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They are. Every single public resource is seen as a potential market opportunity being squandered away, or as competition other players do not want to see in p

They are. Every single public resource is seen as a potential market opportunity being squandered away, or as competition other players do not want to see in play.

atoav 3y ago
Well a library is a place where a population can spend the day getting smarter while not spending money. If you're rich, powerful and an unethical asshole those are two things you definitely do not want. Sadly many people seem to think they are really showing the folks up there by retreating from any form of self-education once they are out of school. The opposite couldn't be more true.
- leonroy 3y ago
  Didn’t Andrew Carnegie, the very definition of rich and difficult to work for spend a huge chunk of his fortune funding 3000+ libraries? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library
  - defrost 3y ago
    The criticisms were telling though, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and many others claimed he had a rich mans agenda, seeking fame rather than improvement, paying for buildings and not books, maintaining segregation rather than open access, paying for bricks was "cheaper" than paying taxes, etc. Not undercutting the role of libraries, just pointing out that philanthropy from the wealthy can be a mixed bag of indirect control and agenda pushing at times, wrapped up in tidy looking tax avoidance multi layered "charity" arrangements.
    - gameman144 2y ago
      It's always fair to criticize, but it's also very plausible that Carnegie paid for buildings instead of books so that his charity would improve things for the longer term. Also, as long as the outcomes are good, I personally don't care one iota whether a person is doing them for the wrong reasons.
  - atoav 3y ago
    Then he isn't rich, powerful and an unethical asshole. People can be rich and try to do the right thing even if there seems to be no direct economic incentive to do so — and I applaud them if they do realize that money alone doesn't create a meaningful life. Yet I don't need to wonder whether a normal tax rate on billionaires would do even more for the libraries.
    - gameman144 2y ago
      > Yet I don't need to wonder whether a normal tax rate on billionaires would do even more for the libraries. I agree that tax rates should be higher, but I have absolutely no faith that politicians will do a better job stewarding money toward good causes than a billionaire who cares about them (and/or wants to brag about their philanthropy for clout)
      - EricE 2y ago
        >I agree that tax rates should be higher, Why? Why isn't reducing waste ever an option?
        gameman144 2y ago
        Reducing waste is a great option! I'm not of the opinion that raising taxes is some objectively correct solution or anything, my personal viewpoint is just that taxing more across the board to invest in infrastructure and long-term economic strengths is the way to go.
  - isleyaardvark 2y ago
    It's a shame the current robber barons are worse than the old ones.
- vik0 3y ago
  >If you're rich, powerful and an unethical asshole those are two things you definitely do not want. This smells like a half-baked conspiracy theory. It's not like the overwhelming majority of people want to get smarter in their free time. I'm not sure how it is in the rest of the world, but in American and all (individual) European cultures, most people don't pursue self-education. I would not be surprised if this applies to most other cultures as well You might say that's how a lot of people on this website got their knowledge, but this website is statistically insignificant compared to the world population. Plus, it's not like every single member here pursues self-education. I'm willing to wager most people come on here just to be entertained
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    > I'm willing to wager most people come on here just to be entertained To add to the conspiracy, endless entertainment is another way that the rich and powerful want to keep the population complacent. Add some unsubtle propaganda about how great and diverse the US is, too. That said, the propaganda isn't as straightforward as it used to be, and foreign propaganda is sprinkled in as well with e.g. China funding and adding their section to big blockbuster films.
  - atoav 3y ago
    I didn't say rich, powerful and unethical people actively need to work against public libraries. They just don't need to support them, which is enough, given the fact that they often land in or near places of political power. Just don't increase the funding while inflation increases and you're basically cutting funding. And then when things eventually start to look like shit tear them down. And these are not even things a rich, powerful and unethical person needs to do willingly or on purpose. It is just a thing that happens, because it isn't high on the priority list. And it isn't high on the priority list because it doesn't make them direct money. Now if you're a politician that profits from your constituents being not too critical why should you actively support a thing that has the potential to make them more critical? Not that you actively have to be against it, it just isn't that high on your list of priorities.. This is how incentives work. And while there are people who will support measures which won't directly profit them short term, it seems to me they are an endangered species, at least in the US.
