[Jeffrw]

And one more point: You say it is all about choices and that's what makes rich kids better off than middle/lower class. So then how would a Private Sector make things better for the non-rich? THe rich will still be going to the Abercrombie or whatever of education and the poor will still be going to the thrift shop of education.

[Bigdaddyandy]

Does'nt matter, it's just 2 puppets and one puppetmaster.
Beside does anyone in their right mind actually believe Bush is in charge of anything?
Cheney's got his hand so far up George's ass, they could be a ventriloquist act.

[chauncy]

not a chance.

[kymo99]

No. But he was still a better alternative than Kerry!

[CDB]

Originally Posted by Jeffrw

Okay you say I keep looking at failed structure and then applying the Private Sector idea to it. So far though you have only given me the idea of a Private Sector but haven't actually explained how this would work or how an investor would set this up. It's like you've said "here's an idea that looks better on paper, so I'll leave it to someone else to figure out how to make it work money wise."

That's because no one knows. I would say you're approaching the idea from the wrong mindset. There are, or ideally should be no rules other than don't steal and don't hurt in the private sector. Any plan that works would be acceptable, any plan that turns enough of a profit for someone in some way will succeed. And profits doesn't mean money, it just means a person is marginally satisfied with the trade/how they spent their time for whatever reason. The basic model is there's a demand for a product or a product someone thinks there is a demand for, they solicit investors and get going on delivering it. It's what happened for example in the PC market. A lot of the people most deeply involved in the computer business before PCs thought there was no real reason for regular people to have them. Now there are people who couldn't see living without them. The whole point of the private sector is that it doesn't have to stick to strict rules of how you do this, and how you deliver that. There is no plan per se. There's just the demand, the possible demand, and the risk, and people can deal with those in countless ways. For existing models I'd point to existing distance learning programs. Some schools offer lectures on DVD, CD, etc. Some schools exist for the teaching of specific trades, business skills, languages, etc.

Until you can also add to your theory how someone might make money of this, this is simply an insanely optimistic dream. It's like saying we should have world peace.

Sounds like you're biased against the idea to begin with. Since there are already a decent amount of private schools of all types thriving right now, even in light of a virtual government monopoly on education, it seems a lot less insanely optimistic than you would indicate. After all, those schools are still managing to pull in profits when there is a "free" alternative available. There are however lots of government rules that make competition hard.

What's to stop these businesses from going under?

Nothing but their own ability to keep their customers satisfied. That's the point.

Who can guarantee that there will be enough schools to pull this off?

Who guarantees there are enough TVs to go around, or cars? Who guarantees there are enough tomatoes on the shelves at the super market, or apples or steaks? Somehow those things manage to stay stocked at a reasonable level to satisfy everyone's demand for them. It isn't magic, just economics.

Think how much the market goes up and down. Would you want to send your kid to school that is losing money the last three quarters and has now laid off half the Janitoral staff?

The market going up and down isn't a general reflection of its stability. It is a general reflection of government intervention however. On any given day, when the market is up or down, when you look at a snap shot of business conditions the vast majority are pulling in profits. They might not be making a killing but they are surviving and usually thriving. That's the weeding mechanism of the market in place, generally speaking people who run their businesses poorly lose and don't get another chance, unless the government subsidizes them with easy credit and similar things. There can be ups and downs depending on market conditions, but when those are general responses to consumer demand, investors, etc., they are good things because they represent the self balancing of the market. The wave like movement of the market in boom in bust cycles is generally the result of government intervention, credit expansion and investment misallocation. While this can make investment projects temporally far from the retail/consumer market very iffy, generally the business cycle does not hit the retail markets hard if at all. Even during the great depression those markets only went down 10-20%. When a business does go under in the retail market it would generally be because of competition, which means some other business is satisfying consumers' demands better, cheaper or both. That's a good thing.

Or now there's 35 kids in Bio instead of 25 because you had to fire a couple teachers to make numbers? Now my kid can fall behind because the teacher can't possibly give as much attention to al those kids. You would need more schools than McDonald's, and think how many those are. So maybe for schools you have "different brands"? How will this make education even for everyone?

How have the public schools done that, except by making it equally horrible for everyone? That education would not be the same for everyone is, once more, the point. Not everyone has a Rolls Royce or a plasma TV. But, almost everyone does have access to various versions of cars and TVs that are within their price ranges.

