5 ms·

I think some "industries" shouldn't work as a normal business, health, education, law / police. They just don't work as a business and will end up corrupt becau

I think some "industries" shouldn't work as a normal business, health, education, law / police. They just don't work as a business and will end up corrupt because money.

frockington1 7y ago
Education hasn't gone well publicly so far in America. I'm not sure completely private is the answer but something needs to change. Government funding has led to massive amounts of money being spent for negligible results. Agree on health, law / police though
- tsukurimashou 7y ago
  I can only speak for France but the education system is beyond saving at this point.
- Thlom 7y ago
  But isn't the problem with public schools in the US that the funding comes from taxes in the school district itself, so ppor districts will get a underfunded school while rich districts get a well funded school? Anyway, the school system should be changed dramatically everywhere. The current paradigm is hurting children and should be abolished.
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    The problem with schools in the US is and has always been segregation. The problem is that local versus federal control of schools allows local politicians to bow to the deranged, racist fears of upper class parents, as opposed to policies, like integrative bussing, that actually improved outcomes.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      Forcing integration, which would mean forcing people to live in certain places and not be able to send their kids to private schools) is less likely to succeed than efforts to structurally reduce income/wealth gap (aka wealth transfer from rich to poor).
      - claudeganon 7y ago
        > Forcing integration, which would mean forcing people to live in certain places Not sure I follow. Busing was premised on the exact opposite of this? I’m all for structural change on many fronts, but I’m not sure that private schools should even exist. It’s hard to build successful, high performing universal services, and especially for education, if the wealthy can just construct a separate, parallel system that becomes a social marker for perpetuating elite status.
        lotsofpulp 7y ago
        I doubt people with means are going to want their children to waste time being transported from the rich side of town to the poor side. I would just move one town over.
        frockington1 7y ago
        Private schools enabled my family to give me better opportunities than they had. Rather than go to the school next door with the heroin dealers, I went to a neighboring town full of motivated peers. Why do you believe private schools shouldn't exist? For some it's the only way out.
        jaymmartin 7y ago
        They stated why. If you allow people with the means to do so to opt-out of a system, they do not participate in the system. The system now loses the governance and to some degree resources of those people with means. More specifically, rich families put their kids through private schools and abandon the public school system. Without skin in the game, they vote to reduce the budget of the public school system. Rich families generally have more time and resources to spend being involved in the schools. They won't be spending those resources advocating for improving the public school systems. Additionally, their kids, who are well-cared for and come from a family who values education, do not form a peer group with the other less fortunate kids. This deprives those kids of better peers to model. Now, you can argue that the freedom of and benefits to the rich families trumps the benefits that the poorer families would receive, but there is a greater good argument. I've seen it argued that universal social programs are generally seen to work better and are more popular compared to means-tested ones. For example, Medicare and social security vs Medicaid and TANF.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    While proper and equitable funding of schools is an issue, unfortunately, it seems the peer group and home life of a student make a very big impact on their probability of success, and if we allow a people to freely move around, society seems to sort itself by socioeconomic status and as the income/wealth gap gets wider, there is no amount of funding that can make up for the effects of not having a wealthy, knowledgeable, and motivated peer group.
  - Ohn0 7y ago
    Money is not their problem.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > But isn't the problem No, but it is one of many problems.
  - coryrc 7y ago
    In Michigan, where I grew up, Detroit public schools got about 50% more funding than the public school I attended. Want to guess which schools had better outcomes?
    - IggleSniggle 7y ago
      I would expect schools in impoverished, troubled neighborhoods would cost QUITE a bit more than schools in wealthy neighborhoods in order to get the same results. The students are more likely to be facing food insecurity and odd parental schedules at home. The school may need to spend more keeping their student body safe. And one kid with a violent parent who reacts by being violent in turn can wreck havoc on the rest of the classroom. That kind of person might need an education that is more therapy than academic.
- socialdemocrat 7y ago
  The US however is not a good example of public education. School fees are quite high. Private companies push student loans eagerly. Funding to schools is highly depended on neighbourhoods. To see that publicly education can work very well. Look at Finland e.g. But there are also many asian countries showing good results with public education. Based on my experience as a foreigner in the US, the US school system strikes me as something operating far more like private enterprise. Schools compete for students while there are no strong national standards and so you get insane grade inflation. I was shocked when I studied in the US how high grades where. Anything to please the "customers" I mean the students I guess.
  - frockington1 7y ago
    > The US however is not a good example of public education So why is the common reaction to fund public schools even more? To me the logical reaction is to cut funding and try something different
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      The logical reaction should be to analyze the problem and try to suss out the cause. Unfortunately, the cause seems to be a widening wealth/income gap creating a segregated society and a lack of stable and supportive families on the lower income end. The solution to that, a long term initiative to change culture and create stable families and wealth transfers, is politically impossible, so the next best, easiest thing one can suggest is more funding for the schools.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    US has fine reasonably affordable public colleges. The student loan crisis is about people who shouldn't have attended those private schools in the first place.
- akhilcacharya 7y ago
  K12 education is generally pretty great in the US, it's just incredibly unevenly spread. There aren't that many schools on par with Stuyvesant or Thomas Jefferson or Bronx Science (all testing admission) in the world.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Education hasn't gone well publicly so far in America It has in most the rest of the developed world; maybe (as with healthcare) the problem is that the system has been deliberately compromised to benefit private providers for financial and (more for education than healthcare, though it's a factor in both) sectarian reasons by the same people that use the poor results to rail against the public system and for (usually, publicly subsidized) privatization to further benefit the same private financial and sectarian interests. And not a fundamental problem with the service being publicly provided, which plenty of countries manage to do quite well. > Agree on health, law / police though To be fair, public provision of both of those are pretty bad in America, too, though the private provision of the former is worse.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Whether or not you officially "privatize" them police departments having to insure themselves, pay their own lawsuits, justify their expenses (i.e. departments that don't need APCs probably wouldn't have them) and deliver sufficiently high quality service that their customers don't decide to hire someone else to do the job and generally behave like a business that cannot rely on always being propped up by the city/state is a wet dream of many (dare I say most) people seeking police reform.
- jimktrains2 7y ago
  While this doesn't invalidate your point entirely, I have never met a person who want the police run as if they fear being replaced by a different agency. Everyone I have ever meant who want police reform, at their core, want accountability and a lesser reliance of lethal weapons as a primary tool. There are other topics depending on where you come from, e.g. racial diversity, but I've yet to meet someone who wants the police to act like a private force.
  - billfruit 7y ago
    Yes, but a thought is that if police were private they would have liability for their actions which perhaps is stronger than accountability in someways.
    - notabee 7y ago
      Let's take a little trip down memory lane about what deadly force in the hands of private corporations looks like: https://timeline.com/rockefellers-hired-militias-to-shoot-at-strikers-in-ludlow-massacre-115ae488164c https://timeline.com/rockefellers-hired-militias-to-shoot-at...
    - chungus_khan 7y ago
      If that were really the case I would imagine PMCs like Blackwater would face a lot more consequences for war crimes than they actually have.