- Zenzero 3y ago
  > Well a library is a place where a population can spend the day getting smarter while not spending money. If you're rich, powerful and an unethical asshole those are two things you definitely do not want. This is conspiracy level thinking. Nobody wealthy is sitting around scheming how to keep the proles dumb and subdued. The assault on public institutions like libraries comes from 2 places: 1) Stop wasting my tax dollars on stuff I don't use or care about. Or 2) I bet there is an untapped commercial market that can be built, and people will love my solution more than public libraries.
  - teitoklien 3y ago
    > Nobody wealthy is sitting around scheming how to keep the proles dumb and subdued. They dont sit around scheming, they work, walk around doing it in action. Company executives keep adding ingredients to processed food to make them addictive knowing it’ll hurt health outcomes and lead to more death. Company executives continue to sell medicine that they sell for $20 or $10 in Europe or India, but charge americans $5000 or higher for the same medicine in the same package. They shut down any research paper that outs them, by suppressing the findings, like Facebook or Junk food companies do whenever a research is conducted on their products. We should celebrate our pioneers and innovators, but we shouldn’t ignore it blindly when MBA execs and Beancounters actively sabotage and hurt their own customers and the masses. Businesses are awesome, but it shouldnt be used to give a no questions asked green flag to anyone who runs businesses. There are people actively lobbying for policies that lead to more american deaths, bankruptcies, families breaking into shambles, and the government watching from the sidelines and even sometimes helping to make it all happen. Yes, there are people who do want to subdue the masses and keep them dumb, just as long as it helps them buy 1 more yacht or few more 0s in their bank balance. I say it as a free market capitalist who is ardently anti-communist.
  - loup-vaillant 3y ago
    > > [Rich & powerful assholes often maintain their status by unethical means.] > This is conspiracy level thinking. The prevalence of assholes is a documented thing (latest numbers I've heard was over 6% of clinical narcissists, reportedly a very conservative lower bound), and who would ever be surprised that high-status people like being high-status? I don't know about libraries specifically, but the idea that rich assholes would like to keep the education level of the general population below a threatening threshold is not conspiracy thinking to me, it's just obvious. I am of course not denying the existence of nice rich people. Though I'm afraid they tend to be selected out of ludicrous wealth. In fact, I fully expect to find many more assholes among super-rich people than I would among the general population. (But I'm not sure either: the strife we find among some of the poorest people also tend to generate assholes…)
- throw__away7391 3y ago
  Ah yes, just last week me and my fellow billionaires at our secret biannual conference in Geneva were discussing how we can prevent people from reading books at the library. See, people reading is a threat to our power, one which we take very seriously. It is not going to be easy, especially seeing how many of us have donated millions of dollars to libraries and a few even have wings of libraries named after us, but the threat is too severe now, drastic measures must be taken. Now seeing how people are on to our plot, the urgency is clear. I am proposing that over the next few decades we work secretly behind the scenes to gradually reduce funding for various local libraries which have seen visitors decline since the rise of the Internet.
  - jacobyoder 3y ago
    > few even have wings of libraries named after us Public libraries? With easy access?
    - throw__away7391 3y ago
      I don’t know if you have ever been to a public library, but basically all of them are prominently adorned with the names of their largest donors.
      - atoav 3y ago
        How many of those could you have built if you had taxed billionaires with a normal tax rate?
        throw__away7391 2y ago
        I believe this is called "moving the goalposts".
  - wasteduniverse 3y ago
    [dead]
- cafard 3y ago
  Thank goodness then that socialists got a jump on building libraries back in the day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library
  - yardie 3y ago
    Carnegie: “I’d like to avoid being remembered for having a bunch of labor strikers shot and killed. How can I launder my reputation?” PR: “sir, with enough money you can make the public believe whatever you want.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewashing_(censorship) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewashing_(censorship)
    - cafard 3y ago
      Quite. Do you refuse, on principle, to visit the Frick when in New York City? For that matter do you avoid the Rockefeller Center?
      - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
        Straw man argument; the person you're replying to did not mention any boycotting. See also "Mr. Gotcha".
