14 ms·

Bezos should put his billions in public libraries

247 points by steven 9y ago

wichcraft 9y ago
I don't think so
kolbe 9y ago
Bezos still needs to focus on actually delivering the value that the world has priced into the expectations of his company. He can't just retire and collect income off of an existing machine like Gates.
- mulmen 9y ago
  What does that have to do with his personal wealth? How is Bezos' situation different than Gates? e: to clarify my second question: How is Bezos' situation different than Gates' when Gates left Microsoft.
  - reducesuffering 9y ago
    Because Amazons stock price is valued strongly based on future potential. For Bezos to cash out now and do philanthropy, without a very strong replacement to realize Amazons potential, shares would fall 50% effectively halving Bezos' worth. Regarding your second question, it is actually a similar scenario to when Gates left Microsoft. Right before Gates left, Microsoft was at one of the highest peak values, $58, almost it's Market cap today if you account for inflation, and a year after Gates left the stock had plummeted to $24 a share. Many would propose that Bezos leaving would actually be more detrimental, as Microsoft at the time was not a growth stock, but a well established money printing machine, while Amazon stock is still banking on future potential.
    - pravinva 9y ago
      All shares are valued solely based on their future potential (cash flows). It matters not a whit what you did in the past, if your future is bleak, you share price will reduce to under book value
  - dmoy 9y ago
    Bezos net worth is almost entirely Amazon stock, which is a growth stock. Gates net worth is almost entirely cash (tens of billions in cash?) and other investments (there's like a holding/investment company that's actually just Gates).
  - nrhk 9y ago
    Amazon stock would plummet if Bezos just upped and left and most of his wealth is tied to the company.
- ApolloFortyNine 9y ago
  More than most companies, Amazon seems like it's actually worth what people say it is. It's the world's largest e-retailer, with a huge percentage of happy customers (due to their great customer service), with a booming membership program, making strides into local deliveries (Whole Foods), with the largest cloud computing infrastructure in the World. Much better in my opinion than Apple, that is almost solely valued off of a popular phone that the majority of users could replace with a phone 20% of the cost and be just as happy.
- chaostheory 9y ago
  Bezos solicited public feedback on Twitter for causes he should support.
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melling 9y ago
“So far, you’ve concentrated on things that might benefit our distant successors” ... “space trave, cancer treatments, AI” I would hope we’re going to make large strides in these in his lifetime. If we could effectively funnel more into R&D sooner, we’d all see the benefits sooner. Cancer(s), for example, might be cured in say 2060 with our current effort, but if we solved the problem by 2030, hundreds of millions would benefit.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  Will cancer ever be solved? Isn't cancer many different problems that got the same label?
  - goialoq 9y ago
    Libraries are many different books that got the same label :-)
  - melling 9y ago
    That's why I put an (s) on cancer to signify that I did understand the challenge.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      Stupid question probably, but have any cancers been cured so far?
- MikkoFinell 9y ago
  We should solve general AI first, because then those other problems would be solved within two months.
the-dude 9y ago
Plain old : I know better than you on how to spend _your money. Boring.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Bezos asked for suggestions on how to spend the money. As the article clearly shows.
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pravinva 9y ago
Is non fossil fuel energy research too hard to be funded? Gates and Bezos etc have funded just about a billion. Why not 20 billion
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  I was wondering if someone would put big money into fusion if we could make it happen sooner. My understanding is that the physics are reasonably well understood and now it's mainly a difficult engineering problem. I wonder if ITER could happen sooner with enough money.
  - contact_fusion 9y ago
    Fusion research is actually very well funded. It doesn't seem that way because nearly all news stories about fusion are about the Q factor of the latest shot or experiment was. (Q is the energy gain factor.) The field is advancing on many fronts, using several strategies. ITER is but one of many efforts. Some results coming from NIF suggest that ICF is not as dead as it seemed years ago! ITER itself is (iirc) the largest scientific project on Earth. It is funded by 35 countries, to the tune of billions. They have already had cost overruns (the perpetual curse of modern science it seems) but I doubt that more money would necessarily solve fusion engineering faster. They are currently building the reactor and are on track for first plasma in 2025. An ITER-scale tokamak is as close to a "sure bet" for Q>=1 that you can get. (Their goal is Q=10) Interestingly, one of the major milestones for ITER is tritium production through breeder blankets - which would solve a critical bottleneck for future, enterprise fusion power systems. (Not to mention scientific research.)
_jal 9y ago
This is poorly thought out and edited, because I have to run, but I thought it worth posting. I've been thinking more about libraries lately. I really think it is time to reinvigorate and expand them. Pretty sure I'm preaching to the converted here about the power of information; I think what some folks miss is just how incredibly valuable libraries are. No, they aren't a panacea, but they are a cheap source of immense social good. A lot of people see a building full of books and wonder why it can't be replaced by a bank of terminals and Google. I won't get in to the relative merits of dead trees vs. electrons, and largely don't care about it. What that line of thought misses is two-fold: the librarians and the community space. Decent librarians are hugely underrated resources. Great ones can be incredible. Maybe natural language systems will become good enough in my lifetime to handle some of the vague requests librarians routinely manage to match to the right book, but the leaps of association to related topics, the knowledge of the edge cases of information classification to navigate them well, and the general mass of knowledge they accumulate is massively useful to have on hand. And so few people take advantage of it. Meeting spaces in this context (both formal, sign-up-for-your-group and informal) serve an important role as well. It seems[1] like they're becoming rarer as government buildings use security as an excuse to close to the public, and in calling around to private groups with spaces that previously did that sort of thing have been much more reluctant to do so when I've tried to organize things over the last several years. To personalize this a bit, I grew up in a poor family. One thing that was heavily emphasized to me was the value of learning - I think it was reaction to missed opportunities. Who knows what would have happened, but I do know that my college essays (written referencing library books, building on interests fostered in the math and the American Lit sections) would have been very different without them, and I kinda doubt I would have gotten a free ride to a top-10 school if I had been only drawing on what public school offered. I'd love to see more experiments with libraries. I know some are playing with becoming more "maker-space"-ey, which is a decent thing to explore. I think finding a way to offer peer-classes in whatever - learn Javascript, fancy knitting techniques - would be an interesting thing to try as well. But I'm bad at seeing opportunities like this. I wonder what people with that super power could come up with. [1] Anecdata alert!
- melling 9y ago
  4% of the world’s population lives in the United States. How about something a little more far reaching? [Update] The author is not talking about a global project. “Hidden in plain sight, the local libraries of America are patiently waiting for your attention”
graphitezepp 9y ago
I would much rather billionaire types take on large issues that governments don't want to touch, like space flight or specific diseases in foreign countries, than something already in service like libraries. Maybe I just have a bias due to having a library just up the street from where I live currently, but I have never not had access to an adequate library in my life time, and only see room for marginal diminishing returns in improving them.
- chickenfries 9y ago
  Visit a library in a low-income area (where people need them the most) and see the kinds of computers people use to hunt for jobs, do their homework, etc. I've been to a library that was running windows 2000 on TWO ancient Dells with with CRT monitors in 2015. And the two computers they had were being used by adults and students. There is so much to be gained from improving libraries.
  - arkitaip 9y ago
    The libraries in my city offer legal advice, business advice and much more beyond storing books. Heck, the majority of books are put in storage in order to free up physical space for doing homework, computers, study rooms, etc.
  - Chardok 9y ago
    I completely agree. Where I lived at in Houston, trying to find a place to sit and study quietly was near impossible, which is something I certainly took for granted. Libraries provide so much public good: giving the public internet access, allowing people to read classics and better themselves for free, and giving some quiet space for those wanting to study (and not have to pay for a $5 coffee).
    - goialoq 9y ago
      not paying for a $5 coffee hurts the official GDP metrics. Reading a book in a library contributes $0 to official GDP.
Overtonwindow 9y ago
Libraries are an excellent place to put some money. They provide learning opportunities, but many also provide resume and job search training, community meeting places, free internet access, and I think is one of the few "neutral" places in American society. Neutral in that there are few, if any politics involved, and it's an equal opportunity benefit to a community that most people can get behind. Even if they don't use the library, few I think would speak against.
- adventured 9y ago
