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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, th

• 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.
      • peatmoss 9y ago
        Directly speaking, that's right. Indirectly, the latter statement is, of course, false in that libraries provide the means for anyone in society to raise their station and thus contribute more to GDP. But I think you're making a good point that others are missing: The most valuable things in society are often things that aren't easily measured by straightforward means.
  • stillsut 9y ago
    Let me give you a hypothetical company IT department: while you are allowed to work there with any education background, only an MBA can be a manager. How do you think they would perform at IT tasks? Who runs libraries? People with Masters in Library Science. I expect severe budget and certification crises would come to any library that won't put a certified librarian in a head position. Or, I'm a working class guy and it's Sunday, my traditional off from work, can I go to the library? No, it is closed because there needs to be Master Librarian on duty and they've negotiated a contract to never have to work Sunday. Now the facility sits there unused 14% of the time, during the most likely time it would be used.
    • soperj 9y ago
      Libraries in Canada have the same stipulations, but are actually funded and are open all the time. Our downtown library is open 9am-9pm every day of the year.
      • rubatuga 9y ago
        That's a severe overgeneralization and I can tell you that is not the case.
        • Sumaso 9y ago
          Please do. Where is that not the case.
      • surement 9y ago
        https://www.vpl.ca/hours-locations https://www.vpl.ca/hours-locations
      • jgmjgm 9y ago
        I live in Canada in a mid-sized city and my library is closed on Sundays. Just as a poster above, it appears to be the case that the librarians negotiated a great deal for themselves. (Closed on Sundays during the summer, open on Sundays during the winter.) However, it is a great library. No arguments there. It's a pain that its closed on Sundays just when kids want to use it most.
  • conductr 9y ago
    This makes me think a recycle/reuse program should exist. "Our" old hardware is newer/better than what they have. I know this program probably does exists but I usually assume they are just breaking my device apart and pulling out gold/metals. If I knew the library needed a gently used device, I'd have no problem giving them my old stuff.
    • goialoq 9y ago
      Thanks to the march of progress, it's cheaper to deliver new tablets and keyboards than to wrangle ad-hoc used hardware.
    • KGIII 9y ago
      The best thing you can do is ask your librarian. Libraries are often poorly funded, very much so in rural areas. They are often partially funded with donations. Somebody was willing to step up and rehab a local library. Had they not done so, it would have been forced to close. It is staffed entirely by volunteers. The town can barely afford to budget the heat. Fortunately, the same person now donates regularly and there's no risk of immediate closure. They will have also left a small trust for the library when they pass away.
      • WalterBright 9y ago
        Around here, the library buildings are new, large, modern, and spacious. Those buildings were expensive to construct. They lack books, though. The shelves are low, widely spaced, and don't occupy much of the floor space. http://www.buildingwork.design/projects/kenmore-library/ http://www.buildingwork.design/projects/kenmore-library/ I've long since given up even looking for books there. I just go buy them. Contrast this with Half Price Books: http://www.waymarking.com/gallery/image.aspx?f=1&guid=ae61a8f9-45e4-4002-a100-fe2b7437b04f http://www.waymarking.com/gallery/image.aspx?f=1&guid=ae61a8... It's crammed with books. (The picture barely does that justice.)
        • KGIII 9y ago
          I still have a lovely, fairly local, shop. It is called Twice Sold Tales. It's a lovely place. I miss bookstores.
  • randyrand 9y ago
    > where people need them the most On the contrary, even the poor have their own computers and smartphones these days and these libraries don't see much sense in upgrading their rarely used computers.
    • chickenfries 9y ago
      If you're poor, you might have a limited data plan. In which case, you probably make use of public WiFi all the time to reduce your usage of your limited data plan, which should be reserved for when you need it on the side of the road or when you're running late to a job interview. Using an old android device to browse the internet is browsing as a second-class citizen. When I job hunt, I open many documents, hundreds of tabs, visit hundreds of websites... all of this would be greatly hindered by a mobile device. Have you been to a low income library where people are not using the computers? My previous neighborhood's library computers were being used almost all the time when I went there. > even the poor have their own computers and smartphones these days I'm curious what you've read that informs this opinion. The digital divide still exists, especially in rural areas but in general across socioeconomic class. https://www.ntia.doc.gov/blog/2016/state-urbanrural-digital-divide https://www.ntia.doc.gov/blog/2016/state-urbanrural-digital-...
