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11/7/2016 8:57:53 AM
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I mean that's a difficult claim to make and argue. As someone who typically holds very libertarian principles I find it to be the most difficult topic to address theoretically. I honestly have no idea what an ideal education system would look like. But that aside.
I mean it's hard to say because clearly public education is not effective across the country. We teach to tests now instead of knowledge and tools. Yet we still waste more and more money every year on it despite it not getting any better.
Realistically, who tries to argue this? Really of all the wasted tax dollars someone is going to try and argue against wasted spending on education as a starting point?
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[quote]I honestly have no idea what an ideal education system would look like. But that aside.[/quote] This is incredibly wise. I have no clue how to structure an education system. Nobody really does - not alone. Voluntary exchanges on an open market typically lead to better results than a centrally-planned bureaucracy, so why are we so preoccupied with finding the magic combination of funding, laws, and zoning to repair a crumbling network of public schools?
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Edited by Tosevite 187: 11/9/2016 7:43:30 AMWhile I want to agree with you there are many potential cons to privatized education. I think we can all agree that an educated nation is all round beneficial yet with exclusive privatization you can't ensure everyone has access to education. Furthermore, the quality of education will be even more subjective and all I see this doing is further separating the gap between the rich and poor. Also you have the issue of schools teaching what the parents (people funding the school) want instead of a more objective encompassing take. I'm not necessarily against privatizing the whole system but it's just important to think about some of the potential consequences. And with something like education, people can't make informed decisions if they are never given the opportunity to learn at a young age and it's likely their children will follow in their footsteps and even if some generation decides to school their children, they may not be able to afford it. I probably don't make much sense cause it's so late. But I'm curious what issues do you think privatization will address?
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[quote]But I'm curious what issues do you think privatization will address?[/quote] Like most (nay, all) things, a private system will provide a higher quality service than a public one. I'm also astounded at how many people are convinced that privatization will mean no education for the lower class. Privatization does not lead to rising costs. If the free market had a habit of making things inaccessible for those with less, it would have a track record of mass starvation. On the contrary, countries that nationalize their industries are the ones with food too expensive or too scarce for the lower classes. As for the schools teaching what the parents want, I actually see that as a pro instead of a con. A single-size public bureaucracy faces virtually no competition, and parents are compelled to send their kids to schools where they have no real say in what is taught. With a private system, parents can select a school that fits their value system. If they want a heavy focus on math with no focus on social sciences, that option can be available to them. Contrarily, some parents might want schools that have prayer sessions. These schools compete against one another, and this competition forces the institutions to try and provide a higher quality education for a reasonable price.
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By privatizing education you are making people pay directly for it, which really does have a psychological effect on spending habits of people (automatic deductions vs conscious spending) and will raise the price of education for the poorest who don't pay taxes really at all. You could argue this deficit will be addressed often by private scholarships and loans as we see in private colleges today, but here we are considering worst case scenarios that are true possibilities. Not only will it possibly exclude the poorest from education all together, it is almost inevitable that the wealthy will get better education. If you look at our judicial system with privatized lawyers or our private health care sector you can easily see that the rich have a huge advantage and receive higher quality services. It's no leap to assume this won't occur in an educational setting as well. Hell, it kind of does if you look at colleges and private high schools already. Then there is the issue that if you privatize education you can no longer make it mandatory. Which I again am split on. Is it the parent's right to choose their child's fate? Or is the child entitled to be given the tools to make decisions for themselves? Even if hypothetically private education is available and affordable for everyone there are a decent amount of parents that won't see merit in sending their children to school at all. Which you could say isn't fair to the children as they will never be given a fair shot at succeeding because they had never been encouraged to learn. Sure this happens some now, children skip school and parents don't encourage attendance or homework to be completed but this will cause that number to explode. You could say well that was the parent and child's choice but what if the child really wants to go but the parent won't pay? Really I don't care about optimal functionality of society as a whole as that comes second to individual freedoms. But it is tricky when trying to distinguish between the rights of children and their parents. I hope you can see this conundrum. Similarly this idea of a child's right to be educated extends to the content. If your parent is a hard core atheist and send you to a school that foster's their beliefs you will never learn creationism or about any religions at all (except in the bias context taught). Sure this is dramatic and happens to an extent already but it's just something to think about. How this will give parents the power to arbitrarily filter information their children will have access to learning. Again does the child have the right to sift through knowledge and make opinions on their own? This whole argument isn't the best as we don't really see this happening in private education today. You could argue it happens more in public schools as they teach to standardized tests instead of practical knowledge and skills, but the reality of complete privatization is the possibility of extreme sensory of content. This really is one of the hardest issues as a libertarian minded individual.
