A Stitch in Haste

The Brooklyn Public Library has queued up an innovative new idea:

In what would be a first in the United States, the Brooklyn Public Library hopes to team up with Netflix to deliver DVDs and videos to anyone in the borough with a library card[.]

The price would be unbeatable — free.
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Asked why the company would agree to a deal that might cut into its own subscriber base, [a library official] responded: "We'd be paying them to do something. They'd be the provider of a service."

That's certainly an interesting idea. But I have an even more interesting idea: Let people pay for their own damn Netflix subscriptions!

A DVD is simply not a public good. A DVD rental service is not a public good.* The very existence of Netflix (and Blockbuster and all the other services) is proof that there is no need for government provision of free DVD rentals.

And make no mistake about it, the Brooklyn Public Library is the government: 91% of its revenue — $88.6 million every year — comes from taxpayers. Not all of whom live in Brooklyn, not all of whom use the Brooklyn Public Library, not all of whom would use its "free" DVD service and plenty of whom are already paying for their own DVD purchases or rentals. BPL is about as "private" as Amtrak (less so, in fact — at least Amtrak doesn't let people ride for free).

Incidentally, who's going to decide which titles would be offered for "free" and which wouldn't? Does anyone seriously doubt that activist legislators would start imposing censorial restrictions on R-rated titles? On films that contain smoking scenes? Would religious films trigger First Amendment concerns? The can of worms could be bottomless.

Similar issues have arisen with another faux public good: municipal wi-fi. First the local government crowds out the private service providers, then suddenly the "free" service comes with ominous strings attached: no porn, no privacy, etc. No thanks.

Meanwhile, a curious denouement:

Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey said he knew nothing about a possible partnership with the library and seemed surprised by the news.

Wouldn't it be nice if this all turns out to be a figment of some library bureaucrat's imagination? Stay tuned.

(Via Consumerist and Gothamist.)

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*Libraries themselves are arguably not public goods. But I leave open for now the premise that a repository of basic reference volumes and periodicals might generate enough positive externalities to qualify. But most public libraries cross way over that line these days, spending taxpayer money on offerings and services that certainly do not qualify by any standard as "public goods."

"What kind of fool..."

Barbra Streisand's concert in Rome next month should be cancelled because of excessively high ticket prices, consumer groups in Italy have said.
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Prices, ranging from 150 euros to more than 900 euros, were "absurd and shameful", the groups said.
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The 24,000-seat [Stadio Flaminio] "is public property and cannot be used for immoral deals that are shameful to a civilized country", [the groups] said.

This is the mindset of modern socialist Europe: A pop concert is "immoral." A voluntary exchange among competent consenting adults is "shameful." There is a "right to cheap Streisand."

Meanwhile, note the sotto voce implication of invoking the status of the stadium as "public property" (which, of course, it should not be in the first place). What difference does it make whether the Stadio Flaminio is "public property" — unless of course the people willing and able to pay the higher prices are not to be considered part of the "public"? Apparently "public property" in fact doesn't mean "for the public" at all, but rather for a subset of the public only — those too poor, or too stingy, to buy a ticket.

A concert is a scarce good: there are 24,000 seats; they must be rationed. What better way to ration than to have those who value Barbra Streisand the most (as evidence by their willingness to pay) actually pay and go? How would an alternative rationing system (e.g., a lottery) do any better a job at maximizing (the fiction of) "social welfare" better than having those who want to go the most actually go?

Or is the suggestion that Streisand should be constrained in her liberty to charge whatever price she sees fit? Which simply means that it is not the Stadio Flaminio that is "public property," but Barbra Streisand herself — that she is in fact just another "resource" to be "exploited" for the "common good."

Either that, or perhaps the groups simply want the government (i.e., the taxpayer) to underwrite the concert — in which case every person who does not attend the concert, and who doesn't want to attend the concert, toils for those who do. This is what modern socialist Europeans consider "social justice."

"A funny kind of proposal..."