The Seattle Public Library is reducing maximum digital holds

This is one of the most unhinged take I've ever read on libraries. Respectfully, it looks like you have never understood what libraries really are. At least here, in Italy, a library organizes events such as photography shows, local artists exhibits, and sometimes hosts voluntary activities (people here might know things such as corderdojo ecc...)

The discoverability of new books is excellent, librarians routinely make a selection of books on some topics, it may be a generic one "history", specific one "important people in history" which are way better than any other system that tries to recommend me books

Last, but not least, libraries are on of the few remaining places "for the people, by the people". You're not expected to pay anything, you can walk in any, take a book, read it, sit down and relax. It's also a place where a lot of students can go to study in silence, I can't think of many other places which offer a similar quietitude.

It would be a disservice to reduce libraries to "places where you can read Taylor swift books" (not that there's anything wrong with reading Taylor swift or Spare), losing libraries would mean loosing one of the remaining "third places" we have in our always more disconnect society

probably a couple times a week or so?

I would argue many stories on hacker news are boring and just people self-fellating themselves. Who cares and to each their own my dude.

> Just because some members of the community need power tools doesn’t mean we all benefit from that. We all benefit from police, fire, ambulance, and roads — we all don’t benefit from free power tools.

Lol, roads. Taxes should only cover public walkways and public transit between walkable areas.

And I'm not even sure about sidewalks. First, they require roads, and we already tossed those. I mean sure, we all use roads, but do we really all benefit equally from every road? I've never even driven on half the streets in my town, but my tax dollars still pay for their upkeep. It's madness!

And don't even get me started on sidewalks. I choose to drive everywhere, so why should a single penny of my hard-earned money go toward maintaining sidewalks for pedestrians? Walking is a personal choice. If you want somewhere to walk, go build your own private walking path. Bootstraps, people!

Oh, and public parks? Talk about a bridge too far. Without kids or dogs in the house, I never use them. Why am I still paying for other people's kids and pets to have a place to play? Back in my day, we entertained kids and puppies with sticks and stones in our own backyards, and we turned out just fine. If parents and dog owners want parks, they can band together and build their own - on their own dime, of course.

Heck, when you really think about it, even having a public fire department is kind of overstepping. I've never had a fire, so that's a service I've never personally used. Shouldn't each citizen be responsible for putting out their own fires? You could purchase your own hose and hydrant, or for a small fee, subscribe to a privatized firefighting service. Same goes for the military, and borders. If you don't like immigrants, drive them back across the border yourself.

Look, the free market is the answer for all of this. Well, except the corporate subsidies, and bank bailouts, since companies and banks do actually “cater to our every need from before birth to after death.” But definitely for everything else!

That doesn't really matter; as you just noted, the library gets a few dollars by doing so. $4 after two years is an amount that, if it went away, wouldn't matter.