This guy says that public libraries should be subject to the same free-market forces as other businesses; offer goods and services at competitive costs and provide good customer service to ensure repeat business. WTF?
This is the problem with the world. Everything is based on economics. What's the cost-benefit ratio of a librarian? I'm sure it sucks. What's the cost-benefit ratio of a lawyer? It sucks more, but who's going to take on lawyers. So let's attack librarians. Some poor bastards (bastardesses?) who just want help others find information. And not starve while doing it.
This (I just had to delete all the Cartmanesque references I used to describe him) university student (hey, why do we have so many professions teaching in universities? Let's put all the instruction on the Web for one-tenth the cost) bases his theories on video rental stores and how the free market offers consumers low costs and endless variety. Hey, the free market is $90 a barrel oil! The free market is child labor in Asia! The free market is people like you who don't want to pay taxes that support libraries.
Let's privatize roads, so each one-mile stretch will have another toll booth for some other company to get their cut. Let's privatize cops so you can get your credit score rated before they decide to show up.
Then he finishes with: "The free market has been good to children thus far, and there is no reason to doubt it now. "
No. Free libraries have been good to children. The free market puts them in factories and whore houses.
Libraries are free because society needs them to be free. So that everyone gets a chance to come through the front door, equally. Try getting half our patrons through the front door of most businesses. And we do this for about $150 a year in taxes. And Blockbuster and Netflix are $18 a month. I think that's more. Add in book rental fees, Internet access, print and online newspapers, magazines and reference sources, directory assistance, legal forms, and guess what? Maybe you're right. Maybe we need the free market to step in so the public can know just how much money they save with free libraries. Thanks for the education, dude.
