
Bezos should put his billions in public libraries - steven
https://www.wired.com/story/jeff-bezos-should-put-his-billions-into-libraries/
======
graphitezepp
I would much rather billionaire types take on large issues that governments
don't want to touch, like space flight or specific diseases in foreign
countries, than something already in service like libraries. Maybe I just have
a bias due to having a library just up the street from where I live currently,
but I have never not had access to an adequate library in my life time, and
only see room for marginal diminishing returns in improving them.

~~~
chickenfries
Visit a library in a low-income area (where people need them the most) and see
the kinds of computers people use to hunt for jobs, do their homework, etc.
I've been to a library that was running windows 2000 on TWO ancient Dells with
with CRT monitors in 2015. And the two computers they had were being used by
adults and students. There is so much to be gained from improving libraries.

~~~
stillsut
Let me give you a hypothetical company IT department: while you are allowed to
work there with any education background, only an MBA can be a manager. How do
you think they would perform at IT tasks?

Who runs libraries? People with Masters in Library Science. I expect severe
budget and certification crises would come to any library that won't put a
certified librarian in a head position.

Or, I'm a working class guy and it's Sunday, my traditional off from work, can
I go to the library? No, it is closed because there needs to be Master
Librarian on duty and they've negotiated a contract to never have to work
Sunday. Now the facility sits there unused 14% of the time, during the most
likely time it would be used.

~~~
soperj
Libraries in Canada have the same stipulations, but are actually funded and
are open all the time. Our downtown library is open 9am-9pm every day of the
year.

~~~
jgmjgm
I live in Canada in a mid-sized city and my library is closed on Sundays. Just
as a poster above, it appears to be the case that the librarians negotiated a
great deal for themselves. (Closed on Sundays during the summer, open on
Sundays during the winter.)

However, it is a great library. No arguments there. It's a pain that its
closed on Sundays just when kids want to use it most.

~~~
soperj
Which city? I'm in a mid-sized city as well. I find it quite surprising since
I've lived in many places around Canada from small towns to big cities from
Toronto all the way out to the West Coast, and have never had access to at
least one library that was open all the time.

------
Overtonwindow
Libraries are an excellent place to put some money. They provide learning
opportunities, but many also provide resume and job search training, community
meeting places, free internet access, and I think is one of the few "neutral"
places in American society. Neutral in that there are few, if any politics
involved, and it's an equal opportunity benefit to a community that most
people can get behind. Even if they don't use the library, few I think would
speak against.

~~~
adventured
I overwhelmingly agree with that.

I grew up in one of the poorer places in America - Appalachia. Despite that,
we had a nice library, donated initially by a wealthy individual and then
sustained by various forms of private funding over the decades.

It didn't always have the absolute latest books, the selection was decent
though. It had Internet access very early on and was a valuable, inexpensive
resource for young and old people alike. It was also relatively well
maintained; pre mid 1990's Web, if you needed to really know a subject in-
depth, it was easily the best local resource. The local community benefited
immensely from it.

I'd like to see Bezos (and ideally matching contributors) put together an
effort to modernize the concept for the 21st century. Virtual reality for
example will become an important access technology over the next 20 years,
that many lower income people won't be able to afford and will have future job
importance in many fields.

~~~
goialoq
It's much more efficient to move people from rural areas into the cities, than
to build micro-cities all across the country.

~~~
elihu
Much of our civilization depends on food and natural resources that come from
sparsely populated areas of the country. On top of that, real estate and rent
are ludicrously expensive in most of the nicer large cities. It makes sense
economically for people to spread out if they can find the employment,
education, and services they need in smaller towns.

------
_jal
This is poorly thought out and edited, because I have to run, but I thought it
worth posting. I've been thinking more about libraries lately. I really think
it is time to reinvigorate and expand them. Pretty sure I'm preaching to the
converted here about the power of information; I think what some folks miss is
just how incredibly valuable libraries are. No, they aren't a panacea, but
they are a cheap source of immense social good.

