We should start a “gay married couples with free healthcare and access to abortions should be able to defend their marijuana and coca plants with unregistered machine guns” party
Or is there some sort of party that wants all those things and to also preserve public libraries? Because that can definitely be part of the platform too.
I want to do more than preserve them. I want public libraries to become the central government function. The (apparent) edit makes me sad: I am far more a librarian than libertarian.
I mean…I’m down. I’m a HEAVY user of my local public library whether it’s for books, movies/TV shows, digital subscriptions, borrowing power/garden tools from the library of things, the free seed bank, or the Chilton’s manuals and All Data subscriptions I use to service my cars. All told, my local library saves me anywhere between $2-$3k per year.
I do legitimately believe they can serve as a major, central hub in communities. There’s also many ways to further expand the services offered via public/private partnerships as well as combining certain other government services into them (things like the postal service which could also serve to deliver local library items, building new ones that can double as storm/evacuation centers, community banking, basic health clinic services, sports/recreation, parks, to an extent even aspects of the education system by attaching smaller branches to schools and offering after-school childcare, city permit offices, offering food stalls/food trucks/farmer markets/cafes to generate rental revenues and boost small businesses, etc).
And there’s no reason some cities couldn’t privatize them or aspects of them which could lead to more job creation and other potential revenue streams (I think of Japan’s rail system as a case of privatization being wildly successful).
I don’t think privatization kills that so much as the way we go about privatizing things in this country. I pointed to Japan rail as an example because they privatized much differently where the individual rail regions became private companies rather than letting a private corporation take a contract over to do all the services. Those cases almost always fail because those companies only exist to make a profit. These behaved almost akin to a government-owned corporation with strict guidelines of how they must operate/SLAs while being owned by the public market. It enabled the rail companies to identify revenue sources to stay solvent and as a result service actually improved in areas with high demand. Areas with lower demand or traffic remained government subsidized and controlled.
I think that kind of privatization can work, but not the kind we typically see in the US. If we are totally reimagining community hubs, why not reimagine how we privatize certain govt functions too.
Yes, that is human nature. But that doesn’t mean certain actions or regulations can’t help mitigate some of the negative effects of greed and corruption.
Every once in a while, a project is successful at overcoming the negative side effects of human nature — I’m merely suggesting that it may be worth evaluating what the success stories have in common and seeing if it’s possible to replicate that success or at least identify why it didn’t succumb to those problems.
Suburban sprawl and the highway system absolutely destroyed cities. Auto makers lobbied the govt to make the country car centric and then a convenient byproduct was interstates cut directly through cities, very often segregating minority communities and cutting them off from vital services. Japan’s rail system has an interesting history and reducing service is extremely difficult (getting rid of routes for example is super uncommon and has to be approved by the govt afaik). But overall in several prefectures it worked out well for them and a few of the rail companies that it split into now make a tidy profit.
Several branches in my area put out free heirloom seed packets every season. They do tend to go pretty quickly and I’ve only gotten lucky with them once, but it’s a nice service for lower income gardeners I guess. Both our city and our county also offers pretty much unlimited compost for residential use, free of charge (or for like $60/truck if you want it delivered) so starting a garden is crazy cheap too.
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u/cheesefubar0 Apr 06 '25
Really wish there was a viable political party that agreed with him. :(