10 ms·

To understand what is wrong with the west, think of libraries

31 points by vaghetti 5y ago

bediger4000 5y ago
Gotta admit I read this one expecting to find some extremely libertarian critique of libraries per se, something about how "intellectual property" is being violated, etc etc etc. Instead, I found all the talking points to refute such extremist critiques, and a thoughtful expansion to problems afflicting western liberal democracies. Good read, very thoughtful.
etempleton 5y ago
To some extent, this is by design. The inaction of liberal western democracies is because it is ambiguous as it what should be done. Yes, this leads to stagnation, but also minimizes massive mistakes. When it becomes clear what needs to be done western democracies can spring into action, such as with, as the author pointed out, the pandemic. Look at Russia - The government, but more specifically Putin, just set the country back 20-30 years with one bad decision. China is on a hot streak, but the same could happen to them. What happens when Xi looses his mind? Or dies? Or when the economy takes a prolonged downturn? Democracies win over the long term because they bet small and lose small. Libraries aren’t being built because, A. We already have a lot of them in the west, and B. Typically they begin as part of a major philanthropic gift but right now our philanthropist class is focused on eradicating diseases and going to space.
- eternityforest 5y ago
  Getting involved in a war, trade war, or campaign of human rights abuse is a completely separate category from, say, spending 100 billion on some project. You might upset the economy a bit. Maybe someone will call you an idiot. But at any rate you made some jobs and nobody died. Nobody is going to demand sanctions unless someone is being badly abused. We did not spring into action with the pandemic. The only thing we did was make the vaccine, and we can't even keep up with the variants with that. If we really "Sprang into action" we would have small thermal cameras in our phones by now that would warn us of fevers. We would have grates in the floor making a constant downward airflow, and vents blowing HEPA air in the ceiling in major public spaces. Cashiers would have barriers and small filters making walls of clean air indefinitely, not just "Till the worst of the pandemic is over" It would be such a big industry they'd have advertising projections on the acrylic. Busses would have the same thing. We would have "Trying to get your employees to work sick" become a 10 year sentence kind of felony. We'd have subsidized masks that actually do something, with battery powered fans. We don't do these things because we accept infectious disease as part of life, and there's basically no interest in actually stopping it with any kind of sustainable long term technical evolution like we did with sanitary sewers. It seems the current system is considered good enough.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    It seems fairly unreasonable to suggest that it was a mistake to not or that it would be reasonable to have retrofitted all public buildings to have underfloor (sometimes underground) HVAC ducting added. Think about the typical large slab-on-grade grocery store, Target, Home Depot, Walmart, etc., which is the majority of the places I’ve had to go in the last two years. Given where we are with COVID, that seems like it would have been a massively wasteful over-reaction.
    - bckr 5y ago
      > Think about the typical large slab-on-grade grocery store You can raise the floor, just like you can drop the ceiling. > that seems like it would have been a massively wasteful over-reaction At least this person has some creative ideas for saving lives and actually evolving our society, so that we don't lose a million people to the next airborne virus, which I have little reason to believe won't happen next time.
      - sokoloff 5y ago
        Could we have built raised floors in all the grocery stores and big box stores while simultaneously serving the needs of a country in pandemic in two years? That seems beyond optimistic.
        bckr 5y ago
        We're not talking about perpetual motion engines. I think you've demonstrated the above commenter's point that > there's basically no interest in actually stopping it with any kind of sustainable long term technical evolution I for one am not looking forward to the next killer airborne virus.
- bllguo 5y ago
