> book banning. This source mentions that some books get banned from libraries: https://www.ala.org/bbooks/book-ban-data. But i assume all of these books can be obtained via a bookstore or online retailer. Even if someone argues that it puts books out of reach because of price, I cannot believe that since one can get used books from what for as little as $3-5, or 15 minutes of googling can give them access to PDFs and epubs to tens of thousands of public domain books or millions(?) pirated books that can be read on tablets and phones which have saturated everyone's hands.
You seem to be arguing that library book bans are innocuous, because one can simply find the books elsewhere.
Yes. To elaborate, I think the effect of bans is so small that it's probably not even measurable because we have become amazingly good at distributing textual information.
That does not argue for shutting down libraries. It doesn't make an argument for what to do with libraries at all.
Book “bans” are indeed innocuous because they’re not bans at all unless it is legally codified into law. Any and all decisions to remove books from a library is called curation and is in fact perfectly reasonable.