  • lnreddy 9y ago
    Physical libraries seem so inefficient. Can't the same thing be accomplished at a fraction of the cost by distributing laptops with subscriptions to KhanAcademy etc ?
    • johnjhayes 9y ago
      Consider extreme rural areas. I've lived most of my life in rural Alabama and libraries provide an essential resource for many. Giving these people a laptop and a subscription doesn't help much if they don't have a decent internet connection (or one at all).
      • ue_ 9y ago
        Perhaps the internet connection could be funded in a similar way to libraries, then.
    • chickenfries 9y ago
      There is still value in WiFi and a quiet place to work, especially if you're not wealthy and you don't have an office set up in your home, or don't have good quality internet, or home internet at all.
• icebraining 9y ago
  Well, Bezos already invests in space flight, so there's no much point in suggesting that. The article also claims that libraries are getting defunded, so you may not have your library up the street for much longer.
• tracker1 9y ago
  Libraries serve a very important function, preserving and distributing knowledge. Yes, internet access can mitigate some of the needs, but even then many use libraries to access the internet. Though an interesting idea would be to combine the roles of a library with a traditional pub house.
  • KGIII 9y ago
    Meandering through the stacks with a pint in hand. That's either the best idea ever, or the worst idea ever. I'm not sure that it'd be very quiet, either.
    • tracker1 9y ago
      I mean in terms of a larger gathering place of knowledge and ideas... Adding in meeting spaces and coffee/bar for beverages, etc would be a net positive imo. As for quiet, I'm not entirely sure that's always a positive either.
      • KGIII 9y ago
        Oh... Hmm... It was much more awesome in my imagination. I'd even drink, just to make it more amusing. I've consumed alcohol in a library, but not openly. This should be a thing. It might be a horrible thing, but it should exist.
• monorepoman 9y ago
  "The government" is virtually the only entity that has ever taken any interest in space flight. The cumulative government investment in space research, development, and operations is orders of magnitude higher than the the cumulative private investment, and even today in the supposed golden age of private spaceflight more than 80% of the money is coming from taxpayers.
  • mobilefriendly 9y ago
    And yet, with a small fraction of just one year of NASA's budget, look what SpaceX has accomplished.
• RivieraKid 9y ago
  I wish some tech billionaire or rich tech company invested in rethinking healthcare from the ground up (or like Elon Musk likes to say, from first principles) with focus on UX, state-of-the-art technologies and integration. Anytime I use our healthcare (although, this is the Czech Rep, could be different in USA), I feel like it should be easy to design a better service. Basically, something what Tesla did, apply Silicon Valley tech startup mentality in a non-tech industry.
  • volkk 9y ago
    Many have tried, but my guess is that it's extremely difficult mainly because the government is involved, and decades of archaic systems (and minds) that you need to deal with. The word "fast" isn't in the vocabulary in this industry, and every decision moves at a snail's pace. Granted, there's a reason and you can't simply fuck up and prioritize into the next sprint that you'll fix the previous fuckup. The other issue (at least in the USA) is a ton of compliance stuff you have to deal with. HIPAA compliance is such a pain in the ass. It's not "cool" or fun, so it doesn't usually attract great devs or people that don't want to deal with constant red tape and permissions for accessing things. Naturally, this business sort of attracts the bureaucratic minded people and the really efficient people end up frustrated/burn out and move into an industry where getting shit done is easily quantifiable in the short term. Regardless, I work in the healthcare industry currently and it's a shitshow for lack of a better word.
    • graphitezepp 9y ago
      Large part of the issue is any downtime of existing systems is generally considered completely unacceptable in health care.
      • volkk 9y ago
        Yep. The other thing is that generally any sort of screw up (apart from server down time) by a company will cause extreme distrust from partners to the point of failure of your business. It's extremely tricky.
    • deleted 9y ago
• eutropia 9y ago
  Libraries have such an enormous impact on people that need them! It's as if you read the article and completely ignored all the points the author made -- musical instruments, tools, and art being loaned out. Makerspaces, computers with internet access, free classes, resume help, job applications -- a politically neutral meeting space! These are actually amazing investments because they're getting incredible duty-cycles out of all of those objects when they're being shared. One purchased instrument or computer for the library is access when it's needed for dozens if not hundreds of people. It's like the argument for self-driving cars being shared because normally cars are idle 95% of the time. Think of the library as the efficient distribution center of Common Good.