- ddingus 3y ago
  Yes, I see it playing out the same undesirable and unfortunate way. Great comment.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

They are. Every single public resource is seen as a potential market opportunity being squandered away, or as competition other players do not want to see in play.

atoav 3y ago

Well a library is a place where a population can spend the day getting smarter while not spending money. If you're rich, powerful and an unethical asshole those are two things you definitely do not want. Sadly many people seem to think they are really showing the folks up there by retreating from any form of self-education once they are out of school. The opposite couldn't be more true.

leonroy 3y ago
Didn’t Andrew Carnegie, the very definition of rich and difficult to work for spend a huge chunk of his fortune funding 3000+ libraries? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library
- defrost 3y ago
  The criticisms were telling though, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and many others claimed he had a rich mans agenda, seeking fame rather than improvement, paying for buildings and not books, maintaining segregation rather than open access, paying for bricks was "cheaper" than paying taxes, etc. Not undercutting the role of libraries, just pointing out that philanthropy from the wealthy can be a mixed bag of indirect control and agenda pushing at times, wrapped up in tidy looking tax avoidance multi layered "charity" arrangements.
  - gameman144 2y ago
    It's always fair to criticize, but it's also very plausible that Carnegie paid for buildings instead of books so that his charity would improve things for the longer term. Also, as long as the outcomes are good, I personally don't care one iota whether a person is doing them for the wrong reasons.
- atoav 3y ago
  Then he isn't rich, powerful and an unethical asshole. People can be rich and try to do the right thing even if there seems to be no direct economic incentive to do so — and I applaud them if they do realize that money alone doesn't create a meaningful life. Yet I don't need to wonder whether a normal tax rate on billionaires would do even more for the libraries.
  - gameman144 2y ago
    > Yet I don't need to wonder whether a normal tax rate on billionaires would do even more for the libraries. I agree that tax rates should be higher, but I have absolutely no faith that politicians will do a better job stewarding money toward good causes than a billionaire who cares about them (and/or wants to brag about their philanthropy for clout)
    - EricE 2y ago
      >I agree that tax rates should be higher, Why? Why isn't reducing waste ever an option?
      - gameman144 2y ago
        Reducing waste is a great option! I'm not of the opinion that raising taxes is some objectively correct solution or anything, my personal viewpoint is just that taxing more across the board to invest in infrastructure and long-term economic strengths is the way to go.
- isleyaardvark 2y ago
  It's a shame the current robber barons are worse than the old ones.
vik0 3y ago
>If you're rich, powerful and an unethical asshole those are two things you definitely do not want. This smells like a half-baked conspiracy theory. It's not like the overwhelming majority of people want to get smarter in their free time. I'm not sure how it is in the rest of the world, but in American and all (individual) European cultures, most people don't pursue self-education. I would not be surprised if this applies to most other cultures as well You might say that's how a lot of people on this website got their knowledge, but this website is statistically insignificant compared to the world population. Plus, it's not like every single member here pursues self-education. I'm willing to wager most people come on here just to be entertained
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  > I'm willing to wager most people come on here just to be entertained To add to the conspiracy, endless entertainment is another way that the rich and powerful want to keep the population complacent. Add some unsubtle propaganda about how great and diverse the US is, too. That said, the propaganda isn't as straightforward as it used to be, and foreign propaganda is sprinkled in as well with e.g. China funding and adding their section to big blockbuster films.
- atoav 3y ago
  I didn't say rich, powerful and unethical people actively need to work against public libraries. They just don't need to support them, which is enough, given the fact that they often land in or near places of political power. Just don't increase the funding while inflation increases and you're basically cutting funding. And then when things eventually start to look like shit tear them down. And these are not even things a rich, powerful and unethical person needs to do willingly or on purpose. It is just a thing that happens, because it isn't high on the priority list. And it isn't high on the priority list because it doesn't make them direct money. Now if you're a politician that profits from your constituents being not too critical why should you actively support a thing that has the potential to make them more critical? Not that you actively have to be against it, it just isn't that high on your list of priorities.. This is how incentives work. And while there are people who will support measures which won't directly profit them short term, it seems to me they are an endangered species, at least in the US.
