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Subject: 
Re: Libertarian SPAM (Propaganda)
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.debate
Date: 
Sat, 16 Jun 2001 02:08:56 GMT
Viewed: 
1341 times
  
Matthew Gerber wrote:
All of this still brings to the forefront the fact that few businesses in
America would/could/care to run privatized schooling for children. Most
can't make their bottom line in the first place, and are laying off tens of
thousands of workers daily. Besides all that, in this day and age, there
would need to be strict guidelines on HOW the business could educate the
kids, and that is just the same size government, doing different work, right?

I think you're numbers on layoffs are a bit off... 10s of thousands of
workers daily is quite a few.

In Libertopia, there would certainly be no regulation of schools. Of
course schools would vary all over the map as to how good an education
they actually give, and it wouldn't necessarily follow how much is spent
per pupil or any such. Of course that really isn't different than today.
Of course we also have examples today of private schools doing just
fine, with plenty of corporate sponsorship, they just currently don't
start until their students are essentially adults. Of course they aren't
totally free, but heck, I managed to get a master's degree at one of the
most expensive such schools without very much support from my parents
(and I stupidly didn't even search for scholarships).

Will some kids get screwed by a fully private school system? Sure. Will
it be more or less than get screwed today? I'd strongly suspect less.
For one thing, I'm not sure that the majority of kids in poor performing
schools really need all the education we give them. Sure, folks need to
be somewhat educated, and opportunity must be available to any willing
to grab for it, but I bet that opportunity would be greater if schools
were private and could use any criterion they chose to accept students
and grant scholarships. The result would be that the underprivileged kid
who shows some promise will be much more likely to be given a place in a
decent or very good school. Today there is little chance of that
happening because most of the schools have no capability to offer a
place to such a kid (since most public schools are structured into
districts and you have to go to the school in your district).

Corporations also give plenty to schools already (of course they have a
non-free market incentive, but most tax breaks are deductions not
credits so the corporation is still reducing it's bottom line). There
was an article in the paper recently about my employer investing another
25 million into education. There is also a reason why my employer's
largest site is here. It's because of the concentration of quality
education. I'd also point out that in many areas besides just education,
I think my employer is ahead of government in providing more opportunity
(for one thing, any employer which can convince a manager to tell his
employees that while he personally came from an environment where boys
dated girls and not other boys, that he was fully behind his employers
efforts to make an environment safe for people of any sexuality because
it was good for business really impresses me as an employer who doesn't
really care what government says it should do, it cares about what the
bottom line means - but heck, my employer is just one of those big
multi-national companies which is out to exploit the world and run over
anyone who gets in it's way).

Frank



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Libertarian SPAM (Propaganda)
 
(...) Sorry, should have said "announcing the laying off of tens of thousands of workers daily"...and I don't mean in total! Look at this from today's TechTV news: (URL) said it will take a $830 million restructuring charge, which is associated with (...) (23 years ago, 16-Jun-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Libertarian SPAM (Propaganda)
 
(...) Ummmm? Not sure where to go here. Let's do this: (URL) can't copy the text out of the PDF file and put it here, so you'll have to go read it yourselves. Here's the gist: In 1813, Connecticut passed law to get businesses to educate their child (...) (23 years ago, 15-Jun-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)

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