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For Freedom and Wisdom By Dr. Pip Muggins, PhD. With
new winds of freedom blowing from California to Washington, D.C., now is
a good time to move decisively against the last bastion of Collectivist
Socialism in the United States, the insidious regulation of the libraries
through public funding. This remnant of the leftist literacy movements
of the thirties can now be corrected, to the benefit of everyone. It is
the duty of each literate American to free the books from the edicts of
the library system bureaucrats, the bibliocrats. There
are two targets of this proposal: the unjust taxation system that allows
no real choice for over-burdened taxpaying citizens who want to opt for
what they themselves want to read, and the lock-step practices of the bibliocrats
who have set themselves apart from the mass of citizenry and who hold covert
power of how and what people learn, stealthily hidden behind the veils
of respectability and stacks of unnecessary books. We
need to let the free market standardize the library systems through the
invisible hand of peoples’ choices. We need to let the free market also
set firm accountability measures for the bibliocrats so they can no longer
work their one-worldly magic behind the backs of Americans. Consider
this: why not user fees for libraries? On a scale more grand, why not offer
vouchers to areas that want to have private libraries, and modest financial
rewards to those who do not. After all, why should people who choose not
to read, or to read privately in the peace and quiet of their homes, be
forced to pay taxes to government controlled libraries which choose books
behind our backs–many of them never to be read, some to be read by an effete
few? Why should the many be forced to subsidize the dubious choices of
the bibliocrats? Why not user fees, allowing the market to decide the books
which will be and are read? For
example, a double-tier user fee system: a fee per book read, and an additional
small fee linked to the number of words (or weight/size) in the books.
That is only fair. Indeed, it parallels the proposed practice of some prestigious
academic journals like Theory and Research in Social Education. If you
want to enter the library and read a book, pay for it. If you want to read
a big book or a lot of words, pay a little more. In the future, with our
remarkable growing technological capabilities, we may be able to develop
a fair and sophisticated formula which considers word-length, weight, size,
pictures, etc. For the time being, however, this common-sense proposal
will do. We
must make the bibliocrats answerable. This can be achieved through the
natural selection process proposed above, which will mean that books in
the future will be chosen by their rankings of popularity, and a system
of accountability/acceptability which will allow officials to move, or
remove, those bibliocrats who do not stay within the bounds of the free
market system–whose libraries fall out of compliance with the natural order
of things described above. In short, librarians whose libraries test themselves
out by undercharging or over-selecting will be reconstituted, removed without
rights of transfer. The free market, naturally, has its own rewards as
well. The judicious application of a method of rewarding good librarians,
clearly measured within the scientific quantitative bounds described above,
could be offered to those librarians who comply with appropriate joy. There
is one more concern: the institutional matter. By now it should be abundantly
clear that the bibliocrats stand between the people and the books they
desire, and the libraries themselves are uninviting institutions. It follows,
that the worst of these libraries should be replaced, especially those
libraries which are physically or fiscally decrepit, and those libraries
which seem to only serve the twisted tastes of people out of the mainstream
in book selection. Therefore, in order to deliver the best services in
the most humane ways, it follows that the churches should, on a case by
case basis, replace the libraries, receiving funding in the same manner
that the bibliocrats do. It is time for the collectivists to stop standing
between the people and the people who best serve them, those chosen with
the way and the word. History shows that books are well-kept by the churches,
and that the chosen select carefully as to which texts are truly deserving. Who
will favor this modest proposal? Well, surely the booksellers and the publishers
will see the wisdom in all of this, allowing them to gear their presses
and bookshelves to the natural processes of the market. For the citizenry,
this is a badly needed and sensible tax cut, allowing appropriate expenditures
to be directed where they are sorely needed: missile systems for instance. In
addition, we already have the agreement of key leaders of the bibliocrat
unions, who see the wisdom in this as being in the national interest, that
is, a natural unity of business, government, and labor around our patriotic
design. We have also consulted the “Small Library Consortium,” which sees
the sagacity herein, and realizes that this shift to accountability and
deregulation will better serve the citizenry with small libraries. The
Rethinking Libraries group seems to be unsure of our proposal, but their
close personal relationships with the library unionists, the chance for
elected positions if they do not stand in front of our bandwagon, and a
growing budget won from their Rethinking The False Claims of Class Struggle
Hidden in Dickens, seems to be moving them in our direction. Of course,
churches representing all races see the light in this proposal. And we
have the support of significant parts of the professorate who are quite
aware that this vital shift will open possibilities for the publication
of significantly thicker textbooks, each to every deserving student without
the interference and privacy danger of holding a library card. Now is the time that tests the souls of men and women who want to stand up for the natural bond of the free market and knowledge. This is the day to take action. To the libraries! For Justice and the Free Market! |