ON DEMOCRACY
Democracy is an attempt to achieve what can only be achieved in a Natural Order: An advanced civilization that recognizes and respects diversity. The fundamental error of dictatorship is that such government stamps out diversity in a sea of uniformity. The thought is that giving all the people equal suffrage in democracy would somehow respect diversity and, therefore, advance civilization. But the 99% acting uniformly against the will of the 1% in a democracy still forces uniformity. While it may not be the 1% forcing the 99% into uniformity, uniformity, whatever government exists, will prevail. The only way to respect diversity and advance civilization is to abolish government and establish anew a natural order.
ON EDUCATION
Though I doubt the film’s intent is to demonstrate the ills of public education, I found Good Will Hunting to best illustrate the problem. Here is a brilliant young man with a great capacity for abstract thinking. Yet, the young man has no desire whatever to make any use of his talent, except maybe to inflate his own ego. To coerce someone to pay for his education would result in a misallocation of funds regardless the young man’s talent. Even worse, it would be an injustice to the young man to ignore his own preferences in favor of how one believes the young man ought to apply his talent. The debate between a mathematician and a psychologist represents the debate between advocates of public education and of homeschooling, respectively. The former wants to pressure the talented young man into an area of intellectual application thatthe mathematician finds desirable but may not be desirable, or even of interest, to the young man. The latter wants only to see the young man achieve his own goals and satisfy his own preferences by overcoming the fears that impede or hinder their accomplishment, whatever they might be.
The point of this post? Maybe it should be in a blog, but these are the thoughts I had reading Murray N. Rothbard’s “Education”
Agreed. I haven’t read Rothbard’s work, but the issue of public schooling is being kept on display when it comes to religion in the classroom. Whether it’s Intelligent Design vs. Evolution or something I just saw on the news where they had a graduation ceremony in a local church and are being sued by the ACLU, it’s this insane battle that wouldn’t even happen with private property.
I wonder though, if markets are going to cater to demand and without democracy where you can’t centralize the majority opinion, I wonder what would happen with not teaching evolution. Schools may not want to offend parents, especially in the Bible belt, and not talk about the subject at all. Public schooling, I think, can be a good thing if they uniform the factual point of view. Obviously this is a double-edged sword since they can propogandize history and politics and economics. While I think a market would be far superior in education, the evolution thing is a minor annoyance.
Democracy is an attempt to achieve what can only be achieved in a Natural Order: An advanced civilization that recognizes and respects diversity. The fundamental error of dictatorship is that such government stamps out diversity in a sea of uniformity. The thought is that giving all the people equal suffrage in democracy would somehow respect diversity and, therefore, advance civilization. But the 99% acting uniformly against the will of the 1% in a democracy still forces uniformity. While it may not be the 1% forcing the 99% into uniformity, uniformity, whatever government exists, will prevail. The only way to respect diversity and advance civilization is to abolish government and establish anew a natural order.
This reminds me of Henry Hazlitt’s argument against Bretton Woods. It was supposed to be about international cooperation, but he saw it as governments coming together to control trade rather than allowing true cooperation through free trade. Democracy is not freedom, it is the facade of a legitimization of private individuals usurping the freedoms of other individuals.
I.e., something that does not exist in reality.