Category: Public Choice

MLLG

Abolish Government (Public) Schools

George Noga

Government schools are a destructive force incapable of significant reform.

Abolish Government (Public) Schools

By: George Noga – November 13, 2022

This post destroys the final school choice myth, i.e. that public schools are necessary. We advocate universal school choice with the money following the child. Up to now, we assumed choice would force public schools to become competitive. We now conclude government schools are a destructive force incapable of significant reform and should be abolished. First, we recap other myths propagated by teachers’ unions.

  • Choice drains money: Vouchers always are for less (usually far less) than per pupil spending in public schools. Hence, vouchers increase spending per public student.
  • Some children are left behind: This is analogous to asserting that because there are not enough lifeboats for everyone, then no one should be saved.
  • Choice Balkanizes education: Students already are highly stratified by income and race. School choice, rather than compulsion, does much more to bridge divides.
  • Segregation would increase: Public schools already are highly segregated based on where people live. Voluntary integration under choice is better than forced integration.
  • The rich benefit under choice: The wealthy already have choice based largely on where they choose to live. The poorest among us need choice the most.
  • Poor families make bad choices: Not only is this insulting to low-income families, but empirical evidence from existing voucher programs dispels this myth.
  • Voucher schools are unaccountable: Private schools are immediately and directly answerable to parents, government schools only indirectly to school boards elected every four years. There is no force more powerful than parents armed with a voucher.
  • Voucher schools are unregulated: Regulating private schools would turn them into the monstrosities families are desperately escaping. Parents are the best regulators.

 

The Case for Abolishing Government Schools

Abolishing public schools will reduce school shootings. As gun free zones, public schools are easy targets. They create hordes of disgruntled and disaffected students who are held there involuntarily; it is not shocking some of them turn to mass violence. With school choice, parents could select schools that provide strong security. No child would be there involuntarily, and troublemakers could be summarily expelled.

Because private schools are non-union and have few administrators, they cost roughly half that of government schools. The county where I live (Seminole) has 60,000 students and 125 administrators making $100,000 per year plus many more making less. In sharp contrast, the Catholic Diocese of Orlando has 15,000 students and only 3 administrators. Eliminating unions and unneeded administrators not only saves money, but it does away with all the mindless bureaucracy that stifles learning.

Abolishing public schools would result in better schools at half the cost

Schools should adapt to the needs and capacities of its students. For less capable students, public schools impede learning, while for bright students the incredible slow pace is a form of torture as they sit year after year in an inescapable miasma. Every student needs a school at his/her level taught by teachers at the same level.

Then there is the issue of values. Families should be able to have their children attend schools that reinforce, rather than contradict, parental values. Parents should not have children taught CRT, the 1619 Project and gender dysphoria without their consent. They needlessly scare the bejesus out of kids about the environment and climate change. Public schools take in carefree, joyous and eager children living in the most well-off, healthy and multicultural society ever known and indoctrinate them to believe they actually inhabit a horribly oppressive country of which they should be ashamed.

That public schools are necessary for maintaining American democracy is a canard that no longer exists and is actually perverse. Eons ago, it might have been possible for a laborer’s daughter to marry the banker’s son, but today there is no way they would attend the same school. Data show private schools produce superior civic outcomes. Public schools do not foster unity from diversity; they exacerbate diversity.

Government schools are a jobs program for adults; children be damned. They resemble public housing; only people with no other choice go there. Public schools, teachers’ unions and the blob of administrators suck the sustenance out of our children. Government schools are a destructive force that can’t be significantly reformed and that cause far more harm than good. America will be much better off without them.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Next up on November 20th is our special Thanksgiving posting.

Click here to join our mailing

More Liberty Less Government – mllg@cfl.rr.com – www.mllg.us

Facebook  Twitter  Linkedin

Government Accountability is an Oxymoron  

George Noga

The most powerful force on earth is a consumer armed with a free choice.   

Government Accountability is an Oxymoron  

By: George Noga – December 1, 2019  

  

Since founding the school choice movement in Florida 25 years ago, I have debated many apologists for government schools. Invariably, their go-to argument is that private voucher schools are “unaccountable“. When everything else fails, they trot out this moldy canard. It’s time for me, once and for all, to demolish this fairy tale.  

