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Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

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Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#141

Post by jacoblyles »

benwerd wrote: post #4

A thousand times this. I find the ultra-libertarian stance that our community sometimes takes to be counter to what web applications have been about. Are we empowering people or aren't we? Libraries are hugely important knowledge transfer hubs (and, as the MeFi commenter rightly says, community centers). Furthermore, selfishly, for us as builders, they're the only place a lot of people will ever come into contact wit…

I'm an ultra-libertarian because I'm fairly certain that giving more revenue to the CA general fund will result in more money given to pensions of 55-year old state employee retirees, and not useful public services like libraries. The large bureaucracies in this country (CA, NY, and national governments) are incredibly dysfunctional and captured by special interest.

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#142

Post by tptacek »

bmj wrote: post #133
tptacek wrote: post #121

Can I add to this one little point, which is a counterintuitive thing you can do to help your local library: Use your local library . During the year we started Matasano our Chicago team spent about 40%-50% of our time working from the Oak Park Public Library, sometimes in meeting rooms we booked, more often at study desks. It was great. The Internet access wasn't amazing but it was totally functional and we could VP…

I'd upvote this many times, if I could. I got in the habit of doing several hours of work a week at the library while my kids were doing various activities, and I loved it. At first, I did have that "gee, am I just taking space" moment, but just as Thomas points out, this is actually what libraries are for--they provide knowledge services (that is, books and internet access) for free. I'd also recommend that if you d…

Totally forgot about kids! We took our kids to the library all the time when we were working out of it. Now we have nice offices downtown and our kids get to the library... never. Yet another benefit of working from the local library at least some of the time.

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#143

Post by rmason »

The situation in Detroit is dire with the most frequently used libraries being closed. There's strong community support to keep the libraries open but the city is broke.

http://michigancitizen.com/neighbors-refuse-to-give-up-east-...

The Detroit library houses the second greatest collection in the world of baseball memorabilia which was given to them by the late Tigers announcer Ernie Harwell. Access is limited, items are being stolen and the collection isn't being well preserved. This collection could be a tourist attraction as a separate museum that would be self sustaining but the city lacks the seed capital to build it.

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2011/06/report_e...

I know it's popular in the tech world to say that libraries will disappear with the digitization of books. But what you don't understand is that libraries are the heart and soul of the communities that they serve and no software program can replace the function they serve.

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#144

Post by martey »

zanny wrote: post #136
mansolo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's horrifying that we need a TL;DR for a modest chunk of text - a mere comment. If our attention spans are that fried, are we any better off than the hypothetical guy trying to fill out a government form? It's a bit like taking someone's synopsis for what the Bible is about. You can't. You have to read it, experience it and parse it yourself or you can't really know. Myself, I'm not going to pablum-feed you guys a…

People write TLDRs for their comments whenever they feel they expended more words on the topic than they feel were necessary, it doesn't imply an expectation that no one else would read it. When I write a fervent wall of text I think is worthy of reading in full, I don't put on a TLDR, I just pity the fool who doesn't take the time to partake of dense knowledge. So, TLDR, it is the author feeling the content is lacki…

"TLDR, it is the author feeling the content is lacking in a dense section of text more than the reader having a limited attention span that leads to TLDR's."

There is no evidence that "feralchimp" (who wrote the TLDR here on Hacker News) is the same as "codacorolla" (who wrote the original comment on Metafilter).

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#145

Post by bryanlarsen »

mtraven wrote: post #131
celoyd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem . This is what governments are for .

It is what governments are for, but given the current spectacular failures of government, quasi-monopolistic corporations that can afford it might as well take on some of their functions. There's a tradition of plutocrats contributing in this way [1], and like the commenter said, it actually would help Google's business. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library

Plutocrats love building libraries because they get to put their name up top. But the cost of building a library is peanuts compared to the cost of running them properly. (Or should be).

