{"id":3368,"date":"2009-03-20T14:21:51","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T19:21:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3368"},"modified":"2009-03-20T14:25:21","modified_gmt":"2009-03-20T19:25:21","slug":"3368","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3368","title":{"rendered":"Library things"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin Myers at The Independent<\/em><\/a> wonders, “If we have free books, why not free concerts or free theatre?” (Link via SF Signal<\/a>.) <\/font><\/p>\n

Except, y’know, we do<\/em> have those things. I don’t know how much of these arts are subsidized by the government and taxpayers in the UK, but these are not crazy socialist concepts.<\/font><\/p>\n

Myers goes on to write:
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

Now, only a baboon would deny the usefulness of free libraries to children. But why should any well-paid person like myself have their literary tastes paid for, including author royalties, by the taxpayer? Meanwhile, the bookshop down the road has to match the range of taxpayer-funded facilities being provided free of charge at the library, and make a profit, a concept about as foreign to a state-run lending library as toilet paper is to a fish.<\/font><\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t know where to start with this. Maybe with the fact that not every tax-payer is<\/em> well-paid, or at least can’t afford the discretionary funds that are needed for buying lots of books? That libraries tend to encourage<\/em> book sales rather than the opposite by allowing readers to discover new authors? That you’d be hard-pressed to find a publisher, much less an author, who doesn’t support and often make use of libraries? Or that hey, your taxes go to pay for a lot<\/em> of things you may never directly use but that other citizens use quite a lot. That’s sort of how taxes (and a society) work.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

Are we really<\/em> at the point where we’re arguing not just for less spending on arts but on scrapping the whole concept of public libraries?<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin Myers at The Independent wonders, “If we have free books, why not free concerts or free theatre?” (Link via SF Signal.) Except, y’know, we do have those things. I don’t know how much of these arts are subsidized by the government and taxpayers in the UK, but these are not crazy socialist concepts. Myers … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[16],"class_list":["post-3368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3368"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}