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Railways is a completely arbitrary example. If they would be impossible (which i sincerely doubt) without government involvement, the free market would find alt

by dreta 10y ago

Railways is a completely arbitrary example. If they would be impossible (which i sincerely doubt) without government involvement, the free market would find alternatives. That’s the beauty of it. It’s how progress happens. Education is not an externality, and should be handled by the free market, not the government. Public education is in a horrible state everywhere you go, precisely because it’s public.

bsbechtel 10y ago
It's unfortunate you're being downvoted here. The market for railways is not railroads and trains, it's transportation. People and goods will find the most efficient way to move around regardless of government involvement.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- adamlett 10y ago
  People and goods will find the most efficient, available way to move around. Regulation can sometimes make more efficient ways available where the market cannot.
Malarkey73 10y ago
(IMHO) Absolutely everything in that response is completely wrong: 1. Railways are a real and concrete example of wrongheaded privatisation. 2. More congested roads are not an alternative to efficient rail services. 3. The greatest technological innovations of our time from cancer drugs to satellites to the internet are spin-offs from government funded research. I could bore on all day about this... 4. A good education system is an externality in that society as a whole benefits from highly trained doctors, engineers and even in my view artists and poets. It is a profoundly social enterprise that we all have a stake in. 5. Public education maybe messed up in the US (I don't know it well) but it's doing just fine through much of Europe and the UK - or even in profoundly free market economies like Singapore. Indeed the UK in particular where the tensions in education exist over school placement and better/worse schools within the public system illustrate that educational variation is usually down to social status and economics - not public ownership.
- icebraining 10y ago
  3. The greatest technological innovations of our time from cancer drugs to satellites to the internet are spin-offs from government funded research. I could bore on all day about this... Of course. The rich use the State to publicly fund research (socialize losses) which they then commercialize and profit from. Otherwise they'd have to actually pay for the research themselves.
pjc50 10y ago
You can build neither roads nor railways without either compulsory purchase or a single market entity which owns a significant chunk of all the land in the country. Otherwise you just get obstructed by holdouts and "nail houses". To commit to private-only education would result in a country with a very large section of the population uneducated. It's also a massive waste of human potential. Sources? Most of pre-20th-Century Europe, and much of the less developed world.
- icebraining 10y ago
  You can build neither roads nor railways without either compulsory purchase or a single market entity which owns a significant chunk of all the land in the country. Otherwise you just get obstructed by holdouts and "nail houses". So you'd either move around them or pay them enough. It'd be significantly more costly, but "impossible" seems like a stretch. I'm not saying it'd be better, mind you; one can still be a staunch believer in the importance of the State. But to claim that the human species would stop transporting stuff if eminent domain was unavailable sounds to me as lack of imagination.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
nnq 10y ago
Man, you're so right and so wrong at the same time! So spot on about railways example: the real problem to solve is transportation, not railways, and a different form of transport could replace railroads. So spot off about education: it damn is an externality! Try living in two societies/regions with different average levels of education and see how it feels. Also try starting different kinds of businesses in places where the pople are on average more or less educated. Also try implementing things like pollution reduction strategies or crime fighting strategies for places/communities with varying levels of education! Yeah, it does not always work in the most obvious ways: a college educated person will not always make a better decision than someone who dropped out of high school. But the high school dropout from an on-average well educated society will most of the time be more of a person you want to be around with / sell to / buy from / live on the same planet with, than anyone from a less educated one. Replace "educated" with "science literate" for the clearest particularization of what I've just said, as other types of education have more variability in effects on people and are easier to "get wrong".
- dreta 10y ago
  Education is a service. People want to become doctors and engineers, because that pays well. It’s profitable to become educated, thus it’s profitable to provide education. Parents will want to provide education for their children, just like they provide them with food, shelter, healthcare, or save money for them. Education, really is no different. I have no idea where this notion comes from that making education private means it stops exiting. Making education private provides competition in the market, and more choice for people seeking it. What’s the correlation between crime fighting and education levels? What you seem to be suggesting is that people need to go through some sort of a brain-washing process in public schooling to be good members of society, which is scary.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    Again, we can look at history or the less developed countries: people might want education, but not be able to afford it.
    - 10y ago
bbctol 10y ago
The phrase "Education is not an externality" is so baffling to me. The education system is of course not an "externality"--those are two completely different classes of things. On the other hand, the process of education is definitely, definitely, definitely tied to externalities--along with infrastructure, it's the prime example of what an externality is, to the extent that I'm not sure you know what that word means. Do you not think an educated population has benefits not captured by the decisions of the market?

by dreta 10y ago

bsbechtel 10y ago

It's unfortunate you're being downvoted here. The market for railways is not railroads and trains, it's transportation. People and goods will find the most efficient way to move around regardless of government involvement.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
adamlett 10y ago
People and goods will find the most efficient, available way to move around. Regulation can sometimes make more efficient ways available where the market cannot.

