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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

#211

Post by redler »

philwelch wrote: post #103
true_religion wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The neighborhood watch can already commit citizens arrests in certain circumstances. Private detectives provide investigative materials that are used in civil courts. It's already happened. --- Now libertarian thoguht doesn't say just because you can replace something by a voluntary institution then you should . However, you should think about the scenario. The alternative, more mainstream viewpoint, is that the gove…

Libertarians are generally the ones making assumptions--that the private sector will provide health care to everyone without government regulation, that the private sector will provide housing, food, and other necessities to the poor and elderly without government assistance, that the private sector will refrain from pumping poisonous substances into the air and water without government regulation, and so forth. Ther…

“A healthy, 30-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides: You know what? I'm not going to spend 200 or 300 dollars a month for health insurance, because I'm healthy; I don't need it,” Blitzer said. “But you know, something terrible happens; all of a sudden, he needs it. Who's going to pay for it, if he goes into a coma, for example? Who pays for that?

“What he should do is whatever he wants to do, and assume responsibility for himself,” Paul said. ”My advice to him would have a major medical policy, but not before —"

“But he doesn't have that,” Blitzer said. “He doesn't have it and he's — and he needs — he needs intensive care for six months. Who pays?”

“That's what freedom is all about: taking your own risks.,” Paul said, repeating the standard libertarian view as some in the audience cheered.

“But congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die,” Blitzer asked.

“Yeah,” came the shout from the audience. That affirmative was repeated at least three times.

  -- LA Times article "Support at GOP debate for letting the uninsured die" [1]
[1] http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/13/news/la-pn-ron-paul-...

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

#212

Post by rayiner »

xenophanes wrote: post #6
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…

The libertarian stance is not "there should be no libraries" but more like "if there is a genuine need for libraries, and value in having them (quite plausible), then Government funding is not the best approach to creating them or running them efficiently". Just because something is good doesn't mean the tax payers should pay for it. There are other options. If they are a great idea, why not persuade people to volunt…

> Or if they are providing value, why don't they make money?

This question is nonsensical in the context of economic theory.

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

#213

Post by unimpressive »

tomjen3 wrote: post #162
unimpressive wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I like to think that if you asked for help you would get it, how do you normally respond when people ask you to help them with computer tasks? Now I don't know about you, but my first instinct is to flee. Helping people with computers, a lot of the time, is annoying . This is compounded by the condescending attitude that most computer users have towards "non-computer" people. If you ask someone to help you with…

"I need to fill out this form. If you help me you can use the computer sooner". Said to the person behind you.

I'm not going to try and rationalize away good answers. Of all the things you could say to someone, I'd say this has the highest chance of success. And if I was behind you, I'd totally go for that.

Part of the problem of what I said above was focusing too much on the totally-green scenario. I think we take a lot of our computer-know-how for granted. As it stands, were still in the age where I tell people over webchat I'm into "hacking" and they leave because they're genuinely afraid that I'll break into their computer. Regardless of how much you and I both know that it's a lot more complicated than that, and probably not going to happen even if someone "has your IP". (Which has become something of a meme among generation Z for "That thing everyone knows you need to break into computers, but not really sure why.") This is ignoring even the definition of hacker, which I would prefer we get past abject ignorance like this before we put hobbyist hackers into the public mind.

I mean, it's not like it takes more than five minutes to explain:

"The web is made of a bunch of computers sending text streams to each other. The program that interprets these streams is called a server. If a server isn't written correctly it can be exploited to do things the owner didn't intend, and be used to break into the host computer. For the most part nobody is going to get into your computer manually unless theres a server they can exploit. Default windows installations have not had servers installed since XP. Your web browser interprets a different set of text streams that can be exploited as well, you should be more worried about this than you should be of human attackers."

But somehow, it's not happening. Instead an embarrassingly high portion of the population believes that David Lightman type figures run around terrorizing the Internet with magical-but-undefined and fuzzy powers that let them break into anything they have a network connection to.

EDIT: The above explanation is obviously a bit more simple than whats really going on, but is really all most people need to know. Though I wish they knew more, that might just be a pipe dream.

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

#214

Post by derleth »

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…

I'll reconsider the TL;DR when academic papers reconsider the Abstract.

