Black market schools

[WordWhiz]

Copernicus--you seem very hung up on the "free riding" problem of education. I accept the basic claim that education creates some positive externalities. So does building a factory, starting a new company, and for that matter, wearing deodorant. In fact, it's difficult to think of a single activity that doesn't have either positive or negative externalities (usually both) of some sort.

The traditional argument for intervention in certain fields (schooling) but not others (deodorant wearing) is the degree of this externality. Other people derive a very slight benefit from me wearing deodorant--for a few minutes when they're standing next to me on a crowded subway, the smell isn't as bad. But the overwhelming majority of the benefit goes to me--I'm far more like to have friends, get laid, and have a decent job than if I stunk all the time. Thus most people can be trusted to make the correct decision to deodorize themselves without a government subsidy.

All of the same can be said of education. The person receiving an education receives almost all of the benefit thereof. Doctors make 6 figures; high school dropouts are lucky to make 5.

It thus seems that education is a poor choice for the government to subsidize. Care to explain why you think otherwise?

[natedogg]

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good series of posts Foosh. Its sums up why, earlier in this thread (at least I think it was this thread), I pointed out that taxes for education are important to solve the free-rider problem when education benefits society as a whole, not just the families with school age kids.

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You can't be serious.

By that standard, I assume that you therefore consider just about anything anyone does that can benefit others in any possible way to be a case of "free rider" problem? Should I be taxed to support all these things so as to avoid the free rider problem?

Did you teach your child how to drive safely? I"m a free rider.

Did you beautify your yard recently? I'm a free rider.

Did you get a boob job? I'm a free rider.

Did you repair your car in some way that made it safer on the road? I'm a free rider and should be taxed to help you pay for it.

We must tax people to support these behaviours otherwise we are all free riders.

natedogg

[FooSH]

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From what I gather, an AC society would rely a lot of "buyer beware" situations and the ability to read and comprehend contracts for pretty much everything. How long would a person unable to read last? I'd give them 2 weeks, tops.

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Not necessarily. Really, I have no idea how many written contracts there would be in an anarchist society. But it certainly isn't true that you have to know how to read for all types of contracts--when you sit down at a restraurant, you 'contract' with the restraunt to pay for the food you order.
So while I'm inclined to agree that reading is a pretty important thing to be able to do, a) it wouldn't be necessary for all types of contracts, and b) why assume you need to pay lots of money (or any money) to learn how to read? My parents taught me how to read--I'm sure lots of others teach their kids as well. I don't understand why you think that basic reading (or other elements of 'basic' education) require a uniform system supported by involuntary taxation, when there are lots of other ways people can learn the stuff they apparently 'need' to know.

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I apologize, I'm quite new here so am not familiar with the full range of contracts that might be needed. My main reference was to the thread about regulation in health-care. Under the present system anyone can go to someone calling themselves a MD and expect a pretty high standard of care, under AC they will need to research the doctor/provider and be smart enough not to fall for phony accreditation schemes. Almost impossible without a basic level of education, no?

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Some parents (and a lot of children) simply do not understand the importance of education. Who, as an 8 year old, never wished they never had to go to school? Now, as an adult, who's glad they stayed?

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Are you talking about 'education' in general or the specific education that you (or I) got? Education IMO is one of the most important things in the world. But a lot of the stuff I actually learned during my years of public education were a complete waste of my time, and I often wish I had spent that time learning something practical and useful than what I actually did.

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How did you know you would never need it? How would you know if you had a gift and a passion for [insert subject here] unless you at least tried it? Even if you never use the specific knowledge taught, learning a new subject is still a mental exercise that can improve skills like logic and problem solving.

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A lot of parents (especially young ones) may still have bad memories of school, and lack the maturity to see the benefits for their children. If education was non-copulsary and charged a direct fee, the numbers receiving basic education would fall off drastically.