  • jasode 9y ago
    >It's as if you read the article and completely ignored all the points the author made [...] Think of the library as the efficient distribution center of Common Good. One can agree with all the positives mentioned in the article and your points as well but still question if there is an _even better_ investment than libraries that will result in the most good. Even Jeff Bezos' wealth is finite so spending it is a zero-sum game. Donating to public libraries means money not donated to researchers needing $1m to find cures/antibiotics that would benefit all of humanity more than upgrading libraries. (Or whatever other recipient you can imagine that could have a greater multiplier effect of that money than libraries.) Maybe libraries are the best use of his donation money. Maybe not.
    • civilian 9y ago
      Yup, jasode has got the right idea. The meter-stick to compare all charities (or hell, government programs? Personal spending?) is that we can donate $3000 to the Against Malaria Foundation and save a child's life. I might be a numbers-first globalist nerd, but $3000 per life? It makes me want to defund most welfare programs in the states because by comparison, they are horribly inefficient. And inefficiency of resources, in this scenario, results in dead children.
      • goialoq 9y ago
• sjg007 9y ago
  Govt should be in space flight and fighting disease.
• cratermoon 9y ago
  > large issues that governments don't want to touch Health care for all? Affordable housing? Food security?
  • tertius 9y ago
    How about reducing their size, removing redundant jobs, reducing regulation that does harm, cutting costs...
    • cratermoon 9y ago
      You mean like we've been doing since the Reagan administration? How's that been working for citizens?
      • notfromhere 9y ago
        not well.
      • zanny 9y ago
        How is 600B a year in global imperialism cutting anything? Unsurprisingly, you can't just stick "size of government" on an axis and say one side is good and the other is bad. The way you spend the money matters way more than how much you spend. One dollar of state spending can mean anything from magnitudes of benefit to a negative impact on the economy or society from the consequences of that dollar.
      • WalterBright 9y ago
        Do you really believe that there are less regulations, is smaller government, fewer government jobs, etc., today than in the 80's?
        • specialist 9y ago
          Rhetoric vs reality. And yet people keep falling for it.
• guelo 9y ago
  > like space flight Like NASA? Elon Musk is building on top of decades of government funding.
• jjjasfdj88 9y ago
  > ...something already in service like libraries. Something that can be used by new generations to learn about and continue on with space flight, diseases... I mean honestly, does anyone here really believe humans will be interplanetary? If so it's definitely not going to be in our life times. I'd rather Bezos put his money into the things that help humans now rather than these nerdy-gasm fantasies formed in childhood watching Star Trek. I say that as a huge Star Trek nerd. Libraries and access to knowledge will go further to making a society look like Star Trek than rocket ships. At least in the sense Roddenberry hoped to capture; equal outcomes for all races/genders.
• stcredzero 9y ago
  It should be acknowledged that public libraries are now defacto places of social work. This actually makes eminent sense, in a way. It should be acknowledged, so that the proper resources and funding can be delivered where it is needed and will do much good.
• specialist 9y ago
  FFS. Libraries?! How about they pay their damn taxes. I don't want "charity". No, I want these deadbeats to start pulling their own weight. Then we'll buy our own damned libraries. https://www.l2inc.com/daily-insights/winners-and-losers/tech-giants-above-the-law https://www.l2inc.com/daily-insights/winners-and-losers/tech... "For economies to thrive, companies need to hand over a quarter of their profits. But the Four Horsemen – Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook — pay far less than the average US corporate tax rate. Loser: future generations, who will have to pay off the debt racked up by politicians unwilling to tax the most profitable companies in the world."
• thaumasiotes 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 I have no idea what you're trying to express here, since space flight and disease are large issues that governments are really really interested in.
• tryingagainbro 9y ago
  Bezos doesn't have enough money for that...as much as he has. It will be drained in a very few years IMO. He could support archive.org to scan all the books for free, or just buy the scans from Google (if they sell them). Of course make that free for all. Eventually almost everyone will have a $50 Android, use some sort of wifi and there's your library.
• OrwellianChild 9y ago
  Agree that private money is best used where public money isn't available... Bezos purchased the entire Washington Post - the 8th largest paper in the country with national readership - for $250M. [1] By comparison, the two library systems that service the Seattle area cost a combined $190M to run just in 2017. [2] [3] The reach and impact that can be achieved by strategic investments like the Post surely outweigh what little incremental improvements could be made in existing library systems. [1] https://goo.gl/QfbJG1 https://goo.gl/QfbJG1 [2] http://www.spl.org/about-the-library/budget http://www.spl.org/about-the-library/budget [3] https://kcls.org/budget/ https://kcls.org/budget/