  I overwhelmingly agree with that. I grew up in one of the poorer places in America - Appalachia. Despite that, we had a nice library, donated initially by a wealthy individual and then sustained by various forms of private funding over the decades. It didn't always have the absolute latest books, the selection was decent though. It had Internet access very early on and was a valuable, inexpensive resource for young and old people alike. It was also relatively well maintained; pre mid 1990's Web, if you needed to really know a subject in-depth, it was easily the best local resource. The local community benefited immensely from it. I'd like to see Bezos (and ideally matching contributors) put together an effort to modernize the concept for the 21st century. Virtual reality for example will become an important access technology over the next 20 years, that many lower income people won't be able to afford and will have future job importance in many fields.
  - csours 9y ago
    Was it a Carnegie library? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library
  - goialoq 9y ago
    It's much more efficient to move people from rural areas into the cities, than to build micro-cities all across the country.
    - elihu 9y ago
      Much of our civilization depends on food and natural resources that come from sparsely populated areas of the country. On top of that, real estate and rent are ludicrously expensive in most of the nicer large cities. It makes sense economically for people to spread out if they can find the employment, education, and services they need in smaller towns.
tanilama 9y ago
His company hosts a large part of the biggest library ever existed: Internet.
- icebraining 9y ago
  And public libraries are used to access it, so you could say the suggestion makes even more sense considering that.
- EliRivers 9y ago
  Yet if I want to make a serious study of something, I hit the textbooks. The internet is, in my experience, a poor replacement for a stack of well written physical textbooks. The internet may be a big library, but in many ways it's not a very good one.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Alternatively, that could be an argument for digitalizing those textbooks and offering them for free. Maybe Bezos should fund Libgen :)
    - EliRivers 9y ago
      I can't speak for anyone else, but every textbook I used during a master's in maths was available on the screen in front of me. I used paper textbooks instead. They're simply much better for serious learning.
    - deleted 9y ago
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  - sol_remmy 9y ago
    Counterpoint: My friends all went through mechanical engineering WITHOUT reading textbooks - that was the secret to their success. No one is going to touch the textbooks in a library.
    - 9y ago
tostitos1979 9y ago
I want to give a shout out to a charity called "Room to read". There is a book about the founder's story .. he was one of us (a tech leader at Microsoft). His book and story touched me deeply.
- jansho 9y ago
  This is great, thanks!
hilyen 9y ago
Wait, didn't he already replace the need for libraries with kindle and kindle unlimited monthly service? Heh.
sddfd 9y ago
Why would anyone think libraries are important in 2017? If things keep getting digitalized at the current speed, all knowledge of the world will be accessible online in our lifetime. Unless you believe that a large percentage of citizens will not be able to afford a device for accessing the internet, libraries are a waste of money. Oh and since librarians were mentioned, if AI keeps advancing, we will be able to have a conversation with a search engine within 30 years. So who needs a librarian?
- magic_beans 9y ago
  It's not belief. It's fact that a large percentage of citizens are unable to access desktop computers for work/jobs, though they might have an internet-enabled phone. Have you ever been to a library in the inner city, or in any big city for that matter?
  - olegkikin 9y ago
    The internet penetration in the US last year was 88.5%, it's higher now. What is this "large percentage" exactly? What important information can't you get through a cheap smartphone and public Wifi?
    - cookiecaper 9y ago
      Not to mention, it's not hard to find a well-used laptop in the US for virtually nothing, and with things like Chromebooks, you can get something new for around $100. There are charities that furnish computer access either through directly providing a cheap laptop or by offering shared access at centers, etc. It's absurd to suggest that we need to spend millions building and maintaining traditional public libraries just because some people do not have immediate access to a computer.
  - sddfd 9y ago
    I concede, I've only ever been in a large campus library in the US. Also I agree, if a few percent of the population cannot afford to access the internet there is a serious problem. I just doubt that libraries are an effective way to solve this problem.
karl11 9y ago
I think this is a good idea. I would add YMCAs and similar places. I think one of the best places for a mega-philanthropist to invest would be in the time and places that kids spend outside of public schools. Many of the biggest disadvantages in opportunities for kids are created when they fall behind before and after school and during summers, relative to kids who are better off socioeconomically. These disadvantages compound and are lasting. Safe places to engage in healthy recreation, productive endeavors, and getting something nutritious to eat that they wouldn't otherwise have access to would go a long way for underprivileged youth and have an impact for the rest of their lives.
- rewrew 9y ago
  This is an excellent idea.
tzs 9y ago
I'd like to see some billionaire put a lot of money into abortions. The political fight over abortion keeps messing up other things, and a billionaire could fix that. For example, I don't think many on the right disagree that funding prenatal care is a good thing--but some major prenatal care providers, such as Planned Parenthood, also provide abortion services and so some politicians want to cut all their funding to make sure none of the Federal money goes to abortions. A whole bunch of women's health services get cut in order to make sure there is no chance the money ends up helping abortions. So I'd like to see some billionaire, or some well-funded charity like the Gates Foundation, build several clinics that provide free abortions around the country in the states with the least restrictions on abortions, and fund a program that provides free travel to and from those clinics for women in the states with restrictive laws that have forced most such clinics to close. Then organizations like Planned Parenthood can get completely out of the abortion business, taking away the major excuse that is used to cut their funding. State legislators can stop spending a lot of time coming up with new ways to try to shut down abortion clinics in their states (because shutting down such clinics will no longer stop the abortions), and state attorney generals can stop wasting time defending those attempts in court, and maybe they will finally realize that the best way to reduce abortions is to make it so people don't need them in the first place. Maybe then states like Texas can drop their idiotic "abstinence only" approach to sex eduction (which has resulted in soaring teen pregnancy rates...) and switch to something actually effective. Edit: any down voters care to name specific objections? That Planned Parenthood provides a lot of useful women's health services that are not related to abortion should not be controversial. That abortion is the main reason Congress wants to completely defund PP should also not be controversial. That "abstinence only" programs are a massive failure is pretty well documented. That many states keep passing abortion restrictions which then get challenged and often struck down as unconstitutional is not controversial.
- Brendinooo 9y ago
  I didn't vote for your post either way, but... If you're pro-life, you probably don't like the idea that someone is spending billions to fund abortions. If you're pro-choice, you probably don't like the idea of Planned Parenthood conceding their abortion services because of political pressure.
balls187 9y ago
Fix traffic and housing in Seattle.
- saosebastiao 9y ago
  Traffic and housing in Seattle are problems only the government can solve, as they're the ones that created the laws and incentives that cause the problems. No use dumping money into a pit.
  - Apocryphon 9y ago
    What if they could fund an easier, more efficient way to lobby?
    - saosebastiao 9y ago
      I actually see the value of lobbying, and think that would be an excellent idea. But lobbying has such a nasty connotation, I doubt it would pad the ego of a philanthropist (call me a cynic, but I'd wager 90% of philanthropy is just a way for people to garner attention and praise). I don't think lobbying would be nearly as bad if a) we had publicly funded elections, which takes away the incentive for politicians to be beholden to the interests of donors, and b) we had a mechanism (possibly through a branch of judicial review?) to repeal or amend laws that don't achieve their stated goals.
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oconnor663 9y ago
> they're the only noncommercial places other than city squares where people meet across genders and ages Church?
- soperj 9y ago
  The Church has billions in assets... it's commercial.
  - MrZongle2 9y ago
    I'd say that depends on the church (lower-case "c") and its affiliations. That particularly wealthy religious organizations exist in Rome and Salt Lake City (for instance) doesn't mean a typical small-town church can't struggle to pay its bills.
sjg007 9y ago
Or in school lunches. How about nice healthy food? Lunch should be a class where you learn how to eat.
orik 9y ago
I’m sure thousands of people have ideas of how Bezos should spend his. Bezos should spend (or not spend) in ways and things he values, to maximize what he gets out of what he’s earned. (P.S. libraries compete with his book selling business! Why wouldn’t he rather sell a ‘library pass’ on a kindle for a monthly subscription?)
- komali2 9y ago
  Kindle is very well integrated with library services already. Also, they do sell a month-to-month "kindle unlimited" service. It kind of sucks though (last I used it, anyway).
  - praneshp 9y ago
    It sucks as of last month. The integration with libraries is super-cool though!
- striking 9y ago
  He sent out a request for comment on this. It's not just a random ask.
addedlovely 9y ago
How about pay some taxes.
Clubber 9y ago
We already have libraries, if you are going to presume to tell someone how to spend their money, at least pitch something we don't already have.
denisehilton 9y ago
Or maybe donate some of it to the poor? Like Bill Gates?
saosebastiao 9y ago
Here's a better idea...and one that will ultimately benefit libraries as well: start buying out all the evil academic publishers, overhaul their technology, get rid of copyright assignment, and offer free access to anyone. Then do the same with legal records, although that is more of a legal problem than a money problem.
- _rpd 9y ago
  Even a modest level of support for high quality peer review of open access journals would have a big effect.
- zanny 9y ago