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First of all, your making a big assumption my stating that education in an anarchist society would require a 'direct fee'; it's difficult to say what education would look like in an anacrhist society, but like the market for anything else there are basically 3 types of economies--the market economy (if you need education, you pay somebody to teach you), charity (if you need education, you find somebody to teach you for free), and labor (if you need education, you find a way to teach yourself). So it's not like the only option for eduation would be expensive private education--I would imagine that in a highly decentralized anarchist society, many communities would have educational options that were free.
AS for education being non-compulsory, who the [censored] are you to say that someone else ought to be forcefully educated if they don't want to be? I would agree that a person should get themselves educated (though I might disagree on what constitutes such education), but I haven't the right to force anyone to get educated if they don't want to. Besides creating problems of uniformity and centralization, compulsory education is completely paternalistic and should be resisted on these grounds as well.

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You say many communities will have free education, but that would still come through taxation. What about the other communities?

Children do not have as much freedom as adults, nor should they. I see no problem using any (non-aggressive) means to get a child to learn to read. I also have no problems in diversity of education, home / state / private / religious etc. are all fine as long as they meet a minimum standard.

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According to Child Maltreatment 2005, the most recent report of data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, approximately 899,000 children were found to be victims of child abuse or neglect in Federal fiscal year 2005.

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^^ This is the problem. Without some compulsory education, what happens to these? (genuine question)

[FooSH]

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It *could*? Well, the death star "could" appear in orbit tomorrow, we better spend a lot of money to cover that situation, too.

If you want to argue on a cost/benefit basis, you need something better than "X could be more expensive than Y, so we need to use force to make sure Y happens." Couldn't Y be more expensive than X?

People say that anarchocapitalists only care about dollars. But time and time again, the arguments used against them are about money, and purposefully ignore the moral implications.


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The costs I reffered to were more than just financial. The financial cost *could* be higher, the cost to society (crime and an under-educated workforce) *will* be higher.

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How are you measuring those costs? Can we see your calculations? And how are you determining that this scenario is actually what "will" happen?

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Feel free to propose another likely AC scenario for the ~1M children of neglectful parents, because I can't think of one.

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What moral implacations have I ignored?

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How you're paying for it, primarily. If I point a gun at you and force you to donate money to charity X, have I done a good thing?

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Have you ever wondered why Robin Hood is always portrayed as the good guy?

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Nobody would stop you from making a deal with some violent thugs to come knock on your door and take X% of your money and give it to charity XYZ.

Nobody would stop you from working for a company that would set this up for you automatically.

Now, please explain why your laziness and your lack of imagination about how you might accomplish your chosen goal creates any obligation on my part to do things your way. Please explain why, even if we share the same goal, I should be compelled to contribute to the same tactic for achieving that goal.

Please explain why you use loaded appeals to emotion? I have a finite amount of resources. If I spend them all on saving children A, B and C, but children D, E and F starve, have I destroyed those innocent children's lives? I *could* have saved them, but I did something else with the money.

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This will not work unless everyone is forced to contribute, hence "If it was left to voluntary contributions, there would not be enough money". I'm not saying you have to send your kid to a state school, private or home schooling have their place and should be entitled to some rebate of some kind from the state.

I see my shameless appeals to emotion just as valid as your shameless appeals to greed [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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Ah, personal attacks. A common way to end an otherwise poor argument.

The fact that your preferred system doesn't work unless you can force people to pay for it should tell you something.

The ford pinto business model didn't work. Perhaps Ford execs should have looked into making everyone buy one. I mean, people need cars, right? And you wouldn't *have* to drive it, you could still buy a Lexus or a Mercedes, those would still "have their place".

Think about what this would do to the car market. Any other cars that would normally compete with the Pinto would basically be wiped out. All that would be left on the "open" market would be higher end stuff. It wouldn't take long before people would say stuff like "ZOMG if people had to buy their own cars, only rich people would have cars!"

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I'm sorry if you thought that was a personal attack, no offence intended.

