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Bezos should put his billions in public libraries

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Re: Bezos should put his billions in public libraries

#131

Post by randyrand »

The modern day equivalent of a public library (storing information history) is the internet archive.

I think donating to the internet archive would be a better donation which a lot more benefit to society than funding physical libraries.

Libraries solve one of the worlds most important problem - keeping societies important information history safe. Websites are not immune to this problem. They require maintenance. When a webpage goes down its gone forever. Without something like the internet archive, we would not have a modern day library equivalent for the web. We are losing a lot of important information. Physical libraries today are in comparison much less important than digital ones.

Re: Bezos should put his billions in public libraries

#132

Post by tomschlick »

mehrzad wrote: post #99
tambourine_man wrote: post #85

I find this titles very off putting. It seems to imply that someone, who wasn't competent enough to make billions of their own, is somehow more apt to know how to better spend them than the one that actually did.

I find your comment very off-putting. First of all, Bezos asked for advice on philanthropy. Second, most wealth generated by the property owning class (including Bezos) is through extracting the surplus value of their employees. Those billions were made through force (by the state monopoly of violence through police defending the so-called "right to property") as his employees never had a fair shot in getting a reaso…

> as his employees never had a fair shot in getting a reasonable share of profits

They get paid an hourly wage or salary. Thats their share of the profits. Why are employees magically entitled to profits other than what they agreed to work for?

Re: Bezos should put his billions in public libraries

#133

Post by surement »

soperj wrote: post #60
stillsut wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me give you a hypothetical company IT department: while you are allowed to work there with any education background, only an MBA can be a manager. How do you think they would perform at IT tasks? Who runs libraries? People with Masters in Library Science. I expect severe budget and certification crises would come to any library that won't put a certified librarian in a head position. Or, I'm a working class guy a…

Libraries in Canada have the same stipulations, but are actually funded and are open all the time. Our downtown library is open 9am-9pm every day of the year.

https://www.vpl.ca/hours-locations

Re: Bezos should put his billions in public libraries

#134

Post by SolaceQuantum »

stillsut wrote: post #44
chickenfries wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visit a library in a low-income area (where people need them the most) and see the kinds of computers people use to hunt for jobs, do their homework, etc. I've been to a library that was running windows 2000 on TWO ancient Dells with with CRT monitors in 2015. And the two computers they had were being used by adults and students. There is so much to be gained from improving libraries.

Let me give you a hypothetical company IT department: while you are allowed to work there with any education background, only an MBA can be a manager. How do you think they would perform at IT tasks? Who runs libraries? People with Masters in Library Science. I expect severe budget and certification crises would come to any library that won't put a certified librarian in a head position. Or, I'm a working class guy a…

Every library I've been to in every town I've been to had Sunday hours. This includes New York City and its surrounding suburbs, Buffalo and its surrounding suburbs, several towns in Conneticut and several more in Toronto Canada and its surrounding suburbs.

Even my university library has sunday hours.

Re: Bezos should put his billions in public libraries

#135

Post by aqsalose »

RivieraKid wrote: post #35
graphitezepp wrote: post #15

I would much rather billionaire types take on large issues that governments don't want to touch, like space flight or specific diseases in foreign countries, than something already in service like libraries. Maybe I just have a bias due to having a library just up the street from where I live currently, but I have never not had access to an adequate library in my life time, and only see room for marginal diminishing…

I wish some tech billionaire or rich tech company invested in rethinking healthcare from the ground up (or like Elon Musk likes to say, from first principles) with focus on UX, state-of-the-art technologies and integration. Anytime I use our healthcare (although, this is the Czech Rep, could be different in USA), I feel like it should be easy to design a better service. Basically, something what Tesla did, apply Sili…

One problem that can't probably solved by simply "focusing on the UX and better service" is that the service provider (medical professional) is both responsible for evaluating what's wrong with you (and what services you need) and the administering the treatment.

Judging the quality of the medical service is also often difficult. The true quality and the utility of the service you receive will often be apparent only years or decades later. Did a patient need for antibiotics for a basic viral infection? Probably not but it feels like a better service.

Re: Bezos should put his billions in public libraries

#136

Post by bitL »

kazinator wrote: post #112
bitL wrote: post #101

What's the point of libraries these days? We literally have the possibility for everyone to have a "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in their pocket with all books that were ever written.

... with all books that were ever written. All that and an electronic girlfriend application to replace the real one you could have picked up at the library.

Come on, book is just a medium, now we have a different form already, why put money into old-school stuff? For nostalgia reasons?

Re: Bezos should put his billions in public libraries

#138

Post by KGIII »

tracker1 wrote: post #25
graphitezepp wrote: post #15

I would much rather billionaire types take on large issues that governments don't want to touch, like space flight or specific diseases in foreign countries, than something already in service like libraries. Maybe I just have a bias due to having a library just up the street from where I live currently, but I have never not had access to an adequate library in my life time, and only see room for marginal diminishing…

Libraries serve a very important function, preserving and distributing knowledge. Yes, internet access can mitigate some of the needs, but even then many use libraries to access the internet. Though an interesting idea would be to combine the roles of a library with a traditional pub house.

Meandering through the stacks with a pint in hand.

That's either the best idea ever, or the worst idea ever. I'm not sure that it'd be very quiet, either.

Re: Bezos should put his billions in public libraries

#139

Post by qsymmachus »

cko wrote: post #109

Whenever a topic like this gets posted, it feels like the majority of commenters feel 'entitled' to other people's money and think they know best how to spend it. Or the notion they have to 'give back.' I'm not rich in the popular sense of the word (besides having the fortune of being American middle class), but I do have investments by virtue of almost never spending on consumer goods. And having no wife or kids. My…

> It's his money. He could buy a fleet of yachts, set them on fire, and upload the video footage - why shouldn't he be allowed to do that? At what arbitrary level of wealth does 'his' money become everyone else's money?

This is a good question to ask.

Typically arguments about the ethical demands of wealth are predicated on how that wealth is _acquired_. As a society we suppose that some wealth is acquired "fairly" (say through some amazing talent or hard work), while other wealth is said to be acquired "unfairly" (say through fraud or exploitation).

There's a separate question however that this does not address: regardless of how you have earned your wealth, to what degree are you morally permitted to _retain_ it? To frame the question is slightly different terms, if I am in possession of an expensive life-saving medicine, and my neighbor is in dire need of this medicine, am I morally obligated to give my neighbor this medicine? The question of _how_ I acquired this medicine is quite separate from the question of whether I have a moral right to retain it.

The same question may be asked of exorbitant wealth. If I have enough money to buy a fleet of yachts and set them on fire, and my neighbor does not have enough money to pay for her children's breakfasts, do I have a moral right to set those yachts on fire? Or am I morally obligated to surrender some of my wealth to my neighbor's hungry children?

Re: Bezos should put his billions in public libraries

#140

Post by kazinator »

bitL wrote: post #136
kazinator wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... with all books that were ever written. All that and an electronic girlfriend application to replace the real one you could have picked up at the library.

Come on, book is just a medium, now we have a different form already, why put money into old-school stuff? For nostalgia reasons?

Probably for the same reason we didn't replace books with microfilm, which began to be used commercially in the 1920's. And microfilm can be "decoded" using simple magnification. No issues of software compatibility with document formats and whatnot.
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