Well I was listening to Obama (barf) talk about how he wanted to give money to college kids only if they promise to serve in community service or something else. But what I quickly realized was, this is nothing but a school voucher, with some strings attached… So while he is against elementary and high school vouchers, he is for College ones… How interesting.
Anyways I was wondering what you all thought about the idea of college vouchers…
This same question has been asked and answered in quite a few ways on these posts. The most common answer I have read is that: Vouchers like other programs that allow people to give cash to another person come as most things do in two flavors:
Vouchers paid through coersion, force and ultimately violence are evil, inefficient, immoral and burdened with unforseen consequences. The problems start at collection either through taxation (Forcing people to pay directly), debt(Forcing future people to pay.) or inflation(stealing wealth from savers) and continue through the strings attached and bureaucracies built to extract money and distribute it to another person.
Vouchers paid through generosity and/or mutually beneficial (Generosity is a subset of this) exchange between the payer and payee are fine.
The important factor is the mechanism through which the money for the vouchers is obtained and not the intent of the voucher or if the voucher allows the payee to use the money more according to their preferences.
This same argument can be applied in a large number of examples including but not limited to: Education All Levels, Research, Health Care, etc.
It was my udnerstanding that most people here are for vouchers on the lower level of education, i was just wondering at what point in one’s these vouchers should stop. And what is the justification for that.
That is not my view nor is it the view many writers on this website. We are against stealing money from one person and giving it another reguardless of the motive, person who receives it or what the person does with it. Theft is simply theft, that is true if it is a theif stealing from you, goverment taxing income, sales or a home or the federal unreserve creating money thus reducing the value of the current stock of money.
It is true that one of the best known proponents of freedom, Milton Freidman, was at times in his life a proponent of Educational Vouchers and central banking. The folks that run this website do not agree with those opinions. Freidman started the Chicago School which is different from the Austrian School.
Vouchers schmouchers. There are enough colleges out there sitting on fat stacks of money sufficient to finance the tutorials of all their students every year into perpetuity.
Education has been cartelized and is now wielded as a barrier to entry by the upper classes.