Subject:
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Re: Rights, Who needs them? (was Re: Abortion...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 13 Nov 2000 02:09:31 GMT
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Viewed:
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993 times
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Scott A wrote:
> From The LP
> "To transfer control of education from bureaucrats to parents and teachers
> and encourage alternatives to the public school monopoly, the Libertarian
> Party would"
>
> With the best will in the world, how can individual parents and teachers
> strategically plan a nation’s education? Governments can and plan for the
> future and are able to direct focus to areas where there is a lack of skills
> or ability.
Scott, think this through, and give an answer: what superior power of
decision making does the government (which is a collection of people)
have that any other collection of people could have? What makes the
legislatures and other government officials so much smarter than the
rest of us?
To me it is clear that the _only_ special power a government has is the
power ceded to it by it's subjects, and it only has the power to force
it's subjects to cede power to it because it has so much power as to be
able to force everyone to cede power to it ("let us govern you or we'll
lock you up or blow you away.").
Now it is true that any individual is not and can not be a master of
everything. Therefore we do have to cede a certain amount of decision
making to others, but where is there any guarantee that the people
elected to government have any real ability to make those decisions?
> From The LP
> "To transfer control of education from bureaucrats to parents and teachers
> and encourage alternatives to the public school monopoly, the Libertarian
> Party would"
>
> This would essentially move funds invested in state schools to subsidise the
> private sector. Parents who could afford to move their children to a better
> school could do so, those who could not would be left behind in the
> underfunded public sector. This was an issue for state funded care in the UK
> a few years ago, it was kicked into touch for the reasons I give. Further,
> higher education system is largely privately funded(?), what is its product
> like – I hear you IT revolution has been based considerably overseas skills?
If our higher education system is so horrible, then why are huge numbers
of non-Americans coming to our schools, especially at the graduate
level? The reasons non-Americans are heavily involved in the IT
revolution include:
- more dedicated/industrious (or however you want to express it)
- lack of enough people within the US
- why not use the best wherever in the world they come from
One reason I would suggest that the non-Americans who are involved in
the IT revolution are more industrious is because there is a more
competitive, freer market producing them. What percentage of US citizens
go to US colleges? What percentage of Indian citizens go to US colleges
(and then stick around in the US to get a job)?
If non-Americans are so almighty in the IT revolution, how come the
worlds largest software company is run by a guy who dropped out of
Harvard and is most certainly not a non-American? (And lest you think he
has no technical skill, or for that matter, real business skill, read
about his early years, I wouldn't be surprised if the products of the
company he started in High School are still plugging away telling the
faceless masses when it is safe to proceed through intersections, read
about how the program he wrote for the first PC ran the FIRST time it
was loaded onto an actual machine having been written in his dorm room
more than half a continent away from the machine it would run on, read
about how he recognized the potential market which could be generated by
the then largest computer company [again a distinctly American company]
and decided that if they were confused as to who was writing operating
systems, well, he would just get into that business [and look at the
architecture of the computer that most of us are using, which was
developed by that particular computer company]). (1)
I don't dispute that non-Americans supply much of the brain power which
has fueled the computer age, but I will certainly claim that our country
and it's governmental system definitely has a lot to do with the
creation and pace of the computer age.
(1) And lest you think that I think Bill Gates is a perfect saint, I
certainly don't, but he didn't get where he is by luck or by force. He
got there because however his mind works, somehow he is able to perceive
better than almost anyone else in the world what people really want out
of a computer. I remember how when Windows 95 was first being previewed
and the Start menu and the task bar were pooh-poohed. Now I see a very
similar thing on my Linux desktop. I can't even begin to describe how I
feel about Lotus Notes and Lotus Wordpro compared to MS Outlook and MS
Word (although I will grant that MS Word has a significant advantage in
my case because I first used it on a MacIntosh several years before the
Windows version would have all of the same capabilities).
Frank
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Rights, Who needs them? (was Re: Abortion...
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| (...) You or I can only hope to assist our kids in the education path which they choose. They can only make a choice from what is available. Educational planners are there to predict the needs of your country. At a low level, below are the aims of (...) (24 years ago, 13-Nov-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Rights, Who needs them? (was Re: Abortion...
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| (...) PhD ... (...) Yes you are correct. Even though I have a lot of respect for TL, I don't think he is correct all the time. No big deal really. If it were TL could change the T&C. (...) If you mean I don't agree with you, you are correct. (...) (...) (24 years ago, 12-Nov-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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