Am I sensing another discussion looming on the merits of completely separating school and state?
Examples that illustrate the sensibility of that proposition abound. This particular incident, and how it is playing out, are to a large degree an example of the underlying built-in structural rot of our "public" schools. By the way they are structured, financed, and run, our schools necessarily subject children to indoctrination--which for many (most?) families is counter to their ethics and life view.
Making it worse, Johnny still can't read in spite of the fact we knew the problem many decades ago (and it has nothing to do with money).
Schools should of course be privately owned and privately run and education should be paid for privately.
If some parents want to send their kids to schools that teach the "John Gibson" version of history, that right is theirs and government exists to secure that right.
If other parents want to send their kids to schools that expose their kids to other versions of history (see, e.g., Frank Nicosia's "My Turn: The Iraq war and Nuremberg" at http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:VhAze009V64J:
www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article%
3FAID%3D/20051123/OPINION/511230328/
1006+nicosia+nuremberg+my+turn&hl=en&
client=firefox-a) that right is theirs and once again government exists to secure that right.
A mock war crimes trial is relatively tame in comparison to the rhetorical garbage that I've been subject to in recent months as a student of the HPCDSB (a school board in Ontario, Canada). From teachers, I've heard open praise of communism, the classification of the U.S. as similar to Nazi Germany, and generally disparaging commments on anything that doesn't fall into the New Left mentality.
There's a big difference between (a) a teacher exposing students to ideas and viewpoints that are different from those promoted by the State and (b) a teacher forcing such ideas on students.
If a teacher exposes students to idea A but welcomes and encourages students to argue in favor of not-A, that strikes me as fine. The problem is that often a teacher with a captive audience will discourage students from arguing in favor of not-A. In which case all that has happened is we've exchanged State indoctrination for indoctrination of another kind.
However, it does strike me as extremely odd that a society that would no doubt cringe at the idea of forcing citizens to financially support State-owned and State-controlled newspapers has no qualms about forcing citizens to financially support State-owned and State-controlled schools.
I ahve great difficulty taking seriously this libertarian fantasy of completely private provision of education until libertarians can provide an example of a developed country with such an approach or an explanation of why such an approach has not emerged in a developed country. Absent this you are falling victim to Demsetz's Nirvana fallacy (albeit in reverse).
MWebb: Can you explain why a desired good like education would not be widely and affordably available in a market-based system? To simply argue that no one does it (which is not absolutely true, as there are mixed systems) is not sufficient. The primary reason it is not already so, is the same as our current descent into the regulatory state--an unfounded and unnecessary belief that someone "must" be in charge. Yet the workings of civil society do not require any top down imposition of rules other than the recognition and protection of property (and the institutions that evolve to manage that, including exclusion of fraud, theft, and violence in our interactions).
mwebb,
So your recommendation is that we should keep shooting ourselves in the foot until the Europeans stop shooting themselves in the foot?
Public schools have failed. But we should wait until the Europeans return education to the market before we do? Exactly why should we wait?
In "Changing the Education Paradigm", Scott McPherson wrote (http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0509e.asp),
The idea of replacing bread lines and empty store shelves with a free market in food production and distribution appeared ridiculous to the Soviets. They simply couldn’t imagine what such a system would look like, and we laughed at their feeble attempts to reform their flawed policies.
So too do most Americans shut their eyes to the possibilities accessible to everyone if government were to get out of the education business.
Just as the Russians couldn’t feed their citizens using a system of collective agriculture, Americans are failing to give every child a chance to live up to his fullest potential by locking children in a system of collective education. Government’s “one size fits all” approach to learning is failing 40 million school kids. The stultifying effects of our public schools can be seen everywhere.
At a home-schooling conference in Maryland last April, author John Taylor Gatto — an award-winning teacher with almost three decades of classroom experience — told his audience that debates over high-stakes testing, sex education, “new math,” and phonics are merely red herrings that deflect us from identifying the real problem: government schools are unfixable.
We don’t have a Department of Sustenance because food is far too important to be controlled by a government bureaucracy. Likewise, we don’t need education central planners of any kind, from the federal Department of Education to state boards of education to local school boards. It’s time we stopped arguing about petty details about how best to run state schools and instead started talking about true educational freedom in America.
Albert Shanker, President of the American Federation of Teachers, said,
It's time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve; it more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy.
Collectivist agriculture in the USSR eventually imploded, but not before a lot of people starved to death. Collectivist education in the US will eventually implode, but why wait? Why force even one more generation of kids to suffer?