    

            Everyone wants accountability for the products and services they consume. In free markets businesses compete to provide accountability for quality, safety and value. There is no such thing as an unaccountable free market. The most potent force on this planet is a consumer armed with a free choice; or, as Von Mises so eloquently put it, “Markets are a daily plebiscite in which every penny confers the right to vote“.  

    

          Markets deliver safety, quality and value in many ways. Foremost is branding, by which companies stake their reputation on products. When you vacation at Disney or buy an Apple computer, the reputations of the companies are on the line. Markets also deliver quality and value through franchising. If you eat at Wendy’s, you know what to expect. There also are third party rating firms like Consumer Reports, Good Housekeeping, Underwriter’s Laboratories and BBB. Lastly, social media confer enormous power on consumers; a few terrible reviews can sink nearly any business.  

    

          Markets are accountable from the bottom up, with consumers exercising control directly. Government accountability is an oxymoron; to the limited extent it may exist, it is from the top down. Consumers can exercise limited control through the political process only once every four years. With government accountability, voters select candidates with positions on numerous issues; with markets, consumers make a choice about one specific good or service. In many jurisdictions accountability is impossible due to political domination by interest groups and voting blocks. With government schools there is no branding, franchising, independent rating agencies or social media.  

    

        Contrast market accountability (Uber) with government regulated taxis. With Uber, consumers get location, name, photo, driver rating, fare and arrival time. They get a spotless car, pay via credit card and rate the driver. With taxis you get none of the above; you get an unkempt driver with poor English who drives aggressively. The taxi has a musty odor, blares obscene music and costs triple Uber; complaints are futile. Which is more accountable, the market (Uber) or government (taxis)?  

    

           An independent review of Providence, RI schools with 25,000 students found peeling lead paint, brown water, leaking sewage, rats, frigid temperature, classroom chaos, bullying, no discipline and rampant violence. Only 5% of students were at grade level. Unions protect failed teachers and principals, who at worst are placed in rubber rooms with full salary and benefits. Government blamed lack of funding even though spending was $18,000 per student – 50% above the national average. Not one person ever has been held accountable and these horrors have been going on for decades.   

    

         In sharp contrast, Providence charter and voucher schools are successful. Instead of expanding charters and vouchers, government and unions want to impose more regulations on them in the name of – you guessed it – accountability. They are trying to turn charters and vouchers into the same veritable hell holes parents are fleeing.  

  

         Lack of accountability in government is endemic just like waste, fraud and abuse. The only way to reduce these evils is to slash government spending; there is absolutely no other way.  We can increase accountability and simultaneously reduce cost, waste, fraud and abuse by giving every parent a 100% school voucher.   

  

        The next time you hear that voucher schools are unaccountable, remember Uber, taxis and rubber rooms. Remember that free markets always are accountable and that government accountability is an oxymoron. Above all, remember the Providence schools; how much of that kind of accountability do you want for your children?  

Medicare for all? Next, we take on the Canadian national health care system.   

 

Click here to join our mailing list  

More Liberty Less Government –  mllg@mllg.us  –  www.mllg.us 

 

We are the Choices We Make

George Noga
America is the summation of the political choices we make just
as individually we are the sum of all our individual life choices.
We are the Choices We Make
By: George Noga – October 30, 2016

       Alexander Hamilton pondered: “Whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend on accident and force.” James Madison added: “What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature.”

     During the first 175 years of our beloved republic, Madison and Hamilton would have rested easy. We made good public choices; we saw to it that whoever was elected president or to Congress, and those they appointed and confirmed to the judiciary, had little power over our lives. Government had few, limited and enumerated powers and there were abundant checks and balances against the concentration and abuse of power. All branches of government stayed inside the constitutional box; states zealously guarded their federalist prerogatives; and the media were effective watchdogs.

     No longer! We are answering Hamilton’s question in the negative and to Madison’s dismay, the worse angels of our nature are dominating the better angels. If any society of men fails to get government right, it affects every aspect of our lives and life itself. If we get government right, we live our lives in freedom and prosperity; if we fail, happiness, liberty and property are forfeit and life becomes nasty, brutish and brief.

     If we don’t get government right, our children and our children’s children will survive in an Orwellian torpor with their lives and liberty constantly at risk because of obeisance to failed ideologies, fantasies, political correctness and the perpetual and futile search for utopias. They will pay dearly for our debt binge and intergenerational theft. They will people a dysfunctional world where nuclear arms proliferate in places committed to our destruction. They will be a lost generation in every sense.

