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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

#191

Post by graeme »

tptacek wrote: post #180
hermannj314 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to believe that but the tone I got from the story is that we shouldn't be using our local libraries. I'd hate the thought that I have checked out a book I could otherwise afford to buy and deprived the use to someone that could not. Or that I am using a computer to read Hackernews that an ex-convict needs to use to apply for a government program to keep his grandson alive. Using the library deprives a slice…

This simply isn't true. The library keeps stats on how many books are being loaned out, and when they drop, they lose an argument for funding the service. Meanwhile, the people who genuinely need the library don't need it to take books out; lending out books is a service that disproportionately helps people with the leisure time to develop a taste for reading books for pleasure.

As the son of a librarian, I can confirm this is true.

One library within my father's system cut all books below a certain circulation.

They did not bother checking whether the books could be considered "important" by some other metric. So much scientific and classical work was gotten rid of.

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

#192

Post by msbarnett »

Shenglong wrote: post #31

Drawing a parallel to the Canadian healthcare system: I haven't been sick in 12 years. Yet, every year, I pay taxes to keep the public healthcare system running. Even though it's not something I use, undoubtedly, there are people who need it, and wouldn't be able to pay for it if it wasn't public. About a month ago, I exhibited the symptoms of some kind of ventricular tachycardia (heart arrhythmia). As advised by a f…

You're not unable to use the system, you're just not able to use the system frivolously.

Procedures like ECGs arent performed at patient request, they're performed by specialists when a qualified physician determines a need for one and refers you to a specialist.

You can't get yourself an ECG not because they're unavailable, but simply because "Joe Random from city X says you need one" caries as much weight with Heart Specialists as "my cousin Bob says you should give me a new laptop" does with warrantee repairmen.

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

#193

Post by TeMPOraL »

mickey7 wrote: post #187
jonhohle wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I leans heavily toward the libertarian side, but I think libraries are one of the most important social services provided by local governments. Unlike other programs, absolutely everyone can get some direct benefit from the library - no matter what age or income level. Libraries, in my opinion, are a model of what social services should look like: universally beneficial, only practical at the community level, little…

i'd rather not pay for other people's benefits unless the benefit returns to me with reasonable probability and period of time. on one hand i'd like to see libraries turn profit (like 'lite' version of video rental model) or at least be self sufficient. on the other hand i want to enjoy reasonably educated population with easy access to methods for self improvement and economic mobility (both up and down) and a 'safe…

> i'd rather not pay for other people's benefits unless the benefit returns to me with reasonable probability and period of time

Then pay for the warm, fuzzy feeling you'll get for doing something that benefits others.

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

#194

Post by jahmed »

celoyd wrote: post #159
jahmed wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because government can or does provide a service does not mean you cant as well.

Absolutely. But the idea of a collective action problem is that sometimes it isn’t in anyone’s interests to provide the service by themselves. This can interact badly with some of the (contingent) ways we’ve come to practice capitalism. Ideally, a government can act as an internalizing force that allows economic actors to step out of local maxima – bad Nash equilibriums where everyone knows how to fix problems but ge…

True and governments have the unique position to have a longer view that would ideally introduce a whole new range of potential outcomes that might not be rational at shorter timescales.

One problem we face now is that the time scale of government is being shortened to that of the corporation. Government shouldn't think quarterly or annually but in terms of decades and generations.

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

#195

Post by jes »

philwelch wrote: post #98
xenophanes wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're wrong and should stop hating people you're ignorant of. I'll give brief examples in hopes you, recognizing you really were wrong about some basic facts, will either learn about the subject or stop making nasty, ignorant accusations in the future. Ayn Rand did not have a policy of "never accept handouts", said so, and, for example, signed up for medicaid. Ayn Rand's argument I cited does not consist of denying…

I was a fanatical Randroid myself in my younger years, and while she may not have gone as far as "never accept handouts", she did go as far as "never expect handouts", and in Rand's system there is explicitly no right or expectation to anything unearned. Rand's opposition to "libertarians" was purely a personal dislike of the people in Rand's time who called themselves libertarians. Most sensible definitions of the w…

Do you think you have the right to something that someone else has to work to produce? That's what Rand was against. You don't have a right to use force to cause someone else to work for your benefit.

