5 ms·

Perhaps they view themselves as a charity, and that spending is the goal.

VLM 9y ago
That's a good point, its like my local public library. The problem summarizes down to my local public library spends most of its money on the physical building and physical books. You could inaccurately think that is the only expense of running a library, but there are numerous "in the noise" expenses people don't talk about as much. You could replace my local public library with a completely non-physical website of ebooks. No physical building or books means that primary expense disappears. That means a ebook library, is completely free, right? Well it turns out that the "lost in the noise" expenses of running a public library still exist and would then be the primary expenses. At perhaps 5% of previous "brick and mortar" cost. And the city and county were happy to fund a brick and mortar public library at 100% of budget, but you're not getting a penny or at most 1% if you're a "free virtual library" and you need 5% to keep open... Maybe a corporate benefactor could be found? I mean that's how we got our brick and mortar library, thanks, steel monopoly... Note that my public library costs $3.5M/yr, and is one of the best in the state, if not the best, and serves 71K people in my city, that's about $50/yr per resident and I'm quite happy with it. It sounds like a public ebook library should round down to free. Amazon Kindle Unlimited is currently $120/year plus tax. Isn't that fascinating? The actual cost per user after all the financial hand waving is done implies the nicest newest largest most luxurious library in the state is less than half the cost of an inferior virtual replacement. It does make one wonder if "free" wikipedia is actually costing our civilization in total more than paper encyclopedias did in the 80s. Merely changing the billing model to trick people into thinking something is zero cost, when its actually more expensive to the overall civilization, isn't very innovative.

VLM 9y ago

That's a good point, its like my local public library. The problem summarizes down to my local public library spends most of its money on the physical building and physical books. You could inaccurately think that is the only expense of running a library, but there are numerous "in the noise" expenses people don't talk about as much. You could replace my local public library with a completely non-physical website of ebooks. No physical building or books means that primary expense disappears. That means a ebook library, is completely free, right? Well it turns out that the "lost in the noise" expenses of running a public library still exist and would then be the primary expenses. At perhaps 5% of previous "brick and mortar" cost. And the city and county were happy to fund a brick and mortar public library at 100% of budget, but you're not getting a penny or at most 1% if you're a "free virtual library" and you need 5% to keep open... Maybe a corporate benefactor could be found? I mean that's how we got our brick and mortar library, thanks, steel monopoly... Note that my public library costs $3.5M/yr, and is one of the best in the state, if not the best, and serves 71K people in my city, that's about $50/yr per resident and I'm quite happy with it. It sounds like a public ebook library should round down to free. Amazon Kindle Unlimited is currently $120/year plus tax. Isn't that fascinating? The actual cost per user after all the financial hand waving is done implies the nicest newest largest most luxurious library in the state is less than half the cost of an inferior virtual replacement. It does make one wonder if "free" wikipedia is actually costing our civilization in total more than paper encyclopedias did in the 80s. Merely changing the billing model to trick people into thinking something is zero cost, when its actually more expensive to the overall civilization, isn't very innovative.