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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.
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.