Prometheus 6

I don't think there is a market failure for education. Quite to the contrary, I am of the opinion that most of the privately organised schools are a lot more cost-efficient than those organised by the state.

The number one reason for that is an irrational ideology that permeates the public school system, namely, that it should be impossible for people with more money to get better education for their children.

If they started to concentrate on delivering the best education with the means allocated to them instead of engaging in questionable politics, we might see a big improvement.

The market fails on public goods due to the nature of public goods. There's a market for private education, yes. But the free market will never be able to provide public education.Even this experiment isn't a free market thing.

"Privatizing" education by payiung corporations out of public funds is more of a subsidy for those corporations than true privatization.

True privatization will exclude those who can't afford education, as all market based remedies do.

Markets are not an adequate response to the problem of distributing necessities. End of story.

> Markets are not an adequate response to the problem of distributing necessities.

I disagree. Most people buy their own food, and do not expect the state to provide it for them.

And those who, for reasons beyond their control, can't should just starve.

That IS the market-based solution to hunger, you know.

If you want to prevent people from starving, you just have to give them food. You don't need to nationalise the food industry.

And who will collect and distribute the food?

"Just" giving people food is as far from a market solution as it gets, don't you think?

DoF, food is a necessity. The Food Industry is not. No one ever suggested national distribution of Cool Whip.

Now, can you make a cogent argument in favor of privatizing education for the benefit of all?

When people can't afford market levels for food, it makes a lot more sense to subsidize these people so they too can buy food.

Nobody points at a starving homeless guy and says "Oh, he's starving, there must be something wrong with the food producers that results in high food prices. (Actually there is something wrong with high food prices, but that's because protectionism raises prices above freemarket prices in the US and Europe.)

A good reason to privatize education of minors is efficiency. There exists a whole education industry for adults that's totally up to snuff. The state does not educate people to become a (spit) MSCE, the private sector can handle that. I can't think of any reason why the private sector can't do the same for educating minors.

When people can't afford market levels for food, it makes a lot more sense to subsidize these people so they too can buy food.

Socialism?? Horrors!

Now, why doesn't that hold for education?

Subsidizing people who can't buy at freemarket prices is the lesser of two evils compared to having the state run a complete industry.

I'm pleased you see that the free market can't deal with hunger, the need for food. I'm glad you see there's a limit.

As I said, I haven't suggested the government run the food industry. Who the hell wants to distribute caviar? If people want that nasty stuff, let them buy it, fine.

Subsidize subsistance. We already pay enough in farm subsidies to do it. It's just not an all or nothing deal, unless nothing is all you can accept.

>I'm pleased you see that the free market can't deal with hunger

Looks to me it does a whole lot better than the north-koreans.

> As I said, I haven't suggested the government run the food industry.

Then why should it run education?

>I'm pleased you see that the free market can't deal with hunger

Looks to me it does a whole lot better than the north-koreans.

Market failure, policy failure…in the end, it's failure.

Then why should it run education?

See the post. And see standard economic theory.

Google "market failure" and I'll bet three out of five definitions use education as an example.

If everything you have tried up to now has not worked, then you have to try something different.

Young people have to learn success and/or mastery early in their lives in order for them to fully unfold.

Quite frankly I do not believe the massive educational machine was ever designed to be 100% successful. Rather I think it was designed to identify the top 10% for exploitation.

Actually, public education wasn't very common until after the Civil War. I suspect the good people who went to teach the newly-freed slaves put a burr under the saddle of the rest of society as well.

And now we've found it's vital to the maintenance, much less improvement, of our personal lot.

Neither of my grandparents finished high school but both my parents went to college. So I think that there have been a lot of changes even since WWII in how necessary an education is considered to be, and how much of one.

If something is to be provided to all citizens because it's considered a necessity, the government has to provide for it in some way, whether by running it directly (as with education) or making sure that everybody has enough money to purchase it (as with food).

As P6 says, this is basic economics. I don't know why libertarians have such a hard time with it.