A lot of people see a building full of books and wonder why it can't be
replaced by a bank of terminals and Google. I won't get in to the relative
merits of dead trees vs. electrons, and largely don't care about it. What that
line of thought misses is two-fold: the librarians and the community space.

Decent librarians are hugely underrated resources. Great ones can be
incredible. Maybe natural language systems will become good enough in my
lifetime to handle some of the vague requests librarians routinely manage to
match to the right book, but the leaps of association to related topics, the
knowledge of the edge cases of information classification to navigate them
well, and the general mass of knowledge they accumulate is massively useful to
have on hand. And so few people take advantage of it.

Meeting spaces in this context (both formal, sign-up-for-your-group and
informal) serve an important role as well. It seems[1] like they're becoming
rarer as government buildings use security as an excuse to close to the
public, and in calling around to private groups with spaces that previously
did that sort of thing have been much more reluctant to do so when I've tried
to organize things over the last several years.

To personalize this a bit, I grew up in a poor family. One thing that was
heavily emphasized to me was the value of learning - I think it was reaction
to missed opportunities. Who knows what would have happened, but I do know
that my college essays (written referencing library books, building on
interests fostered in the math and the American Lit sections) would have been
very different without them, and I kinda doubt I would have gotten a free ride
to a top-10 school if I had been only drawing on what public school offered.

I'd love to see more experiments with libraries. I know some are playing with
becoming more "maker-space"-ey, which is a decent thing to explore. I think
finding a way to offer peer-classes in whatever - learn Javascript, fancy
knitting techniques - would be an interesting thing to try as well. But I'm
bad at seeing opportunities like this. I wonder what people with that super
power could come up with.

[1] Anecdata alert!

~~~
melling
4% of the world’s population lives in the United States. How about something a
little more far reaching?

[Update]

The author is not talking about a global project.

“Hidden in plain sight, the local libraries of America are patiently waiting
for your attention”

~~~
tracker1
And we all know that _only_ the United States can have libraries.

~~~
melling
The article was only discussing the United States and made no mention of a
global project. However, if the numbers work, the world population is going to
9 billion by 2050, so we’ll need a lot of libraries.

If 320 million Americans can’t fund libraries, I’m sure several billion others
are in great need.

------
randyrand
The modern day equivalent of a public library (storing information history) is
the internet archive.

I think donating to the internet archive would be a better donation which a
lot more benefit to society than funding physical libraries.

Libraries solve one of the worlds most important problem - keeping societies
important information history safe. Websites are not immune to this problem.
They require maintenance. When a webpage goes down its gone forever. Without
something like the internet archive, we would not have a modern day library
equivalent for the web. We are losing a lot of important information. Physical
libraries today are in comparison much less important than digital ones.

~~~
tspike
Archiving information is only one function of libraries. They are community
spaces, social equalizers, educational institutions, and temporary shelter,
among other things.

------
jamesred
The problem libraries solved, mostly access to information, has largely been
monopolize by the internet. Most, including the third world impoverished, have
access to the internet. Therefore the necessity of a library has been largely
diminished and inevitably libraries will disappear. Complaining about
libraries when people have no sanitation and access to clean tap water sounds
largely like a first world problem, as much as I dislike the term.

Libraries should evolve with the change of technology and move their function
from curation and access to information to something that is able to benefit
more people. Books occupy volume and removing them would make more room for
desks and rooms where people with no access to quiet areas could use to be
more productive.

~~~
plandis
Where is this place on the internet I can legally read the same books I can
find in a library for free without paying?

~~~
zanny
Copyright law is crazy broken. IP in general at least needs dramatically
reevaluated in the context of global information networks. Building more
libraries to circumvent and subsidize an archaic model of corporate profit
doesn't sound like a great use of societies resources.

------
karl11
I think this is a good idea. I would add YMCAs and similar places.

