5 ms·
To play the devil’s advocate: there is no competitive market pressure to keep such public entities efficient. What if these libraries really are run horribly, b
by jmeister 5y ago
To play the devil’s advocate: there is no competitive market pressure to keep such public entities efficient. What if these libraries really are run horribly, by unaccountable, unfireable people?
From the article:
>Yeah, so the company goes in and says, look, your library is one of the things that’s sapping all of this money from your budget, and we can fix that for you. And we can increase your services. And then, of course, that is partially true, in terms of this company has a record of going into a public library, taking over management of it, and reducing the amount of money that the county has to spend, or the city has to spend. But all of that is on the backs of workers.
I do not know what the solution is. Money cannot be the only issue(e.g. the private entities are usually forced to agree to guarantee certain employee pay levels and benefits before taking over). People point to California, and SF in particular, and ask, where the hell is all the tax revenue going?
Progressives like Ezra Klein have accepted the problem, and are thinking about solutions:
“California Is Making Liberals Squirm
If progressivism can’t work there, why should the country believe it can work anywhere else?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/opinion/california-san-francisco-schools.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/opinion/california-san-fr...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/19/opinion/supply-side-progressivism.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/19/opinion/supply-side-progr...