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I mostly agree. I think we need a free(er) market in education. The Joel Greenblatt charter schools would soon be available everywhere, if market dynamics were

I mostly agree. I think we need a free(er) market in education. The Joel Greenblatt charter schools would soon be available everywhere, if market dynamics were allowed. We also are undeniably in need of healthcare reform, and on that front, I think we need to just make up our minds and choose between a single payer system or a free market. The Frankenstein we have today is the worst. And we need to break up monopolies, starting with cable companies / ISPs.

alfiedotwtf 6y ago
Laissez-faire in education will create an even greater gap as schools will not have a shared curriculum by definition
- AstralStorm 6y ago
  Most importantly it will drain funding from the already hurting schools in poor areas, while the job "market", or rather employers, will demand ever better, more specialized education in many areas to have a job that provides a living wage. Schools in poor areas are not a profitable enterprise. Companies do not even run schools if they can help it.
  - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
    > Schools in poor areas are not a profitable enterprise Yep... and they never should be. Public utilities should never be profit centres
beej71 6y ago
Pure free-market healthcare is something nobody wants. Even now, the vast majority of people want to be able to buy insurance even if they have a preexisting condition. So we've already seriously meddled with the free market and we're unlikely to go back. And that's not even counting the multitude of other places in the system where free market forces do not apply appreciable pressure. For non-emergency, non-chronic health conditions, the free market is great. Otherwise it kinda blows. There's no competition for emergency services. You don't choose your hospital or ambulance or helicopter. You can't shop around--not that it would help since they don't tell you prices ahead of time. No competition, no prices, no free market. And if you want to change that, you have to regulate--which also means no free market. Not everything has a free market solution (e.g. flood insurance). But there are plenty of other systems in between these two extremes that work quite well. We don't have to go all-in on one or the other. I will agree, though, that the Frankenstein we have in the US is actually the worst. We pay more tax for healthcare than almost every other country and we get a lot less back for it than they do. And in addition to paying the most tax, we pay huge prices for poor quality insurance. And our prices for care are among the highest in the world. We could definitely do better.
- bumby 6y ago
  Can n you elaborate on what you mean by the healthcare taxes being paid? Is this the taxes to fund programs like Medicare, the ACA etc.? Or the more generalized notion of aggregate healthcare costs?
adamcstephens 6y ago
Education isn’t a profitable enterprise, unless you skew the input or cut corners. We need to teach everybody, regardless of their needs, and pay the teachers well to do so. (This is actually one of the cruxes of the article) Monopoly has invaded every area of our lives, and we’re worse off for it. We need the opposite of “free” markets in order to deal with this. Companies need to be broken up, sectors need new regulation, and we need to prevent mergers while subsidizing competition.

alfiedotwtf 6y ago

Laissez-faire in education will create an even greater gap as schools will not have a shared curriculum by definition

AstralStorm 6y ago
Most importantly it will drain funding from the already hurting schools in poor areas, while the job "market", or rather employers, will demand ever better, more specialized education in many areas to have a job that provides a living wage. Schools in poor areas are not a profitable enterprise. Companies do not even run schools if they can help it.
- alfiedotwtf 6y ago
  > Schools in poor areas are not a profitable enterprise Yep... and they never should be. Public utilities should never be profit centres

beej71 6y ago

Pure free-market healthcare is something nobody wants. Even now, the vast majority of people want to be able to buy insurance even if they have a preexisting condition. So we've already seriously meddled with the free market and we're unlikely to go back. And that's not even counting the multitude of other places in the system where free market forces do not apply appreciable pressure. For non-emergency, non-chronic health conditions, the free market is great. Otherwise it kinda blows. There's no competition for emergency services. You don't choose your hospital or ambulance or helicopter. You can't shop around--not that it would help since they don't tell you prices ahead of time. No competition, no prices, no free market. And if you want to change that, you have to regulate--which also means no free market. Not everything has a free market solution (e.g. flood insurance). But there are plenty of other systems in between these two extremes that work quite well. We don't have to go all-in on one or the other. I will agree, though, that the Frankenstein we have in the US is actually the worst. We pay more tax for healthcare than almost every other country and we get a lot less back for it than they do. And in addition to paying the most tax, we pay huge prices for poor quality insurance. And our prices for care are among the highest in the world. We could definitely do better.

bumby 6y ago
Can n you elaborate on what you mean by the healthcare taxes being paid? Is this the taxes to fund programs like Medicare, the ACA etc.? Or the more generalized notion of aggregate healthcare costs?

adamcstephens 6y ago

Education isn’t a profitable enterprise, unless you skew the input or cut corners. We need to teach everybody, regardless of their needs, and pay the teachers well to do so. (This is actually one of the cruxes of the article) Monopoly has invaded every area of our lives, and we’re worse off for it. We need the opposite of “free” markets in order to deal with this. Companies need to be broken up, sectors need new regulation, and we need to prevent mergers while subsidizing competition.