Geez, Barak - I hardly know where to start!
Well, one suggestion, especially if you're going to continue to respond to pieces of my post the way I respond to pieces of yours, is to figure out how to use the quote tag to make my stuff appear in little isolated boxes, so that you can put in the whole sentence or paragraph you're talking about rather than just a fragment of it. It'll make your comments easier to understand.
There's not much to it. Click the Reply link on the post you want to reply to, and then look at the bar across the top of the text area you'll be typing into. You'll see a list of square boxes with little pictures in them. One of those pictures is a pair of double quotes. In my case, it's the ninth from the left.
Click that box. It'll generate some text for you. Looking at that text should make it clearer how to use the quote tag. If it doesn't, then play around with it while using the Preview Post button to see the effects of what you're doing.
"It's government schools rife with ....etc????" Don't you read the news? Commie, liberal, subversive press that it is.
That chit goes on EVERYWHERE, including private schools -it' s just better hidden in private schools, where the "Good Old Boy syndrome is alive and well, even more so than public schools, which at least have SOME outside oversite to them.
Government schools have only
government oversight, which is motivated and fashioned by politics--politics that in many cases comes from small special interest groups and may have nothing at all to do with the desires of parents. Competitive private schools have far more effective oversight, which is simply, "If you don't teach our kids the way we want them taught, we're going to take our money to a competitor who will." That's the kind of oversight that governs everything from churches to landscaping services to grocery stores, and it seems to work well enough.
And no, I haven't heard a great deal about corruption in private schools. I tend to believe it would be a lot easier to hide corruption in a government school where people have no real stake in where the money goes than it would be to hide in a private school, where every dime that goes for a kid's tuition means a dime that doesn't go for food or rent or fuel or whatever.
There will always be as much corruption as the folks determining the budget will tolerate; but that amount will always be smaller in the private sector than in the government sector because corruption is a competitive disadvantage, even if
no one finds out about it. A corrupt organization cannot do business as well or as cheaply as an honest one; therefore an honest competitor will draw business away from a corrupt organization. Government, by definition, has no competitors; therefore corruption in government has to actually be exposed before there's a chance that anything might be done about it. Even when exposed, though, government corruption frequently remains solidly in place (the famous Daley Dynasty in Chicago, for example) because it can't be defunded the way private corruption can be.
"The school's still in business, right?" Yes it is. So lets close the bastard down and leave that particular bush village, largely unemployed, without any educational system at all.
Is education important, do you think? Do you think people in general want to have their children educated? Yes? Then the free market will provide a way to make that happen, without government involvement. It happened quite handily before government schools came into existence (heck, kids back then learned Greek and Latin in one-room schoolhouses, for crying out loud), and it'll happen just as handily once they're gone.
There are a helluva lot of communities out there whose residents simply could not afford to support a private school.
I expect you mean they could not afford to support a
government school if they didn't get subsidies from outside their communities. There's no reason to believe that private schools would need to be as big and expensive and wasteful as government schools. For example, they wouldn't need metal detectors or cops or multiculturalism administrators or guidance counselors or sports campuses: you could put a perfectly serviceable small 5th-through-8th-grade school in an old two-story house.
We agree EXACTLY on why vouchers for private/parochial schools are a bad idea. I think. Purse string meddling by the gov'mint. Private schools, public schools, parochial schools, charter schools, magnet schools, home-schooling.... we need them ALL, to provide choice to the broad spectrum of society
Yes and no. Vouchers give control of private schools to the government, yes, which I object to: but no, I don't think anybody needs public schools or charter schools or magnet schools.
"Investment" - Maybe not the precise word I want, but I cannot think of another which is better. One puts money into something expecting a return -hopefully a positive one, but there is no guarantee.
One puts one's
own money into something expecting a return. One does not put other people's money, taken from them involuntarily and by force, into something expecting a return and call it an investment: that is simply theft, nothing more.
You can always quit your job and move out into the woods , living as a hermit by your wits and a sharp stick.
This is your definition of voluntary? Something is voluntary if your choice is between doing it and becoming a hermit? Sounds like we need to do a little work on the concept of private property.
With even ONE other person around, there must be an"investment" of some sort. The more people around, the higher number of involuntary investments. Ditto with "civilization".
Turns out not to be the case. Spin me a scenario and I'll show you.
I don't expect the serfs back in medevial times being conscripted by the local baron for roadwork thought much of the idea either, but everyone in that society or community benefited from it one way or another, from increased ease to market, more trade, better movement of troops for protection, etc.
Not a good enough argument for me. I expect you'd benefit one way or another if you stole everything I owned from me and murdered me to cover it up; doesn't mean I think it's a good thing or that I'm about to let it happen.
Would we be better off if the road system was privatized to each community, county, state, with varying standards and ability to fund it?
Absolutely. Last summer, Penny and I had the opportunity to make a 4000-mile road trip across the country. Even with all the government regulations in existence, I still noticed that compared to government interstates, the toll roads and turnpikes were in much better shape, had higher speed limits, handled their road construction in such a way as to maintain traffic flow, and so on. Heck, in west Texas we ran into a forty- or fifty-mile stretch of road construction where the speed limit was 35mph (down from 70 or 75mph), and the traffic congestion brought us several times to a standstill. I'm a big fan of private roads. Free-market competition always beats government oversight hands down.
Let's just do away with the damned government, OK?
You'd make me one happy little monkey.
"People who think it's a good investment....." Trouble is, the people who DON'T think its a worthwhile investment, or simply cannot afford it, will drag all the rest of us down with them
What if they're right? Maybe it
is a bad investment. Look, it's their money, isn't it? Who are you to decide how they should spend it?
"The mandate..." Dead on. I was making an observation, not a judgement with this one. What is your alternative?
My alternative is the free market. If the market thinks it's important to educate people like that, then they will be educated. If the free market doesn't mind 13-year-old crack whores on the street, then there'll be 13-year-old crack whores on the street. If (as I suspect) it turns out the free market believes kids like that should be kept off the street and prevented from hurting themselves or others, but sees no profit in trying to educate them, then that's what would happen.
You think public education is expensive for the buck's return, when you volunteer work in prisons?
Yes.
Don't worry, I think the government has completely screwed up the "justice" and penal systems as well.
if it was even in the ballpark.
Around here, it's closer to $10K/kid/year.
"Privatization" is the knee jerk response to nearly everything these days, but it just isn't practical to apply to any and all situations.
No, but least it's always more practical than government.
Hey, let's privatize the military.
Absolutely.
And the National Forests and Refuges. All "public" lands.
Better and better.
The postal service is FUBAR, I'm afraid.
Take away its monopoly and force it to be competitive, and it'll shape right up.
And by the way - my job with that dastardly taxpayer-supported public education system is not protected by tenure. Paid for, yes. If I'm not doing my job well, I'm gone.
I'm sure that's what they tell you. But how do you, or they, or anyone, know whether you're doing your job well? It's not as simple a question as it may at first appear.
Me, I know I'm not doing my job well if nobody chooses to pay me any money for the result of it, or if the amount of money they choose to pay me isn't commensurate with what I have come to expect for it. If that happens, then I need to figure out how to provide a better service, or learn to be content with less money.
But you don't have that barometer. Nobody chooses to pay you anything: the money you're paid is extorted by force from the people who earn it. If they had the opportunity to choose to pay you or not, and to choose how much to pay you in return for your services, do you think they would pay you as much as you make now? More? Less? You don't know. I don't know. Nobody knows. That's what I mean. Since you don't--and can't--have any idea how much your work is worth, you also can't have any idea whether you're earning your keep.