It seems to me you think all kids have the right to the same education even if it comes at the expense of others. I don't. It's an arguable point. I don't agree with it because even though you can make several moral and ethical arguments that kids should be provided for as innocents or on similar grounds, any attempt to provide a communal solution through the public sector leads to waste, lack of options, increasing costs and eventual collapse. So eventually it's every kid gets the same poor education except the super rich, who can still afford to opt out. In my view every kid and their parents should get a choice of options delivered by the free market. Maybe a new immigrant doesn't see the need for his kid to learn Shakespeare, but would like him to learn a marketable trade so he and his family's economic position can be advanced further and quicker. While I think in an ideal world every kid would get the greatest education possible, the world isn't ideal. Like anything education is a scarce service and throughout history the only mechanism that has shown itself to be good at alleviating scarcity by appropriate pricing is the market. All governments do is basically devalue the general market so everyone can get a hold of a good, even though it costs a ridiculous amount in taxes and wasted resources and the end product keeps worsening in quality, and often dwindeling in quantity too.

So what exactly is so wasteful, in your opinion, about Public Education? Is it just those cushy adminstration jobs? It might interest you to know that those cushy jobs are a part of the Free Economy. Principles, Superintendants, etc. are not union jobs like teachers. Their salary is set by good ol' supply and demand.

If the government employs them they are not private sector jobs, plain and simple. No matter what calculations the government might use to try and fool people into believing they are being paid in line with their demand, it is essentially economic nonsense. Such things can't be calculated aprior, only discovered through the market. Even if the government just owned the institutions and contracted out the jobs, the amount of educational facilities is not market determined and so therefore neither are the amounts of administrators needed nor are their salaries. Further points on this below.

Obviously if you want a well educated and compotent person to run the school, you need to compete with other school's offers right?

Wrong. That's like saying contractors compete for each other for defense contracts. Technically true, but competing for a government contract or a government job is not the same as competing for a private contract or job. If anything the tax resources used to pay the salary of such people have been pulled out of the private sector and have destroyed other potential productive options for the use of the capital. That's opportunity cost. There is also no guarantee of productivity once in the position because of the perverse incentive structure of public sector jobs. If the market justification for the position is interrupted at any step of the way by public intervention and decision making, it basically destroys the whole process.

For example the government can artificially create an increase in 'demand' for such jobs by simply opening more schools. In a free market the product/service demanders, the consumers, set the salaries, numbers of workers, etc., in the end because there is a limit to what they are willing to pay and there is a limit maximum efficiency will allow at any given price. No such mechanism is at work at all in the public sector. The 'customers' and their 'demand' are artificial and invented through compulsion, the amount of institutions and jobs necessary to run them likewise artificial and invented. To allow for your argument would be to say that if the government decided Ford was the only car Americans should own, and made that rule compulsory, that somehow the 'demand' for Fords would be legitimate in a market sense. The larger amount of workers would be legitimate in a market sense as well. And, because the 'demand' can be artificially raised through further legislation, say forcing everyone to trade in and buy a new one at 4 years, salaries and 'demand' can likewise be bid up absent any true market mechanism or actual increase in demand. That's not the free market nor is it competition. In any sense of the word.

In education you have another problem as well, the imposition of a single 'business' model on all institutions. The compulsary laws, the entrenched interests, the strings tied to federal money, the relatively lower number of people in private schools and the general if not total restriction of that market by the 'free' alternative of public education make innovations less likely as well.

That's exactly what they do. High salarys of superintendants are because of competition. The reason they run so high is because the pool of people with enough experience and education to have this job is small. Few people+Lots of jobs=higher pay. These cushy jobs wouldn't go away if education was privatized. People always want to work where there is more money.

I find that and 'interesting' view of supply and demand to say the least, given the above.

Here's a solution that is more than reasonable and would put more money back in education: Federal Caps on Superintendant/Adminstrative pay.

Which, granting your above argument which I don't but let's do so for argument's sake here, will cause an even greater shortage of such people. That's what price caps do.

And one more point: You say it is all about choices and that's what makes rich kids better off than middle/lower class. So then how would a Private Sector make things better for the non-rich? The rich will still be going to the Abercrombie or whatever of education and the poor will still be going to the thrift shop of education.