  This is something I like. Correcting broken laws would be one of the more permanent contributions Bezos could make. We already know from the last ~30 years we cannot amass political capital to fix laws that create the broken journalistic and legal frameworks.
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diffeomorphism 9y ago
The article does not mention ebooks, which is a surprising omission considering it involves Amazon. I don't know how it is in the US, but for instance German libraries offer to loan ebooks: http://www.onleihe.net/ http://www.onleihe.net/ Donating ereaders and rights to ebooks to libraries seems more effective than printed books. Big caveats here are Amazon's monopoly position, DRM and copyright and loans for ebooks vs. physical books.
- DanBC 9y ago
  Yes, ebooks are important and English law changed recently to make it easier, although libraries are still limited by licensing terms: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2017/30/part/4/enacted http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2017/30/part/4/enacted
tambourine_man 9y ago
I find this titles very off putting. It seems to imply that someone, who wasn't competent enough to make billions of their own, is somehow more apt to know how to better spend them than the one that actually did.
- mehrzad 9y ago
  I find your comment very off-putting. First of all, Bezos asked for advice on philanthropy. Second, most wealth generated by the property owning class (including Bezos) is through extracting the surplus value of their employees. Those billions were made through force (by the state monopoly of violence through police defending the so-called "right to property") as his employees never had a fair shot in getting a reasonable share of profits because he had the luck or inheritance to obtain the wealth producing tools (business infrastructure) first while his employees, many of whom are probably more intelligent and hard-working than he, did not. So while his employees work 9-5 making minimum wage to $50 an hour, he gets to enjoy billions and not have to work.
  - tambourine_man 9y ago
    Oh yes, he did ask for advice, I forgot about that. Never mind. Not being sarcastic, to me that makes all the difference. The rest of your comment didn't make much sense to me, however.
  - tomschlick 9y ago
    > as his employees never had a fair shot in getting a reasonable share of profits They get paid an hourly wage or salary. Thats their share of the profits. Why are employees magically entitled to profits other than what they agreed to work for?
    - mehrzad 9y ago
      Because they never had a chance to own the means of production and thus were not able to negotiate on an equal footing.
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miguelrochefort 9y ago
Although I don't like the government taking my money to subsidize stuff, I'd rather see them make basic Internet "free" than build and maintain libraries.
jjtheblunt 9y ago
Should is a pretty insulting verb: who is to presume the wisdom to tell another what to do?
- dionidium 9y ago
  There's a tendency in some to add a bunch of hedge words to statements like this. "Humbly, I think -- and this is just my opinion -- that Jeff Bezos may want to -- I mean, it's up to him, but if he wants to! -- consider putting his money into libraries." This is a misguided pursuit of modesty. It's less clear and reads as false, anyway. Just say what you mean. We all know it's just your opinion without all the weasel words. Nobody is going to mistake it for anything else.
  - ashark 9y ago
    > Just say what you mean. We all know it's just your opinion without all the weasel words. Nobody is going to mistake it for anything else. People on the Web will. They hate succinct, accurate, clear (so, good) writing and will settle for nothing short of explicitly disavowing association with or endorsement of any conceivable evil with which an intentional/incompetent misreading of your words could possibly connect you, absurdly hedging and qualifying every statement as if attempting to make a favorable wish with a hostile genie, and burying all opinions in wishy-washy garbage.
- greeneggs 9y ago
  Bezos himself asked for advice. Here's the tweet: https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/875418348598603776/ https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/875418348598603776/ A news story: "Jeff Bezos Wants Ideas for Philanthropy, So He Asked Twitter" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/technology/jeff-bezos-amazon-twitter-charity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/technology/jeff-bezos-ama...
megamindbrian 9y ago
Or not? https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/paabgg/i-bought-a-book-about-the-internet-from-1994-and-none-of-the-links-worked https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/paabgg/i-bought-a...
- devmunchies 9y ago
  So the books have link rot but what of the webpages? They are gone, yet the books are still around.
  - randyrand 9y ago
    There is something interesting about that. Websites take maintenance and tools to read them. Books do not. If you want your information to be around a long time, maybe write a book instead? Or both?
bitL 9y ago
What's the point of libraries these days? We literally have the possibility for everyone to have a "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in their pocket with all books that were ever written.
- kazinator 9y ago
  ... with all books that were ever written. All that and an electronic girlfriend application to replace the real one you could have picked up at the library.
  - bitL 9y ago
    Come on, book is just a medium, now we have a different form already, why put money into old-school stuff? For nostalgia reasons?
    - kazinator 9y ago
      Probably for the same reason we didn't replace books with microfilm, which began to be used commercially in the 1920's. And microfilm can be "decoded" using simple magnification. No issues of software compatibility with document formats and whatnot.
    - MrZongle2 9y ago
      A book certainly is just a medium, but it's a particularly accessible and durable medium. If you place a 50-year-old book written in English in front of me, I can immediately pick it up and begin reading. Books far older than that are equally as legible and, with care, accessible. What are the chances that in 50 years that even half of the current ebook formats will be viewable by contemporary technology? This isn't to say that other formats shouldn't be used or improved, but we have yet to see a medium that is as unfettered and easily used. It's hardly about nostalgia.
- ahoy 9y ago
  As other users said above, libraries are a huge deal in poor communities. People use them to search for jobs/fill out job applications. These are tasks that are onerous to impossible on a low-end smartphone, if you have one at all. I live in a gentrifying area of NYC. There's a public library branch a few blocks away from me that sees lots of visitors every day. I rarely walk by it and don't see people coming and going.
cko 9y ago
Whenever a topic like this gets posted, it feels like the majority of commenters feel 'entitled' to other people's money and think they know best how to spend it. Or the notion they have to 'give back.' I'm not rich in the popular sense of the word (besides having the fortune of being American middle class), but I do have investments by virtue of almost never spending on consumer goods. And having no wife or kids. My coworkers realize after years of seeing me drive the same beater correctly assume I'm in better shape financially, and some have the audacity to jokingly ask me to put them in my will. Now, I will not deny that I am an extremely fortunate person who is cognitively able, like Bezos or anyone well-connected with material wealth, but what's with the 'he should donate to this cause instead'? It's his money. He could buy a fleet of yachts, set them on fire, and upload the video footage - why shouldn't he be allowed to do that? At what arbitrary level of wealth does 'his' money become everyone else's money?
- lebanon_tn 9y ago
  You're missing the point. Bezos specifically tweeted requesting ideas for philanthropy. No one is saying he can't spend the money how he wants.
  - cko 9y ago
    True. I guess out of quite a bit of other threads, I jumped on this particular thread in order to vent, which wasn't the best choice, since, as the article said (and you emphasized) that he was requesting ideas. Or maybe the word "should" always upsets me, and I envision a world where us common people are walking around believing that the more fortunate owe us just because they are wealthy.
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- drdrey 9y ago
  Did you read the story? He made a public request for ideas about his philanthropy strategy
songzme 9y ago
As much as I hate books, I love public libraries. Our local library (Northside branch santa clara) gives a big conference room every saturday to a team of passionate locals trying to teach themselves programming. My friends and I go there every Saturday to help people who are stuck and give them guidance (what to learn next, how to prepare for interviews, what language is best suitable for what they are trying to do, etc). Talk about diversity, the library is a place where you get to see people from all walks of life outside the silicon valley bubble (different race, age, handicap). It builds a learning community where people have the opportunity to help each other at a more human level.
- alt_f4 9y ago
  So, you don't like libraries, you like the idea of cheap to hire conference rooms.
randyrand 9y ago
The modern day equivalent of a public library (storing information history) is the internet archive. I think donating to the internet archive would be a better donation which a lot more benefit to society than funding physical libraries. Libraries solve one of the worlds most important problem - keeping societies important information history safe. Websites are not immune to this problem. They require maintenance. When a webpage goes down its gone forever. Without something like the internet archive, we would not have a modern day library equivalent for the web. We are losing a lot of important information. Physical libraries today are in comparison much less important than digital ones.
- tspike 9y ago
  Archiving information is only one function of libraries. They are community spaces, social equalizers, educational institutions, and temporary shelter, among other things.
yohann305 9y ago
i love libraries but i never go cause i'm not allowed to sip a coffee. i mean come on, where's the fun factor! Wouldn't you take the risk of spilling drinks on books rather than preventing people from coming?
jamesred 9y ago