  this is overly reductive. the post didnt ask why we aren't building more libraries, it's asking whether we would build them today if they didn't exist. just like it's not ambiguous that libraries are a net positive, it's not ambiguous whether we need more housing and infrastructure. it's not ambiguous that we should deal with climate change. the inaction is not because of ambiguity, it's because we are unwilling to make short-term sacrifices. it's because there is no shared belief in a greater good. these are the kinds of decisions that were, for whatever reason, more easily made in the past than now. Look at the New Deal.
  - etempleton 5y ago
    I don’t think the ambiguity is what the challenges are, but how to solve the problems. And yes, we are unwilling to make sacrifices until the effects are already being strongly felt. This is not a good thing, just a reality of democracy not in chaos. Climate change is a good one. The threat is real. It is at the door, but unfortunately democracies and capitalism will not really react until it is kicking the door down. Europe avoided the Hitler problem until they invaded. US avoided Hitler and Japan until Pearl Harbor. I am agreeing with the author. Democracies need to be stoked into action. Other forms of government are more likely to act quickly, but perhaps rashly. That is my point.
Dracophoenix 5y ago
>Think about libraries as a concept – the government builds a huge building, buys loads of books from many different authors and allows everyone to just go there and read the books for free or some small fee. False premise: Most librairies in the United States were funded and built by private philanthropy. See: Carnegie Library >"Sometimes you can even take the books to your home!"– Now imagine libraries didn’t exist and some politician came around proposing we create libraries exactly as they are. What would you expect to happen? I can tell you what I would expect to happen: Nothing at all: What about the authors and publishers? What about the bookstores! People will just steal and/or destroy the books! People don’t even read anymore! I am quite confident they would never get built in any major western democracy today. If it's difficult to build libraries today, political will is not a limiting factor. Rather, technology has slowly but surely rendered the storage of dead trees as obsolete in all but a few circumstances (i.e. archival analysis) Just as we stopped using street cars when buses and cars proved to be more maneuverable and efficient, one shouldn't advocate a reinvention of the 19th century library simply because it delivered a unique benefit once upon a time.
- runamok 5y ago
  Feels like you are missing the point a bit. The author's point could be about libraries, National Parks, infrastructure like bridges, etc. Many things seem locked in place because of only short term thinking and an unwillingness for short term pain to accomplish long term greater good. Also Carnegie built the libraries under the provision that local governments would sponsor them going forward. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library Furthermore today libraries have started to adapt by loaning digitally. I was going to argue street cars were victims of GM but apparently you are mostly right. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_con... and https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c87l40/i_have_read_that_the_demise_of_streetcars_in_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c87l40/i_hav...
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    If we find libraries today, with best effort they’ll be built in 4x longer than initially planned and 10x the original budget. After it launches, it would be overrun by inefficiencies to the point of extreme dysfunction. See DMV.
daniel-s 5y ago
A commentary about the shortcomings of western civilization from someone that doesn't understand what makes our civilization a success. All the other civilizations have large powerful governments that intervene in their society. The West's strength comes from the fact that governments are generally restrained, slow, and more power and freedom is given to individuals. Governments are supposed to not be able to get anything done.
- dc-programmer 5y ago
  The internet, GPS, nuclear energy, novel vaccines, the interstate system, space flight, the Panama Canal, electrification of Appalachia, 99% adult literacy. Yup glad we didn’t need government action to get these done Most of the highlights of Western Civ have been a result of collective action. If anything the libertarian mythos that was synthesized in the late 70s is our greatest weakness.
- monkeycantype 5y ago
