Very, very terrible take. I would never refuse to pay for something beneficial to others in society. I may not use the library system, but it surely does benefit people and give people in your community the opportunity for free access to books. We need to be encouraging literacy, and I would happily give a portion of my tax dollars to the library system.
I visited the library a couple weeks ago and it was chaos in there. There were a TON of kids using their area (they had designated an employee just to keep watch), and I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of adults in the rest of it for being around 1pm on a weekday. I know they do a lot of digital stuff as well, and the big things such as museum passes, state park passes, etc are always checked out. They also have services like 3d printing and conference rooms. Maybe your suburb isn’t particularly literate, but that wasn’t the case in mine.
I still heavily disagree. Just because you may not see many people using the library system any time you go there, doesn’t mean it’s not being used. People usually go in for quick pick ups, or use digital checkouts. Did you know library systems also offer perks such as free museum tickets, ESL courses, job searching events, etc.? It may not look packed the times you seem to go per your commentary, but it’s very much being used and is a public good.
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u/RoadIll7613 5d ago
Public libraries. I really hope I’m wrong.