Amazon bookstores should replace public libraries

Last weekend, Forbes magazine published an online article by a regular contributor named Panos Mourdoukoutas, in which he advocated replacing pubis libraries with Amazon bookstores in order to save taxpayers money. The article triggered an immediate and angry response, and the article was withdrawn almost immediately. According to Forbes, the article was withdrawn “because the article was outside of this contributor’s specific area of expertise, and has since been removed”. That’s a polite way of saying that the guy didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.

The day after the article was published, Forbes issued a statement confirming the fact that libraries “play an important role in our society.” Twitter, of course, buried Forbes with a flurry of comments, and the Kansas City Star published a lengthy article on July 23 that enumerated the benefits of public libraries.

 http://amp.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/article215349175.html

Andrew Carnegie realized the importance of libraries, which is why he devoted a substantial part of his fortune to the erection of public libraries.

 

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/04/read-you-idiot-read.html

 

Despite our strong public support for libraries, America does not have the most total libraries, nor do we have the highest number of libraries per capita. The country that has the most libraries is India (with 323,605), followed by Indonesia, Russia, and China. The Vatican has the highest number of libraries per capita (1498 per 100,000 of population), followed by Slovakia, Palua, Finland (107), Belarus (97), Czech Republic (91), Ukraine (88), Armenia (83), Maldives (83), Russia (79), and Canada(55). We are #26 on the list, with 30 per 100,000 of population, slightly below Japan (35).

https://www.quora.com/Which-country-in-the-world-has-the-most-libraries-total-and-which-has-the-most-libraries-per-capita

What America DOES have, though, is the world’s largest library. The Library of Congress, which was founded in 1800, has 164 million items available for review. Its annual budget of $642 million is a lot of money, but it is less than 1/10 of 1 percent of our 2018 defense budget, which will be INCREASED to $716 billion in FY 2019. At today’s price of $94.6 apiece, $642 million would buy exactly 6 F-35 jets, with a little money left over.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_libraries

Apart from their obvious value as educational tools, the articles contained within libraries are worth a LOT of money. Earlier this week, 2 men were arrested for stealing $8 million in rare books from the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, a crime that is eerily familiar to the fictional theft from the Princeton library that John Grisham wrote about in his 2017 novel, Camino Island. If your local library happens to have a copy of the Book of Mormon, they should keep it under lock and key, since an original edition sold in 2017 for $35 million.

 

https://pittnews.com/article/133625/featured/2-men-arrested-for-stealing-over-8-million-in-rare-books-from-carnegie-library/

In addition to their literary treasures, there ARE a number of libraries in the country that have resident cats. The most famous feline is a cat named Dewey, who lived in the library in the Spencer, Iowa library for 17 years. Not only did he leave a lasting impression on the town, he also attracted visitors from around the world, including a film crew from Japan.

 

 

With a net worth of $143 billion, Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world. In addition to his ownership of Amazon, he also owns the Washington Post, and Whole Foods. At the end of 2017, Amazon was the 5^th largest book store chain, but the number of its brick and mortar stores is significantly less than the number owned by Barnes and Noble, which was the largest general trade chain in both 2017 and 2011.

 https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bea/article/73837-bookexpo-2017-amazon-will-be-the-fifth-largest-bookstore-chain.html

In its quest to eliminate anything of value from American society, the Trump administration (in February of 2018) proposed the permanent elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, as well as the elimination of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (and virtually all federal library funding), In all, federal library funding only comes to $231 million, while the NEA and the NEH each have individual budgets of $145 million.

 

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/76047-trump-renews-bid-to-eliminate-library-funding-nea-and-neh.html

In the last 30 years, it is doubtful that the tweeter in chief has read more than a handful of books, including the ones that he published that were actually written by ghost writers. If he would take the time to read books instead of watching television 6 hours a day, he would be more likely to appreciate how dumb cuts to library funding actually are.

There is absolutely no way that Amazon, or ANY book store chain, will ever replace public libraries in our country, and that would definitely please the Scottish immigrant who was the riches man in America at the turn of the 20^th century. During the last 18 years of his life, Andrew Carnegie gave away $350 million, which would be slightly more than $9 billion in today’s dollars. He left a legacy of 1687 Carnegie libraries in every state in the country, as well as 1 each in Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.. Arizona has 4, but Indiana has the most, at 156, so it’s highly likely that Mike Pence has actually been in a few of them.  

Sorry, Mr. Moutdoukoutas. You may be the chair of the Department of Economics at Long Island University, but your ideas about libraries just don’t add up. Stick to numbers.