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[quote]By privatizing education you are making people pay directly for it, which really does have a psychological effect on spending habits of people (automatic deductions vs conscious spending) and will raise the price of education for the poorest who don't pay taxes really at all. You could argue this deficit will be addressed often by private scholarships and loans as we see in private colleges today, but here we are considering worst case scenarios that are true possibilities.[/quote] By privatizing food, we are making people pay directly for it, which really does have a psychological effect on the spending habits of people, and will raise the price of groceries for the poorest who don't pay taxes really at all. You could argue this deficit will be addressed by private food banks and charities as we see in neighborhoods today, but here we are considering worse case scenarios that are true possibilities. Opening a good or service to the free market doesn't pull it from the grasp of the lower classes, especially considering that the demand for education is so great. There's universal demand for food, and it's affordable for everybody. There's almost universal demand for education, so I'm not particularly concerned with there being a massive "shortage." [quote]Not only will it possibly exclude the poorest from education all together, it is almost inevitable that the wealthy will get better education. If you look at our judicial system with privatized lawyers or our private health care sector you can easily see that the rich have a huge advantage and receive higher quality services. It's no leap to assume this won't occur in an educational setting as well. Hell, it kind of does if you look at colleges and private high schools already.[/quote] The wealthy get better cars, houses, insurance, vacations, and anything else that money can buy. Are we going to construct public systems for those things, too? The fact that some people can afford nicer things than others is not a morally-striking statement. [quote]Then there is the issue that if you privatize education you can no longer make it mandatory.[/quote] That's another intended-con that I would paint as a pro, here. Compulsory education means that there has to be a system in place to receive the artificial demand. Education can take many different forms. I don't think we necessarily need every kid spending 40 hours a week in a schoolhouse. [quote]Or is the child entitled to be given[/quote] Any "entitlement" like this means that something has to be taken from another person. Nobody is entitled to anything, save the rightful ownership of their bodies. [quote]Even if hypothetically private education is available and affordable for everyone there are a decent amount of parents that won't see merit in sending their children to school at all. Which you could say isn't fair to the children as they will never be given a fair shot at succeeding because they had never been encouraged to learn.[/quote] Like I said earlier, education takes different forms. Some families may not want their child to spend 40 hours a week in a schoolhouse, but that doesn't mean that they don't want their kid to learn [i]something[/i] valuable. I'll cede that there's a possibility that children get shortchanged, but let's be real. A public system shortchanges all of us, and the possibility of not being educated at all still exists. [quote]Sure this happens some now, children skip school and parents don't encourage attendance or homework to be completed but this will cause that number to explode.[/quote] I don't see the reasoning for this. [quote]Similarly this idea of a child's right to be educated extends to the content.[/quote] That right does not exist. [quote]If your parent is a hard core atheist and send you to a school that foster's their beliefs you will never learn creationism or about any religions at all (except in the bias context taught).[/quote] That's fine. Kids in the current system don't learn the nuances of Chinese history, yet we seem to get along just fine. If a school neglects to pass on valuable information, then it's providing a poor product. Providing poor products in a free market is the fastest way to get run out of business.
