I love libraries.
It also feels like all our public institutions in the US are crumbling under assault from all sides.
If you're rich, powerful and an unethical asshole those are two things you definitely do not want.
Sadly many people seem to think they are really showing the folks up there by retreating from any form of self-education once they are out of school. The opposite couldn't be more true.
This smells like a half-baked conspiracy theory. It's not like the overwhelming majority of people want to get smarter in their free time. I'm not sure how it is in the rest of the world, but in American and all (individual) European cultures, most people don't pursue self-education. I would not be surprised if this applies to most other cultures as well
You might say that's how a lot of people on this website got their knowledge, but this website is statistically insignificant compared to the world population. Plus, it's not like every single member here pursues self-education. I'm willing to wager most people come on here just to be entertained
Just don't increase the funding while inflation increases and you're basically cutting funding. And then when things eventually start to look like shit tear them down. And these are not even things a rich, powerful and unethical person needs to do willingly or on purpose. It is just a thing that happens, because it isn't high on the priority list. And it isn't high on the priority list because it doesn't make them direct money.
Now if you're a politician that profits from your constituents being not too critical why should you actively support a thing that has the potential to make them more critical? Not that you actively have to be against it, it just isn't that high on your list of priorities..
This is how incentives work. And while there are people who will support measures which won't directly profit them short term, it seems to me they are an endangered species, at least in the US.
To add to the conspiracy, endless entertainment is another way that the rich and powerful want to keep the population complacent. Add some unsubtle propaganda about how great and diverse the US is, too.
That said, the propaganda isn't as straightforward as it used to be, and foreign propaganda is sprinkled in as well with e.g. China funding and adding their section to big blockbuster films.
This is conspiracy level thinking. Nobody wealthy is sitting around scheming how to keep the proles dumb and subdued.
The assault on public institutions like libraries comes from 2 places: 1) Stop wasting my tax dollars on stuff I don't use or care about. Or 2) I bet there is an untapped commercial market that can be built, and people will love my solution more than public libraries.
They dont sit around scheming, they work, walk around doing it in action.
Company executives keep adding ingredients to processed food to make them addictive knowing it’ll hurt health outcomes and lead to more death.
Company executives continue to sell medicine that they sell for $20 or $10 in Europe or India, but charge americans $5000 or higher for the same medicine in the same package.
They shut down any research paper that outs them, by suppressing the findings, like Facebook or Junk food companies do whenever a research is conducted on their products.
We should celebrate our pioneers and innovators, but we shouldn’t ignore it blindly when MBA execs and Beancounters actively sabotage and hurt their own customers and the masses. Businesses are awesome, but it shouldnt be used to give a no questions asked green flag to anyone who runs businesses.
There are people actively lobbying for policies that lead to more american deaths, bankruptcies, families breaking into shambles, and the government watching from the sidelines and even sometimes helping to make it all happen.
Yes, there are people who do want to subdue the masses and keep them dumb, just as long as it helps them buy 1 more yacht or few more 0s in their bank balance.
I say it as a free market capitalist who is ardently anti-communist.
> This is conspiracy level thinking.
The prevalence of assholes is a documented thing (latest numbers I've heard was over 6% of clinical narcissists, reportedly a very conservative lower bound), and who would ever be surprised that high-status people like being high-status?
I don't know about libraries specifically, but the idea that rich assholes would like to keep the education level of the general population below a threatening threshold is not conspiracy thinking to me, it's just obvious.
I am of course not denying the existence of nice rich people. Though I'm afraid they tend to be selected out of ludicrous wealth. In fact, I fully expect to find many more assholes among super-rich people than I would among the general population. (But I'm not sure either: the strife we find among some of the poorest people also tend to generate assholes…)
Quoting myself, "I am of course not denying the existence of nice rich people".
>Though I'm afraid they tend to be selected out of ludicrous wealth.
The irony is that one of the most ludicrously wealthy people in history was also probably the single largest contributor to public libraries. Whether or not he was simply an outlier, I think that’s an important thing to point out.
Further, some data suggests that as much as 5% of the general population are narcissists. So collectively, your point seems to be that rich people are pretty much like the rest of us, just with more money.
I said "tend to". A tendency does not make an absolute and complete genocide. I also said "I'm afraid", which is supposed to convey some level of uncertainty. Carnegie's donation doesn't invalidate my point, even if he wasn't an outlier.