Car manufacture, food and death stars have very different goals / methods / effects / everything. I really don't think they are usefull analagies. Education is a very specific problem and I think it should be dealt with as such. If 20% of the population get pintos, society isn't affected in the slightest. If 20% can't read it's a huge problem for everyone.

[pvn]

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Feel free to propose another likely AC scenario for the ~1M children of neglectful parents, because I can't think of one.

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It's not my job to fill in the blanks for you. Your lack of imagination is not my problem. "If we don't do ABC, then XYZ will happen, I can't think of anything else, now you're obligated to make ABC happen" is not a convincing argument.

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What moral implacations have I ignored?

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How you're paying for it, primarily. If I point a gun at you and force you to donate money to charity X, have I done a good thing?

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Have you ever wondered why Robin Hood is always portrayed as the good guy?

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Nice dodge.

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I'm sorry if you thought that was a personal attack, no offence intended.

Car manufacture, food and death stars have very different goals / methods / effects / everything. I really don't think they are usefull analagies. Education is a very specific problem and I think it should be dealt with as such. If 20% of the population get pintos, society isn't affected in the slightest. If 20% can't read it's a huge problem for everyone.

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You think. I might have a different subjective personal preference than you. Why do you assume yours is the "right" one, and that force is justified to support your personal preference?

If people don't have cars, they can't get to their jobs. If they can't get to their jobs, I don't get my mocha lattes, and my 60" big screen tvs. The teacher can't get to school. If you don't support universal cars, you're opposing educating our most precious natural resource! Why do you hate children!??

If people being uneducated is actually a "huge problem for everyone" then everyone will have a pretty strong incentive to solve the problem - without coercive intervention.

Also, are you suggesting that people can't learn to read without a coercively funded state-supplied education system?

[tolbiny]

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According to Child Maltreatment 2005, the most recent report of data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, approximately 899,000 children were found to be victims of child abuse or neglect in Federal fiscal year 2005.



^^ This is the problem. Without some compulsory education, what happens to these? (genuine question)


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1. We have compulsory education now. This is not preventing abuse, neglect, poverty for children. Our current system is failing at helping them.

2. There are thousands of people who want to help others these children. They become social workers, however the system that they get into is severely screwed up (as all government agencies are) with perverse incentives, massive waste and a monopoly on removing children from abusive homes.

3. These people will still exist (those that want to help) under a non intervening system (whatever that turns out to be). People still give millions to charities to help kids, join the two and instead of having an entrenched bureaucracy you get flexibility and innovation.

[nietzreznor]

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I apologize, I'm quite new here so am not familiar with the full range of contracts that might be needed.

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No need to apologize; I certainly don't have the answers to that question either!

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My main reference was to the thread about regulation in health-care. Under the present system anyone can go to someone calling themselves a MD and expect a pretty high standard of care, under AC they will need to research the doctor/provider and be smart enough not to fall for phony accreditation schemes. Almost impossible without a basic level of education, no?

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Well, yeah, you'd probably have to know how to read (or know someone else who did), and have some basic reasoning skills. But I certa9inly wouldn't agree that you need to know the types of stuff that you learn in a traditional school setting. Knowledge of US history, or english grammar, or algebra probably won't be that useful. And I think that the types of skills that you would need for situations like this are probably best learned outside of school settings anyhow, so I don't think this is a convincing argument for coercively-funded public schools.

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How did you know you would never need it? How would you know if you had a gift and a passion for [insert subject here] unless you at least tried it? Even if you never use the specific knowledge taught, learning a new subject is still a mental exercise that can improve skills like logic and problem solving.

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I agree, and this is in part why I said that I thought education was really important. But what does this have to do with coercively funded public schools or compulsory education? I've gone to public school, private schools, and college and there are still lots of areas of knowledge I haven't tried yet. Should I be forced to study some botany, or dance, or African history, merely because they're out there and I might like them? If not, then why should I be forced to study math or english or basic US history if I don't want to? Again, the issue isn't one of what I ought to do with my life--it's what people are allowed to force me to do. And I see no reason why 'you might like it' or 'learning is good mental exercise' is a legitimare reason to aggressively force someone into getting an education.

