[ExI] Americans are poor drivers

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2009/7/12 Mirco Romanato <painlord2k at libero.it>:
> Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto:
>> 2009/7/12 Mirco Romanato <painlord2k at libero.it>:
>
>> Or they could decide not to sell the streets to private individuals.
>
> This would be a Common, a tragedy of the.
>
>> Through experience, people have decided that some things, like
>> restaurants, are best run privately, and other things, like law
>> enforcement and education, are best run collectively.
>
> The real history usually is a bit different:
> for example education was entirely private and public education was
> introduced, by governments, to "help the poor" that could not pay and
> send the children to school. Then they enlarged the pool to the people
> that could pay, driving out the private providers. The fact that private
> providers exist after a century or more is testament that free and good
> rarely come together.

Public education is not free, it's paid for, and it's a major drain on
taxpayers.

> Many societal problems we have today can be traced to the way schools
> and public schools were structured in the past from the governments.
>
> Maybe taking the children from the family and indoctrinating them with
> the government ideology is good, maybe it is not.
> Maybe, desocialize the children from their families and neighbours and
> socialize them with a bunch of same age individuals is good, maybe it is
> not.

I have attended both public and private schools in my life and I don't
feel I was ever subjected to any specific political indoctrination in
either. I was indoctrinated by both school and family to believe that
work and study were good, breaking the law was bad, and so on, which I
recognised as just another ideology that had to be critically examined
when I was about 13, and decided to become an anarchist.

The main difference between the private school and the public school
was that the private school had better facilities - science labs,
computers, and especially sporting facilities (which I didn't care
about in the slightest). Another difference was that the students in
the private school were from wealthier families (not me - I was there
on a scholarship) and had a natural assumption that they would go on
to tertiary education and get a good job, while equally bright
students at the public school had lower aspirations. I have friends
who have been teachers at both private and public schools and they
prefer the private schools because, they say, the students there are
more motivated to learn and do well. This effect is mitigated by
comparing private schools with public schools in well-to-do areas,
where there is minimal difference in the academic results of the two
school systems.

>> It's OK to try
>> to argue that your particular way of running things works better, as
>> long as people are free to choose, preferably on the basis of evidence
>> from past experience or observation of alternative systems around the
>> world. Ultimately, if people make the wrong choice their country will
>> fall further and further behind, and it will become more and more
>> obvious that they have made the wrong choice..
>
> It appear that the US and Europe, in many fields, are losing their
> advantages in respect to East Asia. Maybe they are or were doing
> something wrong.

You mean, losing out to the communists, who maintain a tight grip on
every aspect of their "market" economy, even to the point of arresting
the executives of commercial rivals:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25768420-601,00.html


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou