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Comment by IOT_Apprentice | Hacker News Reader

Sigh. I'm not quite sure how to respond to this, it comes across as selfish and staying in your ideological bubble. Libraries exist to serve a community. Young children aren't junkies and your assertion seems specious. Libraries aren't crack houses or heroin dens and using that as a reason to not support them is, well, far fetched.

You can ask libraries to get books you are interested in. Further you can request the books you want via the ILL (Inter Library Loan) System from around the country or the world. You get the value out of the library that you put into it.

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People should be voting selfishly, who else is going to look out for your self interest? If most people do NOT think like him, then the library will stay. If most people do not want it , why keep it?

You can't run a government like this. Most people don't use most government services, yet the smaller number who do use them really benefit greatly from them. If we voted down all government services that <50% of people use then society ends up suffering greatly. Hell, most people don't even use firefighters; should we vote them down too?

We vote to fund firefighting because we all know we COULD make us of the service even if we haven't...this is still a self-interested vote

but in the case of firefighting, most cities could drastically reshape their emergency services to put much of what firefighters do in the hands of an emergency response office that is much cheaper to run. its no coincidence that firefighters make sure they are in the critical path of vehicle accident response etc...they realize that structure fires are vanishingly rare and they might otherwise see drastic cuts. there isn't any real reason why a fire truck should be responding to someone with mild whiplash in a rear-ended vehicle (and no, the reason isn't because the vehicle might spontaneously combust).

No one is saying that we should vote down all services that aren't used by <50% of the population. My only point is that decisions are democratically valid if they're ratified by the majority.

The majority of people deciding to have libraries is just as democratically legitimate as the majority deciding not the have libraries.

People should be voting for what's best for society as a whole. Sure, consider your own interests as part of that, but "I make $200k therefore people making $200k should get tax breaks" is a pretty shitty way to be.

> it comes across as selfish

this is how voting is supposed to work - you vote YOUR interests.

libraries are one of these things nerds get excited about but don't use. I would be surprised if 5% of HN readers have checked a book out of the library in the last five years.

I fund, like and visit my local library but wouldn't see its closure as a sign of the end-times.

I would be surprised if 5% of HN readers have checked a book out of the library in the last five years.

Sure, I might not have checked out a book in the last five years, but I use my local library probably once a month. Libraries are much more than places to borrow books.

But you're paying for the books. If you want a community meeting hall with internet access, it can be run much more cheaply

> I might not have checked out a book in the last five years, but I use my local library probably once a month

How do you use a library while not using books it hold?

Before moving to very-much-big-city, my very-much-not-big-city library had:

* nice meeting rooms we used for interest group meetups and community organizing (of the "pick up litter" variety)

* copies of TAOCP and of Bourbaki (pro tip: tell your librarians what you want!)

I never checked out TAOCP but I'd always show up to meetings an hour early to meetings and read a section. Also a good way to spend a cold Saturday. Made it through a good chunk.

You can read books without checking them out.

> this is how voting is supposed to work - you vote YOUR interests.

Of course it isn't. I'm a man, one could make the argument I have no reason to vote for maternity leave, legal and safe abortions, equal pay. But I'd vote for it each time because it provides a better society for people I have no relation with.

Your view of voting is just a reflection of your own selfishness, not a definition of the idea of political participation. Many people vote for something more than pragmatic concerns.

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