[alephnerd]

Additionally, most municipalities run community centers and libraries which provide programming. The issue is there is declining interest in participating in these kinds of activities.

It's a societal cultural shift, and those are not things that can be shifted by policy as can be seen with various failed attempts at social engineering in Singapore and China.

[sublinear]

Yeah the highest participation areas have significant poverty and lean conservative.

My point is that it isn't an unreasonable solution and it achieves everything outlined in the blog. The only catch is that it's incompatible with their politics. :)