Mwebb's argument kind of reminds me of when I was a kid, and my mom wouldn't let me have something, I would reply, "but all the other kids have it"... She would always ask me, "if so-and-so jumped off a bridge, would you?"
To base one's argument simply on "that's the way other people do it", is a convenient way to dismiss any sort of criticism of the system, and, following its logic, would make ANY sort of reform impossible. After all, what change or innovation could ever take place if the fact that "no one else does it" is automatically grounds for rejection?
Further to my previous comment, Scott McPherson has a new article at http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0512d.asp.
(It's a 2-part article; look for part 2 at fff.org tomorrow.)
Here's an excerpt:
Far from being a reflection of market competition, schools are more like a microcosm of Soviet-style society. Kids are grouped according to their class (rich, middle class, or poor; black, white, or Hispanic), ability (see above), age, or geography (see class). They are sorted, placed in a local “workplace” (the school), given a bureaucratically determined set of instructions (teachers, curriculum, subjects), and watched like laboratory mice to see whether they are up to the task of being good workers, citizens, humans.
The mild, timid, and malleable work silently through the system. The natural leaders are given reign over the others. The nonconformists are punished, broken down, and even exiled (behavior-modifying drugs, “special-ed” classes, demerits, detention, or suspension).
Among the “good” students — those who test well, sit still, and behave themselves — the leaders are like members of the Party: they get the nice bureaucratic jobs (“teacher’s assistant,” “hall monitor,” et cetera), or maybe even a position in the Politburo (student government). The mild, timid, and malleable are the worker bees: the average student who simply does his time, wasting away years of his life doing other people’s bidding to stay out of trouble and get by; the kind of people who made up the bulk of the “noble” proletariat in Marx’s socialist nightmare — factory workers, collective farmers, soldiers, schoolteachers — and who can be found staffing “cubicle farms” in today’s corporate state.
The “bad” students — the ones who fail their tests, reject rote learning, bristle with energy for the wider world, dislike the subject matter, or learn through doing rather than study — are negatively labeled, segregated, drugged, shamed, and silenced. Their inability — through ignorance, lack of desire, or whatever — to please the administration means a 12-year sentence of misery, fear, confusion, shame, insecurity, and, ultimately, a feeling that the wider world is not for them after all, not theirs for the taking. That is for the “good” students — everyone tells them so.
No student, like the Soviet citizen, is ever asked what he would like to do with his time. He’s told. The mighty state has already decided what he should be doing before he was even born.
The collectivist system of education has been an utter failure. Why preserve it just because other countries refuse to acknowledge the obvious?
Previous comment was mine. Not sure why it came out as Anonymous.
Hmm the "collectivist state education system" has been an utter failure. Your rhetoric is a bit overblown. It is perhaps just conincidence that the advent of universal public education coincides with explosions in economic properity, increases in equality etc, however, I doubt it.
In resposne to the assertion that I am making the "everyone else is doing it argument, you are missing the point. The question is if "privately funded public education isa good idea why has no developed country tried it with success." A similar charge can be levelled against communism, if its sucha good idea why doesn't it have success (and where tis tried result in failure). A few of you seem to have taken up a varient of the standard Marxist resposne, that communism doesn't work because of a plot by the evil capitalists (although of course you are substituting the phrase "evil regulatory state" for evil capitalists). This is an invalid resposne by Marxists and an invalid repsosne Libertarians.
Finally, as to why we don't see private provision of education, I do find this a puzzle. however, I am not willing to make a conspiracy argument. Again I will appeal to one of the greatest papers in 20th century economics, Coase's 1937 Paper on the firm. Basically, Coase asked the question, if free markets are so good why is so much of our production organized as command and control (and by this he meant in firms rather than everyone being a free agent contractor). Its a very puzzling question, and his answer is that free agent contractors incur transaction costs that firms can help eliminate. This apper also repersents the proper way to engage in theorizing. Rather than say "theory says free markets are better therefore we should disolve firms, Coase said, theory indicates free markets are better, yet we have firms, what is theory missing. The same principle should be applied here. If you still want to appeal to conspiracy theories, then you need to provide an explanation of what motivates the conspiracy and what keep it from coming apart (since a basic problem with conspiracies is that as they grow in size the incentive to defect increases...).
mwebb,
If public schools are not a failure, why do so many families pay for private school--after they've paid their public-school taxes? Why do so many families homeschool?
If paying school taxes was completely voluntary, would more or fewer families choose to homeschool or send their kids to private school?
