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Put your imagination to a useful end

It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it.
—Frédéric Bastiat

I wish Statists would apply their vivid and active imaginations to the moral, psychological, and economic benefits that we would reap if we lived in free societies, instead of to their tired, old catastrophic images and doomsday scenarios. Maybe they actually don’t have very active imaginations, which is why they all have the same misconceptions about what an anarcho-capitalist society would be like and continue to repeat boring drivel like “chaos would reign in the streets” and “let them waste in the streets” (see below).

Lew Rockwell wrote a pretty interesting column on the transition from mostly government schooling to all-private schooling in a hypothetical city or county, called What if public schools were abolished? He begins with the libertarian assertion that the main purpose of government schooling is not to impart to children the knowledge and problem-solving skills to improve human society, but to indoctrinate them with the civic religion, i.e., that government and democracy are generally good things and participating in the voting process is our duty (and our right) and most of our leaders in the past were good people who did good things, etc. This is also why it is so hard to even get people to listen to a suggestion of abolishing government schools. He then goes into what the initial stages of a city’s or county’s transition from having mostly government schools to having zero government schools would be like.

He mentions the selling of the school buildings to the highest bidder, the firing of all teachers and administrators, the decrease in property values because “good government schools” are no longer an attractant to new homeowners, the exodus of families from the area, and paucity of cheap schools for poor families.

But then he describes what would emerge from that: more, better, and cheaper options. More secular and more religious schools. The elementary–middle–high school model will be eliminated or at least the lines will be blurred in some schools, being replaced with ability-based grouping. (I’m not convinced that’s an entirely good thing, which is why a marketplace with abundant choices is necessary for a quality product to be provided.) More specialty schools will emerge for specific areas of study (we called them “magnet schools” where I’m from). Private tutoring will blossom. Home-schooling will, too. Entrepreneurs will emerge to provide transportation since no government school buses will operate. “In all areas related to education, profit opportunities would abound,” says Rockwell.

It sounds fantastic. I’d love it. Two things I want to add, though:

A city or county need not abolish all State schools in one fell swoop, though I haven’t thought about what a gradual alternative would look like. I am a big proponent of gradual abolition of most government functions (with immediate abolition of the rest), because the people who would suffer from immediate abolition of huge State institutions are not (entirely) to blame for society being this way and, ideally, would only be inconvenienced by the adjustment to a free and private lifestyle, without adding the insult of leaving them with no private options in the aftermath of an immediate removal of a governmental activity. Also, who would support a reduction in government when it would apparently harm so many people, at least in the short run? We’re trying to convince people of the benefits of freedom, not screw people over in the process of making things right just because they were so wrong to begin with. Also, it is entirely plausible that “the order that should follow reform” would actually come at an earlier date if a slow and gradual reform process were undertaken than if an immediate and complete reform were enacted all at once; since these State institutions have existed for so long and are so entrenched in our society and our psyche, the most good might be done by removing injustices gradually rather than immediately. I strongly believe this is true for most State functions. Whether it is even practical to reform things slowly, lest socialists regain control of local, state, or national governments in the middle of the reforms and undo them before they have a chance to get very far, is another matter…

(Though, as Thomas Sowell says, “No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: ‘But what would you replace it with?’ When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?”)

The second thing I wanted to add, which Lew left out: In the absence of government schooling, the level of personal interest that parents would necessarily take in their children’s education would increase, and this would lead to further improvements in childhood education. It would also contribute to an increase in the strength of familial bonds and family values.

The only reason I chose to blag about this column is because B.K. Marcus posted it to his website, and a stubborn Statist posted a thoroughly stupid comment, whose ignorance and stupidity were disguised by its rare departure from an appalled and hysterical tone.

The comment reads:

That’s not totally true and there are problems either way. In some way’s I support the idea and other ways I don’t. One of the main reasons republicans support the removal of public schools has nothing to do with cost and everything to do with religion. Most private schools are religious. The public schools represent a counter to their ideological indoctrination which many young people would have to be put into if that was the only school available in their area.

The other problem is that poorer families will opt out totally. Why pay for something you can’t afford? That isn’t totally true but at least in America I live in education isn’t seen as very valuable. At the age of 15 many will be forced finished with their schooling and be thrust into the job market by their parents.