I think one of the best places for a mega-philanthropist to invest would be in
the time and places that kids spend outside of public schools. Many of the
biggest disadvantages in opportunities for kids are created when they fall
behind before and after school and during summers, relative to kids who are
better off socioeconomically. These disadvantages compound and are lasting.
Safe places to engage in healthy recreation, productive endeavors, and getting
something nutritious to eat that they wouldn't otherwise have access to would
go a long way for underprivileged youth and have an impact for the rest of
their lives.

~~~
rewrew
This is an excellent idea.

------
speedboat
Libraries are great. They should be funded with taxes by society, not the
whims of charity.

Raise taxes and on people like Bezos and Gates for the needs of society.

~~~
throwaway91111
Ehh i don't think Bezos and Gates are the issue; it's that services (like
libraries and public transit) are raising the value of nearby land. We should
tax the beneficiaries; ie the landowners who today profit off tax payer
investments.

~~~
zanny
Subsidized public roads also raise the value of land around which they are
built, by giving you access to build something there.

It isn't a specific group of landowners. These sources of profit created by
public infrastructure simply and generally make people rich, so you need to
tax the rich.

I'm definitely not convinced disincentivizing people from living in walkable
distance from libraries and public transit terminals is good. Sounds more like
we need the opposite - incentivize walkability, build more libraries and
public transit, and more generally incentivize higher density residential to
cut down on the total amount of infrastructure needed, because our current
scale is unsustainable with current tax models.

------
songzme
As much as I hate books, I love public libraries. Our local library (Northside
branch santa clara) gives a big conference room every saturday to a team of
passionate locals trying to teach themselves programming. My friends and I go
there every Saturday to help people who are stuck and give them guidance (what
to learn next, how to prepare for interviews, what language is best suitable
for what they are trying to do, etc).

Talk about diversity, the library is a place where you get to see people from
all walks of life outside the silicon valley bubble (different race, age,
handicap). It builds a learning community where people have the opportunity to
help each other at a more human level.

~~~
alt_f4
So, you don't like libraries, you like the idea of cheap to hire conference
rooms.

------
saosebastiao
Here's a better idea...and one that will ultimately benefit libraries as well:
start buying out all the evil academic publishers, overhaul their technology,
get rid of copyright assignment, and offer free access to anyone.

Then do the same with legal records, although that is more of a legal problem
than a money problem.

~~~
_rpd
Even a modest level of support for high quality peer review of open access
journals would have a big effect.

------
diffeomorphism
The article does not mention ebooks, which is a surprising omission
considering it involves Amazon.

I don't know how it is in the US, but for instance German libraries offer to
loan ebooks: [http://www.onleihe.net/](http://www.onleihe.net/)

Donating ereaders and rights to ebooks to libraries seems more effective than
printed books.

Big caveats here are Amazon's monopoly position, DRM and copyright and loans
for ebooks vs. physical books.

~~~
DanBC
Yes, ebooks are important and English law changed recently to make it easier,
although libraries are still limited by licensing terms:
[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2017/30/part/4/enacted](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2017/30/part/4/enacted)

------
bitL
What's the point of libraries these days? We literally have the possibility
for everyone to have a "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in their pocket with
all books that were ever written.

~~~
ahoy
As other users said above, libraries are a _huge_ deal in poor communities.
People use them to search for jobs/fill out job applications. These are tasks
that are onerous to impossible on a low-end smartphone, if you have one at
all.

I live in a gentrifying area of NYC. There's a public library branch a few
blocks away from me that sees lots of visitors every day. I rarely walk by it
and don't see people coming and going.

~~~
0x4f3759df
If these people are there for the space and the Internet, and not the books,
that seems like an argument for a new type of institution that has a lot of
computers, rather than an argument for libraries.

------
philipps
Strengthening public libraries is an excellent idea, with lots of public
benefits. Libraries are one of the most trusted public institutions in the US
and provide a range of key social services including access to education,
internet, health information. They also reach and support a demographic that
is currently not well served through online-only programs.

I co-founded Peer 2 Peer University [1] a non profit that brings people
together in learning circles to take online courses. When we switched from
online-only to face to face meetings in public libraries we started teaching
adults who had fallen out of the education system and who were not benefiting
from online courses. And I can't say enough positive things about the
librarians who we work with.