Zenzero 3y ago
> Well a library is a place where a population can spend the day getting smarter while not spending money. If you're rich, powerful and an unethical asshole those are two things you definitely do not want. This is conspiracy level thinking. Nobody wealthy is sitting around scheming how to keep the proles dumb and subdued. The assault on public institutions like libraries comes from 2 places: 1) Stop wasting my tax dollars on stuff I don't use or care about. Or 2) I bet there is an untapped commercial market that can be built, and people will love my solution more than public libraries.
- teitoklien 3y ago
  > Nobody wealthy is sitting around scheming how to keep the proles dumb and subdued. They dont sit around scheming, they work, walk around doing it in action. Company executives keep adding ingredients to processed food to make them addictive knowing it’ll hurt health outcomes and lead to more death. Company executives continue to sell medicine that they sell for $20 or $10 in Europe or India, but charge americans $5000 or higher for the same medicine in the same package. They shut down any research paper that outs them, by suppressing the findings, like Facebook or Junk food companies do whenever a research is conducted on their products. We should celebrate our pioneers and innovators, but we shouldn’t ignore it blindly when MBA execs and Beancounters actively sabotage and hurt their own customers and the masses. Businesses are awesome, but it shouldnt be used to give a no questions asked green flag to anyone who runs businesses. There are people actively lobbying for policies that lead to more american deaths, bankruptcies, families breaking into shambles, and the government watching from the sidelines and even sometimes helping to make it all happen. Yes, there are people who do want to subdue the masses and keep them dumb, just as long as it helps them buy 1 more yacht or few more 0s in their bank balance. I say it as a free market capitalist who is ardently anti-communist.
- loup-vaillant 3y ago
  > > [Rich & powerful assholes often maintain their status by unethical means.] > This is conspiracy level thinking. The prevalence of assholes is a documented thing (latest numbers I've heard was over 6% of clinical narcissists, reportedly a very conservative lower bound), and who would ever be surprised that high-status people like being high-status? I don't know about libraries specifically, but the idea that rich assholes would like to keep the education level of the general population below a threatening threshold is not conspiracy thinking to me, it's just obvious. I am of course not denying the existence of nice rich people. Though I'm afraid they tend to be selected out of ludicrous wealth. In fact, I fully expect to find many more assholes among super-rich people than I would among the general population. (But I'm not sure either: the strife we find among some of the poorest people also tend to generate assholes…)
throw__away7391 3y ago
Ah yes, just last week me and my fellow billionaires at our secret biannual conference in Geneva were discussing how we can prevent people from reading books at the library. See, people reading is a threat to our power, one which we take very seriously. It is not going to be easy, especially seeing how many of us have donated millions of dollars to libraries and a few even have wings of libraries named after us, but the threat is too severe now, drastic measures must be taken. Now seeing how people are on to our plot, the urgency is clear. I am proposing that over the next few decades we work secretly behind the scenes to gradually reduce funding for various local libraries which have seen visitors decline since the rise of the Internet.
- jacobyoder 3y ago
  > few even have wings of libraries named after us Public libraries? With easy access?
  - throw__away7391 3y ago
    I don’t know if you have ever been to a public library, but basically all of them are prominently adorned with the names of their largest donors.
    - atoav 3y ago
      How many of those could you have built if you had taxed billionaires with a normal tax rate?
      - throw__away7391 2y ago
        I believe this is called "moving the goalposts".
- wasteduniverse 3y ago
  [dead]
cafard 3y ago
Thank goodness then that socialists got a jump on building libraries back in the day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library
- yardie 3y ago
  Carnegie: “I’d like to avoid being remembered for having a bunch of labor strikers shot and killed. How can I launder my reputation?” PR: “sir, with enough money you can make the public believe whatever you want.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewashing_(censorship) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewashing_(censorship)
  - cafard 3y ago
    Quite. Do you refuse, on principle, to visit the Frick when in New York City? For that matter do you avoid the Rockefeller Center?
    - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
      Straw man argument; the person you're replying to did not mention any boycotting. See also "Mr. Gotcha".
ddingus 3y ago
Yes, I see it playing out the same undesirable and unfortunate way. Great comment.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]