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Should the city start charging market rate for schools, parks, and libraries?

by asdfologist 12y ago

jasonisalive 12y ago
Why not?
- walterbell 12y ago
  Libraries are a form of insurance against the societal costs of illiteracy, which is related to crime. http://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2014/07/10/if-you-want-to-see-the-sharing-economy-go-to-the-library/ http://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2014/07/10/if-you-wa... --- Though the library may appear to be free, the truth is quite different; it is not that the library borrower is getting things for free, it is that they have already paid. Libraries are the result of a community pooling resources (often gathered through taxes) for the funding and purchasing of materials that are then made available to all members of that community. ... Just as a community invests in infrastructure like roads, bridges and water management systems – a community invests in a library. Libraries, if you will, represent educational and intellectual infrastructure. A recognition that just as a road makes it easier to reach your destination, so too does access to information enable one to complete a journey of another sort. ... what occurs in a library is the development and maintenance through the economy of a genuine structure for sharing. Numerous people contribute a little and from this are able to get a lot, but the value they extract from their investment is not in the form of a sack of money with a dollar sign on it, but a larger social value. It is a value that would be diminished by turning it simply into a profit-generating scheme. ---
  - jasonisalive 12y ago
    Well that's very rousing, but only someone working for a chronically underfunded and at-risk institution would feel the need to write such flowery prose. If I was a rich taxpayer whose money was on the line I don't think I would be convinced.
    - walterbell 12y ago
      Yeah some wanted to turn NYC's flagship research library into a glorified starbucks, removing book stacks. Pesky enlightenment democracy and city elections had a diferent opinion. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/arts/design/public-library-abandons-plan-to-revamp-42nd-street-building.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/arts/design/public-library... --- In a striking about-face, the New York Public Library has abandoned its much-disputed renovation plan to turn part of its research flagship on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street into a circulating library and instead will refurbish the nearby Mid-Manhattan Library, several library trustees said .. This shift is something of a defeat for the library, which had already paid the British architect Norman Foster $9 million in private funds for his firm’s work on the plan for the flagship, a 1911 Beaux-Arts landmark. ---
    - taybin 12y ago
      The short-sightedness of the current crop of the upper class is a problem.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
judk 12y ago
The important distinction is congestion. Users should pay auction prices for contested resources (how much someone else would have to pay to get access). Windfall gains should then be used for general welfare spending for the community (maybe building more of the scarce resources). This is how shared infrastructure can finance its development, in a way that incentivize efficient use age patterns (smoothing/flattening the demand across time) Marginal cost of a non-fully -occupied library is approximately zero.

Should the city start charging market rate for schools, parks, and libraries?

jasonisalive 12y ago

Why not?

walterbell 12y ago
Libraries are a form of insurance against the societal costs of illiteracy, which is related to crime. http://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2014/07/10/if-you-want-to-see-the-sharing-economy-go-to-the-library/ http://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2014/07/10/if-you-wa... --- Though the library may appear to be free, the truth is quite different; it is not that the library borrower is getting things for free, it is that they have already paid. Libraries are the result of a community pooling resources (often gathered through taxes) for the funding and purchasing of materials that are then made available to all members of that community. ... Just as a community invests in infrastructure like roads, bridges and water management systems – a community invests in a library. Libraries, if you will, represent educational and intellectual infrastructure. A recognition that just as a road makes it easier to reach your destination, so too does access to information enable one to complete a journey of another sort. ... what occurs in a library is the development and maintenance through the economy of a genuine structure for sharing. Numerous people contribute a little and from this are able to get a lot, but the value they extract from their investment is not in the form of a sack of money with a dollar sign on it, but a larger social value. It is a value that would be diminished by turning it simply into a profit-generating scheme. ---
- jasonisalive 12y ago
  Well that's very rousing, but only someone working for a chronically underfunded and at-risk institution would feel the need to write such flowery prose. If I was a rich taxpayer whose money was on the line I don't think I would be convinced.
  - walterbell 12y ago
    Yeah some wanted to turn NYC's flagship research library into a glorified starbucks, removing book stacks. Pesky enlightenment democracy and city elections had a diferent opinion. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/arts/design/public-library-abandons-plan-to-revamp-42nd-street-building.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/arts/design/public-library... --- In a striking about-face, the New York Public Library has abandoned its much-disputed renovation plan to turn part of its research flagship on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street into a circulating library and instead will refurbish the nearby Mid-Manhattan Library, several library trustees said .. This shift is something of a defeat for the library, which had already paid the British architect Norman Foster $9 million in private funds for his firm’s work on the plan for the flagship, a 1911 Beaux-Arts landmark. ---
  - taybin 12y ago
    The short-sightedness of the current crop of the upper class is a problem.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

judk 12y ago

The important distinction is congestion. Users should pay auction prices for contested resources (how much someone else would have to pay to get access). Windfall gains should then be used for general welfare spending for the community (maybe building more of the scarce resources). This is how shared infrastructure can finance its development, in a way that incentivize efficient use age patterns (smoothing/flattening the demand across time) Marginal cost of a non-fully -occupied library is approximately zero.