[1] [https://p2pu.org](https://p2pu.org)

------
orik
I’m sure thousands of people have ideas of how Bezos should spend his.

Bezos should spend (or not spend) in ways and things he values, to maximize
what he gets out of what he’s earned.

(P.S. libraries compete with his book selling business! Why wouldn’t he rather
sell a ‘library pass’ on a kindle for a monthly subscription?)

~~~
komali2
Kindle is very well integrated with library services already.

Also, they _do_ sell a month-to-month "kindle unlimited" service. It kind of
sucks though (last I used it, anyway).

~~~
praneshp
It sucks as of last month.

The integration with libraries is super-cool though!

------
tanilama
His company hosts a large part of the biggest library ever existed: Internet.

~~~
EliRivers
Yet if I want to make a serious study of something, I hit the textbooks. The
internet is, in my experience, a poor replacement for a stack of well written
physical textbooks.

The internet may be a big library, but in many ways it's not a very good one.

~~~
sol_remmy
Counterpoint: My friends all went through mechanical engineering WITHOUT
reading textbooks - that was the secret to their success.

No one is going to touch the textbooks in a library.

~~~
goialoq
How did MechE's succeed before the Internet?

~~~
sol_remmy
Haha - my friends dad also did MechE in the 80s. He says MechE students now
are responsible for learning much more material.

I'd say the internet has allowed more material to be taught in four years.

------
SJWDisagree111
I'm guessing most of the people here have not been to a local public library
in a long time. They have basically become daytime homeless shelters. That is
the reason they are no longer attractive for philanthropists.

~~~
ABCLAW
Perhaps the libraries in your community share this property, but they
certainly don't in mine. What communities are you referencing in this comment?

Mine have extensive multimedia selections available for access, music rooms
with instruments for practice, 3d printers for prototyping, and a wealth of
research staff who will help you find specific information that you need. All
of the ones in my local area are well attended by the public, at least when
I've gone.

~~~
specialist
With the deep budget cuts and transition to online (vs face to face) services,
libraries have become many poor people's only access to their government.

This was widely reported in my area last time our trogs wanted to cut our
library budgets (even more).

------
tostitos1979
I want to give a shout out to a charity called "Room to read". There is a book
about the founder's story .. he was one of us (a tech leader at Microsoft).
His book and story touched me deeply.

~~~
jansho
This is great, thanks!

------
kolbe
Bezos still needs to focus on actually delivering the value that the world has
priced into the expectations of his company. He can't just retire and collect
income off of an existing machine like Gates.

~~~
mulmen
What does that have to do with his personal wealth?

How is Bezos' situation different than Gates?

e: to clarify my second question: How is Bezos' situation different than
Gates' _when Gates left Microsoft_.

~~~
reducesuffering
Because Amazons stock price is valued strongly based on future potential. For
Bezos to cash out now and do philanthropy, without a very strong replacement
to realize Amazons potential, shares would fall 50% effectively halving Bezos'
worth.

Regarding your second question, it is actually a similar scenario to when
Gates left Microsoft. Right before Gates left, Microsoft was at one of the
highest peak values, $58, almost it's Market cap today if you account for
inflation, and a year after Gates left the stock had plummeted to $24 a share.
Many would propose that Bezos leaving would actually be more detrimental, as
Microsoft at the time was not a growth stock, but a well established money
printing machine, while Amazon stock is still banking on future potential.

~~~
pravinva
All shares are valued solely based on their future potential (cash flows). It
matters not a whit what you did in the past, if your future is bleak, you
share price will reduce to under book value

------
sjg007
Or in school lunches. How about nice healthy food? Lunch should be a class
where you learn how to eat.

------
melling
“So far, you’ve concentrated on things that might benefit our distant
successors” ... “space trave, cancer treatments, AI”

I would hope we’re going to make large strides in these in his lifetime. If we
could effectively funnel more into R&D sooner, we’d all see the benefits
sooner. Cancer(s), for example, might be cured in say 2060 with our current
effort, but if we solved the problem by 2030, hundreds of millions would
benefit.

~~~
maxxxxx
Will cancer ever be solved? Isn't cancer many different problems that got the
same label?

