What is your source?
In any case, please note the internal contradiction in your argument. “The citizens of the town could not afford a service, so the government was able to provide that service by taxing those citizens out of their money to pay for it.” If the citizens couldn’t afford the service, than surely they wouldn’t be able to afford the taxes that government desired to provide that service.
Ok. But most of those parents have had some sort of education. Meaning college. Ya, they will know how to teach their children. And more power to them. I dont argue that all education should be public. I argue that their should be public education provided for those who otherwise wouldnt have any access to it.
Maybe they dont have the money. Maybe their parents dont value education but they do. Maybe their parents work all day and cant home school them.
People use public roads, hospitals, and other utilities because there is no way around it. That doesn’t change the fact that those utilities should be privatized and people should be allowed to voluntarily pay for them on an as-use basis.
You’re right. What the hell were those damn negroes doing, wanting freedom from slavery? Massa provided them with food and shelter! Ingrates.
Seriously, don’t read the texts if you don’t want to, but at least go read the archives a little. We had this topic (“if you’ve used these things then you have an obligation to pay for them”) like a week ago.
Well, until you read the texts and learn, you don’t know what we are talking about. What is moral is what is best in the Austrian and Libertarian sense. But you support a criminal enterprise and thus are a co-conspirator in the crime of stealing and murder, thus, are immoral. We advocate volunteering to help Jojomba in Ethiopia. You advocate forcing us, even if it means you will have to murder and steal from us, to force us to feed Jojomba in Ehtiopia. Until next time…[|-)]
And again, I quote:
Not only is the quality of the public school system horrendous, but its cost is extraordinary. America’s public primary schools spent $5,246 per pupil on average during 1989.[12] That is $130,000 for a classroom of 25 students.[13] Furthermore this is above that of many private schools. Of the approximately $212 million spent on education through high school in 1989,[14] only 40 percent went towards teachers’ pay (West, 1983).[15]
Where did the other $100 billion plus go? Far too much goes to administrators and bureaucrats. Boaz (1991, p. l7) writes:
“Such massive bureaucracies divert scarce resources from real educational activities, deprive principals and teachers of any opportunity for authority and independence, and create an impenetrable bulwark against citizen efforts to change the school system.”
Graham (1963, p. 57) claims that, “Modern education’s chief contribution to preparing children for life in a democratic society is its emphasis upon cooperation in solving problems,” (Graham, 1963, p. 57) but when a system spends more than twice as much on bureaucrats than on the actual teachers, there cannot be much cooperation going on, and the problem that is not being solved is the unconscionable waste of taxpayer resources.
The solution to this massive waste of resources being thrown at goals which do not materialize, is the market. The public education system wastes resources because, like all socialistic endeavors, it cannot rationally calculate in the absence of prices and private property rights (Mises, 1981; Hoppe, 1989). Under a market system, businesses receive signals from consumers in the form of their choice to buy or not to buy. Public education, on the other hand, gets partial signals from consumers (as voters) electing some officials every few years. Furthermore the signals are muddled by the fact that voters elect officials based upon a plethora of issues other than education. On the other hand, consumers of a private service send a scintillatingly clear, immediate signal when they choose whether or not to enroll their children.
The clear, immediate signals which a market system provides are necessary for educational (or any other) firms to be motivated towards increased productivity. In a private system, teachers, principals and administrators are accountable to the consumers. Boaz (1991, p. 28) writes, “[in the public school system] no principal or teacher will get a raise for attracting more students to his or her school.” Just as critical, principals and teachers are rarely fired or reprimanded for not providing education excellence in a public system.
Lieberman (1989, p. 62) notes such in California:
“If a district wants to suspend a teacher for as little as one day, the procedure that must be followed is the same as for firing a tenured teacher. The district and the employee each appoint someone to a three-member commission to conduct a hearing on the suspension. (The other member is a state-appointed hearing examiner.) If the school district loses, it must pay any compensation lost by the employee and the employee’s hearing expenses as well. Not surprisingly, only about one teacher in 10,000 is suspended annually in California.”
