> 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. That strikes me as dangerous, and I can’t help but think that it will lead inexorably in the direction of giving children iPads rather than teachers. The trouble with a public system is that all sorts of perverse incentives arise. Civil servants' unions have an interest in maximising benefits to their members, and in the U.S. they spend their dues (taken, ultimately, from the taxpayer) to lobby politicians to increase their members' benefits (taken, ultimately, from the taxpayer). A public system mandates that everyone contribute, regardless of his or her beliefs: in Tennessee an atheist might be forced to spend on a school which teaches creationism, while in San Francisco a theist might be forced to spend on a school which teaches that there is no God. There would be similar problems with a 'public food option.' The author notes 'I could give you a dozen people who could run a nutritious, delicious, and decidedly non-dreary nonprofit diner given a sufficient budget': what would prevent those dozen people from each building their own little empires on the taxpayers' dime? Who is to determine what is a sufficient but not exorbitant level of non-dreariness? Is it okay for the Free American Diner to serve meat? Non-kosher food? None of this is to say that private firms don't also have perverse incentives: he's right, they do. But I think that the answer is generally to try to fix that (e.g. by regulation) rather than to go public. At least with competing firms one might have a choice: with a public option, only the very wealthy can opt out.