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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cosmicforce who wrote (3521)	10/24/2000 1:55:52 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10042

I liked your post. I tried to write something similar- but it came out wrong. What I tried to say, is that the public schools are producing something so vital to our national security interest, I did not think that private industry should be trusted. Our schools are producing citizens for our democracy. Without educated citizens who can come together as one people, all other institutions of government are meaningless- since you cannot hold together a society that does not wish to come together.

To: cosmicforce who wrote (3521)	10/24/2000 8:13:54 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 10042

I'm thinking that my children are more like Yosemite than customers of McD's If we have McD's running the schools then where is the impetus to maintain quality for 5 years beyond the current financial quarter? Perhaps children are more like Yosemite then customers of McD's. ( I personally don't think children are that much like either of these things.) However schools are not produceing children they are educateing them. Education services are more like the training and services provided by many private companies then they are like a large plot of land. Here is a concrete example. McD's Educational Division finds that they can have access to the testing material by paying the right price. So to boost their scores for this quarter, they hire a bunch of aids to tutor the students to the test (they have nearly unlimited capital resources relative to government school), so they can "dump" cheap education for a few quarters to get market share. When the scores come in great for a few quarters they let the aids go and fill every square foot with kids coming to the school because of inflated test scores. Plus they serve McD's food in class at all hours. Now, the following quarter test scores fall, but guess what, the competition is gone or is now so weak as to not present a financial danger to McD's. Would you send your children to such a school? If the answer is no then thats one "sale" that McDs would have lost. (If you actually had McDs running schools). If parents have the choice they will pull the children out of schools that are not actually teaching them much. McDs would not be able to put the competition out of business. If they spend tons of money on loss making schools there stockholders will not be pleased nor does McDs have enough money to subsidies enough schools to put the potential competitors out of business. They may have a war competeing for students (expensive high quality at low prices) but other competitors would fight back. Monopolies without government support are hard to maintain and in this case the government would oppose not support a monopoly in the very unlikely event that there was danger of one happening. It's intersting that you pick McDs. I don't particuarly care for their food. But for the market they are involved in it is of high quality. Kids like it (thus meeting market demand), and it is consistant. That is the standard of quality in there market and why they have been so successfull. In the marked for education parents will probably have somewhat different standerds. Since you like grabing companies and asking how I would like them to run education, I ask you who do you think could run a better school system. A group orginized like the US Postal System or a group more like FedEx? FedEx got its market because it has consitantly been a higher quality service. However it could not dump cheap deliveries and put UPS out of business. This kind of market regulation for something as important as schools and our future population is idiotic. Relying on government for something as important as schools that can be provided efficently by private industry is idiotic. Why not fire the military and replace them with mercenaries from Iraq, Asia or Africa? They'd probably work for a fraction of the price that our people would. This has been attempted before with poor success. Maybe it is just that the long-term functions of government should not be privatized. The military is very different then education. Military power is not a service in the same way as education and it is completly central to what a nation state is. If the state does not control the military power within its borders then it ceases to function as a state. Even in this extreme case there have been successful uses of mercenaries as a major component of a nations military. It usually requires a long term relationship between the mercenaries and the those that hire them. But overall its not a good idea to rely on mercenaries. If a company does not provide a good product or service you can go to its competitor. If a mercenary army does not provide good service there may be no you left to go to any cometitor. Normal companies have an incentive to provide good service. (They don't always do this but they do more often then government). Mercenary groups can sometimes feel they can do better by turning to the enemies side. With education there is no orginized group paying to make sure children are not educated. Tim