> The irony is that one of the most ludicrously wealthy people in history was also probably the single largest contributor to public libraries.
Where you see irony, I see expected statistics: the largest contributor to pretty much anything has to be ludicrously rich. Because the only way to give that much, is to own even more.
And I will add that one incentive for rich people to donate is their public image. And in many cases their "donations" are largely neutered by tax cuts or by increasing the return on some of their other investments (basically their donations causing other of their investments to increase their returns). Donations by rich people aren't always genuinely generous.
If the wealthy don't fund something, it's because they're narcissists. If they do, it's because of statistics. At the same time, you ignore the statistics about narcissism.
I said no such strawman, and it's not my main point anyway.
My main point is: the idea that rich & powerful people will generally do what it takes to stay rich & powerful is not conspiracy thinking, it's common sense. The idea that a sizeable proportion of them will resort to unethical (even lethal) means to do so is not conspiracy thinking, it's common sense.
That's it, and I don't think Mr Carnegie here provides any significant evidence to the contrary. I mean, the same guy reportedly had strikers shot and killed, didn't he? It's hard to believe such a guy donated large amounts of money out of the goodness of his heart.
There’s a philosophical argument that all altruism is actually selfish in nature, so I don’t think your premise holds that the wealthy are unique in this regard. What you seem to be saying is that they are complicated just the same as everyone else, just with more resources. If your only point is that wealthy people are status-minded, I don't disagree. I disagree that they are uniquely status-minded. As William Storr's work attests, we are all status-driven apes, whether wealthy or not.
You also didn’t answer the question about what it would take to change your mind, which is usually indicative of a dogmatic, rather than reasoned, position.
Quote me, or I didn’t.
Feel free to clarify, but to me, this reads as, "Rich people, being narcissists, will try to maintain their high status by keeping the education level of the general populace low."
It also reads as a narrative talking point without good evidence to support it. I.e., "I can't prove it, I just know it's true."
Or is your point that people are assholes in general? If the latter, I’m failing to see how that gets connected to rich people actively suppressing education, especially when, as you say, they are the most likely to donate money to those causes.
It seems likely. But that's a detail, because I believe the more important effect is the contempt higher-class people can have towards lower-class people. Some of it may even come from cognitive dissonance. See, barring a few exceptions, one does not get rich just by working. One also has to exploit other people, to spoil them of a fraction of their added value. The richer you are the truer this gets, and then you have to find some way to look at yourself in the mirror despite that.
> actively suppressing education
I don't recall saying that. My exact words were: "I don't know about libraries specifically, but the idea that rich assholes would like to keep the education level of the general population below a threatening threshold is not conspiracy thinking to me, it's just obvious."
> especially when, as you say, they are the most likely to donate money to those causes.
I didn't say that either. My exact words were: "the largest contributor to pretty much anything has to be ludicrously rich. Because the only way to give that much, is to own even more."
To be generous, you said they are the "largest contributors" which I agree is different than being "most likely." But the research does show they are more likely, possibly because they are in a position to do so. I think that's what connects to your point.
Just as a counterpoint to your late-stage capitalism-esque viewpoint, wealthy are also shown to over index in conscientiousness in some studies. This is a personality trait that relates to persistence which is an alternate explanation for goal-attainment (ie wealth).
I fail to see how this is a counter point. Sure, conscientiousness, and I would add work ethics certainly explain some inequality. But even if they explained most of it (exploiting people does require work, and I'd expect the more conscientious capitalists are better at it), they would still come far, far short of morally justifying the level of inequality we observe today.
No billionaire ever deserved to be that wealthy.
Now we can discuss incentives, and I can accept that a good system may need to allow some people to accumulate undeserved wealth. Still, I will note that the mere existence of billionaires is a threat to democracy. (Or a blocker: our representative governments aren't very democratic to begin with, and we have studies showing that when billionaires and the people disagree over a piece of legislation the billionaires win most of the time.)
My current opinion on this is that putting a hard cap on individual wealth is a good thing. Furthermore, I think this hard cap should be well under $1B, almost certainly below $100M.
Well, that's probably because you are constantly arguing different points that aren't necessarily germane to the discussion. Remember, this was about your point that wealthy people build their wealth by suppressing education in the general populace. So this is a counter-point in that it is possible to build wealth by conscientious behavior instead. There is some research on the latter, but really only conjecture and false narratives on the former.