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

#196

Post by moultano »

tptacek wrote: post #135
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…

It's funny how you can look at one mostly-benign comment that just happens to bring up politics (and mostly as a tangent to the point it wants to make) and see how it drives the whole thread off the rails. Just eyeball the torrent of BS political posturing this set off. I'm not blaming the author or anything; it just seems like a miniaturized version of a problem that hurts the whole site.

s/whole site/whole world/

For whatever reason, all politics is now identity politics. Less important than the effectiveness of a policy is whether that policy is threatening to the ideology that accompanies a person's group identity.

It makes me wish we didn't have names for these things for people to rally around. If you replace "I'm a libertarian" with "I'm skeptical of government solutions without sufficient supporting evidence" notice how the lack of abstraction makes it impossible to avoid focusing on the issue at hand.

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

#197

Post by tptacek »

moultano wrote: post #196
tptacek wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how you can look at one mostly-benign comment that just happens to bring up politics (and mostly as a tangent to the point it wants to make) and see how it drives the whole thread off the rails. Just eyeball the torrent of BS political posturing this set off. I'm not blaming the author or anything; it just seems like a miniaturized version of a problem that hurts the whole site.

s/whole site/whole world/ For whatever reason, all politics is now identity politics. Less important than the effectiveness of a policy is whether that policy is threatening to the ideology that accompanies a person's group identity. It makes me wish we didn't have names for these things for people to rally around. If you replace "I'm a libertarian" with "I'm skeptical of government solutions without sufficient suppo…

I have learned to try not to let my politics get too much in the way of what I talk about here, enough so that I am routinely criticized for being a libertarian (heh) or even sometimes a security-state conservative.

I'll every once in awhile throw a jab towards "libnerdtariasm", because while I do try to keep politics out of things as much as possible, I am still easily baited by nerd tropes.

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

#198

Post by tptacek »

graeme wrote: post #191
tptacek wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This simply isn't true. The library keeps stats on how many books are being loaned out, and when they drop, they lose an argument for funding the service. Meanwhile, the people who genuinely need the library don't need it to take books out; lending out books is a service that disproportionately helps people with the leisure time to develop a taste for reading books for pleasure.

As the son of a librarian, I can confirm this is true. One library within my father's system cut all books below a certain circulation. They did not bother checking whether the books could be considered "important" by some other metric. So much scientific and classical work was gotten rid of.

... you're agreeing with me, right?

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

#199

Post by mickey7 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #193
mickey7 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'd rather not pay for other people's benefits unless the benefit returns to me with reasonable probability and period of time. on one hand i'd like to see libraries turn profit (like 'lite' version of video rental model) or at least be self sufficient. on the other hand i want to enjoy reasonably educated population with easy access to methods for self improvement and economic mobility (both up and down) and a 'safe…

> i'd rather not pay for other people's benefits unless the benefit returns to me with reasonable probability and period of time Then pay for the warm, fuzzy feeling you'll get for doing something that benefits others.

yes. i think the warm fuzzy feeling is how the body internally represents the vague and unspecific expectation of 'social' reward from doing something that benefits others

the sense of something being a 'good deed' comes from expecting harmony and general social cooperation (reciprocity) and since the cause effect is so disconnected and complex - it's too difficult to grasp with reason (for some people) and just has to be felt in this way. (?)

also the neurological 'mirroring' and empathy

.. anyways. people who want and use the library should pay for it. people who don't should not pay. isn't this fair?

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

#200

Post by benwerd »

tptacek wrote: post #197
moultano wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

s/whole site/whole world/ For whatever reason, all politics is now identity politics. Less important than the effectiveness of a policy is whether that policy is threatening to the ideology that accompanies a person's group identity. It makes me wish we didn't have names for these things for people to rally around. If you replace "I'm a libertarian" with "I'm skeptical of government solutions without sufficient suppo…

I have learned to try not to let my politics get too much in the way of what I talk about here, enough so that I am routinely criticized for being a libertarian (heh) or even sometimes a security-state conservative. I'll every once in awhile throw a jab towards "libnerdtariasm", because while I do try to keep politics out of things as much as possible, I am still easily baited by nerd tropes.

Yeah, this is what happened here. It's an issue that makes me angry and I said something I shouldn't have. Do I get an "I derailed a thread on Hacker News" t-shirt? Definitely something I'll try not to do again.
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