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> That’s because I tend to think that when a service is for profit rather than for the public’s benefit, all sorts of perverse incentives arise. If schools oper

> That’s because I tend to think that when a service is for profit rather than for the public’s benefit, all sorts of perverse incentives arise. If schools operated for profit, with education subsidized by vouchers, the companies running the schools would have an interest in spending as little as possible actually educating the students, because every dollar they could save would be a dollar they could keep. The problem with this kind of argument is that it forgets the incentive of a government run or public's benefit is that they too have a different metric to adhere to - politics. They then lead to a cumbersome system with nearly zero responsibility. This then gets picked up by people on the opposite side of the fence as failures of public benefit, government run system. So, unfortunately things have to seen on a case to case basis. Public benefit schooling is a great thing. But public benefit food option? That is debatable. For some it will come off "government controlling what we eat" and hurting fundamental rights.

bmcusick 9y ago
My friend, have you heard the good news about Public Choice Theory?
- thisisit 9y ago
  Not really. Please enlighten me.
  - undersuit 9y ago
    From the article, I find it funny that the article actually loops around later to counter your cherry picked quote and argument from the first paragraph. >There is a tacit acceptance of the basic idea of “public choice theory”: that state actors are just as much selfish maximizers as anyone else, and that the only difference between the state and a corporation is that the state doesn’t have to be as accountable to its consumers.
sandworm101 9y ago
>>> because every dollar they could save would be a dollar they could keep. Which is why they shouldn't operate as corporations. They can still be "for-profit" but under a different corporate scheme. Make all the kids/parents shareholders/members in the association and keep those profits internal.
- kiliantics 9y ago
  So a cooperative model? I like that. I think pretty much everything would be better off and we would all benefit more if our institutions were structured as worker-owner and worker-consumer cooperatives.
clagio 9y ago
Also public school can be seen as "government controlling what we learn". Private and public have two different metric indeed, one is profit and one is politics. None of them is perfect, but I think one of the two is better especially if talk about food/health of the population.
m00g00 9y ago
There is such a thing as non-profit organizations. And businesses will generally reinvest profits into the company themselves as the ROI is seen as higher than just accrued interest. If the private school really has no interest in investing in the school itself instead just pocketing money, I think they will find they soon have no money left because parents have pulled their kids from a failing school with a bad reputation. On the other hand, no matter how poor a public school is, it will always continue to get money, because the law demands people pay for it whether they send their kids there or not. So there's no incentive to improve, or fix management, because there's no real risk. The inability to let failure happen combined with legally sanction monopoly is a big problem with some public institutions.

bmcusick 9y ago

My friend, have you heard the good news about Public Choice Theory?

thisisit 9y ago
Not really. Please enlighten me.
- undersuit 9y ago
  From the article, I find it funny that the article actually loops around later to counter your cherry picked quote and argument from the first paragraph. >There is a tacit acceptance of the basic idea of “public choice theory”: that state actors are just as much selfish maximizers as anyone else, and that the only difference between the state and a corporation is that the state doesn’t have to be as accountable to its consumers.

sandworm101 9y ago

>>> because every dollar they could save would be a dollar they could keep. Which is why they shouldn't operate as corporations. They can still be "for-profit" but under a different corporate scheme. Make all the kids/parents shareholders/members in the association and keep those profits internal.

kiliantics 9y ago
So a cooperative model? I like that. I think pretty much everything would be better off and we would all benefit more if our institutions were structured as worker-owner and worker-consumer cooperatives.

clagio 9y ago

Also public school can be seen as "government controlling what we learn". Private and public have two different metric indeed, one is profit and one is politics. None of them is perfect, but I think one of the two is better especially if talk about food/health of the population.

m00g00 9y ago

There is such a thing as non-profit organizations. And businesses will generally reinvest profits into the company themselves as the ROI is seen as higher than just accrued interest. If the private school really has no interest in investing in the school itself instead just pocketing money, I think they will find they soon have no money left because parents have pulled their kids from a failing school with a bad reputation. On the other hand, no matter how poor a public school is, it will always continue to get money, because the law demands people pay for it whether they send their kids there or not. So there's no incentive to improve, or fix management, because there's no real risk. The inability to let failure happen combined with legally sanction monopoly is a big problem with some public institutions.