🚀 go-pugleaf

curtis@cs.berkeley.edu (Curtis Yarvin) writes:
>rmr@sgi.com (Robert M. Reimann) writes:

>You appear to think of art as a "public good."  A public good is any
>good whose benefits cannot be restricted to those who pay for it.
>National defense, for example, is a public good.
>
>But what I don't see is how art, or literature in specific, is
>such a good.  After all, to my stubbornly myopic view of things,
>it seems that restricting the reading of books to those who pay
>for them is perfectly good disqualification from this exalted
>status.

So you are against libraries, then?

>Because let's not forget what we're doing when we subsidize
>literature.  I might be able to support it but I will brook no
>euphemisms in the process.  What we are doing is forcing people to
>buy books that they do not want to read; and before you do this
>you had better have a pretty damn good reason.

See it's a question of access.  It's not just a demand
side problem, either.  For a society that places free
expression at the top of its priority list (or the Bill 'o
Rights at any case), we can expect the individuals of
that society to make a small sacrifice (and it's damn
small) to ensure that this right is upheld for everyone.

				Robert.