Destroying Public Libraries for Equity

New York Public Library has abandoned the system of late fees for books that are not returned in a timely manner. They're doing so because late fees are somehow bigoted, so they need a “more equitable system that does not disproportionately impact high-need communities.” Of course, late fees don't target “high-need communities”. They target those who don't return books.

The typically marginal fees incentivize people to read in a punctual manner and return their books for the benefit of others. If people don't return them, then the library system breaks down, because that's the basis of the model. It stands to reason that fewer people will return books when they have no motivation to do so, and those waiting will have no reasonable expectation of the length of their wait. This will destroy the library system, for the library will become a repository of books waiting to be stolen.

It seems readily comparable to the elimination of cash bail, which was also adopted in New York on the premise that cash bail places an unfair burden on the poor. Even when you accept the premise as well intentioned, the result was that innocent New Yorkers suffered from the increasing crime, perpetrated by those who previously would have been held behind bars.

At the heart of the library change, which is gradually spreading throughout the nation, is the assertion that poor people are affected more by fines than the wealthy. While it is true that $1 will always be more of an imposition to the poor than the wealthy, the fines are only experienced by anyone if he fails his part of an agreement, namely to return the book on time.

We seem to have taken the fact that the poor have less to lose as a moral mandate to fail to hold anyone accountable. But the actual moral issue is that one is now redirecting the consequence from the perpetrator to the victim. There is a consequence either way. In the old system, the person who owed the fine would pay somewhere between a quarter and a dollar. In the new, people don't get access to library-owned books because they are not returned. This migration of consequence is being seen increasingly in our society, in far more serious areas of life.

It's the same dynamic with the elimination of cash bail, the choice to completely disregard standardized testing, and the prevention of merit-based hiring. The net result is felt by innocent parties, but it makes some participants in secular morality feel pious and noble. When people who are ill-equipped enter college programs, they force teachers to lower the standards of education for all students, so that they can accommodate the mediocre. When merit is ignored in hiring in favor of racial diversity, patients get inferior doctors, businesses get inferior accountants, and airplanes get inferior pilots. Down the line, people who are not responsible suffer the consequences, and everyone becomes more skeptical of those of preferred pigment. Very few people win, except those who feel better about themselves for their “equity”, even as planes fall from the skies.

If we make victims out of innocents while refusing to penalize the guilty, we will raise generations who expect reward for mediocrity and misconduct. We will disincentivize fortitude, industriousness, magnanimity, and moral character.