
Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive - blatherard
http://www.metafilter.com/112698/California-Dreamin#4183210
======
tptacek
Can I add to this one little point, which is a counterintuitive thing you can
do to help your local library:

 _Use your local library_.

During the year we started Matasano our Chicago team spent about 40%-50% of
our time working from the Oak Park Public Library, sometimes in meeting rooms
we booked, more often at study desks. It was great. The Internet access wasn't
amazing but it was totally functional and we could VPN out through it. The
desks and working space were if anything better than what we have now (and we
really like our office).

There were times I worried that we were being a burden, but the impression I
get is that it's the opposite. What's deadly for a local library is for nobody
from the community to be using it, for it to have no stakeholders from the tax
base of the community. The library staff was always welcoming to us.

Your hip coffee shop on the other hand hates you with a passion it normally
reserves for Scott Stapp solo albums. At the coffee shop, you take up space in
a business that's driven by turnover. Someone's going to chime in here with a
story about a coffee shop that truly loves the startups that park themselves
at their tables and order 3 count them 3 cups of coffee in a day, but I've
talked to hipster coffee shop people oh-yes-I-have and at least some of you
who truly believe you're doing your coffee shop a favor are being tolerated
gracefully, not welcomed, like you would be at your local library.

Libraries have an obvious role to grow into as IT hubs for their communities,
now that so much of their knowledge-disseminating role has been subsumed by
IT. But another related less obvious role is as a hub for local
entrepreneurship; thing thing "hackerspaces" are supposed to do, but are (for
so many companies) suboptimal at.

~~~
jonhohle
I leans heavily toward the libertarian side, but I think libraries are one of
the most important social services provided by local governments. Unlike other
programs, absolutely everyone can get some direct benefit from the library -
no matter what age or income level.

Libraries, in my opinion, are a model of what social services should look
like: universally beneficial, only practical at the community level, little
chance of moral hazard or conflict of interest by any party involved (don't
return a book, you lose check out privileges - the only one hurt is the perp).

Next time you think of buying a book, seriously check out your local library
system.

~~~
mickey7
i'd rather not pay for other people's benefits unless the benefit returns to
me with reasonable probability and period of time. on one hand i'd like to see
libraries turn profit (like 'lite' version of video rental model) or at least
be self sufficient. on the other hand i want to enjoy reasonably educated
population with easy access to methods for self improvement and economic
mobility (both up and down) and a 'safety net' in case of uninsured unforeseen
events. there's a balance between socialism and pure libertarian model but its
so local and complicated and constantly evolving that i just resign myself
toward the purest liberty and self responsibility and say fuck the libraries.

~~~
wisty
When I was <18, most of the books I read were from libraries. My parents
aren't poor, by any measure, but they don't believe in paying for a lump of
dead tree you only read once. Books can inspire. They help you improve your
literacy.

Local libraries are pretty cheap. Programs to give books to poor children may
not be as cost effective. Giving computers to poor children may simply result
in them being sold, either by the kids or their parents.

Commercial libraries (proprietary libraries) have existed. They typically
catered to the kind of people who paid a lot for membership - upper middle
class professionals. If we relied on commercial public libraries today, they
would be stacked with O'Reilly's books, Tolkien, popular economics, management
books, and the like.

~~~
smsm42
I wouldn't mind having a paid membership in a library that carries O'Reilly's
books and like. I would also probably try to convince my company to have one
(and that would mean much bigger budget there). Most of such books are needed
only for a relatively short periods of time and then sit there gathering dust
for years. The library would be ideal for such things. I don't say this would
necessarily work, there are many problems with this idea that would need to be
resolved, but on the face of it I don't see why it couldn't work.

------
feralchimp
TL;DR - Just because you don't use the library doesn't mean no one needs them
anymore. Not everyone's Real Life Issues are amenable to a self-service web
portal, and that's not just because no one has built the right widgets yet.

> it will be a slow death by a thousand cuts

It will be a slow descent into budget fugue, followed by an extremely quick
death when we pass an inflection point in "the number of people who remember
getting awesome value out of their local/municipal library system."

I bet when a lot of people here first started hearing about library closures
in their old neighborhood, or wherever they're living now, their initial
reaction was one of total shock followed by "well I guess I can see how that
could happen."

When people hear about library closures now, they could be skipping the shock
entirely, passing smoothly through "aw that's too bad", and fading into "well
there's Google."

> [the library] need[s] to become the center of civic engagement

We need a center of civic engagement with both equality and equity of access.
Libraries are a decent foundation on which to build such a thing, but there's
at least one common feature of libraries that makes them _awful_ for this:
people are supposed to be _quiet_ in the library.

There should be almost nothing quiet about civic engagement, finding a job,
learning new skills, research, etc. Less giant rooms with rows of people not
saying anything; more smaller sound-proofed rooms with whiteboards and
projectors. Like a giant executive briefing center, only with fewer executives
and more regular folks with something to ask/teach each other.

~~~
mansolo
It's horrifying that we need a TL;DR for a modest chunk of text - a mere
comment.

If our attention spans are that fried, are we any better off than the
hypothetical guy trying to fill out a government form?

It's a bit like taking someone's synopsis for what the Bible is about. You
can't. You have to read it, experience it and parse it yourself or you can't
really know.

Myself, I'm not going to pablum-feed you guys a over-simplified short form
version of what I think I just read. Read it for yourself.

No wonder libraries are endangered.

~~~
zanny
People write TLDRs for their comments whenever they feel they expended more
words on the topic than they feel were necessary, it doesn't imply an
expectation that no one else would read it.

When I write a fervent wall of text I think is worthy of reading in full, I
don't put on a TLDR, I just pity the fool who doesn't take the time to partake
of dense knowledge.

So, TLDR, it is the author feeling the content is lacking in a dense section
of text more than the reader having a limited attention span that leads to
TLDR's. I think.

~~~
martey
" _TLDR, it is the author feeling the content is lacking in a dense section of
text more than the reader having a limited attention span that leads to
TLDR's._ "

There is no evidence that "feralchimp" (who wrote the TLDR here on Hacker
News) is the same as "codacorolla" (who wrote the original comment on
Metafilter).

~~~
zanny
I just meant in the general case about TLDR's, not just in one particular
instance. Existentialism happpened.

------
jdietrich
OP's statement is a strong argument _against_ libraries.

We're spending good money on buildings full of books that inadvertently
provide some really important social services. If you've got a bucket catching
drips from your leaky roof, you need roof repairs, not a better bucket.

Here in England, we have an organisation that does exactly what the OP is
espousing - guiding people who don't know where to turn for help. It's called
the Citizens Advice Bureau, it has been in existence since 1939 and it now has
20,000 volunteers working out of 3200 locations. The CAB provides impartial
and confidential advice and assistance on just about any issue someone might
bring through the doors. Crucially, the CAB is an independent charity, so is
trusted by marginalised people in a way that no government agency could be.