I personally also went to a private “religious” school because that is what my family wanted. It was unfortunate because the public schools would have given me far better access to good education. I had to make up a lot in college which made things very difficult.

As long as globalization is running around we are going to need the public schools. People must be educated otherwise they become a burdon to society. Or should we just let them waste in the streets.

There are a million other things we could do away with. Though I do believe teachers unions and other powerful lobby’s are actually causing more harm than good.

So many problems but this one should be down the list. I would just be happy with removing the federal government from forcing federal requirements and letting each state choose how they handle the situation.

“So many problems but this one should be down the list”?! Are you fucking kidding me? This is one of the biggest problems our society—any society!—faces. It is the reason education is so expensive and so ineffective! It is the reason parents don’t hold a greater direct interest in their children’s education! It is the reason children are so gullible and do not question the “civic religion” that the idiots in the media and the professional criminal class feed them! For example, the belief that income taxes are just, and they are necessary, and the rich do not deserve to be rich and should therefore pay even more than they already do; or the belief that the criminal justice system is largely just or is somewhat accountable for its mistakes (or its blatant and intentional crimes against the innocent); or the belief that wars and other foreign military interventions have served to protect or defend our freedoms; or the belief that legality bears some vague or remote semblance to morality; or the belief that money should be taken from people who earned it and given to government schools to educate other people’s children. The State’s near-monopoly on education is one of the very first and foremost problems of the Statist society! Good lord, that person is unintelligent and misinformed.

And about this: “Most private schools are religious. The public schools represent a counter to their ideological indoctrination which many young people would have to be put into if that was the only school available in their area.”

Siiiiiiiiggggghhhhhh. Lew already addressed this, briefly, in his column, but I’m surprised it’s even necessary to address it. I guess it is. Obviously the number and type of options available to people of all income levels would skyrocket in a free market for education, so secular as well as religious private schools would abound.

My last point is regarding the commenter’s statement, “The other problem is that poorer families will opt out totally. Why pay for something you can’t afford? That isn’t totally true but at least in America I live in education isn’t seen as very valuable. At the age of 15 many will be forced finished with their schooling and be thrust into the job market by their parents.”

Let’s assume he’s referring primarily to poor minorities in the inner city. He asserts that in the absence of government schools, they will have no good schooling options because they are so poor, and so they won’t get an education and will have little hope for good career opportunities. Um, this is in contrast to their current situation…how? Their schools are already terrible precisely because they are run by the State and paid for by other people. (Oh, and the State hinders their economic opportunities in lots of other ways that I’m not going into here.)

This person has so little imagination and has examined the issue so poorly that not only is he incapable of imagining a non-governmental solution to an entirely government-caused problem, but he doesn’t realize the government causes the problem to begin with! He doesn’t even realize—or, at least, doesn’t address—the fact that the situation is exactly as bad under the Statist system as he imagines it would be in a free society!

He rightly implies that if you don’t get a good education, you will most likely have a bad job and therefore a bad life, at least socioeconomically. He got an education from a private school and claims, against all statistical evidence and common sense, that he would have done better with a government education and needed to make up material in college. That is either a blatant lie or is 100% the fault of him and his parents, not you or me or the taxpayers or his teachers and administrators.

But I digress. He probably got a decent education, and went to college, and benefited from it, at least more than the poor minorities whose fortunes he laments. His education, and the government schooling of millions of other kids, got them pretty good lives and pretty good jobs, but what else did it do for them?—it indoctrinated them with socialist-Statist notions that scourge all of human society. Some people’s bad home lives, bad neighborhoods, and bad schools ruin their own individual lives by hurting their job prospects and values and work ethic, but the American public’s indoctrination in the “civic religion” ruins millions of other people’s lives, not just their own. Their support for immoral and ineffective State functions like childhood education and their insistence that everyone be forced to participate allow the State to grow and grow in its oppressing and impoverishing activities. Not coincidentally, the people whose lives are not just inconvenienced but ruined by our socialist State are predominantly poor minorities.

So, in conclusion, this ignorant and closed-minded commenter would perfectly exemplify the problem with government education, except (he claims) he went to a private school.