It's just worth reiterating public services and institutions will often suffer in comparison to the elite free market providers which is predictable but also, imo, uninteresting and when repeated enough is underlying literally the entire right wing agenda. As an informal observation it's fine and true enough. Not everything is political. But just note demeaning the library's audiobook system, availability and selection vis a vis Audible is a one way path to how you arrive in Trump's America. Obviously Audible is going to be better, more usable, and you'll get whatever you want the moment you want it. The average public library stands on its own, apart from it, a separate institution and it's not meant to stack up to Amazon.

pvn's post is just a good jumping off point that the comparison he makes (points 1-23 versus points 24) is deeply unfair but people do it literally all the time in tons of services (not just audiobooks, even forgetting public libraries) and the whole gambit is (usually) to demean public services and resources for not failing to measure up to private firms. The next step from there is LOL we don't even NEED libraries, why the poor can huddle around trash fires and discarded textbooks for warmth and entertainment, I mean our ancestors told each other stories around the fire, are the poors too good for that, why Amazon has everything *we* need, duh!

I agree with your point in general, but I don't think that it's obviously, necessarily, or universally true that commercial services like Amazon are better. It may well be true for audio - I've never gotten audio books from Amazon - but it's not true for regular books with the caveat that I take a nice walk to my library to pick up a book instead of having it delivered to my house. The public library provides other services and I think my library system (a big one - second biggest non-university public library system in the country) has a bigger selection than Amazon.

If there's some argument about "one-click" vs. two or three or even four clicks I really can't fathom how anyone other than an idiot in a marketing department could think that matters. An interface requiring a few clicks can easily be more simple and intuitive than a "one-click" interface.

I dunno about audio books, but libraries being used definitely contributes to their security.

A lot of the people I read are dead anyway and most of the ones who aren't have a lot more money than I do. I don't worry about that a lot. But my wife buys a lot of books anyway, so my/our money ends up in various author's hands as well as Jeff Bezos'.

Got it.

Our local library also provides fun activities for adults and children at no charge. Amazon doesn't do that.

I agree. As you and Trolly have pointed out, the library can compete with Amazon specifically and most importantly on price and perhaps a few other factors. It's not obviously, necessarily, or universally true that commercial services like Amazon are better than the public alternatives but they often will be. I have no doubt for instance that Audible has a better app than the average library uses, the gratification for the user can be instant -- the book is never on wait. Audible's selection is probably way better.

My point is simply that pvn's experience with getting audiobooks from his library compared to Amazon is unfair. Sledding at the hill at the public park won't be nearly as nice as skiing at a resort in Aspen but god bless public open green spaces is the correct answer.

There was a Bob Dylan tribute group I went to a couple weeks ago and my wife and I at 50 were probably 20 years younger than the next youngest people aside from the performers. It had me thinking that while the old people vote R, they are naturally pretty communal.

You pay for it with your tax dollars. Once the Republicans claw back what they can out of Social Security and Medicare, they might get to libraries eventually. Poors been living large in these libraries with those no-cost DVD rentals and places to sit without having to buy something. If Fox News started highlighting this indolence I suspect the deplorables would be fuming and frothing at the mouth in no time.

Thankfully, and in reality, they remain relatively small line items in public budgets, so this prediction may never come to fruition but modern America is always full of surprises.

Funding is mostly local. We have state income tax, sales tax, property tax, many cities have their own sales tax and there are bond measures all the time for things like libraries. The Brownbackier parts of the country have probably killed or mortally wounded their libraries already.

They've already done so, at least here in Pennsylvania, under the guise of cutting spending in general. The rural areas of the state have been sending nothing but Tea Party slappies to Harrisburg for years now. They have, in turn, refused to pass any state budget which doesn't slash spending across the board.

Needless to say funding to public libraries has already been cut. Pennsylvania law requires public libraries that receive tax dollars to maintain certain hours of operation in order to get the money, including being open on Saturdays. Our local library now has to hold various fund raisers throughout the year just to keep its doors open.

I'm not a form over function guy, but money gets into our library system. This is my local library.

****ing awesome

The main point was mostly that middlemen have a vested interest in making the borrowing process as cumbersome as possible. It’s hard to **** with dead tree books but they can do all sorts of bullahit shenanigans with bits.

Libraries are awesome yo.

Most books i want to read are $.01 used plus $3.99 shipping off amazon but if it's anything that is expensive i can just go to my library's webpage and have them order it for me. They'll buy 10 books per year on my behalf. Hopefully there are other people that want to read new books on how artificial intelligence will kill us all or new scholarly books on Greek hoplites.

That's pretty good. I only get to recommend a purchase and get no idea if they are going to buy or not.

I love our local library, and get books there all the time. The one strange thing that our local library has done is eliminate overdue fines entirely. Not sure I understand why.

Also, this is obviously true:

It was a major battle in my town getting the public library construction funded. I remember some tool came to my house with a petition against funding and when I told him I wouldn't sign it he went off about how all the people with money were going to move out of town. Told him it couldn't happen soon enough for me.

I can confirm that the Santa Monica library is absolutely awesome and there are poors in there all the time alongside rich people galore. California just continuously dunks on right wing ideology, it's pretty great.

What else goes on in libraries these days other than homeless people watching porn?

I think this is true in every state. If you are not charged sales tax you are supposed to keep track of it and submit a payment to the state. This obviously almost never happens, nor is there any real enforcement.

For a while MA was trying to force sales tax on items purchased over the border in NH, but I haven't heard much about that in recent years.

Bump ...

https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/16/ba...illing-itself/