I'd like to say that I'm surprised there's no equivalent in the US, but sadly
I'm not. I just don't think there are enough Americans prepared to give up big
blocks of their time to help people who we'd all cross the street to avoid. I
don't think any society that still uses the word "ghetto" in the present tense
is capable of building such an organisation.

I understand that there are agencies sporadically providing similar services,
but that lack of consistency is half the problem - if your brand isn't
ubiquitous, you're failing your most needy clients. Now please, go out and
prove me wrong. Build an absolutely kick-ass advice agency and rub my limey
face in it. There are few things that would please me more.

~~~
recoil
You are flat-out wrong about Americans and their willingness to give up their
time for charitable causes [1].

Interestingly I am also British and my impression from American friends and
acquaintances was generally the opposite to yours: many of them had
volunteered in the past or were involved with volunteering, which is something
I came across less frequently in the UK (I emigrated 4 years ago so this may
have changed, I suppose). This impression is borne out by the report above.

While the social issues faced in every country differ greatly for any number
of reasons governed by history, demographics, etc. etc., there are enough
similarities between the two countries as to make you sound very insensitive
to the issues faced by many inhabitants of the UK.

To use one small example, the Gini co-efficient measure of income inequality
(after taxes) for the UK is closer to that of the US than it is for almost
every other European country [2]. I don't think anybody would dispute that
there are a lot of poor and disadvantaged people in the UK.

The main difference between the two countries has less to do with the
willingness of citizens to donate time or money to charitable causes than it
does to do with the "social safety net", provided by the government. That's a
whole different subject though.

[1]
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/sep/08/charitab...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/sep/08/charitable-
giving-country#_) [2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equ...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality#Gini_coefficient.2C_after_taxes_and_transfers)

~~~
jdietrich
Both figures are disingenuous. American charitability has to be seen through
the prism of religiosity. An exceptionally high proportion of American
donation and volunteering is done through church groups and the vast majority
of that activity should not reasonably be considered 'giving'. A church-
sanctioned rock band will be included in the statistics as an enormous number
of volunteer hours. A church organisation is a tax-deductible charity,
regardless of whether it achieves any charitable aims.

Britain's Gini coefficient is substantially distorted because of London. The
Gini coefficient is a pure measure of income inequality, so is massively
influenced by the presence of people with exceptionally high incomes. It tells
you almost nothing about the gap between the middle class and the working
class in a developed country. When your country includes a megalopolis that's
the world's most popular playground for billionaires and tax haven for
multinationals, that distorts the figures somewhat. Factor out a couple of
London boroughs and our Gini index changes dramatically. Likewise, France's
Gini index would plummet if they had a territorial claim to Monaco.

------
snprbob86
This is a very well written story that takes what I already kinda of assumed
to be true and made it feel very real. It's quite sad, really.

I don't want to trivialize the plight of the poor, but I'm also concerned with
the impact on the world's intellectuals. A somewhat relevant rant follows....

We were down in the bay area meeting investors a few weeks ago, and I took
some time to walk around Standford's campus. It's beautiful. It feels somewhat
quiet and lonely, but that's simply because it is _huge_. However, I walked
through a few random buildings and delighted in seeing people studying and
working. While still quiet, there was an energy to the place. This was a place
that brilliant people made magic happen.

It strikes me as odd that so much work these days is done out of coffee shops.
I mean, I do it too, but it's really kind of weird. You walk in, all these
people have headphones on, are sipping on a latte, and totally ignoring the
outside world. People are crammed in like sardines and working like mad men,
but it simply doesn't feel like magic is happening.

Neil Degrasse Tyson talks about how NASA is necessary to create the sense of
wonder and enchantment to raise a new generation of scientists. He says the
NASA budget is simply a great investment. He's right.

I feel the same way about public spaces.

I'd really like to see more energized, magical, beautiful public spaces. I'm
not a Stanford student, so I couldn't use their wifi. I had to walk down to
University Ave and work out of Paris Baguette. There's just not as much wonder
and excitement when you're surrounded by pastries.

~~~
icebraining
Where I live most coffee shops have tables outside (is there a name in English
for that space?), so you can work while you watch street vendors, people
walking around and grandparents with children, not to mention the sun, trees,
etc. It doesn't have a work environment, but it's very reinvigorating to stop
for five minutes and appreciate the surroundings.

~~~
notatoad
>is there a name in English for that space?

you could call it a patio, but that implies a bit more formality than there is
at a lot of coffee shops. "tables outside" is probably pretty good.

------
benwerd
A thousand times this. I find the ultra-libertarian stance that our community
sometimes takes to be counter to what web applications have been about. Are we
empowering people or aren't we?

Libraries are hugely important knowledge transfer hubs (and, as the MeFi
commenter rightly says, community centers). Furthermore, selfishly, for us as
builders, they're the only place a lot of people will ever come into contact
with the stuff we make. They can't be allowed to die.

The entire California library system was given $12m in state funds in 2008.
It's now down to zero. How can we, as a community, help?

~~~
xenophanes
The libertarian stance is not "there should be no libraries" but more like "if
there is a genuine need for libraries, and value in having them (quite
plausible), then Government funding is not the best approach to creating them
or running them efficiently".

Just because something is good doesn't mean the tax payers should pay for it.
There are other options.

If they are a great idea, why not persuade people to voluntarily pay for them?

Or if they are providing value, why don't they make money? Perhaps they could
provide some services for free and charge for others. Or profitably provide
some services very cheaply.

~~~
urbanjunkie
> If they are a great idea, why not persuade people to voluntarily pay for
> them?

Because, in this specific case, the people who most need libraries can often
barely afford to pay for food and shelter.

Libraries are such an obvious public good that I will _never_ understand why
they're _not_ treated (both in the US and in the UK, and perhaps in other
countries), as a basic and absolute necessity.

[edited to add _not_ which I left out in my rush to get my point across]

~~~
xenophanes
I meant persuade people with money to pay for them.

You value them. Why don't you pay something voluntarily? And a thousand other
yous? Why doesn't Bill Gates throw some money at it if it's a super efficient
use of resources?

He will, and many other non-poor people will, if they are persuaded it's a
better use of their resources than Greenpeace, Oxfam, malaria medicine for
Africa, clean water for Africa, and so on.

If such people can't be persuaded of this -- that it's an efficient use of
resources -- then that's no time to send the tax man to take their money for
this purpose and divert it away from the purposes they judge to be more
important.

~~~
leot
Is it really so hard for you to imagine prisoners dilemmas and tragedies of
the commons?

I'm willing to pay $1 for a public good if everyone else pays $1. But it is
utterly irrational for me to pay voluntarily for this public good, for at
least two reasons: 1) since most people _won't_ be paying for it, if I want it
I'll have to pay _much_ more, and 2) whether or not it exists is entirely
independent of my actions anyway, so why pay a thing?