Malarkey73 10y ago

(IMHO) Absolutely everything in that response is completely wrong: 1. Railways are a real and concrete example of wrongheaded privatisation. 2. More congested roads are not an alternative to efficient rail services. 3. The greatest technological innovations of our time from cancer drugs to satellites to the internet are spin-offs from government funded research. I could bore on all day about this... 4. A good education system is an externality in that society as a whole benefits from highly trained doctors, engineers and even in my view artists and poets. It is a profoundly social enterprise that we all have a stake in. 5. Public education maybe messed up in the US (I don't know it well) but it's doing just fine through much of Europe and the UK - or even in profoundly free market economies like Singapore. Indeed the UK in particular where the tensions in education exist over school placement and better/worse schools within the public system illustrate that educational variation is usually down to social status and economics - not public ownership.

icebraining 10y ago
3. The greatest technological innovations of our time from cancer drugs to satellites to the internet are spin-offs from government funded research. I could bore on all day about this... Of course. The rich use the State to publicly fund research (socialize losses) which they then commercialize and profit from. Otherwise they'd have to actually pay for the research themselves.

pjc50 10y ago

You can build neither roads nor railways without either compulsory purchase or a single market entity which owns a significant chunk of all the land in the country. Otherwise you just get obstructed by holdouts and "nail houses". To commit to private-only education would result in a country with a very large section of the population uneducated. It's also a massive waste of human potential. Sources? Most of pre-20th-Century Europe, and much of the less developed world.

icebraining 10y ago
You can build neither roads nor railways without either compulsory purchase or a single market entity which owns a significant chunk of all the land in the country. Otherwise you just get obstructed by holdouts and "nail houses". So you'd either move around them or pay them enough. It'd be significantly more costly, but "impossible" seems like a stretch. I'm not saying it'd be better, mind you; one can still be a staunch believer in the importance of the State. But to claim that the human species would stop transporting stuff if eminent domain was unavailable sounds to me as lack of imagination.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

nnq 10y ago

Man, you're so right and so wrong at the same time! So spot on about railways example: the real problem to solve is transportation, not railways, and a different form of transport could replace railroads. So spot off about education: it damn is an externality! Try living in two societies/regions with different average levels of education and see how it feels. Also try starting different kinds of businesses in places where the pople are on average more or less educated. Also try implementing things like pollution reduction strategies or crime fighting strategies for places/communities with varying levels of education! Yeah, it does not always work in the most obvious ways: a college educated person will not always make a better decision than someone who dropped out of high school. But the high school dropout from an on-average well educated society will most of the time be more of a person you want to be around with / sell to / buy from / live on the same planet with, than anyone from a less educated one. Replace "educated" with "science literate" for the clearest particularization of what I've just said, as other types of education have more variability in effects on people and are easier to "get wrong".

dreta 10y ago
Education is a service. People want to become doctors and engineers, because that pays well. It’s profitable to become educated, thus it’s profitable to provide education. Parents will want to provide education for their children, just like they provide them with food, shelter, healthcare, or save money for them. Education, really is no different. I have no idea where this notion comes from that making education private means it stops exiting. Making education private provides competition in the market, and more choice for people seeking it. What’s the correlation between crime fighting and education levels? What you seem to be suggesting is that people need to go through some sort of a brain-washing process in public schooling to be good members of society, which is scary.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Again, we can look at history or the less developed countries: people might want education, but not be able to afford it.
  - 10y ago

bbctol 10y ago

The phrase "Education is not an externality" is so baffling to me. The education system is of course not an "externality"--those are two completely different classes of things. On the other hand, the process of education is definitely, definitely, definitely tied to externalities--along with infrastructure, it's the prime example of what an externality is, to the extent that I'm not sure you know what that word means. Do you not think an educated population has benefits not captured by the decisions of the market?