      If we fail to answer Hamilton’s question in the affirmative, we will inhabit a Clockwork Orange world with our lives vastly diminished and trivialized in countless and unspeakable ways. We will live lives of quiet desperation. We will fulfill Kipling’s prophesy in the Gods of the Copybook Headings – the final verse of which follows. Note: By the term “Gods of the Copybook Headings” Kipling means the experience and wisdom of mankind through the ages.

“And after that is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as water will wet us, as surely as fire will burn,

The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!”

      Our lives individually and as a nation are nothing more than the summation of all the choices we make. If we make good choices in our individual lives, it will come to naught if the choices we make in our public lives are bad ones. Of the 110 billion humans who have trod this earth, fewer than 1% have lived their lives in liberty. We must make wise public choices or just as surely as water wets us and fire burns, terror and slaughter will return. And don’t think for a moment that it can’t happen here!

The next post November 6th contains some final thoughts about the election.

Public Choice Economics Explains Government Failure

George Noga
 By: George Noga – July 1, 2013
       The science of economics, far from being dismal, can be truly exciting; it offers much more than arcane supply and demand curves. In recent years economists have captured the public imagination with books such as Freakonomics, Super Freakonomics, More Guns – Less Crime and More Sex is Safer Sex. They are popular because they use the tools of economics, including rigorous logic and analysis, to reach what often are counter intuitive, but valid, conclusions.
     So it is with public choice economics. In the private sector, theoretically correct economic solutions usually are positively correlated with real world decisions In the public sector however, there is a huge chasm between the correct theoretical (economic) solutions and the choices made by decision makers, i.e. politicians. Public choice economics explains this chasm.
      Many citizens, particularly young people and liberals, have an infatuation with government. They see elected officials as benevolent, dispassionate planners looking out for ideal social outcomes as contrasted with self-interested actors in the private sector. Yet we constantly are bumfuzzled by political decisions contrary to all logic and national self interest.
“We constantly are bumfuzzled by politicians acting illogically.”
     Why is private sector decision making far superior to government? Business ownership and governance do a much better job of aligning business and personal objectives and incentives so that decision makers choose the economically (theoretically) correct decision. In government there is a wide gulf between self interest and public interest.
      In both government and business, decision makers usually decide on the basis of personal risks, rewards and incentives; this is embedded in human nature and is immutable. The private sector understands this. The founders of our country understood this, hence our constitutional system of federalism, limited government and checks and balances. Public choice economics explains why government fails us; consider five tenets from public choice economics.

  1. This comes as no surprise but politicians are far more interested in winning the next election than in doing the right thing. Their desire to win elections far outstrips their duty to the country. Their personal incentives are grossly misaligned with the public interest.

  2. Politics is extremely shortsighted, favoring debt financing over taxes; that explains why we have had deficits in 47 of the last 52 years. Politicians love to make unfunded  promises such as unsustainable pensions and benefits. They want to provide immediate benefits while borrowing, hiding or deferring the costs as far into the future as possible.

  3. Special interest groups and rent seekers (those who extract value from government without giving value in return – such as public sector unions) dominate the process. Politicians always favor highly concentrated and organized groups (that return the favor in various ways) at the public expense and contrary to the public interest. A great example is sugar subsidies where a few growers share nearly $1 billion a year in added profits while all 310 million of us Americans pay $30 too much for sugar each year.

  4. There is a myth that central planning leads to good decisions. This ignores the real world preferences of real people, creates perverse incentives and disincentives and inevitably creates a myriad of unintended consequences. The real world is far more complex and dynamic than any central planner or computer model can ever simulate.

  5. Whereas in business the culture is to quickly recognize and to cut losses, the incentive in government is to deny anything is a blunder and continue to throw more money at it.
      Public choice economics can lead to better decisions if we give it heed. We must recognize  economic science is just as applicable to government as it is to business. We must understand  human nature has not changed since the dawn of time. People are people and they do not suddenly become benighted when they enter public service. We need to return to the system  envisioned by the founders where government is so limited as to minimize the harm it wreaks. Failing that, we must closely align the risks, rewards and incentives of public officials with the long-term public interest – just as the private sector has done so successfully.