On libraries and lifeboats

An encouraging celebration, by C. at It Is Better To Be Free, of libraries.

I would agree entirely with C. that local-authority libraries are hopelessly degraded from their earlier condition; like everything else, they have been dumbed-down to the level of people whose most challenging reading is a television schedule, and the impressive silence has long since been sacrificed to the unrepressed self-expression of the omnipresent children.

It will not be long before they are done away with entirely, and the budget used to fund yet more compulsory public telescreens.

What I am doing about this is three hours of voluntary work a week in a local charity library (for which I have the written permission of the benefits office and the grudging agreement of a number of doctors).

Charities are a good and essentially libertarian idea. Nobody gives our library anything if they don’t want to; it receives no financing whatever from any public funds, but people keep on joining and donating books, and it’s 20 years old this year.

I wouldn’t say this is the best-run and most effective charity in the UK; that title goes to the RNLI, which is cordially, if covertly, loathed by the government and therefore habitually discredited by the BBC (who will give the credit for a rescue to a traffic-warden, if necessary, should he have been within sight of the sea at the time, and if it cannot for some reason be given to a more plausible state-funded emergency service such as the police or the coastguard), and of which Mrs. Underclass and myself have the honour to be Governors (which is no more than a posh title for their expensive membership; we don’t even get a keyring, let alone supreme executive power).

The RNLI maintains a seagoing establishment larger and more efficient than some countries’ navies, and a fundraising department which competes in such matters as mercy with the Spanish Inquisition. Its gift catalogue is, like the Great Wave of Hokusai, magnificently terrifying.

It is greatly to our country’s credit that it has for so long maintained an institution of such very high performance and cost-effectiveness on a solely charitable basis. The example of the RNLI should be cited by all libertarians wishing to illustrate how important, complex, technological and life-critical functions can be carried out satisfactorily without the interference of a government.

One cannot help but wonder what sort of underfunded, grossly over-managed, somewhat corrupt, ill-motivated, hopelessly inefficient and slightly dangerous organisation our present government, or any of its more likely successors, might come up with were it forced to make an attempt to provide a marine rescue service. It hardly bears thinking about…

(Tempest. Waves crash. Winds howl. In the offing, a vessel in distress. Hooting of siren. Rockets and flares shot off. Alarums. Pagers. The doors of the Lifeboat House open. The HEALTH AND SAFETY INSPECTOR walks alongside the slipway to the water’s edge. He produces a decibel meter and holds it up. He notes down the reading, puts away the meter and produces a set of ear-defenders, which he puts on. He produces a hand-held anemometer, holds it up and reads it, making a note on his clipboard. He gazes at the sky, taking note of the number, size and behaviour of the clouds, then at the sea, and the number, size and behaviour of the waves. He produces a copy of the Daily Mirror and looks up his horoscope, and that of the lifeboat. He squats in the surf and, with a complex and expensive-looking instrument, measures the hardness of the rocks. Finally he turns and walks back to the Lifeboat House, from which several members of the CREW are now peering anxiously)

THE CREW (variously) Well? What’s happening? What’s he say?
THE INSPECTOR What? (he lifts one of the ear-defenders) What?
THE CREW (in chorus) Can we launch the lifeboat?
THE INSPECTOR (consults his clipboard at some length, then shakes his head) Naah.