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Well your first two counter arguments are pretty bad. When making an argument like this we first must determine what kind of good is education? In your first argument you classify it as a necessary good comparing it to food. This implies it's an inelastic good where demand won't change much based on price. Then in your second argument you go on to compare it to a luxury good like cars or houses. So you can't make both of those arguments as they inherently contradict each other. I would place education as it is treated in the market more as a luxury good, yet I feel that it really is a necessary good for equal opportunity and true freedom to exist. I think I'll address this later on, depends how much time I have. Privatizing education will pull the service from the poorest of people, you will need to rely on charity to educate their children. The poorest of people don't pay any taxes, really including most sales taxes too. Privatization will force a cost for education- no matter how high or low there will still be some cost that was non-existent for a subset of people. Then your thought that education does have a near universal demand shows you have little experience in dealing with poor people, immigrants, etc. I have worked with these populations extensively in St. Louis for a time and I can guarantee if school was not mandatory or free nearly all of the children I worked with would not have an ounce of education. Ranging from defiant trouble making children, drug addicted parents, ignorant parents, not present parents, etc these children would not be educated in a fully privatized system. There are two problems with this. 1) These children lack equal opportunity to make informed decisions, critically evaluate information, and act as autonomous adults. By given children the freedom to avoid education at a stage when they are not mentally capable of making that decision limits their freedom to a much much greater extent later in life. 2) All of these uneducated people will grow up to become burdens to society. By lacking an ability to fit within a roll in society or make a living salary many will fall to crime, need to be taken care of, or will end up sucking our money away sitting in a prison (assuming we still have our humanity and won't watch people on the street just starve, their ignorance will fall on the conscious of the rest of us to take care of them through private donations.) I want to make it clear I am not arguing our current system is superior to a hypothetical completely privatized system. I am arguing a hypothetical public system or even a mix of public and private hypothetically have advantages over a private system. You are right that in a privatized system the bad schools would close or lower their prices and good schools would survive. This competition would improve the top end of education however it would only be attainable by the most wealthy which will in turn perpetuate a strict caste system. It is also likely the poorest preforming schools would need to lower their prices so low that they no longer can meet their operating costs and then close. Sure this is an example of capitalism succeeding but what if there is no longer enough spaces in schools for the demand? I've tried to find a country that only has privatized education and I can't find any (it was a brief search so if you know any please let me know) but many countries have entirely public education and do fairly well. So you've got to wonder why this is the case. (I'm seriously saying wonder why, I can't explain it but there must be something there right?) Someone not educated limits their own true freedom and negatively impacts all of society in ways far greater than it would have been to educate them in the first place. By becoming a burden on the rest of society it limits our freedom as well as we now have to support the uneducated.
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[quote]When making an argument like this we first must determine what kind of good is education? In your first argument you classify it as a necessary good comparing it to food. This implies it's an inelastic good where demand won't change much based on price. Then in your second argument you go on to compare it to a luxury good like cars or houses. So you can't make both of those arguments as they inherently contradict each other.[/quote] Education is a service. My point is that the free market does not have a habit of putting things out of reach for the lower class. My second point was that there's no legitimate moral issue to be found when some people possess more than others. Wealthy people can have higher-quality things than poorer people. Does that mean that they ought to be forced into subsidizing certain industries? [quote]I would place education as it is treated in the market more as a luxury good, yet I feel that it really is a necessary good for equal opportunity and true freedom to exist. I think I'll address this later on, depends how much time I have.[/quote] Your definition of "freedom" is lacking, then. A free society is a society free from violence and coercion. Armed robbery is an infringement of liberty in the same way that taxation is. Equal opportunity isn't something that we can achieve through force if we want to live in a free society. [quote]Privatizing education will pull the service from the poorest of people, you will need to rely on charity to educate their children. The poorest of people don't pay any taxes, really including most sales taxes too. Privatization will force a cost for education- no matter how high or low there will still be some cost that was non-existent for a subset of people.