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#146

Post by icebraining »

mansolo wrote: post #115
feralchimp wrote: post #21

TL;DR - Just because you don't use the library doesn't mean no one needs them anymore. Not everyone's Real Life Issues are amenable to a self-service web portal, and that's not just because no one has built the right widgets yet. > it will be a slow death by a thousand cuts It will be a slow descent into budget fugue, followed by an extremely quick death when we pass an inflection point in "the number of people who r…

It's horrifying that we need a TL;DR for a modest chunk of text - a mere comment. If our attention spans are that fried, are we any better off than the hypothetical guy trying to fill out a government form? It's a bit like taking someone's synopsis for what the Bible is about. You can't. You have to read it, experience it and parse it yourself or you can't really know. Myself, I'm not going to pablum-feed you guys a…

The fact that one person wrote a TL;DR is not an indication that we need one. And besides, usually a TL;DR of someone else's post is an opinionated summary, not a simply condensation of facts.

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#147

Post by leot »

xenophanes wrote: post #30
urbanjunkie wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they are a great idea, why not persuade people to voluntarily pay for them? Because, in this specific case, the people who most need libraries can often barely afford to pay for food and shelter. Libraries are such an obvious public good that I will never understand why they're not treated (both in the US and in the UK, and perhaps in other countries), as a basic and absolute necessity. [edited to add not which…

I meant persuade people with money to pay for them. You value them. Why don't you pay something voluntarily? And a thousand other yous? Why doesn't Bill Gates throw some money at it if it's a super efficient use of resources? He will, and many other non-poor people will, if they are persuaded it's a better use of their resources than Greenpeace, Oxfam, malaria medicine for Africa, clean water for Africa, and so on. I…

Is it really so hard for you to imagine prisoners dilemmas and tragedies of the commons?

I'm willing to pay $1 for a public good if everyone else pays $1. But it is utterly irrational for me to pay voluntarily for this public good, for at least two reasons: 1) since most people won't be paying for it, if I want it I'll have to pay much more, and 2) whether or not it exists is entirely independent of my actions anyway, so why pay a thing?

In order for fundamentalist libertarianism to work it will need to come up with a solution to the free-rider problem. Got one?

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#148

Post by icebraining »

snprbob86 wrote: post #41

This is a very well written story that takes what I already kinda of assumed to be true and made it feel very real. It's quite sad, really. I don't want to trivialize the plight of the poor, but I'm also concerned with the impact on the world's intellectuals. A somewhat relevant rant follows.... We were down in the bay area meeting investors a few weeks ago, and I took some time to walk around Standford's campus. It'…

Where I live most coffee shops have tables outside (is there a name in English for that space?), so you can work while you watch street vendors, people walking around and grandparents with children, not to mention the sun, trees, etc. It doesn't have a work environment, but it's very reinvigorating to stop for five minutes and appreciate the surroundings.

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#149

Post by ck2 »

jseliger wrote: post #134
ck2 wrote: post #43

You know where all the public money has gone for libraries? War. The cost of medical benefits for all the soldiers who are mamed but now can survive for 50 years is staggering and will choke our culture to death. All those weapons, fuel, R&D, "homeland security theater", etc. all part of the massive war machine. But war will always be funded because it's the ultimate high of money and power, to be able to send people…

You know where all the public money has gone for libraries? War. I'm glad someone pointed this out, because I came here to do this. But that money has actually gone two places: war and welfare transfer payments, as Alex Tabarrok describes in Launching the Innovation Renaissance , where he says that "the big four of defense, Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security eat up $2.2 trillion, or nearly two-thirds of the U.S.…

War costs are hidden and spread throughout the system. It's far more than the official numbers.

All those injured vets get tons of welfare, well before their elderly years instead of how the system was designed for as a safetynet.

You cannot eliminate the safetynet for poor and elderly - well you could, but whomever does it would be a heartless bastard and march our nation right into hell itself as crime becomes exponential.

You can however eliminate war and the TSA and all these billions of dollars we are wasting to spy on every American.

Re: Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive

#150

Post by snowy909 »

DanKnox wrote: post #132

I am earnestly surprised by the collective HN reaction to this story. While at first glance it may seem as though there are commenters on very opposite ends of the geopolitical spectrum, they all have one thing in common. The distinct belief that this is someone else's fault other than their own. No matter your stance on public vs private services, what good does it do to argue on the internet about how other people…

Thank you for this comment. This is one of the best posts that I have read on HN (the original one) and I think it behoves everyone on the better off side of the digital divide to consider how this gap can be closed. I sincerely hope that the compassion in this world has not be drowned out by the noise of 'entrepreneurism' Looking at the great entreprenuers of the 19th century, nearly all were characterised by following a vision and giving back to the community.
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