I acknowledge your point, but to be fair you should also acknowledge that the status quo was conscious decision by voters (via representatives) to minimize the cost of power for citizens. That may not have been a good choice, but we are a long way from a non-free society.
On the plus side, you can now easily get solar + batteries + inverters as an alternative :). Costs more, though.
Tossing this out - lost the comment this was a reply to:
I'm not sure about that - my N=1
I went to a State school and got an economics degree, I started my career as a SQL-lackey for a B.I department in declining midwestern retailer, but I treated my career like graduate school insofar that I worked hard at it.
About 4 years after my first day of professional work, I started as a data scientist at a FANG. My team of 9 had 3 Ph.Ds (all science Ph. Ds). As I understood it, the Ph.Ds do receive higher compensation but it's not that much more (~18% higher base) and if I really kick butt, I can out earn them with bonuses.
But I think my path was much easier and lucrative. I was able to save ~$100k, I had a standard of living above that of a regular graduate student and I had flexibility that they would dream of. I made 4 years worth of contacts of my profession, I
I'm sure some Ph.Ds are worth it as investments, but if you're interested in renumeration, get working.
I went to a State school and got an economics degree, I started my career as a SQL-lackey for a B.I department in declining midwestern retailer, but I treated my career like graduate school insofar that I worked hard at it.
About 4 years after my first day of professional work, I started as a data scientist at a FANG. My team of 9 had 3 Ph.Ds (all science Ph. Ds). As I understood it, the Ph.Ds do receive higher compensation but it's not that much more (~18% higher base) and if I really kick butt, I can out earn them with bonuses.
But I think my path was much easier and lucrative. I was able to save ~$100k, I had a standard of living above that of a regular graduate student and I had flexibility that they would dream of. I made 4 years worth of contacts of my profession, I
I'm sure some Ph.Ds are worth it as investments, but if you're interested in renumeration, get working.
But trucks aren't that much 'bigger' on the inside than sedans. Go sit in a Toyota Avalon and a Tahoe and tell me where you have more room.
The Avalon probably has 80% as much noise on the freeway and if you set the cruise control to 80, the sedan is going to get 2x-3x better MPG and the Avalon costs half as much as the Tahoe.
Let me try to steel man the parent comment and maybe you can respond:
These people are fleeing the very predictable consequences of progressive governance, they should make an attempt to understand what made their origin so bad they wanted to leave and what made their destination so good that they decided to move there. If they vote for the policies that led them to flee, they might start the cycle over again.
I'd question using terms like "progressive" there. For instance, the reason SF is so expensive is that it's impossible to build more housing. That's not in any way a progressive policy.
I don't want to say its _only_ because of "progressive" policies, but specifically affordability is hurt by lack of construction, and construction is hurt by things like low income housing units, high fee's for new construction, and rent control. Those are all marketed as progressive and they are choking supply.
The entire reason why Senate Bill 827 failed was because progressives said it didn't protect the low income from gentrification.
"Progressive" generally goes along with the mentality there's no problem that is not solvable by government, which is usually the least efficient and cost effective mechanism for most problems.
This undoubtedly causes a ripple effect through the economy as all costs proceed to rise over time if not in check. Never mind how many preferred policies like rent control and micromanaged environmental laws that accumulate like technical debt and paralyze development have wrecked the housing market and soak the tech industry like a huge transfer tax that benefits those who got in the right place at the right time in the 80s/90s and shut everything down.
"Affordable housing" is another misnomered policy that is shooting oneself in the foot. Instead of just having market pricing and allowing the city to grow as demanded you let a few poor people stay because they win a lottery and still drive the bulk of people far out.
The syringe, shit laden road to hell is paved with good intentions still holds true today, and why I call myself a liberal but not a progressive in the political sense. There's a definite distinction, and certainly not unreasonable to hope that voters driven out by those policies take a moment to think of how things got there.
“Progressive” isn’t why people flee. Nobody is fleeing Australia which has higher taxes than SF.
I think people would be more inclined to stay if the money went further, I’m yet to understand why the taxes are so high without free hospitals, university, super clean streets etc.
legitimate Q: where does it all disappear in San Francisco that doesn’t occur in progressive Europe / Aus / NZ?