Civil servants lack both positive and negative incentives to educate children in a manner satisfactory to the parents who foot the bill (i.e., pay the taxes). There is no automatic feedback mechanism encouraging government hirelings to design productive, cost-effective schooling which fits the distinct tastes of their “customers.” For example, perhaps poor families would forgo the cost of hiring teachers for basic physical education and art classes which often consist of no more than the activities children pursue outside of school on their own time. Under the public system, however, administrators have no incentive to challenge predominant school structure. If they do, there is no immediate effect on the tax structure, so parents would only see their children as losing services with no decrease in the price of education; also there would be no increase in salary for the inventive of the administrator. Supporters of the public school system, once having abandoned market forces as schools’ drive toward productivity, can only point at a district, state, or federal bureaucracy to take their place. source
In a genuine free market, education would be much cheaper and affordable, even for the poorest of the poor. Costs could be cut by removing unneccessary courses, such as physical education and art. Hours could be cut down to just the needed basics like math, English, science, and history/geography.
Private schools could also earn additional revenue from private businesses:
Unwilling to shortchange his students or to pay for the copies himself, the visionary teacher found an alternative: he began to sell advertisements on his test papers. According to USA Today, he charged $10 per ad on quizzes, $20 per ad on chapter tests, and $30 per ad on semester finals. Within a few days he had over 75 email requests for ads! Farber has already generated $350 in ad revenue. The article also states that approximately 67% of the ad sales are inspirational messages, paid for by parents. Others are from local businesses.
This free-market solution enables parents to voluntarily provide additional funding in order to help their children. It also allows local businesses to benefit from targeted advertising. Local businesses may also benefit from an improved labor pool due to the improved education students receive from their funding. It is an excellent example of parties participating in voluntary exchange and everyone benefiting: students benefit from the improved education; parents are pleased by improved placement scores; and businesses benefit from a better labor force and more customers. This is capitalism at its finest. source
Moreover, on-the-job training and technical schools could be a much more viable alternative for poor children who could earn money for their families, contribute to society’s wealth, and gain valuable marketable skills for the future.
Im well aware of Jeffersons disagreement with welfare. Instead he wanted to abolish inheritance. Id be fine with that as well if it worked. But it would just be another forcible confiscation of peoples wealth.
I think the ads on tests is brilliant. Once again you assume I think govt should be the only provider of education. And that is just stupid. However we can get it done; I just want to make sure everyone has adequate education and decent healthcare. There is absolutely no reason the free market shouldnt be allowed to. But someone has to be there to make sure it does.
The problem with a sick goose isnt that its a goose. Its that its sick.
By the way, Jojomba in Ethiopia (note: I’m rather uncertain that Jojomba is an ethnically Ethiopian name) would be best served by a policy that cut out subventions to wealthy Western farmers, so that the agricultural goods that his country produces don’t turn out to be completely worthless. Or, by an immigration policy that lets him get a job outside his country, so that he isn’t doomed to scrape the dusty soil for a living.
As ive said, its not that I havnt tried to read your sacred texts. Theyre just not very well written, nor do substantiate themselves in the real world. Its all built off of “what ifs.” What if there werent public roads and schools, etc, etc.
But I will read your Bible. I just find it much easier to get down to the real issues. I like to see the more personal side of the argument. It has to be personal, and it has to be practical, else its just theory. Theorizing on what if has its place, but there is a real world out here. A real world which already has a state. Wouldnt it be better to reform the system out of the need for the state, rather than just aboloshing all established systems of cooperation and descending civilization into anarchy?
And by the way, I never once said it is righteous for the state to force education upon us. You dont have to use it, in my view, you just have to help pay for it. WHy? Becuase youre a citizen of this nation. Its quite plain and simple. I dont have to go to great lengths to explain it. Unlike your Bibles, I can say just this; YOU are responsible for everyone and everything on this planet. By YOU I mean everyone. I didnt do it, or its not my fault, or what does that have to do with me, isnt a valid argument.
WHen you realize that, then we can talk about aboloshing systems of governance, becuase we wont need them anymore. Everyone will help prop up everyone.
But you know as well as I that certain people will lie, cheat, and steal to get what they want. Then they will claim they earned it, and hoard it against all would be takers.
If an educated person writes a contract with the uneducated in a manner which only suits himself but appears to suit both parties, is that not theft? Or should the losers have known better?
Source? I can find no evidence that Jefferson supported the inheritance tax. If he had, wouldn’t he have instituted it when he was President?
No, I don’t assume that. I know that you are in support of some kind of public system whereby the government taxes citizens for the education it provides. Such a system is clearly ridiculous, as it is much more expensive than private education and much worse in quality. More could be accomplished by a private, voluntary system based on charities, business investment, on-the-job training, and private initiative.