Yes. I've already said there will be a variety of choices, and that includes low income choices and it stands to reason those would not be the best of options, but they would be options that weren't there before. And the incentive structure inherent in the market would ensure they would be the best for the price. Everyone would be able to get the best they could afford, and they would have more options too, unlike now where everyone gets the mediocre to the worst, and the rich are the only ones who can make an actual choice. It's that ability to choose which will give the greatest advantage. Once the middle and lower income people have the option to choose the market can begin the process of honing in on their actual needs and wants as well, instead of the government imposed one size fits all curriculum there is now. There's also a virtual guarantee the methods used would improve because there's no unions or voters to please or consciences to salve, just consumer demand for better and better products at each given price point. That everyone cannot afford a Rolls Royce isn't justification for nationalizing the automotive industry, especially since everyone knows the end result will be cars similar to those once made in Russia and East Germany; unreliable oil burning gas-guzzlers in bland designs that necessitate a huge tax burden.

In every single case without exception if a product is delivered by the market rather than the government, it is cheaper and of better quality, there are no shortages or surpluses worth mentioning at any level and everyone involved at every step of the way is involved voluntarily. I've yet to see anything about education that would make it different except the assertion that because the current government model doesn't work that the private market couldn't possibly work, which doesn't really sit right because the private market in all other cases does function better. In the end there is nothing special about education. It's a product/service some people want or feel they need, and someone will deliver it to them. If it's the government I'll grant you the delivery is guaranteed, but so is continually falling quality of service/product. It's got nothing to do with the educators themselves, it's just the nature of a compulsary government system.

[Jeffrw]

If the government employs them they are not private sector jobs, plain and simple. No matter what calculations the government might use to try and fool people into believing they are being paid in line with their demand, it is essentially economic nonsense. Such things can't be calculated aprior, only discovered through the market. Even if the government just owned the institutions and contracted out the jobs, the amount of educational facilities is not market determined and so therefore neither are the amounts of administrators needed nor are their salaries. Further points on this below.

This makes no sense. So you are saying just because state/federal money is involved in paying for a job it somehow automatically erases a competetive job market?

It simple to understand that a wealthy suburban district has money money than a rural area. This will be true for either public or private education. Joe Superintendant just recieved his masters and administrative certification. Straigh A's, dean's list, all that. He gets offered both of those jobs, which one is he more likely to take? It doesn't matter if there is only a certain number of these fixed non-market jobs available.

The point is that as long as the pay is different, there are few solid canidates and many positions, this creates competition amongst districts to "snag" the next "C.E.O." of the school.

You also said caps cause a shortage? So I guess fewer people try to get into professional sports now? Caps seem to work fine there. Keeps the money steady and guarantees an even playing field. Even if what is capped is the total amount of all pay (not just adminstration) this would be good. They could even run it like baseball, where those who go over have to do revenue sharing with the smaller "teams".

It is somewhat disapointing that someone who is obviously intelligent does not think that everyone should have a fair shake at a quality education.

More stupid uneducated people is only going to lead to more sixteen yearolds asking Superdrol questions here. And I don't think anyone wants that!

[CDB]

Originally Posted by Jeffrw

This makes no sense. So you are saying just because state/federal money is involved in paying for a job it somehow automatically erases a competetive job market?

Yes. Competition for manufactured demand is not a free market by any stretch of the imagination, and it's barely a competitive market.

It simple to understand that a wealthy suburban district has money money than a rural area. This will be true for either public or private education. Joe Superintendant just recieved his masters and administrative certification. Straigh A's, dean's list, all that. He gets offered both of those jobs, which one is he more likely to take? It doesn't matter if there is only a certain number of these fixed non-market jobs available.

The point is that as long as the pay is different, there are few solid canidates and many positions, this creates competition amongst districts to "snag" the next "C.E.O." of the school.

You also said caps cause a shortage? So I guess fewer people try to get into professional sports now? Caps seem to work fine there. Keeps the money steady and guarantees an even playing field. Even if what is capped is the total amount of all pay (not just adminstration) this would be good. They could even run it like baseball, where those who go over have to do revenue sharing with the smaller "teams".