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

#215

Post by rdl »

kzrdude wrote: post #172
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…

One example of how unliberal our society has become today I think is "imagine libraries being invented today: media industry would scream piracy"! Those libraries that today experiment with e-books pay ridiculous prices per loan to do so. It's yet another angle where I think it's evident that the copyright lobby is losing perspective and society has lost the compromise struck once over copyright.

What are the economics of Overdrive or the other e-book lending systems? From what I saw in googling, it's something like $10-100k/yr to be a member institution (depending on size), plus access fees of a few thousand per month, plus per-item acquisition costs (much less than physical media; maybe $1.00 for a book?).

That's expensive only because no one actually uses the online lending service, since rich/tech people value convenience, and the people for whom a $9.99 ebook is a big enough expense to warrant the inferior search, wait, etc. are probably not technology early adopters (or can't afford a $79 Kindle).

It might make sense in a school library environment, though. Or, with sufficient assistance in setting it up, audiobooks for the reading-impaired (a helpful librarian, or an audio-only UI to search/download books).

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

#216

Post by mickey7 »

mickey7 wrote: post #210
gergles wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>.. anyways. people who want and use the library should pay for it. people who don't should not pay. isn't this fair? People who want and use the roads should pay for them. People who don't shouldn't be allowed to drive or walk anywhere. Isn't that fair? People who want and use the police department should pay for it. People who don't should have no protection. Isn't that fair? People who want and use the fire depart…

neighbourhood watch and locally funded andor volunteer police, vigilanteesm & personal responsibility fire insurance includes fire department service. you can go cheap and risk burning down but it's more likely that decent friendly neighbours will gladly cover yours if you can't. or you can move to more affordable housing within your means health insurance with discounts for taking care of yourself competition betwee…

i'm puzzled and somewhat amused with the downvotes because i'm aiming for maximum honesty and truth. the market organises to elevate the best and raise standards for all others - it's like a force of nature, whereas government seems to systematically mismanage libraries into mediocre grey soulless underused smelly wastelands.

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

#217

Post by njs12345 »

xenophanes wrote: post #119
njs12345 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely as argued above, contagious disease prevention would qualify as a public good — it is certainly something that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Why do you agree with government provision in this case but not in the case of, say, free education for all? That article doesn't seem to give much sway to the issue of transaction costs in letting people organise to provide a public good, which is really central t…

> That article doesn't seem to give much sway to the issue of transaction costs in letting people organise to provide a public good, which is really central to the issue.. There are transaction costs for Government action too. In general they are higher. Government has no special ability to keep transaction costs low. > Surely as argued above, contagious disease prevention would qualify as a public good It has exclud…

It's important to keep in mind that economists consider things cetibus paribus - that is, as they are at the time, in isolation and in the real world. Whilst I have no particular problem with market based solutions (e.g. publicly funded vouchers should be provided for schools rather than public funding per se) I'm interested in seeing some kind of current, market based solution to issue of contagious disease prevention (how do we make everyone who benefits from protection against contagious diseases pay the value of their protection, for instance) and education (how do we make everyone who benefits from an educated populace pay a fair price towards the education of the next generation) --- when I do, perhaps the libertarian approach will persuade me more. Keep in mind that approaches which require future technological advances or infringement of civil liberties aren't allowed.

> There are transaction costs for Government action too. In general they are higher. Government has no special ability to keep transaction costs low.

Of course they do --- it's called fiat. When a variety of beneficial options exist but a lack of cooperation prevents an overall resolution, the government has the power to step in and dictate what should be done. If you don't like it, other options are still available --- there are other countries to migrate to.

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

#218

Post by njs12345 »

eropple wrote: post #174
nimblegorilla wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting points, although I respectfully disagree. It's pretty silly to talk about economics if you don't believe in rational economic actors. A public list is a nice theory, but then you would still have people trying to get on the list for the minimum amount possible and hoping that others would donate more to be higher on the list of donors. And what happens when you have 60 local farmers and 40 corporation far…

> It's pretty silly to talk about economics if you don't believe in rational economic actors. With respect: when you find rational economic actors in notable quantities, please do let the rest of us know. (My skepticism of the questionable assertions of libertarians is largely based on the conspicuous absence of such actors.)

Don't worry: even with rational actors as an assumption fundamentalist libertarianism still has plenty of holes.

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

#219

Post by graeme »

tptacek wrote: post #198
graeme wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Oops, yes. I must learn to use pronouns more precisely...

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

#220

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #198
graeme wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]
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