If you want government-controlled schools, you can have them. Just don't force the rest of us to pay for them. The government schools, if they are allowed to survive, should be run like the Post Office: if you use it, you pay for it. All of it.
You ask, if "privately funded public education is a good idea why has no developed country tried it with success"? Just to give you one example, the U. S. tried privately funded education and it worked just fine: literacy levels were higher in the U. S. before the arrival of government-financed and government-controlled schools than they are now!
Government schools were not introduced to correct a failure in the education market because no such failure existed.
If you search on the web for "public schools history" you'll discover why we have public schools in America. For instance, at http://www.fff.org/freedom/0795n.asp you'll discover this:
Early in our history, education was mainly a private, free-market activity — no compulsory attendance laws, and no school taxes. That system produced the most literate, independent-thinking, self-reliant people in history.
But not everyone was satisfied with the American way of doing things. According to John Taylor Gatto, the New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991:
A small number of very passionate American ideological leaders visited Prussia in the first half of the 19th century; fell in love with the order, obedience and efficiency of its education system; and campaigned relentlessly thereafter to bring the Prussian vision to these shores.
They finally succeeded early in the 20th century.
Just as the Prussian system was intended to unify Germany, the American educators' goal was to create a national culture out of the disparate subcultures that comprised the country in that period. (Catholic immigrants were a prominent target.) "To do that," writes Gatto, "children would have to be removed from their parents and from inappropriate cultural influences."
The modern public school curriculum comes right out of the Prussian system. Gatto says the American educationists imported three major ideas from Prussia. The first was that the purpose of state schooling was not intellectual training but the conditioning of children "to obedience, subordination and collective life." Second, whole ideas were broken into fragmented "subjects," and school days were divided into fixed periods "so that self-motivation to learn would be muted by ceaseless interruptions." Third, the state was posited as the true parent of the children.
Over the years, various fads have seized the education bureaucrats of America, but those fads have been variations on a theme: The public schools are intended to create complacent "good citizens" — not independent thinkers — because political leaders do not like boat-rockers who question things too closely. They prefer citizens who pay their taxes on time and leave them alone to chart the course of the nation. The growth in government power since the advent of public schools is hard to ignore.
(Before you leap, remember: name-calling is not a valid argument.)
It is perhaps just conincidence that the advent of universal public education coincides with explosions in economic properity, increases in equality etc, however, I doubt it.
Correlation doesn't prove causation. And one could point out that since the full onset of government schooling, illetracy levels have tripled for blacks and doubled for whites...but you'd probably dismiss that as a coincidence, wouldn't you?
The question is if "privately funded public education isa good idea why has no developed country tried it with success."
Ok, then. Tell me where a developed country has tried it and was a prven failure, and I'd be happy to give you a post mortem.
But if you're question is "why hasn't any developed country tried it", there are many answers. One is that most education "reformers" that agitated for compulsory schooling were held under the sway of collectivist ideologies. The purpose of government schooling was to create compliant and moldable worker/consumer drones would be good little sheep in the new industrial age. Now...one can argue that such a program was a good idea at the time...(that's an entirely different discussion)....the fact is, our economic circumstances are radically different than they were 150 years ago...yet we still educate our children on a model that was built for a pre-industrial, agrarian society. In this day and age, when change is the only constant, and innovation is the norm, we need to have an educational system that is aggressive and innovative...which is what a free market is best suited to provide.
A second, and more insidious reason is that there is a benefit to the State to control what people think.... If you can get kids at an early age, and mold their young minds in accordance with certain political principles, the State can maintain its mastery over the people. Independent thinkers have always been viewed as a threat by established powers.
Finally, as to why we don't see private provision of education, I do find this a puzzle.... Basically, Coase asked the question, if free markets are so good why is so much of our production organized as command and control (and by this he meant in firms rather than everyone being a free agent contractor).
This one is simple... as government moves into a certain area, it crowds out private initiative. After all, if YOU were a provider of a good or service, and had to charge for what you do in order to stay in business, how successful would you be against a competitor who can, literally, give away its product for free...(and make you pay the costs, to boot)?
Rather than say "theory says free markets are better therefore we should disolve firms, Coase said, theory indicates free markets are better, yet we have firms, what is theory missing.
This is non-sensical. The market exists because of individual actors (ie. "firms"). Without firms there would be no market.
If you still want to appeal to conspiracy theories, then you need to provide an explanation of what motivates the conspiracy and what keep it from coming apart
Simple...government schooling is a welfare program, meant to buy off opposition. If you are a parent, and you are faced with the choice to pay for your kids education, or have a politician provide one for free (or, rather, at your neighbor's expense)...which would you conclude is in your self-interest? Hmmm... pay for it myself, or make someone else pay?