[/quote] I'll cede that. However, there's still no moral issue here. If you don't have the wealth to engage in trade, then is it morally acceptable to employ force to push the transaction forwards? I'd say not. If somebody cannot afford education, where do they derive the rightful authority to take another person's wealth and use it for the transaction? [quote]Then your thought that education does have a near universal demand shows you have little experience in dealing with poor people, immigrants, etc. I have worked with these populations extensively in St. Louis for a time and I can guarantee if school was not mandatory or free nearly all of the children I worked with would not have an ounce of education. Ranging from defiant trouble making children, drug addicted parents, ignorant parents, not present parents, etc these children would not be educated in a fully privatized system.[/quote] This somehow justifies using force to come up with the resources necessary to educate them, and then to use force to push them into the system? Let's not forget that delinquency is not eliminated in the public school system. [quote]There are two problems with this. 1) These children lack equal opportunity to make informed decisions, critically evaluate information, and act as autonomous adults. By given children the freedom to avoid education at a stage when they are not mentally capable of making that decision limits their freedom to a much much greater extent later in life. 2) All of these uneducated people will grow up to become burdens to society. By lacking an ability to fit within a roll in society or make a living salary many will fall to crime, need to be taken care of, or will end up sucking our money away sitting in a prison (assuming we still have our humanity and won't watch people on the street just starve, their ignorance will fall on the conscious of the rest of us to take care of them through private donations.)[/quote] Statist problems require statist solutions, which end up creating more statist problems. Your first point has [i]some[/i] merit. Not having any kind of education can handicap you in life. However, let's look at the current system. We can use coercion to fund a public system, and then we can mandate that people are educated in one way or another. We still haven't guaranteed any kind of valuable education, though. American students aren't exactly the most employable graduates. We can try and use a coercive system to plug up all the gaps - making it nigh impossible for children to escape some sort of formal education. However, the quality of this "universal" education is severely lacking, and it's also far more expensive than it needs to be. Your second point only holds water if we keep up the coercion. Violence is the burden on society. If this person becomes a criminal, then they destroy or take wealth that doesn't belong to them. That's a burden on society. We can confiscate wealth and try to ease this person out of poverty, but we're still taking wealth. The burden hasn't been eliminated; we've just legitimized the crime. [quote]You are right that in a privatized system the bad schools would close or lower their prices and good schools would survive. This competition would improve the top end of education however it would only be attainable by the most wealthy which will in turn perpetuate a strict caste system.[/quote] I don't foresee a caste system being formed, honestly. More money can mean a better education, but that doesn't necessarily mean that people will be distinctly separated. If anything, the current public system creates a two-caste system. A diploma (or something equivalent in the state's eyes) is basically a permit to work, and lacking one can trap you in the underclass. A decentralized system based on voluntary exchanges isn't reliant on the pseudo-license of a diploma. [quote] It is also likely the poorest preforming schools would need to lower their prices so low that they no longer can meet their operating costs and then close. Sure this is an example of capitalism succeeding but what if there is no longer enough spaces in schools for the demand?[/quote] The market regulates itself constantly, not just once. When a poorly-operated school closes, there's increased demand. It's in every nearby institution's best interest to scoop up that demand, rather than to let their competitor's claim it. [quote]I've tried to find a country that only has privatized education and I can't find any (it was a brief search so if you know any please let me know) but many countries have entirely public education and do fairly well. So you've got to wonder why this is the case. (I'm seriously saying wonder why, I can't explain it but there must be something there right?)[/quote] They do well relative to other public systems. As far as schooling goes, public and compulsory systems are relatively new to the West. England didn't make education compulsory until 1880, for example. [quote]Someone not educated limits their own true freedom[/quote] Their potential? Certainly. Their freedom? No. [quote]and negatively impacts all of society in ways far greater than it would have been to educate them in the first place.[/quote] Only if we're yoked into a system that coerces us to provide for them, you mean. [quote]By becoming a burden on the rest of society it limits our freedom as well as we now have to support the uneducated.[/quote] Our freedom is limited by being coerced into supporting the dismal education system. Eliminate the coercive system entirely and you eliminate any [i]guaranteed[/i] loss of freedom.
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Stallcall. That's who.