Price caps cause shortages, yes. Honestly trying to argue otherwise is like arguing 2+2 doesn't equal 4. It's an economic certainty. They will generally appear at the margins first, which you can see to a degree in the recent free agent fiasco if football. Cap their salaries they will go somewhere else or not work. Admitedly the salaries in professional sports are very high and it is possible that even capped there might not be an immediate shortage because the cap is high enough that there is no pronounced effect at first; the salaries still available satisify most player's demands. It would be lik government capping the price of gas at 50 dollars a gallon. Meaningless now, but it would start to manifest itself as a shortage if the market price every wanted to push above that amount. That a similar cap be placed on a much lower salaried position would lead to a more pronounced and immediate effect is basically a given.

It is somewhat disapointing that someone who is obviously intelligent does not think that everyone should have a fair shake at a quality education.

More stupid uneducated people is only going to lead to more sixteen yearolds asking Superdrol questions here. And I don't think anyone wants that!

Not by any stretch, but I'd say it's just as disappointing that so many people refuse to see the possibilities and many benefits of a free system and keep forcing everyone to throw money into the hole public education has become, to the point where any attempt at change and more specifically change to allow the least fortunate to have some option is opposed with such vehement force by the very teachers and administrators who are supposed to be educating those kids. At the very least that indicates to me there are some conflicting interests involved in the system. In a free system there is one interest: keep your customers happy so they don't go anywhere else. With public education the approach is not to outperform other options, but to outlaw them.

[Jeffrw]

Originally Posted by CDB

In a free system there is one interest: keep your customers happy so they don't go anywhere else.

Not really. It's to make money. If public education is private, you would have one of the largest corporations in America. It would also be one of the most influential institutions in the country. You will have advertising in schools. You will have food courts with fast food. Maybe you don't think this is a big deal, but I think it's horrible now, the amount of "sponsorship" that goes on currently. I can't imagine what it would be like when actual companies have a stake in the schools. If Pepsi owns Lay's and Pizza Hut/Taco Bell/KFC, it's not a far stretch to imagine them wanting to get "involved" in education.

It doesn't matter anyway. This will never happen. And not because people do not support this idea, but because it is so far fetched that one can only dream. If this was even a possibilty, there would already be an example somewhere in this country of somebody trying it. Hell, private schools have enough trouble staying afloat now.

BTW, still disagree about the salary cap/revenue sharing. Until I enetered my "career" job, Every job I had had a maximum pay. From my first job at McDonals's to my last part time job I had doing retail for the st. louis blues. This already exists in many jobs.

[CDB]

Originally Posted by CDB

In a free system there is one interest: keep your customers happy so they don't go anywhere else.

Originally Posted by Jeffrw

Not really. It's to make money.

You accomplish the latter by accomplishing the former though. That's how the system works. Companies don't make money if people don't buy their products. Not unless they use the government to force purchases or limit alternatives to a product with inflexible demand.

If public education is private, you would have one of the largest corporations in America. It would also be one of the most influential institutions in the country.

Jeff, you have to start seeing other options than the current model. One institution? There's isn't one manufacturer/distributor of any other good or service in the world unless such an arrangement is government enforced. Why do you think education would be any different? It's like people in the former USSR saying they shouldn't privatize television because there'd only be one network, it ignores the reality that in a free system it just doesn't work that way.

You will have advertising in schools.

Unless of course the customers didn't want it. And if they didn't mind, who honestly cares?

You will have food courts with fast food. Maybe you don't think this is a big deal, but I think it's horrible now, the amount of "sponsorship" that goes on currently.

That is all happening under the government run system...

What exactly would stop parents from enrolling their kids in schools that offer healthy food, not the admittedly horrible stuff they're getting access to in our current government run model? Don't you think that would be a great selling point for a school, good onsite meal/nutrition options/education? If I had a kid and the such a system was in place, it's something I'd look for.

I can't imagine what it would be like when actual companies have a stake in the schools.

What you're missing though is that the main profit they get from the schools would be based on the kids' educations, not how many bags of chips and bottles of soda they sold. While that might be an additional way to earn a profit and some companies might try it, it isn't guaranteed to happen.

You're ingoring the very crucial point that the education/care of the kids is the product. If some institutions saw this as a means to an end to the point that they ignored their primary goal of satisfying their customer (parents), they'd lose those customers. To the point that such advertising was incorporated the return companies got on such ads could help lower the overal cost of education, making it more widely available. To the extent parents did not want their kids exposed to such ads, they could simply do business with those who didn't run schools along those lines, or use some other method of education besides an actual school.