The problem libraries solved, mostly access to information, has largely been monopolize by the internet. Most, including the third world impoverished, have access to the internet. Therefore the necessity of a library has been largely diminished and inevitably libraries will disappear. Complaining about libraries when people have no sanitation and access to clean tap water sounds largely like a first world problem, as much as I dislike the term. Libraries should evolve with the change of technology and move their function from curation and access to information to something that is able to benefit more people. Books occupy volume and removing them would make more room for desks and rooms where people with no access to quiet areas could use to be more productive.
- cowabungamann 9y ago
  A lot of people, even those in the developed nations, rely on libraries for internet access.
  - jamesred 9y ago
    This is what I meant where libraries should evolve from being curators of books to adapting to new technology. It also seems obvious that instead of access to libraries a better use of money would be access to the internet. SpaceX and Facebook are already working on solving this problem. It’s just a matter of technology and infrastructure. If it’s unfeasible to lay wires in remote areas maybe access to internet would better be served by satellites or balloons. If a person is not educating themselves through the internet what makes you think they would educate themselves at a library? At some point it comes down to personal responsibility and as much money you throw at the problem it will never solve it.
- plandis 9y ago
  Where is this place on the internet I can legally read the same books I can find in a library for free without paying?
  - zanny 9y ago
    Copyright law is crazy broken. IP in general at least needs dramatically reevaluated in the context of global information networks. Building more libraries to circumvent and subsidize an archaic model of corporate profit doesn't sound like a great use of societies resources.
MrZongle2 9y ago
I think public libraries would be a wonderful beneficiary of Jeff Bezos' fortune, but I would hope that in the (admittedly unlikely) event that it happens, the bulk of the donated funds are not thrown at shiny "library of the future" initiatives. Not after-school STEM programs, not summer Minecraft redstone programming camps, not 3D printer labs. Just books, staff and facilities: the three things that libraries always need, won't become obsolete in a few years, and are equally available to all patrons in an area. Yes, public libraries need to evolve to meet their community's needs as they change. But just as a new coat of paint or solar-powered lighting doesn't strengthen an aging bridge, focusing on the flair rather than the core of what makes a library a library would be foolhardy.
gondo 9y ago
everyone knows what to do with other people's money
HillaryBriss 9y ago
what a ludicrous idea. libraries lose thousands of books each year to theft and vandalism. what would happen to all those bundles of cash? just keep the money in banks. that's what they do.
speedboat 9y ago
Libraries are great. They should be funded with taxes by society, not the whims of charity. Raise taxes and on people like Bezos and Gates for the needs of society.
- throwaway91111 9y ago
  Ehh i don't think Bezos and Gates are the issue; it's that services (like libraries and public transit) are raising the value of nearby land. We should tax the beneficiaries; ie the landowners who today profit off tax payer investments.
  - zanny 9y ago
    Subsidized public roads also raise the value of land around which they are built, by giving you access to build something there. It isn't a specific group of landowners. These sources of profit created by public infrastructure simply and generally make people rich, so you need to tax the rich. I'm definitely not convinced disincentivizing people from living in walkable distance from libraries and public transit terminals is good. Sounds more like we need the opposite - incentivize walkability, build more libraries and public transit, and more generally incentivize higher density residential to cut down on the total amount of infrastructure needed, because our current scale is unsustainable with current tax models.
payne92 9y ago
Libraries are struggling with an identity crisis as printed books become less relevant. It's an issue not solved by the injection of billions. Carnegie's legacy, the example used in the article, doesn't translate to the present. If Bezos wanted to democratize information in a comparable way, perhaps he could underwrite universal access to high-speed Internet. Many many parts of the country still do not have reliable, high-speed, low latency Internet connections.
- mustacheemperor 9y ago
  Libraries are well aware of their identities, which have not changed as much as you think. For many people, their public library is their only access to Internet of any speed. And they're using that connection, the same one this community constantly rallies around as a human right, on the only boxes that public library can afford.
jpao79 9y ago
Or maybe arm US public libraries with free to checkout Kindles that have no hardware for WiFi or LTE support and simply are cached with the latest videos from Khan Academy and a significant portion of the most read portions of Wikipedia. The cache would be updated over the air weekly at the library. If the Kindle ever was jailbroken, well then the kid or whoever just learned about jailbreaking/hacking. Without Wifi or LTE support, likely no one would really bother. I find this one inspiring: https://www.ted.com/talks/curtis_wall_street_carroll_how_i_learned_to_read_and_trade_stocks_in_prison https://www.ted.com/talks/curtis_wall_street_carroll_how_i_l...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
SJWDisagree111 9y ago
I'm guessing most of the people here have not been to a local public library in a long time. They have basically become daytime homeless shelters. That is the reason they are no longer attractive for philanthropists.
- awaythrow102 9y ago
  Depends where you live. Most of the suburban and rural library I have been to are what you would expect with zero bums. My local ones are quasi co-working spaces with tons of telecommuters and even a coffee shop inside.
  - SJWDisagree111 9y ago
    Rural yes. There are not enough shelters or public assistance to support the homeless population. I imaging your mileage may vary based on the specific metro area. I'm specifically referring to the southeast. Also at least Chicago as well my cousin is a librarian there and constantly has stories about how her job is essentially running a halfway house.
- ABCLAW 9y ago
  Perhaps the libraries in your community share this property, but they certainly don't in mine. What communities are you referencing in this comment? Mine have extensive multimedia selections available for access, music rooms with instruments for practice, 3d printers for prototyping, and a wealth of research staff who will help you find specific information that you need. All of the ones in my local area are well attended by the public, at least when I've gone.
  - specialist 9y ago
    With the deep budget cuts and transition to online (vs face to face) services, libraries have become many poor people's only access to their government. This was widely reported in my area last time our trogs wanted to cut our library budgets (even more).
  - 9y ago
MentallyRetired 9y ago
Or, you go earn billions, and then you can decide what to do with them.
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
As commenters have noted, libraries conflict with Amazon's business. How about instead mass produce cheap (low-profit or at-cost) kindles pre-loaded with a large amount of public domain and other free material (including wikipedia offline compressed database). And then bezos will still make money from some of them buying paid kindle books.
- b4ux1t3 9y ago
  The thing is, libraries are more than just a place to put books. As still other commenters have put it, they are community centers, shelters-in-place, and work spaces. The more personal overhead (like having to rent out a personal office if you work remotely, or having to pay for a computer and internet access) that people can offload o places like libraries, the more money they have to spend on Amazon.
WalterBright 9y ago
By far the biggest barrier to books being available is perpetual copyright.
kazishariar 9y ago
Now, that would solve that problem now wouldn't it.
stcredzero 9y ago
If I were Bezos, I would start a vlogging platform and a competitor to Twitter -- one free of concerns of covert partisan censorship. There would be serious synergies for amazon.com and other Amazon products.
philipps 9y ago
Strengthening public libraries is an excellent idea, with lots of public benefits. Libraries are one of the most trusted public institutions in the US and provide a range of key social services including access to education, internet, health information. They also reach and support a demographic that is currently not well served through online-only programs. I co-founded Peer 2 Peer University [1] a non profit that brings people together in learning circles to take online courses. When we switched from online-only to face to face meetings in public libraries we started teaching adults who had fallen out of the education system and who were not benefiting from online courses. And I can't say enough positive things about the librarians who we work with. [1] https://p2pu.org https://p2pu.org
dnprock 9y ago
My libraries cost $180/year through property tax. Most of the books I want to read are checked out. Most of the movies I want to watch are checked out. It takes a lot of time just to find something. I come to library to hang out. We then pick up something to read/watch randomly. The system is not very efficient.
caisman 9y ago
I agree that billionaries could help society development, but Bezos would not have billions if he invests in public libraries. Nice try.
simonebrunozzi 9y ago
If I were a Billionaire like Bezos, and read this article, I would think: "it's my money. You can be as sure as hell that the last thing I will do is to put it in public libraries". Seriously. Since when we pick someone else's pocket and decide what to do with his money?
- Tomte 9y ago
  Since Bezos specifically asked for ideas about how to spend his money philantrophically. As you would know, had you at least skimmed the article before summarily dismissing it.
alt_f4 9y ago
No offense to the author, but what a tremendously stupid idea. With technology becoming cheaper and cheaper, right now, you can get a good enough computer to access all the world's information (the Internet) for $25. I can imagine that price being more like $5 in the next 10 years. Since the goal of investing is planning for the future, it'd be an enormous waste to spend all of that money on the antiquated concept of a library. It will be about as useful as investing the money in VHS tapes. Better education-related goals for billionaires: make more of the copyrighted information available for free public use. Help increase access to good quality internet and computers in poor communities.
crb002 9y ago
Bezos is putting his billions right where they are best. Re-inventing the supply chain for everything from retail goods to commodity compute.

247 points by steven 9y ago

I don't think so

Bezos still needs to focus on actually delivering the value that the world has priced into the expectations of his company. He can't just retire and collect income off of an existing machine like Gates.

mulmen 9y ago
What does that have to do with his personal wealth? How is Bezos' situation different than Gates? e: to clarify my second question: How is Bezos' situation different than Gates' when Gates left Microsoft.
- reducesuffering 9y ago
  Because Amazons stock price is valued strongly based on future potential. For Bezos to cash out now and do philanthropy, without a very strong replacement to realize Amazons potential, shares would fall 50% effectively halving Bezos' worth. Regarding your second question, it is actually a similar scenario to when Gates left Microsoft. Right before Gates left, Microsoft was at one of the highest peak values, $58, almost it's Market cap today if you account for inflation, and a year after Gates left the stock had plummeted to $24 a share. Many would propose that Bezos leaving would actually be more detrimental, as Microsoft at the time was not a growth stock, but a well established money printing machine, while Amazon stock is still banking on future potential.
  - pravinva 9y ago
    All shares are valued solely based on their future potential (cash flows). It matters not a whit what you did in the past, if your future is bleak, you share price will reduce to under book value
- dmoy 9y ago
  Bezos net worth is almost entirely Amazon stock, which is a growth stock. Gates net worth is almost entirely cash (tens of billions in cash?) and other investments (there's like a holding/investment company that's actually just Gates).
- nrhk 9y ago
  Amazon stock would plummet if Bezos just upped and left and most of his wealth is tied to the company.
ApolloFortyNine 9y ago
More than most companies, Amazon seems like it's actually worth what people say it is. It's the world's largest e-retailer, with a huge percentage of happy customers (due to their great customer service), with a booming membership program, making strides into local deliveries (Whole Foods), with the largest cloud computing infrastructure in the World. Much better in my opinion than Apple, that is almost solely valued off of a popular phone that the majority of users could replace with a phone 20% of the cost and be just as happy.
chaostheory 9y ago
Bezos solicited public feedback on Twitter for causes he should support.

deleted 9y ago

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melling 9y ago

“So far, you’ve concentrated on things that might benefit our distant successors” ... “space trave, cancer treatments, AI” I would hope we’re going to make large strides in these in his lifetime. If we could effectively funnel more into R&D sooner, we’d all see the benefits sooner. Cancer(s), for example, might be cured in say 2060 with our current effort, but if we solved the problem by 2030, hundreds of millions would benefit.

maxxxxx 9y ago
Will cancer ever be solved? Isn't cancer many different problems that got the same label?
- goialoq 9y ago
  Libraries are many different books that got the same label :-)
- melling 9y ago
  That's why I put an (s) on cancer to signify that I did understand the challenge.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    Stupid question probably, but have any cancers been cured so far?
MikkoFinell 9y ago
We should solve general AI first, because then those other problems would be solved within two months.

the-dude 9y ago

Plain old : I know better than you on how to spend _your money. Boring.

icebraining 9y ago
Bezos asked for suggestions on how to spend the money. As the article clearly shows.

deleted 9y ago

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pravinva 9y ago

Is non fossil fuel energy research too hard to be funded? Gates and Bezos etc have funded just about a billion. Why not 20 billion

maxxxxx 9y ago
I was wondering if someone would put big money into fusion if we could make it happen sooner. My understanding is that the physics are reasonably well understood and now it's mainly a difficult engineering problem. I wonder if ITER could happen sooner with enough money.
- contact_fusion 9y ago
  Fusion research is actually very well funded. It doesn't seem that way because nearly all news stories about fusion are about the Q factor of the latest shot or experiment was. (Q is the energy gain factor.) The field is advancing on many fronts, using several strategies. ITER is but one of many efforts. Some results coming from NIF suggest that ICF is not as dead as it seemed years ago! ITER itself is (iirc) the largest scientific project on Earth. It is funded by 35 countries, to the tune of billions. They have already had cost overruns (the perpetual curse of modern science it seems) but I doubt that more money would necessarily solve fusion engineering faster. They are currently building the reactor and are on track for first plasma in 2025. An ITER-scale tokamak is as close to a "sure bet" for Q>=1 that you can get. (Their goal is Q=10) Interestingly, one of the major milestones for ITER is tritium production through breeder blankets - which would solve a critical bottleneck for future, enterprise fusion power systems. (Not to mention scientific research.)

_jal 9y ago

This is poorly thought out and edited, because I have to run, but I thought it worth posting. I've been thinking more about libraries lately. I really think it is time to reinvigorate and expand them. Pretty sure I'm preaching to the converted here about the power of information; I think what some folks miss is just how incredibly valuable libraries are. No, they aren't a panacea, but they are a cheap source of immense social good. A lot of people see a building full of books and wonder why it can't be replaced by a bank of terminals and Google. I won't get in to the relative merits of dead trees vs. electrons, and largely don't care about it. What that line of thought misses is two-fold: the librarians and the community space. Decent librarians are hugely underrated resources. Great ones can be incredible. Maybe natural language systems will become good enough in my lifetime to handle some of the vague requests librarians routinely manage to match to the right book, but the leaps of association to related topics, the knowledge of the edge cases of information classification to navigate them well, and the general mass of knowledge they accumulate is massively useful to have on hand. And so few people take advantage of it. Meeting spaces in this context (both formal, sign-up-for-your-group and informal) serve an important role as well. It seems[1] like they're becoming rarer as government buildings use security as an excuse to close to the public, and in calling around to private groups with spaces that previously did that sort of thing have been much more reluctant to do so when I've tried to organize things over the last several years. To personalize this a bit, I grew up in a poor family. One thing that was heavily emphasized to me was the value of learning - I think it was reaction to missed opportunities. Who knows what would have happened, but I do know that my college essays (written referencing library books, building on interests fostered in the math and the American Lit sections) would have been very different without them, and I kinda doubt I would have gotten a free ride to a top-10 school if I had been only drawing on what public school offered. I'd love to see more experiments with libraries. I know some are playing with becoming more "maker-space"-ey, which is a decent thing to explore. I think finding a way to offer peer-classes in whatever - learn Javascript, fancy knitting techniques - would be an interesting thing to try as well. But I'm bad at seeing opportunities like this. I wonder what people with that super power could come up with. [1] Anecdata alert!

melling 9y ago
4% of the world’s population lives in the United States. How about something a little more far reaching? [Update] The author is not talking about a global project. “Hidden in plain sight, the local libraries of America are patiently waiting for your attention”

graphitezepp 9y ago

I would much rather billionaire types take on large issues that governments don't want to touch, like space flight or specific diseases in foreign countries, than something already in service like libraries. Maybe I just have a bias due to having a library just up the street from where I live currently, but I have never not had access to an adequate library in my life time, and only see room for marginal diminishing returns in improving them.

chickenfries 9y ago
Visit a library in a low-income area (where people need them the most) and see the kinds of computers people use to hunt for jobs, do their homework, etc. I've been to a library that was running windows 2000 on TWO ancient Dells with with CRT monitors in 2015. And the two computers they had were being used by adults and students. There is so much to be gained from improving libraries.
- arkitaip 9y ago
  The libraries in my city offer legal advice, business advice and much more beyond storing books. Heck, the majority of books are put in storage in order to free up physical space for doing homework, computers, study rooms, etc.
- Chardok 9y ago
  I completely agree. Where I lived at in Houston, trying to find a place to sit and study quietly was near impossible, which is something I certainly took for granted. Libraries provide so much public good: giving the public internet access, allowing people to read classics and better themselves for free, and giving some quiet space for those wanting to study (and not have to pay for a $5 coffee).
  - goialoq 9y ago
    not paying for a $5 coffee hurts the official GDP metrics. Reading a book in a library contributes $0 to official GDP.

Overtonwindow 9y ago

Libraries are an excellent place to put some money. They provide learning opportunities, but many also provide resume and job search training, community meeting places, free internet access, and I think is one of the few "neutral" places in American society. Neutral in that there are few, if any politics involved, and it's an equal opportunity benefit to a community that most people can get behind. Even if they don't use the library, few I think would speak against.

adventured 9y ago
I overwhelmingly agree with that. I grew up in one of the poorer places in America - Appalachia. Despite that, we had a nice library, donated initially by a wealthy individual and then sustained by various forms of private funding over the decades. It didn't always have the absolute latest books, the selection was decent though. It had Internet access very early on and was a valuable, inexpensive resource for young and old people alike. It was also relatively well maintained; pre mid 1990's Web, if you needed to really know a subject in-depth, it was easily the best local resource. The local community benefited immensely from it. I'd like to see Bezos (and ideally matching contributors) put together an effort to modernize the concept for the 21st century. Virtual reality for example will become an important access technology over the next 20 years, that many lower income people won't be able to afford and will have future job importance in many fields.
- csours 9y ago
  Was it a Carnegie library? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library
- goialoq 9y ago
  It's much more efficient to move people from rural areas into the cities, than to build micro-cities all across the country.
  - elihu 9y ago
    Much of our civilization depends on food and natural resources that come from sparsely populated areas of the country. On top of that, real estate and rent are ludicrously expensive in most of the nicer large cities. It makes sense economically for people to spread out if they can find the employment, education, and services they need in smaller towns.

tanilama 9y ago

His company hosts a large part of the biggest library ever existed: Internet.

icebraining 9y ago
And public libraries are used to access it, so you could say the suggestion makes even more sense considering that.
EliRivers 9y ago
Yet if I want to make a serious study of something, I hit the textbooks. The internet is, in my experience, a poor replacement for a stack of well written physical textbooks. The internet may be a big library, but in many ways it's not a very good one.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Alternatively, that could be an argument for digitalizing those textbooks and offering them for free. Maybe Bezos should fund Libgen :)
  - EliRivers 9y ago
    I can't speak for anyone else, but every textbook I used during a master's in maths was available on the screen in front of me. I used paper textbooks instead. They're simply much better for serious learning.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- sol_remmy 9y ago
  Counterpoint: My friends all went through mechanical engineering WITHOUT reading textbooks - that was the secret to their success. No one is going to touch the textbooks in a library.
  - 9y ago

tostitos1979 9y ago

I want to give a shout out to a charity called "Room to read". There is a book about the founder's story .. he was one of us (a tech leader at Microsoft). His book and story touched me deeply.

jansho 9y ago
This is great, thanks!

hilyen 9y ago

Wait, didn't he already replace the need for libraries with kindle and kindle unlimited monthly service? Heh.

sddfd 9y ago

Why would anyone think libraries are important in 2017? If things keep getting digitalized at the current speed, all knowledge of the world will be accessible online in our lifetime. Unless you believe that a large percentage of citizens will not be able to afford a device for accessing the internet, libraries are a waste of money. Oh and since librarians were mentioned, if AI keeps advancing, we will be able to have a conversation with a search engine within 30 years. So who needs a librarian?

magic_beans 9y ago
It's not belief. It's fact that a large percentage of citizens are unable to access desktop computers for work/jobs, though they might have an internet-enabled phone. Have you ever been to a library in the inner city, or in any big city for that matter?
- olegkikin 9y ago
  The internet penetration in the US last year was 88.5%, it's higher now. What is this "large percentage" exactly? What important information can't you get through a cheap smartphone and public Wifi?
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    Not to mention, it's not hard to find a well-used laptop in the US for virtually nothing, and with things like Chromebooks, you can get something new for around $100. There are charities that furnish computer access either through directly providing a cheap laptop or by offering shared access at centers, etc. It's absurd to suggest that we need to spend millions building and maintaining traditional public libraries just because some people do not have immediate access to a computer.
- sddfd 9y ago
  I concede, I've only ever been in a large campus library in the US. Also I agree, if a few percent of the population cannot afford to access the internet there is a serious problem. I just doubt that libraries are an effective way to solve this problem.

karl11 9y ago

I think this is a good idea. I would add YMCAs and similar places. I think one of the best places for a mega-philanthropist to invest would be in the time and places that kids spend outside of public schools. Many of the biggest disadvantages in opportunities for kids are created when they fall behind before and after school and during summers, relative to kids who are better off socioeconomically. These disadvantages compound and are lasting. Safe places to engage in healthy recreation, productive endeavors, and getting something nutritious to eat that they wouldn't otherwise have access to would go a long way for underprivileged youth and have an impact for the rest of their lives.

rewrew 9y ago
This is an excellent idea.

tzs 9y ago

I'd like to see some billionaire put a lot of money into abortions. The political fight over abortion keeps messing up other things, and a billionaire could fix that. For example, I don't think many on the right disagree that funding prenatal care is a good thing--but some major prenatal care providers, such as Planned Parenthood, also provide abortion services and so some politicians want to cut all their funding to make sure none of the Federal money goes to abortions. A whole bunch of women's health services get cut in order to make sure there is no chance the money ends up helping abortions. So I'd like to see some billionaire, or some well-funded charity like the Gates Foundation, build several clinics that provide free abortions around the country in the states with the least restrictions on abortions, and fund a program that provides free travel to and from those clinics for women in the states with restrictive laws that have forced most such clinics to close. Then organizations like Planned Parenthood can get completely out of the abortion business, taking away the major excuse that is used to cut their funding. State legislators can stop spending a lot of time coming up with new ways to try to shut down abortion clinics in their states (because shutting down such clinics will no longer stop the abortions), and state attorney generals can stop wasting time defending those attempts in court, and maybe they will finally realize that the best way to reduce abortions is to make it so people don't need them in the first place. Maybe then states like Texas can drop their idiotic "abstinence only" approach to sex eduction (which has resulted in soaring teen pregnancy rates...) and switch to something actually effective. Edit: any down voters care to name specific objections? That Planned Parenthood provides a lot of useful women's health services that are not related to abortion should not be controversial. That abortion is the main reason Congress wants to completely defund PP should also not be controversial. That "abstinence only" programs are a massive failure is pretty well documented. That many states keep passing abortion restrictions which then get challenged and often struck down as unconstitutional is not controversial.

Brendinooo 9y ago
I didn't vote for your post either way, but... If you're pro-life, you probably don't like the idea that someone is spending billions to fund abortions. If you're pro-choice, you probably don't like the idea of Planned Parenthood conceding their abortion services because of political pressure.

balls187 9y ago

Fix traffic and housing in Seattle.

saosebastiao 9y ago
Traffic and housing in Seattle are problems only the government can solve, as they're the ones that created the laws and incentives that cause the problems. No use dumping money into a pit.
- Apocryphon 9y ago
  What if they could fund an easier, more efficient way to lobby?
  - saosebastiao 9y ago
    I actually see the value of lobbying, and think that would be an excellent idea. But lobbying has such a nasty connotation, I doubt it would pad the ego of a philanthropist (call me a cynic, but I'd wager 90% of philanthropy is just a way for people to garner attention and praise). I don't think lobbying would be nearly as bad if a) we had publicly funded elections, which takes away the incentive for politicians to be beholden to the interests of donors, and b) we had a mechanism (possibly through a branch of judicial review?) to repeal or amend laws that don't achieve their stated goals.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

oconnor663 9y ago

> they're the only noncommercial places other than city squares where people meet across genders and ages Church?

soperj 9y ago
The Church has billions in assets... it's commercial.
- MrZongle2 9y ago
  I'd say that depends on the church (lower-case "c") and its affiliations. That particularly wealthy religious organizations exist in Rome and Salt Lake City (for instance) doesn't mean a typical small-town church can't struggle to pay its bills.

sjg007 9y ago

Or in school lunches. How about nice healthy food? Lunch should be a class where you learn how to eat.

orik 9y ago

I’m sure thousands of people have ideas of how Bezos should spend his. Bezos should spend (or not spend) in ways and things he values, to maximize what he gets out of what he’s earned. (P.S. libraries compete with his book selling business! Why wouldn’t he rather sell a ‘library pass’ on a kindle for a monthly subscription?)

komali2 9y ago
Kindle is very well integrated with library services already. Also, they do sell a month-to-month "kindle unlimited" service. It kind of sucks though (last I used it, anyway).
- praneshp 9y ago
  It sucks as of last month. The integration with libraries is super-cool though!
striking 9y ago
He sent out a request for comment on this. It's not just a random ask.

addedlovely 9y ago

How about pay some taxes.

Clubber 9y ago

We already have libraries, if you are going to presume to tell someone how to spend their money, at least pitch something we don't already have.

denisehilton 9y ago

Or maybe donate some of it to the poor? Like Bill Gates?

saosebastiao 9y ago

Here's a better idea...and one that will ultimately benefit libraries as well: start buying out all the evil academic publishers, overhaul their technology, get rid of copyright assignment, and offer free access to anyone. Then do the same with legal records, although that is more of a legal problem than a money problem.