  The author frames this from the perspective of a government official making a choice, but I think the useful observation here applies to anybody making a choice - that in periods of stability, the weight of the status quo is an impediment to development when the summed benefit of development is great, but the individual benefit is small, we choose the safe default option over the riskier option that might more honestly reflect our desires. Therefore times of (and after) chaos and catastrophe, are periods of rapid development, because the dead weight of the status quo is diminished. This seems a reasonable thing to say, and seems even more appropriate is you're mechanisms for development are decentralised.
8bitsrule 5y ago
Hands off the libraries, pal. If you need a straw-they for your 'thought exercise', go ahead and use 'sports stadiums', I don't care then. Of course 'the west' IS still building lots of stadiums. [https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/the-10-newest-stadiums-in-the-nfl-and-what-buffalo-can-learn-from-them/article_e6032ffb-f5fb-5df6-9541-76d648596d83.html https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/the-10-newest-stadiums-... ] Panem et circenses. (Dick was right.)
- agalunar 5y ago
  Did you read the article? If anything, the author is arguing in favor of libraries. I may be misinterpreting your comment, though.
  - flembat 5y ago
    Libraries were just an example of why the author thinks the West can't build anything anymore. I think we can, and I think we will be rebuilding a lot soon as a demonstration of that.
hendark 5y ago
[dead]
yetanother12345 5y ago
In this day and age (at least in my country, a Western Democracy) libraries are not being built, rather closed, or converted to some other uses. And the majority of the vast inventories of books that was once the property of said libraries to keep for posterity's sake has literally been burned, as regulations forbade any kind of recirculation, donation, or sale.
- hungryforcodes 5y ago
  Really? I know this is a US article -- but in Canada as a kid my library used to sell "old books" that were too worn to keep in circulation for a nominal fee. Often sold garage sale style once a year. You could get a $10 book for $0.25 or something. As a kid I'd always make a list of books I read and wanted and wait each year to see if I could find some of them there.
  - riidom 5y ago
    Have you been tempted to speed up the "worn out"-factor a bit? It's (was) same here in germany, and I thought of doing so as a kid, but then didn't because books shall be treated well :)
    - hungryforcodes 5y ago
      Haha, I don't think I was that enterprising yet at that age -- but I did "forget" to return one or two I was fond of.
pjdorrell 5y ago
The author says: >"The status quo provides marginal individual benefit to the person making the decision while also causing marginal harm to society as a whole. Doing the right thing doesn’t really provide much tangible short term benefit." This explains exactly why the majority of people living in a dictatorship don't try very hard to do all the things that they need to do if they want to change their own government. They need to do things like finding out what is the truth about their government, and telling other people what that truth is. But doing that requires individual self-sacrifice, and most people, most of the time, don't what to do that.
noelherrick 5y ago
I am a bit aghast that the author does not mention the American robber barons who are intentionally trying to tear down government so they can pay fewer taxes and get to pass their wealth down to their children tax-free. It’s not “the West” that can’t do anything, it’s that we have whole organizations devoted to stopping any progress. I hate when people complain about government inefficiency or incompetence when the government is being opposed and sabotaged. My county’s DMV has been nothing but a pleasure to work with. When a government system in the west is failing it’s because it’s probably underfunded or weaponized (such as punishing unemployment insurance rules).
- DuskStar 5y ago
  I think it's ironic that you complain about robber barons preventing the modern equivalent to libraries when Andrew Carnegie built 2000 public libraries in the US alone.
  - anon9384929 5y ago
    You’re proving OPs point… they aren’t doing this anymore.
- Lochleg 5y ago
  With the abysmal reputation of DMVs, even if that were the primary business of government, people would still have a case for reforming government from the ground up.
tappio 5y ago
It is also that the public is rather happy with the status quo. Working against public opinion is not something that happens easily in democracy. It takes generations to change opinions.