In order for fundamentalist libertarianism to work it will need to come up
with a solution to the free-rider problem. Got one?

~~~
xenophanes
> In order for fundamentalist libertarianism to work it will need to come up
> with a solution to the free-rider problem. Got one?

Yes: <http://fallibleideas.com/public-goods>

~~~
leot
Any evidence that this solves it?

~~~
xenophanes
It's a philosophical argument, not an evidence-based argument. Do you have a
criticism of it other than that you are an empiricist who dislikes philosophy?
Do you have a rival idea which isn't refuted?

~~~
leot
Philosophers use evidence all the time in support of their arguments,
especially when they are making empirical claims (as you are: you are claiming
that the costs of government outweigh the benefits when it comes to the
provision of public goods). If you choose to not use evidence, then it is
important to be far more careful and charitable than you have been. E.g., in
your "simple argument" you only consider examples at the extreme (million -x
benefit or 1% ROI). These are straw men -- you don't in fact deal with any
kind of realistic example.

For your reasoning to have been good and fair, you would have had to consider
the scenario that puts your position in the worst possible light and then show
that it still holds. Imagine a dam that costs $100 but provides $10,000 of
benefit to 20 users. Imagine, further, that all 20 users are competing with
each other for status and customers, they are all roughly equally wealthy, and
that paying for the dam will be a significant expense for most of them. Even
though the dam could be built by any five of the users, any user who doesn't
pay will gain a comparative advantage over the others. The libertarian might
propose that they collectively participate in a contract. But why should
anyone agree to participate in this contract, if they know that the dam will
be built irrespective of their participation, and if they will get an
advantage over others by not participating? No doubt the hold-outs will claim
that they can't afford to pay for it, or that they don't want it -- but this
is just a negotiating strategy.

Sure, setting up a government to deal with the provision of a single
collective good is extremely inefficient. The issue is that there are many
thousands of such public goods (and services). The empirical argument, here,
is that on balance the inefficiency is worth it.

It does not appear, from your essay, that you have carefully and
sympathetically examined the relevant counter-positions. If you haven't
already looked at it carefully, I would recommend
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-rider/>

It is interesting that free market fundamentalists seem to have trouble
deciding whether their argument is an empirical or a
philosophical/moral/ideological one. They will claim that libertarianism is
the answer because government-based collective action is always less efficient
(an empirical claim). When evidence is provided that this need not always be
true, they switch to an argument of "freedom" and natural rights. When this
argument is shown wanting, they then revert to their efficiency-related
arguments. This flip-flop frequently works to fool many, it seems.

~~~
xenophanes
> Philosophers use evidence all the time in support of their arguments,
> especially when they are making empirical claims (as you are: you are
> claiming that the costs of government outweigh the benefits when it comes to
> the provision of public goods).

That's a moral not empirical claim. You can't measure what is _morally better_
than what.

Also that isn't my claim: I said nothing about what outweighs what, and I
object to such arguments.

You complain that I don't give a sympathetic reading to free rider problems --
without details, presumably simply because you disagree with me -- but then
what do you do? You characterize my views grossly inaccurately by throwing in
a bunch of your own assumptions.

HN has terrible UI for finding new replies to comments like this, where they
are nested under other comments I wrote, so I don't intend to check again. If
you want to have a serious discussion and perhaps learn something, reply at:
<http://groups.google.com/group/rational-politics-list?hl=en>

------
ck2
You know where all the public money has gone for libraries? War.

The cost of medical benefits for all the soldiers who are mamed but now can
survive for 50 years is staggering and will choke our culture to death. All
those weapons, fuel, R&D, "homeland security theater", etc. all part of the
massive war machine.

But war will always be funded because it's the ultimate high of money and
power, to be able to send people to kill and be killed, heck it gives the
politicians special "war powers", why would they not want it?

Doesn't matter if it's the left or right in charge, they do love their war and
will never, ever stop.

~~~
jseliger
_You know where all the public money has gone for libraries? War._

I'm glad someone pointed this out, because I came here to do this. But that
money has actually gone two places: war and welfare transfer payments, as Alex
Tabarrok describes in _Launching the Innovation Renaissance_ , where he says
that "the big four of defense, Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security eat up
$2.2 trillion, or nearly two-thirds of the U.S. federal budget."

We—collectively, as a society—have elected to spend steadily more money on war
and transfer payments. A lot of library funding comes from the local and state
level, but local taxing abilities are partially contingent on how much the
federal government is taking, and what the federal government is spending that
money on.

~~~
ck2
War costs are hidden and spread throughout the system. It's far more than the
official numbers.

All those injured vets get tons of welfare, well before their elderly years
instead of how the system was designed for as a safetynet.

You cannot eliminate the safetynet for poor and elderly - well you could, but
whomever does it would be a heartless bastard and march our nation right into
hell itself as crime becomes exponential.

You can however eliminate war and the TSA and all these billions of dollars we
are wasting to spy on every American.

------
DanKnox
I am earnestly surprised by the collective HN reaction to this story. While at
first glance it may seem as though there are commenters on very opposite ends
of the geopolitical spectrum, they all have one thing in common. The distinct
belief that this is someone else's fault other than their own.

No matter your stance on public vs private services, what good does it do to
argue on the internet about how other people are running things. What happened
to the government formed of the people and by the people, and the intrinsic
responsibility in these types of matters that we all should bear? When will we
all grow tired of commenting from the sidelines and begin to get in the game?

This group as a whole consists of some very smart, creative people, with a
heavy lean towards entrepreneurialism. I would be willing to bet that if we
all put our heads together we could come up with a solution that would not
only put these libraries back in the black, but could generate extra revenue
for our companies as well.

To kick things off I will throw out the first idea. Obviously, companies
producing web applications have a vested interest in the universal access of
technology. What if we could fund some of these training classes by offering
these public libraries referral programs that would allow them to profit from
teaching customers how to use our applications and services? Citizens learn
new technology critical to their well being, we receive new signups for our
services, libraries make a cut. Obviously this is very general and ripe with
logistical complexities. It is meant to spark the minds of people much smarter
than I am.

Not to sound too ridiculous here, but I for one still believe that we can fix
this country if we ditch the someone else's problem attitude and start
focusing on solutions.

~~~
snowy909
Thank you for this comment. This is one of the best posts that I have read on
HN (the original one) and I think it behoves everyone on the better off side
of the digital divide to consider how this gap can be closed. I sincerely hope
that the compassion in this world has not be drowned out by the noise of
'entrepreneurism' Looking at the great entreprenuers of the 19th century,
nearly all were characterised by following a vision and giving back to the
community.

------
Shenglong
Drawing a parallel to the Canadian healthcare system:

I haven't been sick in 12 years. Yet, every year, I pay taxes to keep the
public healthcare system running. Even though it's not something I use,
undoubtedly, there are people who need it, and wouldn't be able to pay for it
if it wasn't public.

About a month ago, I exhibited the symptoms of some kind of ventricular
tachycardia (heart arrhythmia). As advised by a friend in medicine (in a
different city), I tried to get myself booked for an ECG, to see what exactly
was wrong. Without getting into the details, let's just say that even to this
day, I haven't been able to get one.

