Monoculture: How One Story is Changing Everything

by Michaels, F. S.

  It wasn’t until the Enlightenment that crime became thought of as something that affected all of society and not just the victim. Crime became a public issue, an offence against the state that now had to be handled by the state’s officials.12 Governments protected the public and the public interest by sending criminals to prison as retribution (because they deserved it), deterrence (so they wouldn’t do it again), incapacitation (so they couldn’t do it again), or reform and rehabilitation (changing behavior and attitudes).13

  All of that government activity cost money, and during the 1800s, the government started contracting out prisoners as workers across America, sometimes into appalling conditions; slave labor was disappearing after abolition, and prison labor was seen as a substitute for it. The practice of contracting out prisoners as workers was widespread. In 1825, the state of Kentucky, in financial crisis, leased its prisoners to a businessman for $1,000 a year for five years. New York’s Sing Sing had its prisoners work in marble quarries. Other prisons had their occupants make shoes, clothes, carpets, or furniture to help defray the public cost of crime.14 Contracting prisoners out served two purposes: prisons started making the government money instead of costing it, and work, said the Protestant work ethic, could itself be used to reform a prisoner’s character.

  Not everyone was happy with the arrangement. Unions and manufacturers complained that prison labor undercut the work of free men and entrepreneurs. Too, prison conditions ended up being so bad and inmate exploitation so widespread that public agencies were eventually forced to assume responsibility for prisons.15 Leasing convicts out as workers ended in 1923, and contracting prisoners out to private firms had mostly disappeared by 1940. Prison became an expensive proposition for government again.16

  In the 1970s, those costs worsened; America’s prison population doubled. The practice of contracting out prisoners was restarted. Then, in the 1980s and 1990s era of tough sentencing, stringent political attitudes, and the “war on crime”, the prison population doubled again. By early 1992, the United States had the highest number of people incarcerated per capita in the world. Federal and state prison operating costs jumped from $3.1 billion in 1980 to over $17 billion in 1994 — an increase of almost 550 percent based on inflation-adjusted dollars.17

  Both government and the public loathed the financial burden that prisons represented. In the economic story, one solution to skyrocketing costs is to introduce competition and outsource operations, either piecemeal or in their entirety. As costs rose, the prison management services offered by cost-cutting private firms started to look more attractive. Corporations were already involved in the justice system anyway through drug treatment centers, electronic surveillance, halfway houses, juvenile detention centers, work programs in adult prisons, and food and laundry services. Outsourcing adult prisons in their entirety simply represented the next level of private sector involvement.18

  Advocates said outsourcing prison management would cut costs by about 20 percent and that corporations couldn’t possibly do a worse job of running prisons than the government, what with overcrowding, ballooning expenses and lousy living conditions. Private prisons would be cheaper, more efficient, and more responsive, offering better security, better food, and better medical care.19 Critics questioned whether corporations should be allowed to be responsible for the lives and freedom of prisoners and to profit from their suffering. Critics also worried that as the prison industry grew, more and more people would have a financial stake in keeping the prisons full, whether that happened through longer sentences or stricter sentencing.

  In the 1980s, the management of adult prisons started to be transferred from governments to corporations. Firms that managed prisons were typically paid a per diem per inmate by the government. The lower the corporation could spend in daily costs per inmate, the higher the profits, which weren’t inconsequential. Total revenues for private correctional services were estimated at $1 billion in 2001, and of 184 privately-operated prisons and jails around the world, 158 were in the United States, mostly in Texas and California.20

  Did private prisons deliver on what they promised? A report compiled for the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance said no; private prisons proved no more efficient or safe than publicly managed ones. The 20 percent promised cost-savings turned out to be worth about 1 percent on average — realized mostly from lower labor costs since private prisons tend to hire non-unionized staff and fewer of them, then save money by paying lower wages and offering fewer benefits.21 Still, according to the economic story, transferring the management of prisons to corporations is worth doing. And the story says the same thing is true of public libraries.