~~~
melling
That's why I put an (s) on cancer to signify that I did understand the
challenge.

~~~
maxxxxx
Stupid question probably, but have any cancers been cured so far?

------
hilyen
Wait, didn't he already replace the need for libraries with kindle and kindle
unlimited monthly service? Heh.

------
MrZongle2
I think public libraries would be a wonderful beneficiary of Jeff Bezos'
fortune, but I would hope that in the (admittedly unlikely) event that it
happens, the bulk of the donated funds are _not_ thrown at shiny "library of
the future" initiatives. Not after-school STEM programs, not summer Minecraft
redstone programming camps, not 3D printer labs.

Just books, staff and facilities: the three things that libraries _always_
need, won't become obsolete in a few years, and are equally available to _all_
patrons in an area.

Yes, public libraries need to evolve to meet their community's needs as they
change. But just as a new coat of paint or solar-powered lighting doesn't
strengthen an aging bridge, focusing on the flair rather than the core of what
makes a library a _library_ would be foolhardy.

------
megamindbrian
Or not?
[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/paabgg/i-bought-a...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/paabgg/i-bought-
a-book-about-the-internet-from-1994-and-none-of-the-links-worked)

~~~
devmunchies
So the books have link rot but what of the webpages? They are gone, yet the
books are still around.

~~~
randyrand
There is something interesting about that. Websites take maintenance and tools
to read them. Books do not. If you want your information to be around a long
time, maybe write a book instead? Or both?

------
oconnor663
> they're the only noncommercial places other than city squares where people
> meet across genders and ages

Church?

~~~
soperj
The Church has billions in assets... it's commercial.

~~~
MrZongle2
I'd say that depends on the church (lower-case "c") and its affiliations. That
particularly wealthy religious organizations exist in Rome and Salt Lake City
(for instance) doesn't mean a typical small-town church can't struggle to pay
its bills.

------
alt_f4
No offense to the author, but what a tremendously stupid idea.

With technology becoming cheaper and cheaper, right now, you can get a good
enough computer to access all the world's information (the Internet) for $25.
I can imagine that price being more like $5 in the next 10 years.

Since the goal of investing is planning for the future, it'd be an enormous
waste to spend all of that money on the antiquated concept of a library. It
will be about as useful as investing the money in VHS tapes.

Better education-related goals for billionaires: make more of the copyrighted
information available for free public use. Help increase access to good
quality internet and computers in poor communities.

------
WalterBright
By far the biggest barrier to books being available is perpetual copyright.

------
payne92
Libraries are struggling with an identity crisis as printed books become less
relevant. It's an issue not solved by the injection of billions.

Carnegie's legacy, the example used in the article, doesn't translate to the
present.

If Bezos wanted to democratize information in a comparable way, perhaps he
could underwrite universal access to high-speed Internet. Many many parts of
the country still do not have reliable, high-speed, low latency Internet
connections.

~~~
mustacheemperor
Libraries are well aware of their identities, which have not changed as much
as you think.

For many people, their public library is their only access to Internet of
_any_ speed. And they're using that connection, the same one this community
constantly rallies around as a human right, on the only boxes that public
library can afford.