I can definitely see why people don't want to pay, not just for services that
they'll never use, but for services they'll probably be unable to use, even if
they ever need to.

~~~
msbarnett
You're not unable to use the system, you're just not able to use the system
_frivolously_.

Procedures like ECGs arent performed at patient request, they're performed by
specialists when a qualified physician determines a need for one and refers
you to a specialist.

You can't get yourself an ECG not because they're unavailable, but simply
because "Joe Random from city X says you need one" caries as much weight with
Heart Specialists as "my cousin Bob says you should give me a new laptop" does
with warrantee repairmen.

~~~
Shenglong
That's actually not true at all. They'll rush ECG procedures if you're
currently exhibiting symptoms at that moment. Yes, if I were rushed to the
hospital, I could probably get one. Somethings tells me that by then, it's
probably too late.

~~~
jw_
What nonsense. I'm Canadian, I had symptoms of an arrythmia, went to a GP to
describe what was happening, and I had an ECG done and bloodwork drawn at a
nearby lab less than an hour later. This was all while I was not exhibiting
symptoms.

Like msbarnett says, you can't just roll into a clinic and say "I don't feel
well and I'm scared and my cousin who's totally a doctor thinks this is what I
should do! Also an MRI please!" Go see a doctor, and let them decide what
diagnostic tests are appropriate, and you'll get them done.

------
brianlouisw
Even though I consider myself basically libertarian I'm often annoyed by the
programs that seem to be first in line for budget cuts - libraries, parks,
school music programs, and other basic things that don't actually cost very
much.

This is by design, not by necessity - cuts to programs that people enjoy or
support are more like to encourage voters to accept bond measures, tax
increases, etc in order to avoid those cuts.

California spent $10 BILLION on prisons in 2011-2012. The country spent over
$80B fighting drugs.

Funding libraries is a rounding error compared to the actual activities voters
choose to allow their governments to engage in. If you want well funded
libraries - stop voting for politicians whose only solutions involve more
jails, more arrests, more wars, and more handouts.

------
anrope
Maybe I'm just not in a skeptical mood today, but the anecdote in that story
points out something that I tend to take for granted. I'm probably not alone,
especially here on HN.

That is, the fact that some people just really don't understand the most basic
concepts of using a computer. And it's not their fault.

 _Your breath seizes in your chest, and you realize you have no idea what to
do. You have the form that they gave you at the social services office, which
has an address, which you sort of know what that does, but you can't quite
remember – 17 minutes, by the way. You try typing X City Social Services in a
box at the top, a page comes back and says “address not found” with a list of
things below it. You're panicking..._

I'm all for increasing the use of technology in order to make things work more
smoothly and efficiently, but this story points out just how left-behind this
can leave some people.

I guess the answer is better education, and not just in schools. I guess I can
be glad that there are a lot of people working in that space. Even then,
before anyone can use Khan Academy or enroll in online classes, they need to
have a better idea of "what a [web] address does", and sometimes even whether
to "do a left or right click".

~~~
danielford
I've been surprised by the lack of technical ability in my college classes,
especially from students that are my age or younger. This semester, a student
told me she couldn't find a program to write a short assignment. I sent her a
link to OpenOffice and was baffled by how excited she was about it. She
informed me that she was writing papers nonstop, just because she was happy to
finally have a tool that let her do it. And this wasn't a dumb person either.
Last week she was half a point away from a perfect score on an exam that would
have ruined my semester back when I was in college.

~~~
peregrine
Sidebar: Memorization is one, highly over valued, facet of intelligence. I've
know several of the 'smartest' kids in my classes to be actually very slow,
very un perceptive, very 'dumb' by all standards. Nonetheless they got high
honors and accolades because they possessed a remarkable ability to memorize
and put in crazy hours. Some of these people put int 20+ hours in to get an A
in a lab when I would put in 2-3 hours tops and get an AB.

My point is would you want to work with someone who when faced with the issue
of having to write a paper doesn't have the spike of genius to search for
"word processor" in google?

~~~
teamonkey
They got a better grade in the end, didn't they? I would rather work with
someone who can deliver, genius or not.

~~~
peregrine
A better grade is more important than delivering in a reasonable time? I think
you might have missed my point, you can get A an but the point of the
education is not to get an A, its to learn the material.

If they can learn the material, get a very reasonable grade, an AB and spend
far far less time I want to work with that person. This person is more likely
to be a hacker because they see that there is such a thing as diminishing
returns with grades.

~~~
teamonkey
> A better grade is more important than delivering in a reasonable time?

Consider a business tender. The brief is to get the best result by a specific
day. Multiple contractors have the same time to complete the brief. Those who
can provide the best result on the final day will win the contract.

Using your memory is a great hacking tool, probably the best there is. Those
students used any tool available to get the job done. That's the true hacker
spirit.

------
AlexMuir
I wonder if big, successful tech companies should be dipping into their
pockets to fund internet training- not as charity, but as an investment. eBay,
Facebook, Netflix and Google, for instance. Between those four, there must
easily be an annual $100 in revenue from having an extra US person online.

So for them to invest $15 each in free classes for someone seems like a no-
brainer. Plus it buys good PR and goodwill. Plus it's almost certainly tax
deductible.

~~~
celoyd
See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem> . This is what
governments are _for_.

~~~
mtraven
It is what governments are for, but given the current spectacular failures of
government, quasi-monopolistic corporations that can afford it might as well
take on some of their functions.

There's a tradition of plutocrats contributing in this way [1], and like the
commenter said, it actually would help Google's business.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library>

~~~
bryanlarsen
Plutocrats love building libraries because they get to put their name up top.
But the cost of building a library is peanuts compared to the cost of running
them properly. (Or should be).

------
unimpressive
Taking a look backwards, Theodore Nelsons "Computer Lib: You can and must
understand computers NOW!" takes on a whole new meaning 38 years later. (And
is sadly out of print.) The hacker culture that contrasted itself against the
IBM priesthood has itself become a priesthood.

We've given a significant portion of the world personal computers. And told
almost nobody how to use them.

------
orbitingpluto
If someone thinks libraries are antiquated and are no longer useful then they
are just plain ignorant. They really have no idea.

I'm home and I'm using online resources from my library at this very moment. I
use online library resources about 20-30 hours per week.

I regularly send off emails and notes of appreciation for their services they
offer. I've also established a relationship with IT in several libraries as a
go to person when they need an external check on a service that I regularly
use (EZProxy issues usually). Why do I do that? It's actually completely
selfish of me. I want them to know that the esoteric and underused databases
that they are subscribing to are in fact being used and offering aid
diagnosing helps uptime. I was actually told that they were going to
unsubscribe to my favourite portion of a database because they didn't think
anyone was using it!

I made a random comment to a librarian about a year ago. She started showing
me their subscription databases and in 10 minutes I was hooked.

Librarians are so god damn helpful.

------
tnuc
One of the saddest parts of filling in these government forms online is that
some of them time out after 15 or 20 minutes.

I helped someone fill out few of these once because they were having trouble.
Even when I had all the information in front of me and the person next to me
to organize the information it still timed out. I managed to do one of them on
the third try.

There is no way that someone with limited computer experience could fill out a
lot of these online forms. Phoning gets you nowhere, and visiting the office
for help is a waste of a day.

If only government entities could spend some time into making these online
forms and applications usable. Fortunately libraries still exist but I fear
for how much longer.