  For many people, public libraries are iconic. Gary Paulsen, author of over 175 books, many for young adults, credited a public library with saving his life. As a teenager in northern Minnesota with an unhappy home life, he ducked into a small-town library one night to warm up. The librarian offered him a library card and kept feeding him books. Paulsen said, “It saved me, it really did. I still read like that, like I tell kids, like a wolf eats. I read myself to sleep every night. And I don’t think any of the good things that have happened to me would have been possible without that librarian and libraries in general.”22 Legendary science-fiction author Isaac Asimov said, “I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it.”23

  Public libraries embodied something called library faith: the belief that books change lives. Library faith represented a foundational belief in “the virtue of the printed word, the reading of which is good in itself, and upon which many basic values in our civilization rest. When culture is in question,” said political scientist Oliver Garceau, “the knowledge of books, the amount of reading, and the possession of a library — all become measures of value, not only of the individual but also of the community.”24 Public libraries also once shaped people’s reading tastes, “improving” people through books. In the 1940s and 50s, librarians argued about whether or not “light” fiction should be allowed in the library because fiction was considered entertainment, something with little or no educational value, and libraries were supposed to be edifying.25

  Libraries took it upon themselves to help people become informed and thoughtful citizens by keeping the knowledge and values needed for democratic society in circulation.26 In 1852, the trustees of the Boston Public Library — the first library in America to be supported by public taxes — stated, “…it is of paramount importance that the means of general information should be so diffused that the largest possible number of persons should be induced to read and understand questions going down to the very foundations of social order, which are constantly presenting themselves, and which we, as people, are constantly required to decide, and do decide, whether ignorantly or wisely.”27 The United Nations called the public library “a living force for education, culture and information” and “an essential agent for the fostering of peace and spiritual welfare through the minds of men and women.”28

  In short, the public library didn’t just contribute to the public good; it was the public good. We invested in it with our tax dollars because we believed our society was better off when our citizens were literate and educated. The library was the people’s university, the great equalizer in society — the place where you could access books and learn for free regardless of your income.29

  As a public good, libraries existed outside the boundaries of the market.30 Libraries preserved the human record within the limits of their resources, protecting and transmitting that record for future generations.31 They embodied intellectual freedom, the idea that you should be able to think and believe what you want. Because of that belief i
n intellectual freedom, diverse views — even those that were “unorthodox, unpopular, or considered dangerous by the majority” — were deemed to be in the public interest, and the library became a place where you could find alternative and competing points of view on a given issue.32 In practice, intellectual freedom meant important but controversial books were put out on the shelf instead of banned or burned. Information about who was reading what was kept confidential, even from law enforcement, and everybody who used the library had equal access to the information they needed regardless of religion, ethnicity, gender, age, or economic status.33 The library created information resources that the market wouldn’t, because the private sector had no reason to invest in knowledge that didn’t make money, and knowledge that is unorthodox, unpopular, or considered dangerous often isn’t profitable.34

  When the economic story spreads through your community and into the public library, library services become understood as a market, and what goes on in markets starts happening at the library. Information is transformed from a social good that helps to develop informed citizens into something to buy and sell and profit from. The library becomes an information business in the information services industry and starts to focus on what businesses focus on: customer service, cutting costs, efficiency, and productivity.

  Librarians become information specialists who just happen to work in libraries. Chief Librarians become CEOs. Library patrons become customers, and libraries start gathering information about customer needs and wants through market research. Libraries become worth supporting not because they are a public good, but because they respond to customer needs.35

  By 1980, public libraries were focused not on prescribing what patrons ought to read, but on being responsive to customers by giving them what they wanted.36 What some customers wanted, of course, was to ban books, creating a conflict of interest between customer responsiveness and the library’s historical dedication to intellectual freedom.37

  As the economic story spreads into libraries, economic language spreads too. As one prominent librarian said, “Every time a dollar changes hands [at the library] there has been a business transaction. We establish a mission based on our values, we plan strategically and allocate resources accordingly, we engage competent and capable staff to make our products and services available, we monitor and adjust depending on our market’s needs and desires. These are all business activities.”38 The profession started to ask itself, “What If You Ran Your Library Like a Bookstore?” and branch libraries in East London were renamed “Idea Stores.”39

  To be sure, many libraries embraced these shifts because of cuts in government funding. In 2010, American libraries from coast to coast — including the venerable Boston Public Library — again found themselves struggling to cope with city budget deficits in an attempt to avoid branch closures, staff layoffs, and reduced hours and services. In the past, as libraries struggled for shrinking government dollars, many had already adopted business strategies to address the shortfall. Libraries slowly became a place to make money, and a place for corporations to promote themselves and sell their products and services.40

  When the library comes to think of itself as a business, it starts being discussed in terms of return on investment. The economic story says libraries should make money by developing their own revenue streams and opening bookshops, gift shops, and coffee shops. Libraries should also introduce user fees and charge for library cards. In the economic story, you are an individual, and as an individual, if you benefit from something like the public library personally, you should pay for that benefit personally. Though fees for library cards were controversial when they were first introduced because they flew in the face of the library principle of equal access to information, user fees now typically represent 10 to 15 percent of the average library budget.41