_rpd 9y ago
Even a modest level of support for high quality peer review of open access journals would have a big effect.
zanny 9y ago
This is something I like. Correcting broken laws would be one of the more permanent contributions Bezos could make. We already know from the last ~30 years we cannot amass political capital to fix laws that create the broken journalistic and legal frameworks.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

diffeomorphism 9y ago

The article does not mention ebooks, which is a surprising omission considering it involves Amazon. I don't know how it is in the US, but for instance German libraries offer to loan ebooks: http://www.onleihe.net/ http://www.onleihe.net/ Donating ereaders and rights to ebooks to libraries seems more effective than printed books. Big caveats here are Amazon's monopoly position, DRM and copyright and loans for ebooks vs. physical books.

DanBC 9y ago
Yes, ebooks are important and English law changed recently to make it easier, although libraries are still limited by licensing terms: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2017/30/part/4/enacted http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2017/30/part/4/enacted

tambourine_man 9y ago

I find this titles very off putting. It seems to imply that someone, who wasn't competent enough to make billions of their own, is somehow more apt to know how to better spend them than the one that actually did.

mehrzad 9y ago
I find your comment very off-putting. First of all, Bezos asked for advice on philanthropy. Second, most wealth generated by the property owning class (including Bezos) is through extracting the surplus value of their employees. Those billions were made through force (by the state monopoly of violence through police defending the so-called "right to property") as his employees never had a fair shot in getting a reasonable share of profits because he had the luck or inheritance to obtain the wealth producing tools (business infrastructure) first while his employees, many of whom are probably more intelligent and hard-working than he, did not. So while his employees work 9-5 making minimum wage to $50 an hour, he gets to enjoy billions and not have to work.
- tambourine_man 9y ago
  Oh yes, he did ask for advice, I forgot about that. Never mind. Not being sarcastic, to me that makes all the difference. The rest of your comment didn't make much sense to me, however.
- tomschlick 9y ago
  > as his employees never had a fair shot in getting a reasonable share of profits They get paid an hourly wage or salary. Thats their share of the profits. Why are employees magically entitled to profits other than what they agreed to work for?
  - mehrzad 9y ago
    Because they never had a chance to own the means of production and thus were not able to negotiate on an equal footing.
deleted 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

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miguelrochefort 9y ago

Although I don't like the government taking my money to subsidize stuff, I'd rather see them make basic Internet "free" than build and maintain libraries.

jjtheblunt 9y ago

Should is a pretty insulting verb: who is to presume the wisdom to tell another what to do?

dionidium 9y ago
There's a tendency in some to add a bunch of hedge words to statements like this. "Humbly, I think -- and this is just my opinion -- that Jeff Bezos may want to -- I mean, it's up to him, but if he wants to! -- consider putting his money into libraries." This is a misguided pursuit of modesty. It's less clear and reads as false, anyway. Just say what you mean. We all know it's just your opinion without all the weasel words. Nobody is going to mistake it for anything else.
- ashark 9y ago
  > Just say what you mean. We all know it's just your opinion without all the weasel words. Nobody is going to mistake it for anything else. People on the Web will. They hate succinct, accurate, clear (so, good) writing and will settle for nothing short of explicitly disavowing association with or endorsement of any conceivable evil with which an intentional/incompetent misreading of your words could possibly connect you, absurdly hedging and qualifying every statement as if attempting to make a favorable wish with a hostile genie, and burying all opinions in wishy-washy garbage.
greeneggs 9y ago
Bezos himself asked for advice. Here's the tweet: https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/875418348598603776/ https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/875418348598603776/ A news story: "Jeff Bezos Wants Ideas for Philanthropy, So He Asked Twitter" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/technology/jeff-bezos-amazon-twitter-charity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/technology/jeff-bezos-ama...

megamindbrian 9y ago

Or not? https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/paabgg/i-bought-a-book-about-the-internet-from-1994-and-none-of-the-links-worked https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/paabgg/i-bought-a...

devmunchies 9y ago
So the books have link rot but what of the webpages? They are gone, yet the books are still around.
- randyrand 9y ago
  There is something interesting about that. Websites take maintenance and tools to read them. Books do not. If you want your information to be around a long time, maybe write a book instead? Or both?

bitL 9y ago

What's the point of libraries these days? We literally have the possibility for everyone to have a "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in their pocket with all books that were ever written.

kazinator 9y ago
... with all books that were ever written. All that and an electronic girlfriend application to replace the real one you could have picked up at the library.
- bitL 9y ago
  Come on, book is just a medium, now we have a different form already, why put money into old-school stuff? For nostalgia reasons?
  - kazinator 9y ago
    Probably for the same reason we didn't replace books with microfilm, which began to be used commercially in the 1920's. And microfilm can be "decoded" using simple magnification. No issues of software compatibility with document formats and whatnot.
  - MrZongle2 9y ago
    A book certainly is just a medium, but it's a particularly accessible and durable medium. If you place a 50-year-old book written in English in front of me, I can immediately pick it up and begin reading. Books far older than that are equally as legible and, with care, accessible. What are the chances that in 50 years that even half of the current ebook formats will be viewable by contemporary technology? This isn't to say that other formats shouldn't be used or improved, but we have yet to see a medium that is as unfettered and easily used. It's hardly about nostalgia.
ahoy 9y ago
As other users said above, libraries are a huge deal in poor communities. People use them to search for jobs/fill out job applications. These are tasks that are onerous to impossible on a low-end smartphone, if you have one at all. I live in a gentrifying area of NYC. There's a public library branch a few blocks away from me that sees lots of visitors every day. I rarely walk by it and don't see people coming and going.

cko 9y ago

Whenever a topic like this gets posted, it feels like the majority of commenters feel 'entitled' to other people's money and think they know best how to spend it. Or the notion they have to 'give back.' I'm not rich in the popular sense of the word (besides having the fortune of being American middle class), but I do have investments by virtue of almost never spending on consumer goods. And having no wife or kids. My coworkers realize after years of seeing me drive the same beater correctly assume I'm in better shape financially, and some have the audacity to jokingly ask me to put them in my will. Now, I will not deny that I am an extremely fortunate person who is cognitively able, like Bezos or anyone well-connected with material wealth, but what's with the 'he should donate to this cause instead'? It's his money. He could buy a fleet of yachts, set them on fire, and upload the video footage - why shouldn't he be allowed to do that? At what arbitrary level of wealth does 'his' money become everyone else's money?

lebanon_tn 9y ago
You're missing the point. Bezos specifically tweeted requesting ideas for philanthropy. No one is saying he can't spend the money how he wants.
- cko 9y ago
  True. I guess out of quite a bit of other threads, I jumped on this particular thread in order to vent, which wasn't the best choice, since, as the article said (and you emphasized) that he was requesting ideas. Or maybe the word "should" always upsets me, and I envision a world where us common people are walking around believing that the more fortunate owe us just because they are wealthy.
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drdrey 9y ago
Did you read the story? He made a public request for ideas about his philanthropy strategy

songzme 9y ago

As much as I hate books, I love public libraries. Our local library (Northside branch santa clara) gives a big conference room every saturday to a team of passionate locals trying to teach themselves programming. My friends and I go there every Saturday to help people who are stuck and give them guidance (what to learn next, how to prepare for interviews, what language is best suitable for what they are trying to do, etc). Talk about diversity, the library is a place where you get to see people from all walks of life outside the silicon valley bubble (different race, age, handicap). It builds a learning community where people have the opportunity to help each other at a more human level.

alt_f4 9y ago
So, you don't like libraries, you like the idea of cheap to hire conference rooms.

randyrand 9y ago

The modern day equivalent of a public library (storing information history) is the internet archive. I think donating to the internet archive would be a better donation which a lot more benefit to society than funding physical libraries. Libraries solve one of the worlds most important problem - keeping societies important information history safe. Websites are not immune to this problem. They require maintenance. When a webpage goes down its gone forever. Without something like the internet archive, we would not have a modern day library equivalent for the web. We are losing a lot of important information. Physical libraries today are in comparison much less important than digital ones.

tspike 9y ago
Archiving information is only one function of libraries. They are community spaces, social equalizers, educational institutions, and temporary shelter, among other things.

yohann305 9y ago

i love libraries but i never go cause i'm not allowed to sip a coffee. i mean come on, where's the fun factor! Wouldn't you take the risk of spilling drinks on books rather than preventing people from coming?

jamesred 9y ago

The problem libraries solved, mostly access to information, has largely been monopolize by the internet. Most, including the third world impoverished, have access to the internet. Therefore the necessity of a library has been largely diminished and inevitably libraries will disappear. Complaining about libraries when people have no sanitation and access to clean tap water sounds largely like a first world problem, as much as I dislike the term. Libraries should evolve with the change of technology and move their function from curation and access to information to something that is able to benefit more people. Books occupy volume and removing them would make more room for desks and rooms where people with no access to quiet areas could use to be more productive.

cowabungamann 9y ago
A lot of people, even those in the developed nations, rely on libraries for internet access.
- jamesred 9y ago
  This is what I meant where libraries should evolve from being curators of books to adapting to new technology. It also seems obvious that instead of access to libraries a better use of money would be access to the internet. SpaceX and Facebook are already working on solving this problem. It’s just a matter of technology and infrastructure. If it’s unfeasible to lay wires in remote areas maybe access to internet would better be served by satellites or balloons. If a person is not educating themselves through the internet what makes you think they would educate themselves at a library? At some point it comes down to personal responsibility and as much money you throw at the problem it will never solve it.
plandis 9y ago
Where is this place on the internet I can legally read the same books I can find in a library for free without paying?
- zanny 9y ago
  Copyright law is crazy broken. IP in general at least needs dramatically reevaluated in the context of global information networks. Building more libraries to circumvent and subsidize an archaic model of corporate profit doesn't sound like a great use of societies resources.