~~~
thyrsus
I was subjected to that last weekend, filling out FASFA forms. It would throw
up an "I'm timing out" box every ten minutes, and if you didn't click in the
next five, it was gone.

It took me 32 working hours to pull together the records to satisfy that form,
of which 16 hours were "PTO" from my day job. Mostly because it was
effectively necessary to get our 2011 joint tax return done, and my spouse has
an (excruciatingly) small business. Once the taxes were done, I used a kitchen
timer to make sure I clicked on that "I'm timing out" box which was hidden in
another window while I was getting transaction reports.

Someone on NPR had the gall to claim the form would take at most a half hour.
The only way I can see that working is if you had no complications in your
life (investments, medical expenses, one employer).

------
greggman
If you want a community learning center with computers then why are you asking
for a library?

<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/library>

Words matter. People skim, people read headlines. If I read "libraries are in
trouble" or "more support for libraries" needed I think "no, anyone with a
free smart phone can access the entire internet". They can get a netbook for
under $300 or probably a used one for under $50.

Yea, I read the entire post and I understand the guy is poor. I'm just saying
that the word "library" is negatively framing the issue.

If we need places for disadvantaged people to be able to use computers and the
internet for free and get instruction great! I'm all for that. But that's not
a "library"

~~~
mcantelon
Yeah, "economic integration centers" or something might help frame their
utilitarian value. People who can't integrate with the system end up
integrating with the criminal world, so it's worth the social investment to
provide computer access, etc.

~~~
kalleboo
One town in the UK rebranded their Libraries to "Idea Stores"
<http://www.ideastore.co.uk/>

------
farhanpatel
I love libraries as much as the next guy. I would love to study at them. But
as a student I dont want to study at a place that closes at 5pm on a Saturday.
I usually dont want to start studying till 4pm. Compared to my local Starbucks
that closes at 11pm.

We have a new library in my city that is beautiful and a massive 77,000 square
feet on 4 floors. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/petenator/6866904623/>

I love studying at my school campus. Its open 24 hours and relatively quite.
If libraries could stay open longer I would frequent them a lot more.

------
jph
Excelllent view from the inside. The problem the article highlights is filling
out gov't forms that have moved to the web; these are often just PDF scans.

These gov't forms are often ripe for improvement via improved UX with step-by-
step inputs, contextual help, and multi-language capabilities.

~~~
unimpressive
"These gov't forms are often ripe for improvement via improved UX with step-
by-step inputs, contextual help, and multi-language capabilities."

Sure, and this would undoubtedly relieve a lot of pain points. But the authors
intent here goes deeper than just interface. A significant, very non-trivial
portion of the population is being left behind by digitalization. These people
have no recourse if certain government institutions only handle online forms.
Imagine for a second that you have no web experience whatsoever, and you are
greeted by the firefox startup screen.

A hard thing to do I know, but as it stands if this is your position it's hard
to get out of. Where do you even start? Who can you ask for help in an
increasingly competitive solipsistic environment? (Solipsistic, according to
my spell check, is not a word, but it's meaning should be obvious to those
familiar with solipsism.)

It's hard to imagine the peasants plight when your sitting in the Vatican.

EDIT: Going further, even the people that you wouldn't expect, generation Z,
don't really understand computers either. And I'm not sure if they really want
to. I mean, sure they can use facebook, but if they ever have "a cool idea"
good luck to them figuring out how to express it in digital media. I wonder
how many brilliant web startups, game changers, and generally disruptive ideas
are trapped in the heads of people who will never get an opportunity to try
them out.

~~~
tomjen3
If you are 53 you have had plenty of time over the last ten years to learn to
use computers.

As for what I would do if I was operating firefox for the first time? Try. Or
ask somebody next to me (or one of those standing in line).

~~~
unimpressive
While I like to think that if you asked for help you would get it, how do you
normally respond when people ask you to help them with computer tasks? Now I
don't know about you, but my first instinct is to flee. Helping people with
computers, a lot of the time, is _annoying_.

This is compounded by the condescending attitude that most computer users have
towards "non-computer" people. If you ask someone to help you with filling out
forms, or logging into facebook, or whatever it is you want to do, your
probably going to be met with an attitude analogous to "You silly idiot...".
I'm not trying to take the moral high ground here, chances are I've acted on
this attitude just as many times (On average for years of life.) as you may
have, probably more.

It's a very damaging meme. And very hard to eradicate.

EDIT: This was originally appended to my post above. But I eventually decided
that was basically just a way of replying that bloated the discussion.

~~~
tomjen3
"I need to fill out this form. If you help me you can use the computer
sooner". Said to the person behind you.

~~~
unimpressive
I'm not going to try and rationalize away good answers. Of all the things you
could say to someone, I'd say this has the highest chance of success. And if I
was behind you, I'd totally go for that.

Part of the problem of what I said above was focusing too much on the totally-
green scenario. I think we take a lot of our computer-know-how for granted. As
it stands, were still in the age where I tell people over webchat I'm into
"hacking" and they leave because they're genuinely afraid that I'll break into
their computer. Regardless of how much you and I both know that it's a lot
more complicated than that, and probably not going to happen even if someone
"has your IP". (Which has become something of a meme among generation Z for
"That thing everyone knows you need to break into computers, but not really
sure why.") This is ignoring even the _definition_ of hacker, which I would
prefer we get past abject ignorance like this before we put hobbyist hackers
into the public mind.

I mean, it's not like it takes more than five minutes to explain:

"The web is made of a bunch of computers sending text streams to each other.
The program that interprets these streams is called a server. If a server
isn't written correctly it can be exploited to do things the owner didn't
intend, and be used to break into the host computer. For the most part nobody
is going to get into your computer manually unless theres a server they can
exploit. Default windows installations have not had servers installed since
XP. Your web browser interprets a different set of text streams that can be
exploited as well, you should be more worried about this than you should be of
human attackers."

But somehow, it's not happening. Instead an embarrassingly high portion of the
population believes that David Lightman type figures run around terrorizing
the Internet with magical-but-undefined and fuzzy powers that let them break
into anything they have a network connection to.

EDIT: The above explanation is obviously a bit more simple than whats really
going on, but is really all most people _need_ to know. Though I wish they
knew more, that might just be a pipe dream.