I don't want to be rude but are you Australian or are you just guessing? All of the top graduates from my Software Engineering class in Aus either went to the US or did a PhD and then went to the US, and people are absolutely fleeing Sydney because the cost of living is too high.
I don’t think people are fleeing given the net emigration from the US, and the high cost of living in Sydney is actually my point exactly -
It’s not Sydney’s “progressiveness” that makes it expensive, you could live in Melbourne or Hobart where the tax is the same and it’s much less expensive, both more progressive. Three identical sets of benefits and taxes, wildly different cost of living.
My point was that it’s not progressiveness that makes places too expensive, it’s other factors.
>We codify against pointless discrimination against protected classes of people for a reason. Some things are no longer worth debating and serve no purpose but to actively harm people. So no, they shouldn't be allowed to do that.
But where do we draw a bright line? Sure, maybe we want religious people baking cakes for gay weddings. But should Muslim bakers be forced to draw likenesses of the Prophet Muhammad if a customer requests it? Should a bikini wax establishment that only works on women be forced to wax the intimate areas of a pre-op transwoman?
> Let's stick to applicable conversations, shall we?
Unless you a have a principle that everyone agrees on over what is 'applicable' and what isn't, that veers pretty close to begging the question - conversations that support your point are declared 'applicable', while ones that bring up difficult questions to your point of view get dismissed as off-topic.
Getting back to the original topic, if you're saying that "employees' political views should be taken into account in company decisions", the difficult question is "what about employees whose political views are repugnant to you?" The example of the cake bakery is easy to dismiss because it seems covered by existing law, but what about other cases?
E.g. if a medical device company's employees are religious, should they force it to not sell to abortion providers? Should Trump supporters agitate to only manufacture in the US?
>conversations that support your point are declared 'applicable',
But that's not what's happening.
>the difficult question is "what about employees whose political views are repugnant to you?
Why is this a question? What part of any statement that I made lead to the implication that only a certain subset of employee's should be heard from?
>The example of the cake bakery is easy to dismiss because it seems covered by existing law
It's not only easily dismissable if the conversation called for it, it's actually just irrelevant to the current situation. They touch on two completely different subjects and contexts. A company targeting specific individuals on an ad-hoc basis has no bearing on a company empowering a government with its product. You have to strip both situations down to "employee has opinion, will business listen?" for the current conversation to make any sense. I'd say that'd be absurd to do but I guess that's what we're actually doing.
>if a medical device company's employees are religious, should they force it to not sell to abortion providers?
There is an appreciable difference between a company taking its employee's views and wishes into consideration and obeying laws. There is no law stating that Amazon has to sell this technology. It'd be hard to make such a law, for a whole host of reasons. I'd be happy to expand on such reasons since we're going to start having a civics conversation at any point now.
These kind of analogies, again, are fundamentally mistaken. Because they confuse different issues, different subjects, and different contexts. It's a bad abstraction.
Anti-tax fervor seems like a scapegoat. The library wasn't producing enough value for the residents to care about continuing it and I don't blame them. This is how a democratic government is supposed to work - eventually things will converge to the median view.
I've been voting against my libraries for as long as I've been able to vote. They're just not super valuable to me - they're not keeping kids out of trouble, in fact, it seems like kids go to the library to get into trouble - junkies routinely overdose in them.
In the past 3 years, I've purchased at least 70 books. Each time I purchased a book, I checked to see whether I could get it from the library and they didn't have it. My county library system has 2,038 books of and about feminism and ~300 books of and about LGBT issues, but it has scarcely anything about conservative / right wing political philosophy or Abrahamic theology. It doesn't have a single book by Machiavelli, Hobbes, Evola, or Carl Schmitt. The library doesn't seem like a service that's open to everyone, it seems like a subsidiary for a specific viewpoint and agenda.
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.
You seem to be fortunate enough to have other options. Not everyone is so fortunate. Personally I believe society as a whole is better when we offer opportunities for education and self-improvement to those who can't otherwise afford it. Many people derive real value from public libraries simply because it is the only option they have for the services it offers.
