Democratic Socialist Congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently published a tweet that’s closing in on 200,000 likes: “If you think the GOP is terrified of my politics now, just wait until they find out about public libraries.”

At the risk of confirming the caricature of libertarians, I want to make the case against public libraries.

To start, suppose that your boss wants to reward the office with a bonus. She can give all of her employees a $500 espresso machine or $500 in cash. Surely, the cash is better than the espresso machine. Anyone who wants the espresso machine can still buy it with the cash and those who don’t want it can spend that money on something they do want.

The same argument applies to libraries. Rather than operate public libraries, the state should privatize them and cut taxes accordingly. Anyone who wants a library membership can use their tax savings to get one and anyone who doesn’t want a library membership can use their tax savings on something they do want. Library privatization is better for some and worse for none.

You might object that privatization will cause some libraries to close due to lack of demand. But that result tells us that libraries were oversupplied—people were being taxed for something they didn’t actually want. By analogy, few would argue that the state should nationalize Blockbuster to prevent it from going out of business. Tax-funded, free-at-the-point-of-delivery libraries are inefficiently allocated because they’re not responsive to market signals.

Another objection is that public libraries are good for the poor. Anyone can get a public library card for free. Private libraries, by contrast, would charge for memberships. But this problem has an easy fix: preferentially distribute the tax savings to the poor. They could then can use this extra income to buy a library membership or they could spend it on something they’d like more.

If public libraries are the embodiment of the ideal of your economic system, that’s a bad sign for your system.