Mr. Doctorow Says...We, The Public, Are The Angel Investors In Our Institutions.

CitizensAreNot
ClientsOrCustomersVille


Cory Doctorow writing about the rush to force public institutions to be 'profitable':

...We don’t invest in public service institutions because we want them to be profitable. We invest in them because we want them to be good. Galleries, museums, archives and libraries tell us who we are. Schools and hospitals tend our minds and bodies. They are not businesses. We are not shareholders...


So if we don't invest in these things to turn a profit, why are we being forced to make them do so?

Or, to put in more precisely...

Why must we be convinced that we must be forced to do so?

Well.

You know...

...In the story of market-driven public institutions, it’s we, the public, who are the angel investors. We paid to keep the archives growing, to put a roof over the museum, to amass and catalogue all of our nation’s cultural treasures (and the treasures of many other nations). The internet now makes it possible for those institutions to reach wider audiences than ever before, at lower costs than ever before – once their collections are digitised. When Siemens or another big company comes along to digitise our investments, they are the VCs putting in late-stage capital after we’ve borne all the risks, sometimes for centuries...


In other words, capitalists who love both ventures and vultures need a place to park their big piles of private cash, moral hazard- and risk-free, while our public investments are shrunken and dessicated to make said piles even bigger.

OK?


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