Personally I haven't set foot in a library in a long time but I would proudly and gladly vote to increase funding for libraries, even at my own tax expense. I earn enough for my family to live comfortably. Increasing my material wealth further won't bring any increase in personal happiness so I will gladly spend it to better society as a whole, even if I do not directly benefit from it.
>Personally I believe society as a whole is better when we offer opportunities for education and self-improvement to those who can't otherwise afford it.
And you're welcome to do that with your own money. Why is the cause so moral that others get to decide I have to support it with my money?
That's a complicated question but I'll sum up my thoughts on it by saying because you have benefited from it too. Would you have reached your position in life if not for a stable society and functioning economy? As I see it we've got to pay it forward for the next generation as the last did for us. Whether you prefer it or not you are a part of our shared society.
I didn't ask for this. If society collapsed and I became a sustenance farmer or hunter gatherer, that'd be alright by me.
I agree with the rule of law and I'll do what I'm legally obligated to do, however, every chance I get I'm going to vote in favor of returning to the pre-history status quo of all-against-all.
Interesting. Your Abrahamic theology won't help you there. Please don't drag us all down with you. I'm sure you can find a remote bit of forest somewhere where you can live on your own for as long as you can make it. Come on now, walk the talk.
google your <city name> public library interlibrary loan. You can request what you want on-line. Many will also deliver it to you. You can also get ebooks that way as well. Also check out the app called Libby.
Perhaps all of this won't satisfy your political needs to "own the libs" by killing libraries, but who knows!
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?
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.
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).
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
I'm not sure if most people know that the first libraries in America were privately funded subscription services, established by Benjamin Franklin. The first American lending library (Library Company of Philadelphia) was set up in 1731, where it operated for literally over 100 years as a private institution, and exists to this day as a nonprofit. The first taxpayer-funded public library was established 102 years later, in 1833 (New Hampshire Town Library). The optional market good served its clientele better than the non-optional public service for over 100 years.
From the Revolutionary War to 1800, when the national government was in Philadelphia, the Library Company also served as the Library of Congress. Until the 1850s it was the largest public library in America. All of the books the Library Company acquired year by year over more than two and a half centuries are still on its shelves, along with many others added since it was transformed into a research library in the 1950s. In the 21st century, the Library Company serves as a resource for a variety of readers, from high school students to senior scholars, from novelists to film producers, and anyone else with an interest in our collections.
Nah, the rich were only able to afford libraries. Now that they are "free (with taxes of course)," anyone can use it. You can use the same logic for school. You want schools to be paid? Okay, then the poor wouldn't be able to afford anything and they are stuck in a ever-looping hole of poverty.
According to this it is a non-profit corporation open to the public. A corporation is just a legal structure around ownership interest. The corporate shareholder structure allowed the shareholders to collectively share their books in the library which they provided to the public. Nothing about being exclusive to the rich.
Income is a continuum. Schooling (not to be confused with education) at its essence is just a room with a teacher, pupils and study materials. It can be realistically attained by nearly all income levels but the extreme lowest.
The library may not be valuable for you, but it is valuable for many. I see poor children using the computers. Even if a few learn programing and start their own companies instead of selling crack, then the library would pay for themselves. As fort the viewpoint, pressure your library to add more conservative stuff. As for security and junkies, why aren't you doing anything? Go volunteer yourself. Many junkies are actually desperate themselves. I actually read a lot of conservative stuff myself to ground myself. Why don't you?
It seems to me like the real value in a library these days is in the computers. Somewhere you can go to use one if you don't own one, or if you need to print or fax something. I'd be fine with all the books being digitized and libraries being more like just community cybercafes with no cost overhead for the skills of a librarian or keeping around books.
> My county library system has 2,038 books of and about feminism and ~300 books of and about LGBT issues, but it has scarcely anything about conservative / right wing political philosophy or Abrahamic theology.
Since it seems you counted every book in every library in your county and classified them according to left/right political ideology, and were able to come up with a precise number for books "of and about feminism," why aren't you also providing the same for " conservative / right wing political philosophy or Abrahamic theology?" Or for that matter, the books which fall into neither category?
That's just bad statistics.
>It doesn't have a single book by Machiavelli, Hobbes, Evola, or Carl Schmitt.
Bullshit. I refuse to believe you counted ~2,338 items of "feminist" literature in a library system that doesn't contain at least one copy of The Prince.
