You don’t have to be an anarchist to deliver the uncompromised truth to an unfamiliar audience even if the one delivering it still maintains the necessity of the "apparatus of compulsion and coercion", which is why Mises is always first on my list for introducing people to free markets and libertarianism.
Government schools is one of the largest government expenditures. Regardless, there are of course many different rationals for making everyone pay. But it comes down to the fact that without a threat of imprisonment and property theft, no one would pay taxes. And since the only way we know if someone wants a service or not is if the person is willing to pay for it, we have to assume that no one wants government services, since no one would be willing to pay for them without being coerced into it.
If you are maintaining the necessity of government then you are delivering compromised truth.
You edited Jake’s assertion. Look it over again.
This is what my original point was in disagreement with, so we’ve just really have come full circle. In the case of government services we can’t a priori assume that if they are unwilling to pay for it they don’t want the service. When a parent sends their child to a public school then they are obviously demanding the service, even if they then say that they would rather not pay taxes. My point is that there is a disconnect between providing the service and how the service was paid for. I agree that the free market could provide any service better, but this is not believed to be true by the general majority of the population.
I should have originally been more clear.
Nvm, the confusion was already dealt with.
Do you mean demand in the economic sense? If so, then how can you say it is obviously demand given that they were coerced into paying for it? For example, if everyone was forced to pay for my grocery store that provides food for children that are 18 and under, would you call it demand if most everyone shopped there for food for their children?
Just because they want the service, does not mean they necessarily want the government to provide the service. But maybe we will just have to disagree on whether it is a priori or not.
I got it, and had a good laugh about it. You’re ok Jacob.
I have not.
I see where you’re coming from, but I don’t think you are making the connection I’m making. Let’s approach the debate knowing that we both agree with each other when we say that anything provided by the public sector is more productive than anything provided by the public sector. Now that this is established, let’s also take into consideration that the majority of people do not believe that the private sector can supply certain “essential” services as well as the public sector. So, the majority of people (which is what we’re talking about) would say that if there were no public sector schools, then private schools would be so expensive that the majority of children would not have access to them.
We know that this is a fallacy. But, we are not addressing what we know. So, if we approach the topic knowing that the majority of people believe that only the public sector can provide education “to the masses”, then we can make the connection between why people generally support public education and why people demand public education. As a whole, these same people understand that taxes pay for this public education. But, individually, they know that if only they lapse on payments then the service will still be provided, because everybody else is carrying their weight (they don’t see it exactly like this, because then it would prove to be a moral dilemma). So, the majority of people who look for tax refunds or to reduce their taxes are doing it expecting all these services to still be in place.
I disagree, see above (and previous posts).
If it is what you believe to be the truth, the yes.
The necessity of the “apparatus of compulsion and coercion” is the uncompromised truth. It reveals both a truth about necessity and the nature of such a service. If Mises thought that only government can provide such a service it was what he thought was to be the truth. Yet, he did not compromise the truth as he knew it to be in order to cater to some unfamiliar audience. For his time, Mises was practically an anarchist.
No, sir. Please re-read your post, the one to which I replied. I retained your quoting of Jake without so much as changing a single character.
I will, agree, though, that my post doesn’t really prove his assertion. Rather, I was going for the spirit of it. Of course Rothbard would never claim that government would ever be as efficient as the market. He went further, though, and said, even if it could, it would still be immoral.