~~~
waiwai933
The general public is not going to know what a "text stream" is, what a "host"
computer is, or what you mean by getting into a computer "manually". And I'd
be willing to bet that "interprets" in this context is also going to be
difficult. Explaining these things to people who don't care about computers
isn't as easy as you make out.

~~~
unimpressive
I know that.

In fact, I expect that the first four minutes would be spent defining most of
the words in that paragraph.

And thats assuming you have someone who "clicks" on it the first time around.
If they don't, it's going to take a while. Part of the problem is that as you
put it, most people don't care. And it's just too costly (in all senses of the
word) to really educate people about "computer stuff". This is why we've been
advocating user education for years and it hasn't worked.

So we say that we can't teach users not to shoot themselves in the foot. Cool.
What are our other options? We can try to make it impossible for users to
shoot themselves in the foot. But what we've found is that users ignore
warnings. If you make the security restrictions too strict, users can't figure
out how to evade them and deem the machine broken. If you make them too easy
to circumvent, users go ahead and shoot themselves anyway. If you use a
trusted computing architecture, user freedom is lost in such a way that it'd
be better for people to be shooting themselves.

If you can't stop people from losing a limb, and you can't tell them how not
to do so, what is the world to do?

EDIT: The only thing I can think of is to make computer education cheaper. And
I don't mean in the monetary sense, I mean the mental sense. We need to find
_some_ way to get more people to care about computers, or make the concepts
easier to teach, or make the materials easier to access, or make humans
smarter, or _something_.

This is a problem I spend mental computer time on daily trying to solve. No
answers present themselves. I would actually _love_ for someone to show me the
silver bullet, or even a box of lead ones. (LINK:
<http://bhorowitz.com/2011/10/26/lead-bullets/>)

EDIT_2: And just for clarification, I'm focusing on all aspects of computing
here, not just security or usability or what have you.

------
gokhan
If there's demand, there will emerge scriveners of the new era, helping
computer illiterate people.

From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrivener> :

 _Scriveners remain a common sight in countries where literacy rates remain
low; they read letters for illiterate customers, as well as write letters or
fill out forms for a fee. Many now use portable typewriters to prepare letters
for their clients._

------
rmason
The situation in Detroit is dire with the most frequently used libraries being
closed. There's strong community support to keep the libraries open but the
city is broke.

[http://michigancitizen.com/neighbors-refuse-to-give-up-
east-...](http://michigancitizen.com/neighbors-refuse-to-give-up-east-side-
library-p10667-1.htm)

The Detroit library houses the second greatest collection in the world of
baseball memorabilia which was given to them by the late Tigers announcer
Ernie Harwell. Access is limited, items are being stolen and the collection
isn't being well preserved. This collection could be a tourist attraction as a
separate museum that would be self sustaining but the city lacks the seed
capital to build it.

[http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2011/06/report_e...](http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2011/06/report_ernie_harwell_collectio.html)

I know it's popular in the tech world to say that libraries will disappear
with the digitization of books. But what you don't understand is that
libraries are the heart and soul of the communities that they serve and no
software program can replace the function they serve.

~~~
anamax
> There's strong community support to keep the libraries open but the city is
> broke.

Not quite. The city is spending its money on other things.

I'll bet that Detroit is cutting library spending while continuing to spend
money on things that are less important than libraries.

------
gioele
> Look to Britain.

What happened to UK libraries?

The poster says

> Today, California cuts the funding for interlibrary loan (oh, sorry young,
> rural, LGBTQ youth who was hoping to get an anonymous loan of a book that
> might tell you that your life isn't a freakish abomination as so many of
> your class-mates insist, here, try this copy of The Sweet Valley Twins from
> 1989 instead). Tomorrow we have to charge for meeting rooms and our fines
> have been increased by 150%. The day after that we're a contracted out to a
> company that puts advertising in your books, has low, low rates on Red
> Box(C) rentals, and who's under absolutely no compulsion to protect your
> checkout history from police searches (also, you now get advertising in your
> email based on that history as a Value Added Service!)

Are there libraries in UK with advertisements in books and low rate rentals in
place of free lending?

I remember there were talks in UK about putting advertisements in the official
gazette but I hope they didn't really did it.

------
marshray
(Don't take this as crass as it sounds, it's more like an exercise to get back
to the theme of the site.)

How would you make a startup business out of this situation?

Either in support of public libraries, or in the vacuum left by their decline.

------
mckoss
It's a compelling story, BUT, are libraries really the best way to solve this
social problem? Most tax payers don't realize just how expensive their library
system is. In my county, we spend $90 million per year for our libraries -
about 0.5% of property taxes. As a home owner, neary 15% of the cost of your
home, is being funneled to the library system.

I am very in favor of community public investment, but I am skeptical that our
libraries are an efficient allocation of the very large claim they already
have on our public taxes.

Note in this story how the grandfather was so poorly served by the system.
It's not designed to serve those who need the system most. In the end he only
gets reluctant help from someone overqualified (overpaid) to give him the kind
of assistance he needs.

Unlike other suggestions in this thread, I do not agree that the answer is to
prop up the failing library system by pretending to use its services to make
their numbers look better. We should be demanding that our libraries evolve to
remove wasteful and expensive services (that many of its users can already
afford to pay for directly), and focus on the needs of those who cannot pay.

Our average library staff salary and benefits cost $25/hr - couldn't we double
the assistance to the underprivileged by paying trained "Web Assistants"
$10/hr to help them instead?

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_In my county, we spend $90 million per year for our libraries - about 0.5% of
property taxes. As a home owner, neary 15% of the cost of your home, is being
funneled to the library system._

Huh? I'm not understanding your math here at all...

~~~
mckoss
I was doing a back of the envelope NPV calculation - 30 years of 0.5% payments
-> 15%. Depending in the discount rate, it's less than that; which is why I
said "nearly".

~~~
yardie
Wow, you've taken 2 numbers that don't have anything in common except the word
year and managed to produce an irrelevant value.

Using your calculation 40 years * 30% FICA means I'm paying 1200% income tax.

Fox News would be proud.

------
bobz
This is a reply to several comments, but is important enough that I wanted it
at the top level.

Andrew Carnegie founded MUCH more than the Carnegie Library. In fact, a mind
boggling number of public libraries in the States alone, and more worldwide,
not to mention trade schools, medical research institutions, etc.

Not only did he give the money to fund the library, but he only did so in
cases where the town was ready to take on the burden of supporting it.

He was a man with an ego, but his generosity in this regard goes beyond ego.
He was a man of virtue, who genuinely sought to see his fortune go back into
society to make it a greater place. The amount of good he did boggles my mind
and humbles me.

The abundance of public libraries in this country are not a result of
liberalism in government. They are a result of liberalism in men's souls. So
stop bitching about what other people are doing with their wealth, earned or
unearned. That does not make you a better person.

In my opinion, the rich are not necessarily wrong to be abandoning the U.S.
middle classes. I would not be surprised if that wealth is not sitting in
Scrooge McDuck's money vaults, but is instead being funneled into the third
world now, raising up people with a true appreciation for the sacredness of
life and wealth, with more perspective and less entitlement.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. No, government has never been the solution. It has
at best been a custodian, as it is with the public library system in the
states. But every book in there, every microchip, and most of the buildings
and maintenance are made of the lifeblood of hard working people who dedicated
their life to creating more than they consumed.

