this summer? Please fill in this 5-page online application. Not infrequently the person filling out the application is over 50 and barely knows how to use a mouse. That makes other things, such as signing up for subsidized phone service (where they have to “sign” their name with the krappy public mouse, when they can barely write with a pencil) a demoralizing trial, too.
I don’t know any librarian who doesn’t “work.” (contra LSSI; I also don’t know many librarians who are going to get much of a pension.) At the public library level, we really should have been given paralegal and social work training, given the sort of questions that come to us at the desk. “Can my husband get visitation for my kids if I have a restraining order against him for me?” “Is it possible for me to get custody of my sister’s kids if she dies of cancer? Her ex-husband is barely taking care of them now.” “I’m about to lose my house–what do I do?”
Sorry. This is a sore spot for me. Yes, we subsidize reading. We also subsidize the HR depts for most of the major corps in the country. Most importantly, we provide services to the most needy people in our community, in a friendly, non-judgmental way that acknowledges that yes, they are people. I often believe that last point is probably the one that most offends people like Nick Gillespie.
ETA: damn, sorry for the rant. I didn’t intend for it to be this long.
tesslibrarian
@PurpleGirl: They cut services. One of the first things LSSI does is eliminate all adult programming. Bob Edwards had a nice series on libraries, including a segment talking about LSSI.
Stillwater
@ED Kain: You’re, of course, right about outsourcing libraries and all that, as far as it goes. One thing I didn’t read in the comments (I skimmed them) was that the War on Libraries is not simply a part of the class war, it’s also (in my view) part of the war on education generally, which conservatives consider to be fundamentally biased against them.
Reality does indeed have a liberal bias.
Grover Gardner
ED,
The libraries were closed because the logging subsidies finally ran out and a referendum to fund them failed. There are a lot of retirees here who don’t want to pay for anything–they got theirs, screw everybody else. I remember a young guy at work smugly opining on why he didn’t vote for it. “I do everything on the internet. What do I need a library for?”
I said, “You just voted yourself out of a better-paying job.” He looked puzzled, so I added, “What company is going to relocate its families to a place that lacks basic services and won’t fund its schools and libraries?” He hadn’t thought of that.
Part of it Medford’s fault. They spent a huge amount of money on a new building, just before the funds ran out. It’s beautiful, but they could have managed with something less opulent. But the money was going to run out eventually so maybe it didn’t make that much difference.
Purplegirl,
I don’t really know how they make a profit or how it works. I know they saved a few jobs, and the library is very well maintained, and acquisitions are keeping pace with what patrons want.
I also know that otherwise we would have NO libraries. My wife was ready to kill me. When we moved out here from Maryland for *my* job, she said, well at least the schools are nice and they have decent libraries. When everything shut down three months after we got here she was ready to strangle me. And now that they are slashing the school budgets she’s even more pissed off.
But I’m not sure it’s any better anywhere else. I’m in sympathy with the main thrust of ED’s post. We seem determined to become a nation of people who stay at home and watch the biggest flat-screen they can afford, even if they can’t work or send their children to school.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@ED Kain: You’re, of course, right about outsourcing libraries and all that, as far as it goes. One thing I didn’t read in the comments (I skimmed them) was that the War on Libraries is not simply a part of the class war, it’s also (in my view) part of the war on education generally, which conservatives consider to be fundamentally biased against them.
It’s not (just) a war on class or education – it’s a war on community. A library is the most visible hub of the actual community as people live it.
Remove community and what you have is a bunch of dormitaries for corporate drones – which is just the way the corporations like it.
PurpleGirl
Grover — Some entity, whether city or county, is paying the LSSI contract to run the libraries, unless LSSI is charging you membership dues. The money comes from taxes somewhere because, LSSI isn’t doing it from the goodness of their heart.
Stillwater
@Phoenician in a time of Romans: Good point. Destroy the community to save
the communitysociety! Unfortunately, this isn’t just crazy incoherence, but something a lot of conservatives actually believe.ETA: Don’t know what I was thinking there – of course it’s crazy incoherence!
Mako
Old people like libraries. Old people vote. They might vote against supporting schools, but libraries are not going away.
Grover Gardner
Purplegirl,
Yes, I understand that. :-) I wasn’t very coherent in my last response. Apparently there was a $23M shortfall after Congress cut funding in 2007. LSSI reduced operating costs by $27M thus enabling the county to reopen the libraries.
Grover Gardner
Here in Medford they like their RV’s and low taxes a lot more. And our libraries went away, almost for good.