Well, in the 'Beating School Rules' thread, ffp suggested that it would be advantageous to privatize the education system. This topic is about doing it more generally, possibly applying the same approach to policing and hospitalization. The basic idea is that people would pay for the services, and would probably get them more effectively than they would through the government. I disagree with this approach, because I believe that this would decrease social mobility and keep poorer families in a cycle of poverty.

I mostly expect people to agree with me, but I want to see if anyone actually supports privatization of any of these institutions and if I'm missing some positive aspects of it.

This ties in rather well with my Selective Nationalization topic.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Feb 7 2010, 5:23 pm by Centreri.

It would improve general effectiveness as companies compete against each other to provide better services for more people. However, corporations probably have enough power in America as it is.

The thing is, that's a really vague way of looking at it. The laissez-faire stance is that these very same corporations will, as you say, improve general effectiveness. What is inherently bad if corporations have more power, if the government retains a military monopoly and if these companies are kept out of lawmaking? (They're not, but they should theoretically be, so... meh.)

1) Who is ffg? Last I checked, "pigs" started with a "p"
2) Don't make up shit.
I never suggested that it would be advantageous to privatize the school system, I merely stated that others have thought of it.
I stated that 1) schools should remain free and 2) schools should be optional.

Privatizing schools would increase the value of knowledge at the cost of poorer people's education.

privatize? Teach them yourself. Or, kick out all illegal immigrants, so your tax money pays for your education. Or, go to a **private** or charter school. I'm sure you could even consider military school. I don't see the problem here.

There's a problem? I thought there would be a nice discussion about the advantages/disadvantages of privatization. Why must there be a problem?

The problem with privatizing education is that the companies would be motivated to provide as little education as possible (less school days, larger classes, less qualified teachers) to make as much money as possible.

I agree that there are problems, but not that that's one of them. After all, private schools right now are considered to provide better education than public schools.

Not necessarily. Only the expensive ones.

Proof.

Being the little libertarian that I am, I believe it would be beneficial to privatize schools. Government run schools don't guarantee a great education - it is the opposite, they pretty much kill our education with political bullshit, etc. In fact, I see my school being run into the ground by an oppressive school board and incompetent decisions. With private schools this is a non-issue. If the school sucks people will send their kid to another school that's better for a comparable price. Then the bad school goes poof.

That's because they're competing with something that provides low-quality education for free.

Forcing people to pay for school would just result in the poor getting dumber.

As always, there must be a balance to things. I think Doodle is right. Privatizating all schools would not be a good idea; they offer good education services to compete against the cheap public school services. They both rely on each other, I think being extreme on public and/or private services is a bad idea.

Agreed, Doodle. That's what I meant. The problem isn't that education would become worse, it's that it would result in greater class inequality as the very poor would have no way of getting an education.

Anyway, this isn't exclusively about education. I also hoped to bring government services like police and hospitals into the mix.

Poor people only remain poor for about 5 years. Its rare they stay poor beyond 5 years.

Teach them yourself. The problem is that there is a social stigma that teaching is terrible.
Imagine if everyone thought teaching was a great job. Then you could have tons of teachers and reduce class sizes.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 8 2010, 1:16 am by MasterJohnny.

I hope you realize that school quality in the public system also varies greatly. There are some terrible schools filled with poor kids (many of them on the shady side of the law) and then there are good schools in the wealthier neighborhoods. it seems education and wealth go hand-in-hand. I'm not sure whether my current (public) school district was good before the rapid development of the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex (in the last 10 years), but it seems to be doing decently.

As crazy as that sounds when you put it that way, I find to very true the more I think about all the poor people I have known in my life.

ALL THE THINGS SHE SAID.

Thank god this is null, otherwise I might actually have someone to worry about, like vrael

On topic:


Been on stamps for 3, been eating ramen for 6 now.

I don't believe that people only remain poor for five years.

According to the census bureau (page 13), in 2008 the poverty rate within the US was 13.2%, or 39.8 million people. According to this random website, over the course of the last ten years, 14 million people at most have immigrated to the US. According to your theory (and assuming even distribution of the immigration over those ten years; it's probably not true, but not enough to skew the data significantly), seven of those million would already be above poverty, leaving seven in poverty. Since the number is almost six times that at 39.8 people (again, this is two years off, but because of the vast difference in the number it wouldn't really matter), I'd say that's a gross oversimplification, Johnny.

The way I see it, there is a class of people that stays in poverty through generations because of a poor economy in their location, lack of education and lack of motivation to get an education. With privatized education, this class would always be stuck in poverty, because it wouldn't be able to afford to send its children to the basest of schools. It would greatly complicate the rise out of complexity, from a single person doing it himself to a person working hard to first get out of that environment in a bad-paying job, to send his/her child to school.

Additionally, the 'social stigma' that teaching is terrible comes from the bad pay (over the course of decades of working as a teacher, it eventually rises to over $100,000, at least in NYC (source: economics teacher), but still). The way to remove the social stigma against teachers is to increase their pay. This might be viable, and it might not be. I don't know, I don't study the government's expenditures for a living. There are other things that could be done, of course; one option I'd look at is a very large campaign to adjust student culture, to increase ambitions and make being a teacher a more attractive, steady job, while improving student productivity. Again, though, this might not be viable. Because we need more F-22's (joke)

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 8 2010, 11:12 pm by Centreri.

Definitely not true. However, many welfare programs will only let you be on them for 5 years. I know Public Assistance in NY is like this.