------
shoover
The concept of life getting harder for many people as computers take over is
troublesome. I mean, we know to expect and accept some amount of frustration
in return for efficiency and cost saving in general and computerizing anything
in particular, e.g. downtime; more passwords to remember; UI, server, and
workflow glitches; "Why can't this stupid thing just figure out what I mean?!"
Ever try [[<http://pic.bighugh.com/17.png][printing> a label from usps.com]]?

Eliminating paper forms sure seems like a slam dunk, though, doesn't it?
Overall it is... for those of us with computers in every room and in our
pockets. Indeed, what/who will fill the gap those in the shoes of the OP's
example when library hours are reduced again and again and eventually the
branches close and they are suddenly without internet access?

Anyone watch the recent Bret Victor talk and looking for something to fight by
inventing?

------
feefie
If you're the author, thank you for helping these people. I hope your work
gives you great pride.

~~~
blatherard
I'm not, but I sent the author of the comment (codacorolla on Metafilter) a
message through that site to take a look over here, and also mentioned that
there were some appreciations.

------
BadassFractal
I apologize ahead of time if I'm going to sound leftist, but the powers that
be don't really need a well educated lower class that is able to think for
itself and easily get access to quality information. It goes against the
interests of the status quo.

However, if there's a lot of money for everybody to be made, then it will
create some incentives to give these people just enough instruction that they
can perform online purchases. The problem is that the lower 20-40% of the US
population are in so much financial distress that purchasing apps for an iPad
or a kindle book is not even remotely within their realm of possibilities. For
them, there's Walmart.

------
thewisedude
Let me try to shed light on the other side of the argument. Based on the
author's experience, it looks like what is really necessary for this day and
age is a public browsing center with enough resources to teach computer
"illiterates" [for a lack of a better word] how to find what they want in the
digital world. NOT a library per se...now you might ask what the difference is
: having a public library implies money has to spent on buying and managing
books- which can be prohibitively expensive.

------
robryan
I like the idea of these aspects of the library being somewhat replaced by the
coworking space.

Where I work out of we have a lot of space for random drop ins, currently
these people though are mostly highly technical. Government could provide
funding for a place like this to hire someone to assist people getting started
with technology.

While most of us working there are busy, we can usually take a small amount of
time out of our day to meet someone new and give them a hand.

------
learc83
The only thing I can think of for libraries to do, is to morph into some kind
of generic public meeting place.

Maybe something like a coffee shop/coworking space/social club hybrid.

------
robocop
This is a good case for providing state-funded public computer centers, but
not such a good case for continuing to fund large collections of books.

------
yummyfajitas
I'm going to reject one of the premises of the article, namely the premise
that he is helping people who are "barely surviving".

Let's consider people who are receiving cash or non-cash benefits, as the
article described. Among these people, 67% have cable or satellite TV. 38%
have a playstation. 47% own a computer. 23% have a big screen TV. Only 14% of
people receiving government benefits lacked all of these luxuries. [1]

It's only in a nation as wealthy as the US that we could describe such a group
of people as "barely surviving".

[1] Data from this csv file: [http://explore.data.gov/Energy-and-
Utilities/Residential-Ene...](http://explore.data.gov/Energy-and-
Utilities/Residential-Energy-Consumption-Survey-RECS-Files-A/eypy-jxs2)

Code definitions taken from here:
<http://www.eia.gov/emeu/recs/recspubuse05/pubuse05.html>

It's my new favorite data set.

[edit: wow, do some data analysis on raw govt data, provide facts, and get
downmodded about 3 seconds after posting. Did I accidentally post on reddit?]

~~~
lemmsjid
I'm struggling to understand what conclusions you can draw from that. For one
thing, what of that 14%? Do those people not exist? Are they not statistically
significant for you to care about them? For another, are the 47% who own a
computer somehow automatically well off?

Do you understand the economic situation a family can be in? They own a
computer whose net worth is about $50. At some point they bought a television.
Cable--100$ a month for the fancy kind. The worth of all these things put
together is far below the monthly cost of their housing, which they struggle
to pay each month. They could sell or stop paying for all of those above
"assets" and be in danger of not being able to afford housing and food.

There are places where housing is cheaper. Those places are inevitably
situated the furthest distance from locations of economic opportunity. So car
and gas and commute, the monthly costs of which dwarf the assets you
mentioned.

And let's get back to your claimed 14% who have none of these things. Imagine
that--I go to the local thrift store and there's old PCs there that are almost
given away (I've donated plenty throughout my years as a contractor--they're
barely worth the poundage cost). In American culture, not being connected to
pop culture is anathema. Just as cell phone usage has exploded in the poorest
countries, in America the first thing parents will provide for their children
is television.

It is clear your definition of "barely surviving" is different from the
author's (and mine). There's always people chiming in on discussions like this
with the "starving children in Africa" argument. E.g. we shouldn't feel sorry
for the people mentioned in the article because if you lift their shirt you
won't see their ribcage standing out (you'll probably see a bunch of fat from
their subsistence on cheap processed food). Are we really a society where that
is the measure of how well we take care of our citizens? To me not feeding
people is barbaric. Not providing health care to everyone is just short of
barbaric. Not carving out societal resources (like public libraries) for
shared use, targeted at people who slip through the cracks, is terrible.

Enjoy your data set.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The 14% you describe are bottom 14% of the bottom 10-20% - i.e., the bottom
2-3% of the nation. They can be dealt with by a small, targeted program.

The rest can turn off cable and go pay for a computer at kinkos once in a
while. Last time I was in NYC, it was about $0.10/minute, so if the
"struggling" man skipped one or two big macs he could afford to pay for
internet service (and he'd be slightly closer to a healthy bodyweight).

 _There are places where housing is cheaper. Those places are inevitably
situated the furthest distance from locations of economic opportunity._

