anyway, libraries are awesome and weird and important. taxes can suck but when they go to these institutions, it’s genuinely money well-spent no one’s getting rich in these jobs, but they’re critical for community cohesion. they’ve also been catastrophically over-burdened by the failures of other civil systems, which means they’ve become hubs for social services and welfare. that’s a reflection of the engineered incompetence of our government at every level. it alienates the standard-issue patron who wants to learn or participate, not be stressed or accosted by someone unstable or disruptive. this pressure on library systems is destructive (also IMO by design), because a literate, cohesive, participatory community is a Very Dangerous Thing to political machinations that rely on atomization, alienation, and derision between the public