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You say many communities will have free education, but that would still come through taxation. What about the other communities?

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Why assume it will come through taxation? If it did come through taxation, the taxation wouldn't be anything like what we have now. Did you read the part I wrote about the 3 different types of economies? I think many communities would have free education programs that were basically charity (which, in a decentralized anarchist society, could be the same thing as 'taxation'). There is no reason to assume that something couldn't both be free yet not funded coercively.
Some communities might not have such programs. If you lived in one, and wanted free education, then either a) you could get home schooled, b) you could move to somewhere that had free education, c) you could find a school that provided financial aid, or d) maybe you shouldn't have lived in a community that didn't have the things you wanted in the first place. The only that that isn't an option--or *shouldn't* be an option--is to use aggression to get others to pay for your free schooling against their will.

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I see no problem using any (non-aggressive) means to get a child to learn to read.

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Who's using these means? The parents? I have no problem with parents 'making' their children get shcooling of some sort. But I would oppose some non-aggressive means of getting a child to learn (threatening to not feed them?).

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I also have no problems in diversity of education, home / state / private / religious etc. are all fine as long as they meet a minimum standard.

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Who's standard? Who are you to say what a child should learn? Shouldn't that be a decision that the child and parents make?

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^^ This is the problem. Without some compulsory education, what happens to these? (genuine question)

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Honestly, I don't really think this is an issue concerning compulsory education--it is really a broader (and separate) issue about what to do in cases where parents abuse and mistreat their children. Not educating a child at all might classify as mistreatment of some sort, but not giving them a state-sanctioned one certainly isn't (if anything, such parents such be praised).

Seriously though, this is a good topic, and I would suggest making a separate thread about the issue of parents abusing their children and what can be done about it. I don't find it especially problematic for anarchists, but I think it is interesting since how the issue is approached may depend on how one views matters of rights, ownership or control of children, etc.

[natedogg]

Why stop at compulsory education? There's a LOT of things you could do to improve yourself that would make life better for me. Where do you draw the line at forcing people to better themselves for your benefit?

natedogg

[pvn]

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I apologize, I'm quite new here so am not familiar with the full range of contracts that might be needed. My main reference was to the thread about regulation in health-care. Under the present system anyone can go to someone calling themselves a MD and expect a pretty high standard of care, under AC they will need to research the doctor/provider and be smart enough not to fall for phony accreditation schemes. Almost impossible without a basic level of education, no?

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Sounds like a problem. Seems like someone who could solve that problem voluntarily could make a lot of money. I certainly don't like to spend lots of time researching everything.

Consider education.

What prevents universities from handing out diplomas?

Oh, some actually do that. But how many people honor diplomas from such universities?



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How did you know you would never need it? How would you know if you had a gift and a passion for [insert subject here] unless you at least tried it? Even if you never use the specific knowledge taught, learning a new subject is still a mental exercise that can improve skills like logic and problem solving.

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And mental exercise cannot be accomodated without a coercively-funded, state-sponsored schooling system?

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Children do not have as much freedom as adults, nor should they.

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How much should they have?

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I see no problem using any (non-aggressive) means to get a child to learn to read. I also have no problems in diversity of education, home / state / private / religious etc. are all fine as long as they meet a minimum standard.

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What standard? Who gets to decide the "correct" minumum standard?

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According to Child Maltreatment 2005, the most recent report of data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, approximately 899,000 children were found to be victims of child abuse or neglect in Federal fiscal year 2005.

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^^ This is the problem. Without some compulsory education, what happens to these? (genuine question)

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Are you suggesting that complusory education ends child abuse and neglect?

[TomCollins]

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Have you ever wondered why Robin Hood is always portrayed as the good guy?

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Robin Hood was an early Libertarian. He took the money improperly seized by an overreaching and overtaxing government and gave it back to the people. No wonder why he is portrayed as a good guy.