The US subsidizing the book market would be an incredible waste of my taxes, given that the majority of published works are fiction, political drivel, and non-fiction memoirs that provide near-zero value to "humanity" that the root poster is clutching pearls about.
The IA's collection of books they had to remove almost certainly has the same composition, and therefore the same loss in value (roughly zero) after being made inaccessible.
You're right, I confused "misanthropic" and "misogynistic".
That turns out to not make your comment any less incorrect or manipulative, though. Requiring people to pay for the stuff they consume isn't even remotely misanthropic.
Didn't mean that either. I meant that saying the entire book industry is a waste not worth tax money, implying other uses of taxes like military spending is more valuable, is something that could have been said by a fictional character conjured by a person who thinks lowly of humankind.
Memoirs, political books, fiction - no need for the taxpayer to subsidize, people can buy themselves.
Actually useful technical material: already available for free on the internet.
Poor people are not dying on the streets because they can't read the autobiography of the latest president. Tax dollars going to that instead of climate change or cancer research or something similar is incredibly immoral.
2. Your view on books and by extension, long term education is well, short term. A classic issue used to defund libraries. You don't give proper resources and knowledge to get the homeless today off thr street. It's to ensure much less of the next generation isn't also on the street.
There were a vast number of technical books on the internet archive, that was mostly what I used it for. They’re not easily accessible elsewhere, maybe pirated from random torrent sites but they’re not discoverable or easily searched.
The IA's collection of books they had to remove almost certainly has the same composition, and therefore the same loss in value (roughly zero) after being made inaccessible.