------
em3rgent0rdr
As commenters have noted, libraries conflict with Amazon's business. How about
instead mass produce cheap (low-profit or at-cost) kindles pre-loaded with a
large amount of public domain and other free material (including wikipedia
offline compressed database). And then bezos will still make money from some
of them buying paid kindle books.

~~~
b4ux1t3
The thing is, libraries are more than just a place to put books. As still
other commenters have put it, they are community centers, shelters-in-place,
and work spaces.

The more personal overhead (like having to rent out a personal office if you
work remotely, or having to pay for a computer and internet access) that
people can offload o places like libraries, the more money they have to spend
on Amazon.

------
dnprock
My libraries cost $180/year through property tax. Most of the books I want to
read are checked out. Most of the movies I want to watch are checked out. It
takes a lot of time just to find something. I come to library to hang out. We
then pick up something to read/watch randomly. The system is not very
efficient.

------
stcredzero
If I were Bezos, I would start a vlogging platform and a competitor to Twitter
-- one free of concerns of covert partisan censorship. There would be serious
synergies for amazon.com and other Amazon products.

------
MentallyRetired
Or, you go earn billions, and then you can decide what to do with them.

------
jpao79
Or maybe arm US public libraries with free to checkout Kindles that have no
hardware for WiFi or LTE support and simply are cached with the latest videos
from Khan Academy and a significant portion of the most read portions of
Wikipedia. The cache would be updated over the air weekly at the library.

If the Kindle ever was jailbroken, well then the kid or whoever just learned
about jailbreaking/hacking. Without Wifi or LTE support, likely no one would
really bother.

I find this one inspiring:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/curtis_wall_street_carroll_how_i_l...](https://www.ted.com/talks/curtis_wall_street_carroll_how_i_learned_to_read_and_trade_stocks_in_prison)

------
crb002
Bezos is putting his billions right where they are best. Re-inventing the
supply chain for everything from retail goods to commodity compute.

------
gondo
everyone knows what to do with other people's money

------
caisman
I agree that billionaries could help society development, but Bezos would not
have billions if he invests in public libraries. Nice try.

------
pravinva
Is non fossil fuel energy research too hard to be funded? Gates and Bezos etc
have funded just about a billion. Why not 20 billion

~~~
maxxxxx
I was wondering if someone would put big money into fusion if we could make it
happen sooner. My understanding is that the physics are reasonably well
understood and now it's mainly a difficult engineering problem. I wonder if
ITER could happen sooner with enough money.

~~~
contact_fusion
Fusion research is actually very well funded. It doesn't seem that way because
nearly all news stories about fusion are about the Q factor of the latest shot
or experiment was. (Q is the energy gain factor.) The field is advancing on
many fronts, using several strategies. ITER is but one of many efforts. Some
results coming from NIF suggest that ICF is not as dead as it seemed years
ago!

ITER itself is (iirc) the largest scientific project on Earth. It is funded by
35 countries, to the tune of billions. They have already had cost overruns
(the perpetual curse of modern science it seems) but I doubt that more money
would necessarily solve fusion engineering faster. They are currently building
the reactor and are on track for first plasma in 2025. An ITER-scale tokamak
is as close to a "sure bet" for Q>=1 that you can get. (Their goal is Q=10)

Interestingly, one of the major milestones for ITER is tritium production
through breeder blankets - which would solve a critical bottleneck for future,
enterprise fusion power systems. (Not to mention scientific research.)

------
yohann305
i love libraries but i never go cause i'm not allowed to sip a coffee. i mean
come on, where's the fun factor! Wouldn't you take the risk of spilling drinks
on books rather than preventing people from coming?

------
denisehilton
Or maybe donate some of it to the poor? Like Bill Gates?

------
tambourine_man
I find this titles very off putting.

It seems to imply that someone, who wasn't competent enough to make billions
of their own, is somehow more apt to know how to better spend them than the
one that actually did.

~~~
mehrzad
I find your comment very off-putting. First of all, Bezos asked for advice on
philanthropy. Second, most wealth generated by the property owning class
(including Bezos) is through extracting the surplus value of their employees.
Those billions were made through force (by the state monopoly of violence
through police defending the so-called "right to property") as his employees
never had a fair shot in getting a reasonable share of profits because he had
the luck or inheritance to obtain the wealth producing tools (business
infrastructure) first while his employees, many of whom are probably more
intelligent and hard-working than he, did not. So while his employees work 9-5
making minimum wage to $50 an hour, he gets to enjoy billions and not have to
work.

~~~
tomschlick
> as his employees never had a fair shot in getting a reasonable share of
> profits

They get paid an hourly wage or salary. Thats their share of the profits. Why
are employees magically entitled to profits other than what they agreed to
work for?

~~~
mehrzad
Because they never had a chance to own the means of production and thus were
not able to negotiate on an equal footing.