31 points by vaghetti 5y ago

Gotta admit I read this one expecting to find some extremely libertarian critique of libraries per se, something about how "intellectual property" is being violated, etc etc etc. Instead, I found all the talking points to refute such extremist critiques, and a thoughtful expansion to problems afflicting western liberal democracies. Good read, very thoughtful.

etempleton 5y ago

To some extent, this is by design. The inaction of liberal western democracies is because it is ambiguous as it what should be done. Yes, this leads to stagnation, but also minimizes massive mistakes. When it becomes clear what needs to be done western democracies can spring into action, such as with, as the author pointed out, the pandemic. Look at Russia - The government, but more specifically Putin, just set the country back 20-30 years with one bad decision. China is on a hot streak, but the same could happen to them. What happens when Xi looses his mind? Or dies? Or when the economy takes a prolonged downturn? Democracies win over the long term because they bet small and lose small. Libraries aren’t being built because, A. We already have a lot of them in the west, and B. Typically they begin as part of a major philanthropic gift but right now our philanthropist class is focused on eradicating diseases and going to space.

eternityforest 5y ago
Getting involved in a war, trade war, or campaign of human rights abuse is a completely separate category from, say, spending 100 billion on some project. You might upset the economy a bit. Maybe someone will call you an idiot. But at any rate you made some jobs and nobody died. Nobody is going to demand sanctions unless someone is being badly abused. We did not spring into action with the pandemic. The only thing we did was make the vaccine, and we can't even keep up with the variants with that. If we really "Sprang into action" we would have small thermal cameras in our phones by now that would warn us of fevers. We would have grates in the floor making a constant downward airflow, and vents blowing HEPA air in the ceiling in major public spaces. Cashiers would have barriers and small filters making walls of clean air indefinitely, not just "Till the worst of the pandemic is over" It would be such a big industry they'd have advertising projections on the acrylic. Busses would have the same thing. We would have "Trying to get your employees to work sick" become a 10 year sentence kind of felony. We'd have subsidized masks that actually do something, with battery powered fans. We don't do these things because we accept infectious disease as part of life, and there's basically no interest in actually stopping it with any kind of sustainable long term technical evolution like we did with sanitary sewers. It seems the current system is considered good enough.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  It seems fairly unreasonable to suggest that it was a mistake to not or that it would be reasonable to have retrofitted all public buildings to have underfloor (sometimes underground) HVAC ducting added. Think about the typical large slab-on-grade grocery store, Target, Home Depot, Walmart, etc., which is the majority of the places I’ve had to go in the last two years. Given where we are with COVID, that seems like it would have been a massively wasteful over-reaction.
  - bckr 5y ago
    > Think about the typical large slab-on-grade grocery store You can raise the floor, just like you can drop the ceiling. > that seems like it would have been a massively wasteful over-reaction At least this person has some creative ideas for saving lives and actually evolving our society, so that we don't lose a million people to the next airborne virus, which I have little reason to believe won't happen next time.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      Could we have built raised floors in all the grocery stores and big box stores while simultaneously serving the needs of a country in pandemic in two years? That seems beyond optimistic.
      - bckr 5y ago
        We're not talking about perpetual motion engines. I think you've demonstrated the above commenter's point that > there's basically no interest in actually stopping it with any kind of sustainable long term technical evolution I for one am not looking forward to the next killer airborne virus.
bllguo 5y ago
this is overly reductive. the post didnt ask why we aren't building more libraries, it's asking whether we would build them today if they didn't exist. just like it's not ambiguous that libraries are a net positive, it's not ambiguous whether we need more housing and infrastructure. it's not ambiguous that we should deal with climate change. the inaction is not because of ambiguity, it's because we are unwilling to make short-term sacrifices. it's because there is no shared belief in a greater good. these are the kinds of decisions that were, for whatever reason, more easily made in the past than now. Look at the New Deal.
- etempleton 5y ago
  I don’t think the ambiguity is what the challenges are, but how to solve the problems. And yes, we are unwilling to make sacrifices until the effects are already being strongly felt. This is not a good thing, just a reality of democracy not in chaos. Climate change is a good one. The threat is real. It is at the door, but unfortunately democracies and capitalism will not really react until it is kicking the door down. Europe avoided the Hitler problem until they invaded. US avoided Hitler and Japan until Pearl Harbor. I am agreeing with the author. Democracies need to be stoked into action. Other forms of government are more likely to act quickly, but perhaps rashly. That is my point.

Dracophoenix 5y ago

>Think about libraries as a concept – the government builds a huge building, buys loads of books from many different authors and allows everyone to just go there and read the books for free or some small fee. False premise: Most librairies in the United States were funded and built by private philanthropy. See: Carnegie Library >"Sometimes you can even take the books to your home!"– Now imagine libraries didn’t exist and some politician came around proposing we create libraries exactly as they are. What would you expect to happen? I can tell you what I would expect to happen: Nothing at all: What about the authors and publishers? What about the bookstores! People will just steal and/or destroy the books! People don’t even read anymore! I am quite confident they would never get built in any major western democracy today. If it's difficult to build libraries today, political will is not a limiting factor. Rather, technology has slowly but surely rendered the storage of dead trees as obsolete in all but a few circumstances (i.e. archival analysis) Just as we stopped using street cars when buses and cars proved to be more maneuverable and efficient, one shouldn't advocate a reinvention of the 19th century library simply because it delivered a unique benefit once upon a time.

runamok 5y ago
Feels like you are missing the point a bit. The author's point could be about libraries, National Parks, infrastructure like bridges, etc. Many things seem locked in place because of only short term thinking and an unwillingness for short term pain to accomplish long term greater good. Also Carnegie built the libraries under the provision that local governments would sponsor them going forward. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library Furthermore today libraries have started to adapt by loaning digitally. I was going to argue street cars were victims of GM but apparently you are mostly right. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_con... and https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c87l40/i_have_read_that_the_demise_of_streetcars_in_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c87l40/i_hav...
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  If we find libraries today, with best effort they’ll be built in 4x longer than initially planned and 10x the original budget. After it launches, it would be overrun by inefficiencies to the point of extreme dysfunction. See DMV.

daniel-s 5y ago

A commentary about the shortcomings of western civilization from someone that doesn't understand what makes our civilization a success. All the other civilizations have large powerful governments that intervene in their society. The West's strength comes from the fact that governments are generally restrained, slow, and more power and freedom is given to individuals. Governments are supposed to not be able to get anything done.

