Random thought.
If public libraries didn't already exist, capitalism wouldn't let you invent it. Can you imagine how many billions Jeff Bezos would plough into fighting the idea, destroying any politician who dared to back it?
Support your local library.
@davidnjoku 
% yes to Support your Local #Library!!!
Also, please let me add this here #AaronSwartz
In 2013 Aaron Swartz committed suicide for facing 35 years in prison for mass downloading scientific articles. 13 years later, Meta is almost getting away with an infraction orders of magnitude larger. The law didn't change. https://torrentfreak.com/uploading-pirated-books-via-bittorrent-qualifies-as-fair-use-meta/
‘Andrew Carnegie supported libraries because he believed access to knowledge was essential for self-improvement, merit-based success, and community advancement. As a formerly poor immigrant, he credited his own success to having free access to books, calling libraries "ladders upon which the aspiring may climb"’ Wikipedia
These ideas really didn’t used to be controversial or identifiable with a particular side of the political spectrum.
What does capitalism have to do with the fact most people are stupid enough to get locked into a walled garden where they don't really buy anything but pay for a subscription?
What does capitalism have to do with the fact that we are being pushed into a future where we essentially own nothing and we're supposed to be happy about it?
Neither of these things are a fundamental part of capitalism.
@Kalki_Rider They seem directly connected, to me. Capitalism causes both of them.
Yes, that is correct. Capitalism says nothing, however, about ensuring that ownership is equitable, fair, or even common.
@Kalki_Rider All of Scandinavia?
You're viewing our current situation in a short-sighted way. Paying for subs means we're basically renting... from the rich person who owns the material or rights.
The landlord is a part of capitalism.
@Kalki_Rider They're better off than where we are, and worlds better than where we're going.
@Kalki_Rider They are the strongest democracies in the world, with the highest dedication to human rights.
I don't know where you are, but my US is failing in both metrics, rapidly.
@Kalki_Rider I'm not sure you have any idea what you're talking about.
Scandinavia is not "a nation". They are multiple nations. The strongest democracies. The highest rankings for human rights. The happiest citizens, well-educated and healthy, with high trust for their governments. Because they fought for, and won, socialist democracies.
Everything you've said otherwise describes the US, a toxic capitalism falling into totalitarianism via the few who own everything.
@Kalki_Rider I think you fell into a propaganda trap of some sort.
"not a free democracy" 🙃
From your profile, looks like you fell into the same trap with religion.
Hope you get out of it and get to see the world as it is, not what you're told.
I'm done. Muting now.
You think that doesn't happen in capitalist-rentier states?
Socialism is not a pyramid scheme nor does it require authoritarianism. It tends to work against authoritarianism, in fact, by diluting concentrations of power.
...unless you are defining "socialism" quite differently than I am -- perhaps you could share your definition? ...that is to say, what characteristics identify a system as "socialist"?
I guess you haven't been keeping up with the news? Yes, they have abducted many US citizens. Some are still in custody. Some have managed to get released, but with no compensation or any consequence to the abductors.
The post-war social democracies of Europe showed the lowest income inequality and the greatest social mobility of any Western region ever.
Admittedly those advances only existed because members of the various European Establishments were petrified of permanently losing their privileged status to a socialist state, but the principle stands.
Not purist, Austrian free market capitalism maybe, but the sad reality is that the Austrian purists were suckered by avaricious rent seekers wanting to recreate the Gilded Age for the sake of their own prosperity.
@davidnjoku “Imagine there was no such thing as a library, and that members of the current neoliberal policy consensus were to sit down today and invent it.”
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/citizen-coupon
Conservatives and neoliberals envision a government that provides a comparable range of benefits to the one advocated by earlier American liberals. But rather than designing and delivering services directly, the neoliberal government provides coupons for citizens.
Oddly many towns main public library was built with funding from one of the original slave driving capitalists like JJHill. More or less as monuments to themselves.
Free books? That’s some super socialist shit, there!
@davidnjoku @cascheranno If you read the opinion in the case of all 5 publishers against the Internet Archive, you'll find their reasoning applies just as well if you remove the 'e' from "ebook" throughout. Which means the precedent is set; they're just waiting for the right time.
They will, sooner or later, get around to declaring libraries illegal, since they clearly "pirate" books by allowing people to read them without paying.
@davidnjoku Much as it's fun to beat down on the super-rich, there's a huge flaw in that claim.
In America and Britain at least, a huge number of both countries' libraries were originally started and funded by donations from Andrew Carnegie.
He was very much an equivalent to today's tech billionaires -- he was the wealthiest man in the world, literally richer than Rockefeller -- but at the end of his life he used his money for good rather than evil.
True, but Carnegie was also something of an aberration in billionaire terms, and as an advocate for wealth and estate taxes, he was an outlier compared to the vast majority of billionaires at the time and a complete anathema to the tax-dodging billionaires of today.
and like Nobel, he did it when someone pricked his bubble and showed what people really thought of him.
He wanted to whitewash his business practices.
As a minor tangent, can you imagine what the internet would look like today if it had been designed by librarians wanting universal access to information rather than billionaires wanting to lock information behind a paywall?
@ReggieHere it was designed that way wasn’t it? And then we poured the money on top. And starting in 1997 I became part of the problem
Yes, so many of us were dragged into the IT industry at that time, regardless of what we may have previously studied or trained to do.
In the 1990s I remember reading an article, not dissimilar to the 'Will AI replace my job?' articles we have today, and 'Librarian' topped a list of professions that would no longer exist in the newly-computerised world.
@ReggieHere I was lured in by reading Wired articles even though I sensed back then that much of it was full of shit.
I think most of us have a similar story of that time, and the bizarre part was that the same industry essentially recreated librarians in the 2000s to deal with the data silos that had been created in the 80s and 90s thanks to a lack of standards that would have otherwise been created by librarians.
Most of the IT roles starting with 'data' (data scientist, data wrangler, data manager, ...) have a physical analogue that pre-dates the IT industry by centuries.
@davidnjoku I think they would be invented anyway, but with a paywall...
Libraries as we know them in the 16th and 17th century were basically collections of books for the royal family, other wealthy, powerful people and the church. In the 18th there was a change towards public access (although that didn't mean everybody could enter, more like academics and students). Also some libraries started as paid book clubs, where you could access the collections if you paid a fee. True open libraries, at least in Europe, weren't conceived until past the French revolution and their declaration of rights, the rise in mandatory education and the idea of the democratization of access to information. (Excuse the info dump, I'm currently studying this XD)
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