Wealth inequality and the state of democracy are digressions from that point. I don't think I made any statements about what level of wealth inequality is healthy for the stability of a society, let alone a moral argument for it, nor did I make any claims about democracy. Again, this just comes across as you having an axe to grind, and you'll shoehorn in talking points without addressing the central claim.
No.
> Wealth inequality and the state of democracy are digressions from that point.
Yes.
>Nobody wealthy is sitting around scheming how to keep the proles dumb and subdued.
To which you replied:
>"the idea that rich assholes would like to keep the education level of the general population below a threatening threshold is not conspiracy thinking to me, it's just obvious."
To which I replied:
>"The irony is that one of the largest contributions to the public library system was one of the richest guys ever."
It was all about the conspiracy that the wealthy actively suppress education until you went off the rails on a completely different rant.
("the idea" is what you claimed is obvious)
Of course not. They're scheming about how to monetize education, knowledge, and research.
> 1) Stop wasting my tax dollars on stuff I don't use or care about. Or 2) I bet there is an untapped commercial market that can be built, and people will love my solution more than public libraries.
(2) Gets a lot easier if you first advocate for (1) to make the public libraries worse.
There are corporate divisions doing A/B tests, etc. to find out what works for the lowest common denominator, and how to profit more from someone's ignorance. Many people here are directly involved in making it happen.
Now seeing how people are on to our plot, the urgency is clear. I am proposing that over the next few decades we work secretly behind the scenes to gradually reduce funding for various local libraries which have seen visitors decline since the rise of the Internet.
Public libraries? With easy access?
PR: “sir, with enough money you can make the public believe whatever you want.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewashing_(censorship)
Do you refuse, on principle, to visit the Frick when in New York City? For that matter do you avoid the Rockefeller Center?
Not undercutting the role of libraries, just pointing out that philanthropy from the wealthy can be a mixed bag of indirect control and agenda pushing at times, wrapped up in tidy looking tax avoidance multi layered "charity" arrangements.
Also, as long as the outcomes are good, I personally don't care one iota whether a person is doing them for the wrong reasons.
People can be rich and try to do the right thing even if there seems to be no direct economic incentive to do so — and I applaud them if they do realize that money alone doesn't create a meaningful life. Yet I don't need to wonder whether a normal tax rate on billionaires would do even more for the libraries.
I agree that tax rates should be higher, but I have absolutely no faith that politicians will do a better job stewarding money toward good causes than a billionaire who cares about them (and/or wants to brag about their philanthropy for clout)
Why? Why isn't reducing waste ever an option?
I wonder what kind of negotiating power a regional library has in that situation. Do state library agencies have more leverage than regional libraries? Do large states like California have more leverage in negotiating digital licenses than smaller states? Would a national library system have even more leverage? I'll ask a librarian tomorrow and report back.
The problem is the publishers - they don’t always sign on to provide books to every new platform and don’t always release to every platform. But other platforms do exist: https://bookriot.com/comparing-public-library-ebook-platform...
Those already on top.
They can afford to educate their own line and hoard resources across generations doing so. They can fail as many times as it takes before they finally succeed because of this. They throw the bodies of the world at their problems until they are solved, which necessitates an uneducated populace that doesn't realize they're chattel and canon fodder to this purpose. A populace that fear collective power, that fears community beyond immediate family, that shies away from actions that would better the world in favor of actions that are less risky personally.
Globally, this class of people definitely wants to reduce literacy to keep a stream of manual labor inflowing.
...and not just historically. Some societies where significant minority groups are banned from getting an education, in order to further perpetuate their marginalisation, still exist today.
Literacy for more people is a relatively new thing.
Now if you are talking about a country like India - sure I could see Modi doing that. In that case it would be more about restricting growth and investment into education then dismantling an economy built on knowledge.
Undermining literacy means so they are not as literate as they could be to improve their lives.
For example, there are more than a few studies on literacy and education levels of the political spectrum for better and worse.
India is a different world. The crime against humanity that is the caste system all but forbade 1-3% of the population to be permitted to learn how to read. 95-98% of Indians were not permitted to learn how to read, and had to rely on the interpretations of the less populous castes.
Ironically it is a minority that largely broke this logjam and helped push literacy for the many forward.
I'll gladly take the downvotes for speaking the truth about caste being a divider between people and society.
Any decent book about Reconstruction and Jim Crow.
Undermining is a form of limiting, and limiting is a form of undermining.