Since most people in society labor under the impression that "we" are the government...they don't rationalize political action as extortion. And furthermore, there is a common perception by most people that if you are against government doing something...let's say, providing education....then youmust be against education, per se. That is a powerful, yet completely slanderous, critcism to overcome.
MWebb: Coase has confounded the difference between economic actors and an economy. The firm is essentially an economic person which acts within a market economy. As for why firms exist, we might well ask why our hands are attached to our arms. Some of what we do is improved greatly by using our hands--under the direction of our brains--as we interact within the market. However, without the market setting, the firm is no longer effective economically (in such circumstances it usually becomes an agent of the state, which is something else entirely).
The reason communism fails is built-in. Its premises are false and counter to the facts of reality. It is structurally doomed to failure. Our nationalized collective educational system suffers the same structural defects and is also doomed to failure no matter what amount of money is poured into it.
As for our economic properity and liberty, most occurred prior to the adoption of universal public education and during its initial decades. Indeed, we might even admit that in its honeymoon period such education was helpful in presenting American values to the millions of immigrants. But, for the last 60 years or so, the internal philosophical defects of government monopoly schooling have been increasingly exuding the structural rot inherent in the design.
The single most important resource on this earth is the human mind. Our very existence depends upon it. Education is too important to entrust to the state. Liberty is not just a physical condition--minds must have it as well.
LJ,
You wrote,
A second, and more insidious reason is that there is a benefit to the State to control what people think.... If you can get kids at an early age, and mold their young minds in accordance with certain political principles, the State can maintain its mastery over the people. Independent thinkers have always been viewed as a threat by established powers.
For instance, there are certain elements in our society that benefit greatly from the State's indoctrination of children in the religion of democracy. For example, the teachers' unions benefit when children, indoctrinated in the religion of democracy, grow up into adults who then accept, in a knee-jerk fashion, their "responsibility" to "support the public schools" because by doing so they "support our democratic heritage".
Poppycock! The purpose of government is to protect individual rights--to protect individual liberty. The purpose of government has nothing to do with democracy. At best, democracy is a very imperfect means for achieving and securing the ends of government: individual rights and individual liberty.
Voting is not liberty. Democracy is not liberty. In fact, democracy often reduces liberty or extinguishes it completely.
If you're interested in reading more about the issue of liberty vs. democracy, try Hans-Hermann Hoppe's "Democracy: The God That Failed" (http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe4.html or Issue 75 of Chris Leithner's "The Leithner Letter" (http://www.leithner.com.au/newsletter/).
Why would people chose private education or to home school? Perhaps, because they want their child to have a specific type of education. For example, I wills end my children to Cahtolic schools despite living in Fairfax County whose schools are generally acknowledged among the best in the country. In other words choosing private schools does not per se indicate that they are failing.
With regard to the question of evidence that it is failed, read page 7 of Acemogolu's working paper http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/..._pdf.php?
id=583 . There is some evidence that Chile and New Zealand, which have moved toward more marketish types of education have seen significant costs. I would also note that Acemogulu and Kremer are among the top youngish economists alive today.
With regard to the historical examples, I'm familiar with those arguments, and basically it strikes me as bad history. I simply don't believe that there was near 100% literacy in the US in the early 1800's (for one thing one is certainly excluding slaves for whom literacy was illegal).
Al I cannot really respond to your invective against Coase. I would simply note that he is regarded as one of the luminaries of free market economics (and 1992 Nobel winner). He is asking very improtant and interesting questions rather than simply polemicizing.
Anonymous (mwebb?):
You write,
Why would people chose private education or to home school? Perhaps, because they want their child to have a specific type of education. For example, I wills end my children to Cahtolic schools despite living in Fairfax County whose schools are generally acknowledged among the best in the country. In other words choosing private schools does not per se indicate that they are failing.
Well, the government schools have in fact failed because they have failed to provide what the consumers want. And not just those consumers who homeschool or send their kids to private schools. I'm going to let you in on a very big secret. But don't tell anyone, OK? Not only do government schools fail to provide what the homeschool / private school crowd wants, but government schools also fail to provide what a lot of parents of public school kids want! But don't take my word for it! Ask a random sample of public-school parents down there in Fairfax Co. and see for yourself!