The only way we can get it done is by removing the government from the equation. By forcing you to pay for below market quality education whether you want to or not, it is taking funds from citizens who would be able to afford private education on their own.
I don’t know of any Austrian “sacred texts.”
How could you possibly know if you’ve never read one? If you would have read at least one Austrian work on economics, your view of them as being based on “what ifs” would have been completely destroyed.
That is what Austrian school economists already do.
Some Austrian economists are minarchists. In other words, they believe in a state.
Not if private enterprise can do a better job at providing protection and law than the government can.
How is it a valid argument that I’m responsible for others misdoings? How am I responsible for your education?
That’s how the market works. I build a widget, you buy the widget for $5. I profit by those $5 and you profit by owning my widget. In a market economy, everyone who contributes to society gets their fair and equal share.
Lieing, cheating, and stealing would all be illegal in a libertarian society for violation of property rights. Many libertarians are against government precisely because it lies, cheats, and steals.
It would be illegal fraud if the educated person miselead the uneducated, which is implied in your statement.
I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self evident, “that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living;” that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. The portion occupied by an individual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society. If the society has formed no rules for the appropriation of its lands in severalty, it will be taken by the first occupants. These will generally be the wife and children of the decedent. If they have formed rules of appropriation, those rules may give it to the wife and children, or to some one of them, or to the legatee of the deceased. So they may give it to his creditor. But the child, the legatee or creditor takes it, not by any natural right, but by a law of the society of which they are members, and to which they are subject. Then no man can by natural right oblige the lands he occupied, or the persons who succeed him in that occupation, to the paiment of debts contracted by him. For if he could, he might during his own life, eat up the usufruct of the lands for several generations to come, and then the lands would belong to the dead, and not to the living, which would be reverse of our principle.
that was jefferson on the natural right to inheritance
"Many of the opposition [to the new Federal Constitution] wish to
take from Congress the power of internal taxation. Calculation
has convinced me that this would be very mischievous." --Thomas
Jefferson to William Carmichael, 1788.
"The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the
whole taxes of the General Government are levied... Our revenues
liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus
applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see
his government supported, his children educated, and the face of
his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich
alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his
earnings." --Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1811
He pretty clearly states that the land should either go the family occupying the land. He clearly does not support any kind of inheritance tax, what he is supporting here is the direct opposite: he is against any outside meddling in the affairs of the family. If you doubt what I said, read what you posted:
he portion occupied by an individual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society. If the society has formed no rules for the appropriation of its lands in severalty, it will be taken by the first occupants. These will generally be the wife and children of the decedent. If they have formed rules of appropriation, those rules may give it to the wife and children, or to some one of them, or to the legatee of the deceased. So they may give it to his creditor. But the child, the legatee or creditor takes it, not by any natural right, but by a law of the society of which they are members, and to which they are subject. Then no man can by natural right oblige the lands he occupied, or the persons who succeed him in that occupation, to the paiment of debts contracted by him. For if he could, he might during his own life, eat up the usufruct of the lands for several generations to come, and then the lands would belong to the dead, and not to the living, which would be reverse of our principle. What is true of every member of the society individually, is true of them all collectively, since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of individuals.
He clearly lays out that the abonded property may no longer be controlled by whoever the deceased contracted with, but by the first occupants, the family.
You just said it would be better to descend civilization into anarchy if private entities could provide better. Your faith in the market is blinding you to the real world. I asked you if it would be much better and easier to evolve society to the point where it no longer needs public wealth sharing, than to just abolish it altogether?
Im saying to you that you are a creature of existence and as such have a responsiblity towards all the other creatures and things in existence. Lets grow up, put in our fair share, and work to make the system a little more effecient. And maybe one day we can get rid of the formal rules.
I’m sure you posting a bunch of quotes of Thomas Jefferson supporting small government and low taxes makes you feel quite intelligent, but unfortunately it won’t convince anyone here to come back to the cult of statism.
A slave driver will teach us what freedom is ?
Very well fellow philosopher, explain my exact responsibilties and duties to all things in nature. Please give a PREMISE for such responsibilties. What is “fair” this is a baseless notion created out of the air. If the system is inheritly innefficent, than it doesn’t need to be serviced. The system currently in place has no interest in dying. It will fight for it’s existance at every opporitunity. Think of it as systemic inertia.