They Will Kill Your Library, Too ❧ Current Affairs
The problem with public libraries is that while they are hugely popular, they are also in tension with the prevailing political and economic ideology, which suggests the government should run like a business, cutting costs and measuring the worth of every service by its market price. Libraries offer useless knowledge, the joy of intellectual discovery. A McKinsey consultant, looking at a public library, would wonder why it isn’t charging usage fees to its patrons, or why it has many shelves that few people visit, and what its economic value to the city is. To the extent governments think like McKinsey consultants instead of like human beings, libraries will always be under threat, because they seem like a “luxury” rather than an essential good. After all, if government does not provide free housing or free healthcare, why is it providing free knowledge, when one must be housed and alive before all else? (The correct answer to that question is that government should be providing housing and healthcare as well rather than axing library budgets.)
So sick of libertarians.