You seem to be holding the mistaken belief that the poor work for a living.
Please educate yourself. <http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2009.pdf>

~~~
lemmsjid
See, here you go again. You use vague statistics to make absolute statements
that are starkly contradicted by the statistics you started with. I just read
the pdf you sent. As expected, it doesn't support your absolute conclusion
(that the poor don't work).

In my own social circle, I know the following:

1\. Poor people who work for a living. 2\. Poor people who can't work because
they have a felony record. 3\. Poor people who can't work because of health
reasons. 4\. Poor people who don't work because they're lazy.

I also know:

1\. Rich people who work for a living. 2\. Rich people whose family members
don't work because they're "lazy".

You see, there's all sorts of people. Let's take the "worst" examples--the
people who both poor and out of work. Personally I think even "lazy" people
deserve to receive the basic care of civilized society. Why? Because "lazy" is
often code for referring to people with mental deficiencies, emotional
problems, histories of severe abuse, and other issues that lead to severe
depression and failure to thrive.

A lot of modern American polical rhetoric centers around an idea that might be
called the "virtuous poor". Which is that poor people only deserve to be
helped if they are virtuous--good, salt-of-the-earth people who are struggling
constantly to survive--who are savvily trimming coupons and saving every cent
so they can better themselves and their children. On the other side are the
non-virtuous poor. The people who spend their government check on alcohol,
crack cocaine, or satellite TV.

In America, we obsess over separating the virtuous from non-virtuous poor,
ignoring the self-sustaining and cyclic nature of poverty. The clear
correlations between poverty and behavior problems, learning problems, health
problems, etc. In our self righteous drive to only help those who help
themselves, we often ignore the clear consequences.

For every self-satisfied working upper-middle class person I know, I also know
someone who has similar intelligence, similar drive (or lack thereof), but
wasn't lucky enough to be ushered into college by their well-to-do parents--
who wasn't lucky enough to be offered this and that entry-level position by
their well-to-do connections. And yes, such a person doesn't become the
virtuous poor we all like to help, such a person becomes the dirty, yucky poor
that we want to forget about--the poor people who aren't constantly fighting
to better themselves.

You can throw out statistics--all of your statistics will show a predominance
of this and a dearth of that, and in the end, your rounding errors will still
cover millions of people. And your response to the plight of those millions of
people is that we can help them with "a small, targeted program." If only we'd
thought of that sooner--here we were trying big, untargeted programs, when all
we needed to do is shrink and target them.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_As expected, it doesn't support your absolute conclusion (that the poor don't
work)._

You clearly didn't read even the first paragraph, which shows that just under
80% of the poor don't work (by choice). You can even read further and discover
that a big chunk of the working 20% work only part time (also by choice).

 _In America, we obsess over separating the virtuous from non-virtuous
poor..._

No, we don't. We throw money and services wantonly at anyone who wants them.

If we really wanted to target the virtuous poor, we'd cut all welfare programs
and replace them with a guaranteed low paying job. It's perfectly targeted,
since by showing and working a poor person proves their virtue.

If you want to argue that we should give money to people who refuse to work so
they can buy alcohol, crack cocaine and satellite TV, be my guest. I just
refuse to describe such people as "struggling" or "barely surviving".

~~~
vacri
_You clearly didn't read even the first paragraph, which shows that just under
80% of the poor don't work (by choice)._

Wow, talk about spin-doctoring. That 80% figure is people outside the labour
pool, including _children_ (specifically stated in the _first paragraph_ ),
sick, and elderly people.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Um, this doesn't change the picture significantly. You can compare poor people
to the nation as a whole, or you can compare poor adults to adults as a whole.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2130441>

The net result either way is that the poor choose not to work at a
disproportionate rate.

~~~
vacri
There's a few issues here

\- firstly, you've said nothing so far about comparing poor people to anyone,
you've just said "80%" flat out, no comparison to anyone wealthier

\- the "80%" _does_ change, because the numbers you drew that from - 10
million of 40 million - is 10 million _labour force_ out of 40 million
_individuals_. Anyone in that 43 million that is not of working age or ability
decreases your magic percentage. You are trying to paint your 80% as
"percentage of people who could work, but don't" whereas it's actually
"percentage of poor people in the labour force, including children and the
infirm"

\- the overall labour force for the US is 65% of the total population. Using
this number against the 40 million for those in poverty would suggest ~26
million potential labour force instead. Throw in children, mentally ill, and
similarly overrepresented demographics and that number reduces again.

\- your linked comment mentions this interesting metric "FTLFPR", used to
vilify the poor... which when googled shows only a handful of results which
are a combination of typos, random character pages, and your comment. Even
chasing your linked comment to a quoted paper about participation a few
comment up doesn't exhibit that acronym.

\- Even assuming that your acronym is a real measure, it's hardly suprising
that people who can't get enough work are poor. Those people who are classed
as unemployed are going to be dragging that acronym down signficantly - and
almost one in ten of the labour force is unemployed in the US.

\- You make the gross mistake of assuming motive. Since the GFC hit, the US
unemployment rate doubled from 4.5% to 9%. By your reckoning this means that
one in twenty workers in the past few years has decided to just refuse work so
they can "buy alcohol, crack cocaine and satellite TV"

<http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000>

When it comes down to it, yes, there are some people who game the system. So
what - that happens at all levels (try getting tax loopholes fixed...). The
real problem is that you are painting the poor as little short of demonic
layabouts, which is a grossly exaggerated misrepresentation.

------
cconroy
It would be great if the government's budget included a computer and basic
internet access in its assistance programs. I can't imagine this would be too
expensive. Also people would benefit from the increasingly free education
provided by Stanford, Udacity, etc.

------
joelhaasnoot
How do government services in the US get away with this? Walmart has computers
for people to apply for jobs with sitting in their stores, why can't the
government do the same. A kiosk is expensive sure, but can't be impossible...

------
bsb
A public library as a nice place to get a meeting space, ie for a startup, is
a great thing. This post highlights to me the need to expand/improve libraries
as both physical and digital resources

------
abhaga
Libraries are one thing I miss a lot in India since returning from US. Public
library system is virtually non-existent here. It is sad to see it getting
destroyed where it existed.

------
rwhitman
I hope that the author can take their thoughts to a wider audience than a
comment on metafilter. This is a moving and thoughtful article that really
needs to be published...

------
prophetjohn
The story at the beginning was so depressing. It makes me really want to call
my library on Monday and see if I can teach a computer class.

------
funkah
I wonder how long the libraries of America could operate on the money we spent
for one week of the Iraq war.

------
nazgulnarsil
first world poor are not an interesting class of people. There are bigger fish
to fry.

------
melling
I skimmed the article and got to the first comment complaining that Larry
Ellison spends millions on the America's Cup and he doesn't give a crap ...

Basically, the problem is that for years CA, and America in general, spent
money that it didn't have and now it's going to get painful.

There's no point in whining and complaining. Americans are doing it to
themselves. Sit down and decide what we can afford to pay for and quit kicking
the can down the road.

~~~
RandallBrown
I think you read the wrong thing. This post is about the metafilter comment
that is a story about a poor person using a library.

~~~
melling
I thought it was about how people need libraries and the funds are being cut.

~~~
unimpressive
It's about a lot of things at once. But libraries are the frame for the rest
of the piece.

As far as I can tell topics covered are:

0) The digital divide.

1) Cutting of Public benefits

2) Cutting of library funds specifically

3) How libraries help gap the digital divide but even with funding are just
helping people tread water.

4) That the will, money, and effort to change this situation might not be
there.

~~~
melling
Like a said, we've spent more than we have for a little too long. Now this
type of story doesn't really belong on HN. It's the type where you get
downvoted for not having the liberal opinion. Bad news, it's going to get
worse. Debt is at 100% of GDP.

------
afterburner
_"This is, in part, because outside of the ALA (which is a great organization,
a great lobbying body, but perhaps not quite strong enough nor well funded
enough) there is no large, overarching public library thing. There isn't a
central office that can dictate policy, allocate funds, and launch a massive
PR campaign. At different levels, yes, there are state and county and non-
profit organizations, but the existential crises that libraries now face is
massive, universal, and needs coordinated effort. "_

Hmm, maybe a library czar in Washington?

Although something separate from party politics might be better...