MrZongle2 9y ago

I think public libraries would be a wonderful beneficiary of Jeff Bezos' fortune, but I would hope that in the (admittedly unlikely) event that it happens, the bulk of the donated funds are not thrown at shiny "library of the future" initiatives. Not after-school STEM programs, not summer Minecraft redstone programming camps, not 3D printer labs. Just books, staff and facilities: the three things that libraries always need, won't become obsolete in a few years, and are equally available to all patrons in an area. Yes, public libraries need to evolve to meet their community's needs as they change. But just as a new coat of paint or solar-powered lighting doesn't strengthen an aging bridge, focusing on the flair rather than the core of what makes a library a library would be foolhardy.

gondo 9y ago

everyone knows what to do with other people's money

HillaryBriss 9y ago

what a ludicrous idea. libraries lose thousands of books each year to theft and vandalism. what would happen to all those bundles of cash? just keep the money in banks. that's what they do.

speedboat 9y ago

Libraries are great. They should be funded with taxes by society, not the whims of charity. Raise taxes and on people like Bezos and Gates for the needs of society.

throwaway91111 9y ago
Ehh i don't think Bezos and Gates are the issue; it's that services (like libraries and public transit) are raising the value of nearby land. We should tax the beneficiaries; ie the landowners who today profit off tax payer investments.
- zanny 9y ago
  Subsidized public roads also raise the value of land around which they are built, by giving you access to build something there. It isn't a specific group of landowners. These sources of profit created by public infrastructure simply and generally make people rich, so you need to tax the rich. I'm definitely not convinced disincentivizing people from living in walkable distance from libraries and public transit terminals is good. Sounds more like we need the opposite - incentivize walkability, build more libraries and public transit, and more generally incentivize higher density residential to cut down on the total amount of infrastructure needed, because our current scale is unsustainable with current tax models.

payne92 9y ago

Libraries are struggling with an identity crisis as printed books become less relevant. It's an issue not solved by the injection of billions. Carnegie's legacy, the example used in the article, doesn't translate to the present. If Bezos wanted to democratize information in a comparable way, perhaps he could underwrite universal access to high-speed Internet. Many many parts of the country still do not have reliable, high-speed, low latency Internet connections.

mustacheemperor 9y ago
Libraries are well aware of their identities, which have not changed as much as you think. For many people, their public library is their only access to Internet of any speed. And they're using that connection, the same one this community constantly rallies around as a human right, on the only boxes that public library can afford.

jpao79 9y ago

Or maybe arm US public libraries with free to checkout Kindles that have no hardware for WiFi or LTE support and simply are cached with the latest videos from Khan Academy and a significant portion of the most read portions of Wikipedia. The cache would be updated over the air weekly at the library. If the Kindle ever was jailbroken, well then the kid or whoever just learned about jailbreaking/hacking. Without Wifi or LTE support, likely no one would really bother. I find this one inspiring: https://www.ted.com/talks/curtis_wall_street_carroll_how_i_learned_to_read_and_trade_stocks_in_prison https://www.ted.com/talks/curtis_wall_street_carroll_how_i_l...

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SJWDisagree111 9y ago

I'm guessing most of the people here have not been to a local public library in a long time. They have basically become daytime homeless shelters. That is the reason they are no longer attractive for philanthropists.

awaythrow102 9y ago
Depends where you live. Most of the suburban and rural library I have been to are what you would expect with zero bums. My local ones are quasi co-working spaces with tons of telecommuters and even a coffee shop inside.
- SJWDisagree111 9y ago
  Rural yes. There are not enough shelters or public assistance to support the homeless population. I imaging your mileage may vary based on the specific metro area. I'm specifically referring to the southeast. Also at least Chicago as well my cousin is a librarian there and constantly has stories about how her job is essentially running a halfway house.
ABCLAW 9y ago
Perhaps the libraries in your community share this property, but they certainly don't in mine. What communities are you referencing in this comment? Mine have extensive multimedia selections available for access, music rooms with instruments for practice, 3d printers for prototyping, and a wealth of research staff who will help you find specific information that you need. All of the ones in my local area are well attended by the public, at least when I've gone.
- specialist 9y ago
  With the deep budget cuts and transition to online (vs face to face) services, libraries have become many poor people's only access to their government. This was widely reported in my area last time our trogs wanted to cut our library budgets (even more).
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MentallyRetired 9y ago

Or, you go earn billions, and then you can decide what to do with them.

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

As commenters have noted, libraries conflict with Amazon's business. How about instead mass produce cheap (low-profit or at-cost) kindles pre-loaded with a large amount of public domain and other free material (including wikipedia offline compressed database). And then bezos will still make money from some of them buying paid kindle books.

b4ux1t3 9y ago
The thing is, libraries are more than just a place to put books. As still other commenters have put it, they are community centers, shelters-in-place, and work spaces. The more personal overhead (like having to rent out a personal office if you work remotely, or having to pay for a computer and internet access) that people can offload o places like libraries, the more money they have to spend on Amazon.

WalterBright 9y ago

By far the biggest barrier to books being available is perpetual copyright.

kazishariar 9y ago

Now, that would solve that problem now wouldn't it.

stcredzero 9y ago

If I were Bezos, I would start a vlogging platform and a competitor to Twitter -- one free of concerns of covert partisan censorship. There would be serious synergies for amazon.com and other Amazon products.

philipps 9y ago

Strengthening public libraries is an excellent idea, with lots of public benefits. Libraries are one of the most trusted public institutions in the US and provide a range of key social services including access to education, internet, health information. They also reach and support a demographic that is currently not well served through online-only programs. I co-founded Peer 2 Peer University [1] a non profit that brings people together in learning circles to take online courses. When we switched from online-only to face to face meetings in public libraries we started teaching adults who had fallen out of the education system and who were not benefiting from online courses. And I can't say enough positive things about the librarians who we work with. [1] https://p2pu.org https://p2pu.org

dnprock 9y ago

My libraries cost $180/year through property tax. Most of the books I want to read are checked out. Most of the movies I want to watch are checked out. It takes a lot of time just to find something. I come to library to hang out. We then pick up something to read/watch randomly. The system is not very efficient.

caisman 9y ago

I agree that billionaries could help society development, but Bezos would not have billions if he invests in public libraries. Nice try.

simonebrunozzi 9y ago

If I were a Billionaire like Bezos, and read this article, I would think: "it's my money. You can be as sure as hell that the last thing I will do is to put it in public libraries". Seriously. Since when we pick someone else's pocket and decide what to do with his money?

Tomte 9y ago
Since Bezos specifically asked for ideas about how to spend his money philantrophically. As you would know, had you at least skimmed the article before summarily dismissing it.

alt_f4 9y ago

No offense to the author, but what a tremendously stupid idea. With technology becoming cheaper and cheaper, right now, you can get a good enough computer to access all the world's information (the Internet) for $25. I can imagine that price being more like $5 in the next 10 years. Since the goal of investing is planning for the future, it'd be an enormous waste to spend all of that money on the antiquated concept of a library. It will be about as useful as investing the money in VHS tapes. Better education-related goals for billionaires: make more of the copyrighted information available for free public use. Help increase access to good quality internet and computers in poor communities.

crb002 9y ago

Bezos is putting his billions right where they are best. Re-inventing the supply chain for everything from retail goods to commodity compute.