With regard to the historical examples, I'm familiar with those arguments, and basically it strikes me as bad history. I simply don't believe that there was near 100% literacy in the US in the early 1800's (for one thing one is certainly excluding slaves for whom literacy was illegal).
Well, then, how about some good histories to drive out the bad?
yes anon is me
Jimmo you seem to ahve an aversion to actual research. From googling "Satisfaction with Faifax Schools"
http://www.fcps.edu/ss/ABA/
Paren...ntSurvey_05.pdf
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp...5110800484.html
AND DOD (also public) schools
http://www.dodea.edu/profiles/sy...tem/
ddess00.pdf
mwebb,
Perhaps there is a small number of counties in the U. S. where all the parents are completely satisfied with the government schools, "where all the children are above average", etc. What does that prove?
At the end of the day, it all boils down to this: you accept the compulsory attendance laws and the coercive taxes, I don't.
I don't accept them because individual rights are more important to me than any arguments based on "our precious democratic heritage" or any argument that "government schools have positive externalities--i.e., that education is a public good--and thus must be paid for publicly".
The advantage of my position is that to act on my belief that individual rights are paramount, I don't have to force you at gunpoint to agree with me. (As H. L. Mencken said, "I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.") To act in harmony with my belief, I don't have to force you to do anything.
On the other hand, to act on your belief that government education must be paid for by coercive taxes, you must violate my individual rights by forcing me at gunpoint to pay the school tax (or by having the government do the forcing).
So the difference between us boils down to the difference between non-violence and violence, between liberty and coercion. No number of references to Coase (1937) or MIT working papers can obscure this difference.
I'm happy to be on the side of non-violence and liberty.
or the side of free riding and taking advanatage of others. Isn't overblown rhetoric fun (and pointless...)
note how when inconvenient facts get in the way Jimmo changes the terms of debate...
My two kids have homeschooled, at considerable financial cost to our family (to homeschool, one parent in effect has to stay out of the job market). On top of the costs of homeschooling, each year we pay thousands of dollars in property taxes to pay for the government schooling of other people's children, some of whom come from families that are much, much better off financially than our family is. Who's the free rider? Who's taking advantage of whom?
From the beginning, this debate has been about freedom. Not free riders. Not externalities. Not public goods. Not Coase's "Theory Of The Firm". Not MIT working papers. Not satisfaction surveys in Fairfax County. From the beginning, the central idea of this debate has been freedom. Just re-read CapFree's original post:
The debate has focused on whether the teacher's actions are appropriate in the public classroom setting. This is certainly the wrong focus. Can we ever expect unanimity on what topics should be approached, how subjects should be taught, or how rules should be enforced? Any reasonable person would have to admit that short of teaching absolutely nothing at all, such unanimity is unattainable. Regardless of which side is taught, parents and students will scream 'indoctrination!' This is why parents should be free to choose the type of education that is suitable for their children. This is why the costs of education should be borne solely by those who choose it, so that they can rank their preferences in order of importance and pay for the quality and kind of education they deem appropriate. Trying to create a one-size-fits-all public education system inevitably becomes a struggle to provide an education that no one absolutely hates, rather than an education that people truly love. In the end, we've created a public school system that fits no one [emphasis added].
As I said, I'm happy to be on the side of non-violence and liberty.
Evidently, you are happy to be on the side of violence and coercion. Pity.
As a fitting coda to this discussion, Jacob Hornberger has a nice post on this subject today (15 March 2006) at http://www.fff.org/blog/jghindex.asp.
Excerpt:
The core of the problem is that government runs the educational system. If Americans instead embraced educational liberty, schools would be free to run their operations the way they wanted, and consumers (i.e., families) would have the right to educate their children in any way they chose.
So in a free-market educational system, if a school told Bennish he couldn’t make critical comments about the government or about public officials, Bennish could either comply or go find a job in a school that permitted him to make such comments. Parents who liked their children to be exposed to such provocative perspectives, or not, would choose accordingly.
If Americans were to embrace educational freedom by separating school and state (that is, by ending all government involvement in education), all the political/constitutional controversies that currently bedevil the government school system would evaporate. Just as they did in the religious arena when Americans embraced religious liberty by separating church and state. [emphasis added]
Liberty. Free. Right. Free-Market. Freedom. Liberty. That's what this discussion is all about.
but u are a free rider...
Define "free rider".
Cancel that. I really don't care what you mean by "free rider".
Cheers,
JTG
or the side of free riding and taking advanatage of others. Isn't overblown rhetoric fun (and pointless...)
