{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "It\u2019s been said before but if public libraries weren\u2019t a fact of society and were proposed today they would be roundly rejected...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/164436951298/", "html": "

strayhopes:

It\u2019s been said before but if public libraries weren\u2019t a fact of society and were proposed today they would be roundly rejected as pie in the sky communism

\n

they started as private initiatives that were eventually nationalized as vital infrastructure and are maintained on inertia and constituency even as they and the role they were established to fill drift off in separate directions into the aether

more than either libertarians\u2019 or statists\u2019 idealism, that\u2019s how things tend to go

"}