>The library doesn't seem like a service that's open to everyone, it seems like a subsidiary for a specific viewpoint and agenda.
It does seem that's what you want us to think, sir or madam green account created specifically for this thread.
>Since it seems you counted every book in every library in your county and classified them according to left/right political ideology
I didn't. I just queried the search engine.
>Or for that matter, the books which fall into neither category?
Because I don't really care about those books. I'm only interested in books about conservative / right wing political philosophy and/or Abrahamic theology. My library doesn't have many of those, however, it has a lot of books of ideologies that are hostile to the ones I'm sympathetic to.
When I'm not accommodated in a public place, I tend to look around to see who is. I can see why leftists love libraries, they're welcome to that opinion. I'm just going to vote in a way that's contrary to continuing financial support for those libraries that don't accommodate myself or my interests.
>My library doesn't have many of those, however, it has a lot of books of ideologies that are hostile to the ones I'm sympathetic to.
I have a difficult time believing you, partly because libraries don't actually serve a leftist or feminist agenda, and therefore the situation you describe is dubious, and partly because in another comment you mention "all men are bad feminist literature" which is a straw version of feminism promulgated by redpillers, incels and trolls.
So please mention the county you live in so we can do our own searches and verify the feminist/liberal/anti-right wing agenda for ourselves.
>I'm just going to vote in a way that's contrary to continuing financial support for those libraries that don't accommodate myself or my interests.
Do what several commenters have suggested and ask them to get the material you want, or don't go there.
Why do you feel libraries which don't "accomodate" you, personally, also don't deserve to serve the rest of the community?
>Why do you feel libraries which don't "accomodate" you, personally, also don't deserve to serve the rest of the community?
My general view is that People can do what they want as long as they don't involve me. I have no problem with libraries, I just don't like them enough to want to pay for them and whenever the issue comes up, I'm going to vote to free myself from the burden of supporting things I don't want to support. If libraries become a place that's interesting to me, my personal feelings might change.
Also, I'm sympathetic to kids having access to books. Whenever I'm done with my books, I bring them to my neighborhood park's lending library. It's supported by people in the neighborhood and people can exchange books. It's a practical, low cost solution. Though sometimes my books upset my neighbors, but I don't see how "The Concept of the Political" is any more controversial than say "the Life and Narrative of Frederick Douglass"
You continue to dodge literally the only salient question in this thread: which county do you live in?
The rest of the conversation in this thread is built upon the IMO extremely implausible claims in your first comment.
There's good reason for us to simply not believe your claims. I wrote a Python script to search US library catalogs for Prince, Leviathan, the bible, and some standard texts on christian/jewish history. I didn't find a single library that doesn't have at least one out of three, and nearly all libraries with catalogs my script knows how to handle have a copy of both Prince and Leviathan.
Furthermore, nearly all of the libraries without these texts have the keyword "elementary" or "middle" in their names, which... yeah, Leviathan isn't exactly written at a fifth grade reading level.
e: I also searched library catalogs for the intersection of 2k+ books on category/keyword feminism and no copy of Prince. Zero results.
Unless you're in an exceptionally isolated part of the country, your county library is part of an inter library-loan system that can get those books for you. Requesting these books signals to librarians that they need to have those books on premise.
I'm surprised they didn't have any of Hobbes or Machiavelli's works, as they tend to be utilized by a lot of classes.
But for Evola or Carl Schmitt, I don't see that as anti-conservative in any sense as most conservatives/mainstream Republicans have largely embraced classic liberalism that Schmitt opposed. Evola is equally divorced from mainstream orthodoxy outside of the alt-right, which itself has little interest in its own philosophical underpinnings. His work is definitely worht a read if you want to understand the underpinnings of European neofascism but you're talking about pretty niche stuff here.
> It doesn't have a single book by Machiavelli, Hobbes, Evola, or Carl Schmitt.
Probably for the same reason you won't find Hitler's book in German libraries. Their ideas of immorality, absolutism, fascism and nazism simply lost against other, better ideas. Get over it.
If Carl Schmitt and Julius Evola lost, why did Barack Obama get away with using drones to execute American citizens? Why did the CIA and the Bush administration get away with using torture?