Which brings up another point. A school building with various rooms is just the modern equivalent of the school house, and while that worked fine in the old days who is to say it's the best option now? Have you considered that in the goernment run system on a basic infrastructural level the approach to schooling and education hasn't really changed in literally hundreds of years, despite massive advances in technology? Just get the kids together in one room with one instructor and talk at them is the basic model and has been for longer than it probably should have been. How much of that lack of advance could be laid at the feet of a system whose very existence discourages investment/experimentation with radically different methods? No one could possibly know the answer to that, but it's a question that can and should be asked. I would say the lack of options, choice and real development in this area would be worth getting rid of even if it meant giving Pepsi a free license to advertise to kids.

If Pepsi owns Lay's and Pizza Hut/Taco Bell/KFC, it's not a far stretch to imagine them wanting to get "involved" in education.

No, it's not. But Honda's ATV business doesn't necessarily intrude on their auto business, despite some crossover I'm sure, because those in charge are aware they are seperate. I'm sure the ATV business comes it at appropriate times, like some info ater buying a trailer for a Ridgeline, etc. Right now those companies see schools as a source of juicy government contracts, which is basically a guaranteed overpayment for products and services. Even if Pepsi owned and ran education institutions of some kind the involvement of the soft drink/fast food arm of its business would only enter into the realm of their education business to the extent the customers of the education business would tolerate.

It doesn't matter anyway. This will never happen. And not because people do not support this idea, but because it is so far fetched that one can only dream. If this was even a possibilty, there would already be an example somewhere in this country of somebody trying it. Hell, private schools have enough trouble staying afloat now.

Eliminate the "free" option and I'm so sure you'd be surprised by the sudden surge of business in this area that I'd literally be willing to bet my car you're wrong. What you're ignoring is companies also had a problem thriving in the old USSR, not because people didn't want the products and not because the companies weren't capable of delivering them, but because of the debilitating blow a 'free' option delivers to the private market. There's also the compounded problem that the 'free' option isn't free but is paid for with taxes, which means capital getting sucked out of the private sector en masse, used in ways where efficiency is not guaranteed by the profit incentive, and causing countless opportunity costs.

BTW, still disagree about the salary cap/revenue sharing. Until I enetered my "career" job, Every job I had had a maximum pay. From my first job at McDonals's to my last part time job I had doing retail for the st. louis blues. This already exists in many jobs.

Yes, and they do technically cause shortages which is why companies are always hiring new people to replenish their stock. The thing with employees is that they are human and develop and are worth more skillwise over time generally speaking. Once a skilled worker hits the cap of their current position they either stay happy with that pay/job or move up or out of the company. That people often do move up and out makes it not a true price control cap, however a 'shortage' still manifests at the upper margin in that position, which is why a company will have to rehire people, train them and have them work their way up as others did. The shortage is in a sense unseen because out of everyone who left the system after they hit the cap, a percentage would likely still be there if it was not in place to begin with. It's a shifting pattern and manifests to varying degrees over time due to shifting skill sets, the introduction of new workers, etc. The lower the cap on salary, the more pornounced and immediate the effect is likely to be. You can be sure that, should a company cap the salary for any position below the market rate for such a job, they would experience an immediate and profound shortage. While normal caps you see across companies are common, they do technically cause shortages at the margins and could disrupt employee flow/turnover to a certain extent. They have an advantage though in that through competition the upper and lower levels for certain positions have been discovered and are also allowed to flex over time to incorporate changing market conditions. Government schools have no such advantage nor comparable market discovered price to rely on. A dictated salary cap would be just that, a beauracratic decision.

Ignoring the probable political impossibility of getting such caps in place in public education, were you to cap those positions you'd see the same employee flow pattern, and were you to cap the top positions, and what's more important cap them at below the price a similar skill set brought them on the open market, you would very quickly see a shortage and possibly a lack of replenishment from the lower levels over time, because people would gradually learn of the slary/career limitations of entering the field to begin with, and so fewer and fewer people would be available.

[TheSwagger]

If Kerry was still the alternative... absolutely.

[cj1130]

i have to say that i am enjoying reading this thread because i like the honesty

[CDB]

Originally Posted by cj1130

i have to say that i am enjoying reading this thread because i like the honesty

Notice too how the poll here roughly reflects the poll numbers