I think some "industries" shouldn't work as a normal business, health, education, law / police. They just don't work as a business and will end up corrupt because money.

frockington1 7y ago

Education hasn't gone well publicly so far in America. I'm not sure completely private is the answer but something needs to change. Government funding has led to massive amounts of money being spent for negligible results. Agree on health, law / police though

tsukurimashou 7y ago
I can only speak for France but the education system is beyond saving at this point.
Thlom 7y ago
But isn't the problem with public schools in the US that the funding comes from taxes in the school district itself, so ppor districts will get a underfunded school while rich districts get a well funded school? Anyway, the school system should be changed dramatically everywhere. The current paradigm is hurting children and should be abolished.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  The problem with schools in the US is and has always been segregation. The problem is that local versus federal control of schools allows local politicians to bow to the deranged, racist fears of upper class parents, as opposed to policies, like integrative bussing, that actually improved outcomes.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    Forcing integration, which would mean forcing people to live in certain places and not be able to send their kids to private schools) is less likely to succeed than efforts to structurally reduce income/wealth gap (aka wealth transfer from rich to poor).
    - claudeganon 7y ago
      > Forcing integration, which would mean forcing people to live in certain places Not sure I follow. Busing was premised on the exact opposite of this? I’m all for structural change on many fronts, but I’m not sure that private schools should even exist. It’s hard to build successful, high performing universal services, and especially for education, if the wealthy can just construct a separate, parallel system that becomes a social marker for perpetuating elite status.
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        I doubt people with means are going to want their children to waste time being transported from the rich side of town to the poor side. I would just move one town over.
      - frockington1 7y ago
        Private schools enabled my family to give me better opportunities than they had. Rather than go to the school next door with the heroin dealers, I went to a neighboring town full of motivated peers. Why do you believe private schools shouldn't exist? For some it's the only way out.
        jaymmartin 7y ago
        They stated why. If you allow people with the means to do so to opt-out of a system, they do not participate in the system. The system now loses the governance and to some degree resources of those people with means. More specifically, rich families put their kids through private schools and abandon the public school system. Without skin in the game, they vote to reduce the budget of the public school system. Rich families generally have more time and resources to spend being involved in the schools. They won't be spending those resources advocating for improving the public school systems. Additionally, their kids, who are well-cared for and come from a family who values education, do not form a peer group with the other less fortunate kids. This deprives those kids of better peers to model. Now, you can argue that the freedom of and benefits to the rich families trumps the benefits that the poorer families would receive, but there is a greater good argument. I've seen it argued that universal social programs are generally seen to work better and are more popular compared to means-tested ones. For example, Medicare and social security vs Medicaid and TANF.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  While proper and equitable funding of schools is an issue, unfortunately, it seems the peer group and home life of a student make a very big impact on their probability of success, and if we allow a people to freely move around, society seems to sort itself by socioeconomic status and as the income/wealth gap gets wider, there is no amount of funding that can make up for the effects of not having a wealthy, knowledgeable, and motivated peer group.
- Ohn0 7y ago
  Money is not their problem.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > But isn't the problem No, but it is one of many problems.
- coryrc 7y ago
  In Michigan, where I grew up, Detroit public schools got about 50% more funding than the public school I attended. Want to guess which schools had better outcomes?
  - IggleSniggle 7y ago
    I would expect schools in impoverished, troubled neighborhoods would cost QUITE a bit more than schools in wealthy neighborhoods in order to get the same results. The students are more likely to be facing food insecurity and odd parental schedules at home. The school may need to spend more keeping their student body safe. And one kid with a violent parent who reacts by being violent in turn can wreck havoc on the rest of the classroom. That kind of person might need an education that is more therapy than academic.
socialdemocrat 7y ago
The US however is not a good example of public education. School fees are quite high. Private companies push student loans eagerly. Funding to schools is highly depended on neighbourhoods. To see that publicly education can work very well. Look at Finland e.g. But there are also many asian countries showing good results with public education. Based on my experience as a foreigner in the US, the US school system strikes me as something operating far more like private enterprise. Schools compete for students while there are no strong national standards and so you get insane grade inflation. I was shocked when I studied in the US how high grades where. Anything to please the "customers" I mean the students I guess.
- frockington1 7y ago
  > The US however is not a good example of public education So why is the common reaction to fund public schools even more? To me the logical reaction is to cut funding and try something different
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    The logical reaction should be to analyze the problem and try to suss out the cause. Unfortunately, the cause seems to be a widening wealth/income gap creating a segregated society and a lack of stable and supportive families on the lower income end. The solution to that, a long term initiative to change culture and create stable families and wealth transfers, is politically impossible, so the next best, easiest thing one can suggest is more funding for the schools.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  US has fine reasonably affordable public colleges. The student loan crisis is about people who shouldn't have attended those private schools in the first place.
akhilcacharya 7y ago
K12 education is generally pretty great in the US, it's just incredibly unevenly spread. There aren't that many schools on par with Stuyvesant or Thomas Jefferson or Bronx Science (all testing admission) in the world.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> Education hasn't gone well publicly so far in America It has in most the rest of the developed world; maybe (as with healthcare) the problem is that the system has been deliberately compromised to benefit private providers for financial and (more for education than healthcare, though it's a factor in both) sectarian reasons by the same people that use the poor results to rail against the public system and for (usually, publicly subsidized) privatization to further benefit the same private financial and sectarian interests. And not a fundamental problem with the service being publicly provided, which plenty of countries manage to do quite well. > Agree on health, law / police though To be fair, public provision of both of those are pretty bad in America, too, though the private provision of the former is worse.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

Whether or not you officially "privatize" them police departments having to insure themselves, pay their own lawsuits, justify their expenses (i.e. departments that don't need APCs probably wouldn't have them) and deliver sufficiently high quality service that their customers don't decide to hire someone else to do the job and generally behave like a business that cannot rely on always being propped up by the city/state is a wet dream of many (dare I say most) people seeking police reform.

jimktrains2 7y ago
While this doesn't invalidate your point entirely, I have never met a person who want the police run as if they fear being replaced by a different agency. Everyone I have ever meant who want police reform, at their core, want accountability and a lesser reliance of lethal weapons as a primary tool. There are other topics depending on where you come from, e.g. racial diversity, but I've yet to meet someone who wants the police to act like a private force.
- billfruit 7y ago
  Yes, but a thought is that if police were private they would have liability for their actions which perhaps is stronger than accountability in someways.
  - notabee 7y ago
    Let's take a little trip down memory lane about what deadly force in the hands of private corporations looks like: https://timeline.com/rockefellers-hired-militias-to-shoot-at-strikers-in-ludlow-massacre-115ae488164c https://timeline.com/rockefellers-hired-militias-to-shoot-at...
  - chungus_khan 7y ago
    If that were really the case I would imagine PMCs like Blackwater would face a lot more consequences for war crimes than they actually have.