------
Clubber
We already have libraries, if you are going to presume to tell someone how to
spend their money, at least pitch something we don't already have.

------
balls187
Fix traffic and housing in Seattle.

~~~
saosebastiao
Traffic and housing in Seattle are problems only the government can solve, as
they're the ones that created the laws and incentives that cause the problems.
No use dumping money into a pit.

~~~
Apocryphon
What if they could fund an easier, more efficient way to lobby?

~~~
saosebastiao
I actually see the value of lobbying, and think that would be an excellent
idea. But lobbying has such a nasty connotation, I doubt it would pad the ego
of a philanthropist (call me a cynic, but I'd wager 90% of philanthropy is
just a way for people to garner attention and praise).

I don't think lobbying would be nearly as bad if a) we had publicly funded
elections, which takes away the incentive for politicians to be beholden to
the interests of donors, and b) we had a mechanism (possibly through a branch
of judicial review?) to repeal or amend laws that don't achieve their stated
goals.

------
addedlovely
How about pay some taxes.

------
HillaryBriss
what a ludicrous idea. libraries lose thousands of books each year to theft
and vandalism. what would happen to all those bundles of cash?

just keep the money in banks. that's what they _do._

------
kazishariar
Now, that would solve that problem now wouldn't it.

------
cko
Whenever a topic like this gets posted, it feels like the majority of
commenters feel 'entitled' to other people's money and think they know best
how to spend it. Or the notion they have to 'give back.'

I'm not rich in the popular sense of the word (besides having the fortune of
being American middle class), but I do have investments by virtue of almost
never spending on consumer goods. And having no wife or kids. My coworkers
realize after years of seeing me drive the same beater correctly assume I'm in
better shape financially, and some have the audacity to jokingly ask me to put
them in my will.

Now, I will not deny that I am an extremely fortunate person who is
cognitively able, like Bezos or anyone well-connected with material wealth,
but what's with the 'he should donate to this cause instead'?

It's his money. He could buy a fleet of yachts, set them on fire, and upload
the video footage - why shouldn't he be allowed to do that? At what arbitrary
level of wealth does 'his' money become everyone else's money?

~~~
lebanon_tn
You're missing the point. Bezos specifically tweeted requesting ideas for
philanthropy. No one is saying he can't spend the money how he wants.

~~~
cko
True.

I guess out of quite a bit of other threads, I jumped on this particular
thread in order to vent, which wasn't the best choice, since, as the article
said (and you emphasized) that he was requesting ideas. Or maybe the word
"should" always upsets me, and I envision a world where us common people are
walking around believing that the more fortunate owe us just because they are
wealthy.

------
jjtheblunt
Should is a pretty insulting verb: who is to presume the wisdom to tell
another what to do?

~~~
dionidium
There's a tendency in some to add a bunch of hedge words to statements like
this. "Humbly, I think -- and this is just my opinion -- that Jeff Bezos may
want to -- I mean, it's up to him, but if he wants to! -- consider putting his
money into libraries."

This is a misguided pursuit of modesty. It's less clear and reads as false,
anyway.

Just say what you mean. We all know it's just your opinion without all the
weasel words. Nobody is going to mistake it for anything else.

~~~
ashark
> Just say what you mean. We all know it's just your opinion without all the
> weasel words. Nobody is going to mistake it for anything else.

People on the Web will. They hate succinct, accurate, clear (so, good) writing
and will settle for nothing short of explicitly disavowing association with or
endorsement of any conceivable evil with which an intentional/incompetent
misreading of your words could possibly connect you, absurdly hedging and
qualifying every statement as if attempting to make a favorable wish with a
hostile genie, and burying all opinions in wishy-washy garbage.

------
miguelrochefort
Although I don't like the government taking my money to subsidize stuff, I'd
rather see them make basic Internet "free" than build and maintain libraries.

------
simonebrunozzi
If I were a Billionaire like Bezos, and read this article, I would think:
"it's my money. You can be as sure as hell that the last thing I will do is to
put it in public libraries".

Seriously. Since when we pick someone else's pocket and decide what to do with
his money?

