Think about it rationally: If you have a book you haven’t finished but want to, there’s no incentive to return it now. Check out as many books as you’d like, return them at your leisure, and screw anyone who has any concurrent interests in any of those books.
> If you have a book you haven’t finished but want to, there’s no incentive to return it now. Check out as many books as you’d like, return them at your leisure, and screw anyone who has any concurrent interests in any of those books.
Under the new system, if you have any overdue books, you cannot check out new books. So you cannot "check out as many books as you would like". You can return them at your leisure.
A system of library fines works best under the following conditions:
* For most people who use the library, there is only a very small subset of books that interest them.
* And these people want to keep the books long term.
* And these people can afford library fines.
People who are interested in only a few books, want them long term, and can afford library fines generally buy their books at book stores rather than stealing them from libraries.
The system recently adopted by New York City will still work if most library users
* are interested in a selection of books greater than the maximum number that can be checked out at a time
* and regularly want to switch out books
* and cannot afford library fines
I will assume that the New York City Library System knows who their users are. Generally people who use public library fit into the poorer class of people and the people who need the library the most are those who cannot afford books and therefore regularly checkout new books. For these people, the system adopted by the New York Library will still motivate them to return their books.
Yes, some people who can afford books will steal from the library. Well, if they ever want to check out new books, they will need to return their old books (and maybe the New York Library has done the math and decided that a small enough percentage of the population is book thieves that this will work)