dc-programmer 5y ago
The internet, GPS, nuclear energy, novel vaccines, the interstate system, space flight, the Panama Canal, electrification of Appalachia, 99% adult literacy. Yup glad we didn’t need government action to get these done Most of the highlights of Western Civ have been a result of collective action. If anything the libertarian mythos that was synthesized in the late 70s is our greatest weakness.
monkeycantype 5y ago
The author frames this from the perspective of a government official making a choice, but I think the useful observation here applies to anybody making a choice - that in periods of stability, the weight of the status quo is an impediment to development when the summed benefit of development is great, but the individual benefit is small, we choose the safe default option over the riskier option that might more honestly reflect our desires. Therefore times of (and after) chaos and catastrophe, are periods of rapid development, because the dead weight of the status quo is diminished. This seems a reasonable thing to say, and seems even more appropriate is you're mechanisms for development are decentralised.

8bitsrule 5y ago

Hands off the libraries, pal. If you need a straw-they for your 'thought exercise', go ahead and use 'sports stadiums', I don't care then. Of course 'the west' IS still building lots of stadiums. [https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/the-10-newest-stadiums-in-the-nfl-and-what-buffalo-can-learn-from-them/article_e6032ffb-f5fb-5df6-9541-76d648596d83.html https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/the-10-newest-stadiums-... ] Panem et circenses. (Dick was right.)

agalunar 5y ago
Did you read the article? If anything, the author is arguing in favor of libraries. I may be misinterpreting your comment, though.
- flembat 5y ago
  Libraries were just an example of why the author thinks the West can't build anything anymore. I think we can, and I think we will be rebuilding a lot soon as a demonstration of that.

hendark 5y ago

[dead]

yetanother12345 5y ago

In this day and age (at least in my country, a Western Democracy) libraries are not being built, rather closed, or converted to some other uses. And the majority of the vast inventories of books that was once the property of said libraries to keep for posterity's sake has literally been burned, as regulations forbade any kind of recirculation, donation, or sale.

hungryforcodes 5y ago
Really? I know this is a US article -- but in Canada as a kid my library used to sell "old books" that were too worn to keep in circulation for a nominal fee. Often sold garage sale style once a year. You could get a $10 book for $0.25 or something. As a kid I'd always make a list of books I read and wanted and wait each year to see if I could find some of them there.
- riidom 5y ago
  Have you been tempted to speed up the "worn out"-factor a bit? It's (was) same here in germany, and I thought of doing so as a kid, but then didn't because books shall be treated well :)
  - hungryforcodes 5y ago
    Haha, I don't think I was that enterprising yet at that age -- but I did "forget" to return one or two I was fond of.

pjdorrell 5y ago

The author says: >"The status quo provides marginal individual benefit to the person making the decision while also causing marginal harm to society as a whole. Doing the right thing doesn’t really provide much tangible short term benefit." This explains exactly why the majority of people living in a dictatorship don't try very hard to do all the things that they need to do if they want to change their own government. They need to do things like finding out what is the truth about their government, and telling other people what that truth is. But doing that requires individual self-sacrifice, and most people, most of the time, don't what to do that.

noelherrick 5y ago

I am a bit aghast that the author does not mention the American robber barons who are intentionally trying to tear down government so they can pay fewer taxes and get to pass their wealth down to their children tax-free. It’s not “the West” that can’t do anything, it’s that we have whole organizations devoted to stopping any progress. I hate when people complain about government inefficiency or incompetence when the government is being opposed and sabotaged. My county’s DMV has been nothing but a pleasure to work with. When a government system in the west is failing it’s because it’s probably underfunded or weaponized (such as punishing unemployment insurance rules).

DuskStar 5y ago
I think it's ironic that you complain about robber barons preventing the modern equivalent to libraries when Andrew Carnegie built 2000 public libraries in the US alone.
- anon9384929 5y ago
  You’re proving OPs point… they aren’t doing this anymore.
Lochleg 5y ago
With the abysmal reputation of DMVs, even if that were the primary business of government, people would still have a case for reforming government from the ground up.

tappio 5y ago

It is also that the public is rather happy with the status quo. Working against public opinion is not something that happens easily in democracy. It takes generations to change opinions.