~~~
Tomte
Since Bezos specifically asked for ideas about how to spend his money
philantrophically.

As you would know, had you at least skimmed the article before summarily
dismissing it.

------
sddfd
Why would anyone think libraries are important in 2017?

If things keep getting digitalized at the current speed, all knowledge of the
world will be accessible online in our lifetime.

Unless you believe that a large percentage of citizens will not be able to
afford a device for accessing the internet, libraries are a waste of money.

Oh and since librarians were mentioned, if AI keeps advancing, we will be able
to have a conversation with a search engine within 30 years. So who needs a
librarian?

~~~
losteric
# rant: disagree with comments not votes!

I disagree with that sentiment.. Are books a waste of money? In-person public
speaking events? Museums?

The internet is a global Library of Alexandria, but it's absurd to suggest we
no longer need smaller repositories of knowledge or physical
copies/originals... Especially as the internet is increasingly fractured,
censured, monitored, and otherwise limited.

They serve similar but not identical purposes. Libraries have always been more
than the books, just like books are more than the facts contained within.

~~~
icebraining
I think it's wrong, but it's not _absurd_. Let's argue, not shout down.

It's true that the Internet is often fractured, censured, monitored, and
otherwise limited, but the same can be said of libraries, unfortunately; an
example:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Awareness_Program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Awareness_Program)

~~~
losteric
Who's shouting down?

Online foreign counter-government literature can be globally censored by a
national censoring, corporate-critical websites can be taken down by invalid
copyright/trademark notices while books cannot be pulled without thorough
vetting, and most websites out there slowly decay into dust - far faster than
books.

My point is not that books and libraries are superior - it's that they are
different from the internet, both tools convey knowledge with unique strengths
and weaknesses. I do think it's absurd to simply write them off as "a waste of
money", an irredeemable tool that was waiting to be made obsolete.

We will rebalance our usage just like we rebalanced radio after TV came out
and TV after the internet - the end-state is a very interesting question, TBD
whether books follow the path of vinyl or VCR, but I think "complete
elimination" is the most improbable path.

------
tzs
I'd like to see some billionaire put a lot of money into abortions. The
political fight over abortion keeps messing up other things, and a billionaire
could fix that.

For example, I don't think many on the right disagree that funding prenatal
care is a good thing--but some major prenatal care providers, such as Planned
Parenthood, also provide abortion services and so some politicians want to cut
all their funding to make sure none of the Federal money goes to abortions. A
whole bunch of women's health services get cut in order to make sure there is
no chance the money ends up helping abortions.

So I'd like to see some billionaire, or some well-funded charity like the
Gates Foundation, build several clinics that provide free abortions around the
country in the states with the least restrictions on abortions, and fund a
program that provides free travel to and from those clinics for women in the
states with restrictive laws that have forced most such clinics to close.

Then organizations like Planned Parenthood can get completely out of the
abortion business, taking away the major excuse that is used to cut their
funding.

State legislators can stop spending a lot of time coming up with new ways to
try to shut down abortion clinics in their states (because shutting down such
clinics will no longer stop the abortions), and state attorney generals can
stop wasting time defending those attempts in court, and maybe they will
finally realize that the best way to reduce abortions is to make it so people
don't need them in the first place. Maybe then states like Texas can drop
their idiotic "abstinence only" approach to sex eduction (which has resulted
in soaring teen pregnancy rates...) and switch to something actually
effective.

Edit: any down voters care to name specific objections? That Planned
Parenthood provides a lot of useful women's health services that are not
related to abortion should not be controversial. That abortion is the main
reason Congress wants to completely defund PP should also not be
controversial. That "abstinence only" programs are a massive failure is pretty
well documented. That many states keep passing abortion restrictions which
then get challenged and often struck down as unconstitutional is not
controversial.

~~~
Brendinooo
I didn't vote for your post either way, but...

If you're pro-life, you probably don't like the idea that someone is spending
billions to fund abortions.

If you're pro-choice, you probably don't like the idea of Planned Parenthood
conceding their abortion services because of political pressure.

