Wednesday 14 December 2011
"And I Challenge You To Produce One..."
The key question is brought up at the five minute mark by Peter Jay; notice how Milton Friedman answers it. Jay may have thought that Friedman was blustering there and trying to worm his way out of answering the question. He wasn't.
I am not paying much attention to Taiwan's electoral politics and the various electioneering gimmicks and smears and all the rest of the nonsense in advance of the legislative and presidential elections next month. The DPP has to win. However, the DPP is, as their name suggests, infested with democratic-progressive policy aims such as the unjustified pursuit of reducing inequalities of economic outcome.
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Are they committed to reducing inequalities in economic outcome--or economic opportunity? Big difference.
ReplyDelete-Derek-
Oh? Perhaps you could describe that difference Derek; I'm not sure it is as "big" as seem to think it is.
ReplyDeleteWell, you are against taxes--on principle. You are also against private education. When questioned about what poor children would do in a system that offers no public education, you retort that maybe (yes, maybe) wealthy businesspeople will fund schools in poor areas, in an effort towards public relations and reputation.
ReplyDeleteI fail to see how children not being given the same chance and quality of schooling that wealthier children get fit into the free-market view as what constituting 'freedom'. We don't need to go into the nature/nurture debate to agree that people are some mix of their genetics/self and the environment they're brought up in. In order to give each individual a fair chance, we need to ensure some level of equality when they are younger, and unable to alter the situation they are born into. Therefore, we must collect taxes.
I reject the notion that state-funded education leads to poor teaching--as even in a state-funded education program, there is a tremendous amount of competition for jobs.
-Derek-
"Well, you are against taxes--on principle."
ReplyDeleteYes.
"You are also against private education."
No. Why would I be against private education? That's insane. Perhaps you meant to say "public" education?
"When questioned about what poor children would do in a system that offers no public education, you retort that maybe (yes, maybe) wealthy businesspeople will fund schools in poor areas, in an effort towards public relations and reputation."
Actually, you should check out the research done at the E.G. West centre of Newcastle University in my country (just up the road from where I come from). I think it's quite likely that poor kids would get much better schools, and I should have made the case for that much more strongly than I did at the time.
"I fail to see how children not being given the same chance and quality of schooling that wealthier children get fit into the free-market view as what constituting 'freedom'."
Recall my earlier distinction between positive and negative liberty.
But look, the problem for you is much more serious than that: the very term "equality of opportunity" is conceptually incoherent, since there is no such thing as "opportunity"; it is a mere abstraction from what really exists which are particular (and variable) opportunities. Think about it: the differences among people and their circumstances that go together to constitute "opportunity" are so many that in order to render these plural opportunities "equal", you necessarily have to obliterate all differences between rich and poor.
It makes more sense to argue for things that will improve the conditions of the poor kids and things which will improve their chances in life - rather than demanding that their chances be in any sense "equal" to those who happen to have been born into better conditions. Although not written by an outright Libertarian, here is a well-written critique of the subject along these lines.
"In order to give each individual a fair chance, we need to ensure some level of equality when they are younger..."
You see? Even you yourself immediately concede that the concept is nonsense: "some level of equality". For god's sake man, either two things are equal or they are not. If you mean that conditions for poor kids should be improved somehow, then that's what you should say - rather than reflexively grasping for this rhetorical watering down of the commie Left's envy politics.
"...Therefore, we must collect taxes."
Non-sequitur. Good education for poor kids can be done by means other than a State bureaucracy. Enquire into the matter.
"I reject the notion that state-funded education leads to poor teaching."
And you are quite right to do so because it's not the funding aspect per se that leads to poor teaching, but the political control that goes with that funding.