Bezos should put his billions in public libraries

# rant: disagree with comments not votes!

I disagree with that sentiment.. Are books a waste of money? In-person public speaking events? Museums?

The internet is a global Library of Alexandria, but it's absurd to suggest we no longer need smaller repositories of knowledge or physical copies/originals... Especially as the internet is increasingly fractured, censured, monitored, and otherwise limited.

They serve similar but not identical purposes. Libraries have always been more than the books, just like books are more than the facts contained within.

"The government" is virtually the only entity that has ever taken any interest in space flight. The cumulative government investment in space research, development, and operations is orders of magnitude higher than the the cumulative private investment, and even today in the supposed golden age of private spaceflight more than 80% of the money is coming from taxpayers.

Yet if I want to make a serious study of something, I hit the textbooks. The internet is, in my experience, a poor replacement for a stack of well written physical textbooks.

The internet may be a big library, but in many ways it's not a very good one.

I'd like to see some billionaire put a lot of money into abortions. The political fight over abortion keeps messing up other things, and a billionaire could fix that.

For example, I don't think many on the right disagree that funding prenatal care is a good thing--but some major prenatal care providers, such as Planned Parenthood, also provide abortion services and so some politicians want to cut all their funding to make sure none of the Federal money goes to abortions. A whole bunch of women's health services get cut in order to make sure there is no chance the money ends up helping abortions.

So I'd like to see some billionaire, or some well-funded charity like the Gates Foundation, build several clinics that provide free abortions around the country in the states with the least restrictions on abortions, and fund a program that provides free travel to and from those clinics for women in the states with restrictive laws that have forced most such clinics to close.

Then organizations like Planned Parenthood can get completely out of the abortion business, taking away the major excuse that is used to cut their funding.

State legislators can stop spending a lot of time coming up with new ways to try to shut down abortion clinics in their states (because shutting down such clinics will no longer stop the abortions), and state attorney generals can stop wasting time defending those attempts in court, and maybe they will finally realize that the best way to reduce abortions is to make it so people don't need them in the first place. Maybe then states like Texas can drop their idiotic "abstinence only" approach to sex eduction (which has resulted in soaring teen pregnancy rates...) and switch to something actually effective.

Edit: any down voters care to name specific objections? That Planned Parenthood provides a lot of useful women's health services that are not related to abortion should not be controversial. That abortion is the main reason Congress wants to completely defund PP should also not be controversial. That "abstinence only" programs are a massive failure is pretty well documented. That many states keep passing abortion restrictions which then get challenged and often struck down as unconstitutional is not controversial.

A library is free, even if all of the world's knowledge is online it would cost money to access in addition to paying for internet. The point of libraries is to remove any barrier to entry for knowledge. I can go to my library and get access to journals and articles I would have to pay for otherwise. It is not a huge waste of money, it is a great way to save. Taxes are paid into the library and as a result the community as a whole benefits.

Ignoring all of that,you say people can get all of their knowledge online now. Please remember that you're fortunate enough to own a computer or cell phone with a data plan. Many people only have access to the internet at the library.

Libraries have survived through all of history for a reason, the internet will not kill them. If they are defunded they will be formed by people like Bezos who recognize the huge benefit they provide to society.