  In the oil-rich Canadian province of Alberta, library user fees were introduced after government cutbacks in the 1980s. Even when the province became solvent and debt-free, posting multi-billion dollar surpluses and enjoying a reputation as the wealthiest province in Canada, the fees stayed. In the capital city of Edmonton, after user fees were introduced, library enrolment and circulation dropped significantly and had not recovered ten years later.42 The smaller center of Banff, Alberta, chose to axe its library user fee; library membership soared 40 percent that year.43 Although many libraries allow people to ask for the fee to be waived if it’s unaffordable, as one librarian said, “[As] someone who grew up in a poor family, I feel that asking people for proof of their poverty humiliates them. (Surely being poor is humiliation enough without having to identify yourself as such to get ‘special treatment’ in what I feel is our most democratic institution — the public library.)”44

  In the economic story, libraries are encouraged to raise funds by selling named space to individual or corporate donors. This was already happening in libraries to some extent; library buildings were being named after donors. The Carnegie libraries were named for steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, who financed more than 2,500 libraries around the world. What is different now, though, is that library parts are for sale.45 Naming opportunities include the circulation desk, individual meeting rooms, study rooms, window reading nooks, reading benches, and the picture book collection. That kind of private sponsorship, though it brings in revenue, also creates a vicious cycle; companies get a tax write-off for their donations, which means less corporate tax ends up in city coffers. With less money available in public funds, libraries typically find themselves on the chopping block again, making them even more dependent on private sector funding.

  In the economic story, the neutral public space that the public library once represented doesn’t stay neutral. Prior to the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, public libraries in Vancouver were asked to make sure the brands of sponsoring corporations were given exclusive play at library functions. A leaked internal memo read, “Do not have Pepsi or Dairy Queen sponsor your event…Coke and McDonald’s are the Olympic sponsors. If you are planning a kids’ event and approaching sponsors, approach McDonald’s and not another well-known fast-food outlet.” Libraries were also advised to try to meet official sponsors’ brand requirements. If only Sony equipment were available in the library, for example, instead of equipment made by official sponsor Panasonic? “I would get some tape and put it over the ‘Sony,’” the Vancouver Public Library’s manager of marketing and communications was quoted as saying, “Just a little piece of tape.”46

  The economic story interprets the “public” in public library in a new way. It says the management of public libraries ought to be outsourced to the private sector, which is more efficient and effective. Book-buying for the library is outsourced to corporations. Critics worry that outsourcing the development of the library collection is akin to corporations deciding which books are available to you in the library at all, and question whether books that challenge the status quo or that criticize business itself will find their way onto the shelves.47 Even so, in 1997, the city of Riverside, California became the first documented library system to outsource the operation of its 25 library branches to a private company called Library Systems & Services, LCC (LSSI). Critics say the company runs libraries for less than cities can by hiring fewer trained librarians, and by paying lower salaries and offering fewer benefits to employees.48 Yet by 2010, LSSI was America’s fifth-largest library system, having “taken over public libraries in ailing cities in California, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas.” In late 2010, LSSI won its first contract to run libraries in the financially-healthy city of Santa Clarita, California; the $4 million deal was described as “a chance for the company to demonstrate that a dose of private management can be good for communities, whatever their financial situation.”49

  After all, in the economic story, the public sector and the private sector are no longer distinct areas of activity that ought to be managed differently. In the economic story, the public sector and the private sector are the same sector: private.

 
YOUR PHYSICAL

  AND SPIRITUAL HEALTH

  To the extent that economic thinking is based on the market, it takes the sacredness out of life, because there can be nothing sacred in something that has a price. Not surprisingly, therefore, if economic thinking pervades the whole of society, even simply non-economic values like beauty, health, or cleanliness can survive only if they prove to be ‘economic.’

  —E.F. SCHUMACHER

  You in the West have the spiritually poorest of the poor much more than you have the physically poor. Often among the rich are very spiritually poor people. I find it is easy to give a plate of rice to a hungry person, to furnish a bed to a person who has no bed, but to console or to remove the bitterness, anger, and loneliness that comes from being spiritually deprived, that takes a long time.

  —MOTHER TERESA

  FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS, the human value at the center of medicine was health, says biomedical ethicist Daniel Callahan, “the integrated well-being of mind and body” — the healing of the sick, the compassionate relief of suffering. Doctors were expected to act in the best interests of their patients. Plato wrote, “The physician, as such, studies only the patient’s interest, not his own…The business of the physician, in the strict sense, is not to make money for himself, but to exercise his power over the patient’s body…All that he says and does will be said and done with a view to what is good and proper for the subject for whom he practices his art.”1