Yes...but as we discussed before, ANY action which one takes to produce something of value will have "free riders". I could invent a new super computer that performs a million times faster than anything we have had to date...and I could sell it to one person..say, Jimmo...and the rest of society will benefit, because as Jimmo uses it in his business, the increased productivity will lower the costs to society asd it produces various other goods and services.
There is no such thing as a free rider....
note how when inconvenient facts get in the way Jimmo changes the terms of debate...
Actually, you are the one changing the terms of the debate.
MWebb: You said, "In other words choosing private schools does not per se indicate that they are failing."
But, your actual choice indicates a preference based upon the public school's *failing* in some respect compared with the private school.
As for Coase, "Al I cannot really respond to your invective against Coase. I would simply note that he is regarded as one of the luminaries of free market economics (and 1992 Nobel winner). He is asking very improtant and interesting questions rather than simply polemicizing."
Invective? I simply pointed out a problem with that specific notion of the "firm" as an economic organizational model if we were to contemplate extending it to a national economy. The "firm" is actually an outgrowth of the division of labor applied to complex tasks for a specific outcome or product. It works because it operates within a market system and is subject to the same market forces (on inputs and outputs) as are individuals. IMO there are upper limits on the span of control possible in any large organization. When a firm's activities exhibit diminishing (or even negative) results, it is their presence in the market that makes those not only visible, but intolerable to continue.
Government, on the other hand, is quite capable of growing beyond those limits and can sustain diminishing and even negative results in some of its activities for extended periods of many decades. We have only to look closely at our own government to find the overlapping, ineffective, and wasteful programs that have continued way beyond any reasonable point. Indeed, since government is a political thing (and not an economic "firm") it can pursue self-destructive aims for amazingly long periods.
Anyone who has been following this discussion with interest might also be interested in E. G. West's article, "Education Without The State" (http://www.ncl.ac.uk/egwest/pdfs/Education%
20without%20the%20state.pdf).
Excerpt:
More sophisticated observers in the economic school of public choice are now viewing democracy as an institution operated largely by special interest groups, vote-maximising politicians and self-seeking bureaucracies, which do not represent the poor. Many scholars now conclude that the eventual dominant objective of government school systems is not to promote the greatest happiness of parents or children, or the most efficient schooling, but to transfer wealth to educators. In line with this view, education illustrates, indeed, one of the most glaring examples of rent-seeking--the extraction of privileges from government--that the world has ever seen.
LJ: You don't undertsand the definition of free riding. Go look it up in a decent undergrad textbook. In your example there is nothing preventing the benefits from being internalized hence no free riders.
AL: firms can and do grow too large (look at the US auto industry). Therefore I still misunderstand your critique of Coase.
Jimmo: The scholarly work that you describe is called "public choice." I woudl say particualrly with regard to education the results are mixed as to whether governemnt provision makes sense. If you go back and read the paper I cited above there are actually some intirguing implications as to why in some instances it makes sense to have government control the means of production. Basically in certain instances high powered incentives can cause agents to send inappropriate signals to game the system (in very broad terms think Enron). This of course has to be balanced with the fact that because of its coercive power government can do nasty things. You amy beleive that the coercive power of the govenrment is so scary and so evil that it should be everywhere and always eliminated. There are places where this has occured, Somalia, Eastern Congo... Thing is they don't seem to be very nice places. I'd be interested in knowing of any places with little or no governemnt that are nice places...
You amy [sic] beleive [sic] that the coercive power of the govenrment [sic] is so scary and so evil that it should be everywhere and always eliminated.
I'd settle for strictly limiting the power of government to securing individual rights.
But act today: tomorrow I could be an anarcho-capitalist!
And what mechanisms would you use to "strictly limit the govenrment to securing 'individual rights" and which specific rights would you secure?
And what mechanisms would you use to "strictly limit the govenrment to securing 'individual rights"
Inter alia, I'd restore the Republic by restoring the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and many of the other Amendments (but certainly not the 16th or 17th) and I'd ditch democracy, socialism, the Welfare/Warfare State and the Empire. And, to keep the federal government firmly in check, I'd restore the right of each State to secede from the United States. How's that for a starter?
which specific rights would you secure?
All of them!
Keep in mind that the Constitution enumerates the powers of the government, it does not enumerate the rights of the citizens. I.e., the number of individual rights is indefinite if not infinite and thus is much, much larger than the small number of individual rights explicitly mentioned in the Bill of Rights. Also keep in mind that governments and Bills of Rights do not grant rights. Individual rights pre-exist governments, which, as Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, "are instituted among men" "to secure these rights".
The only way to achieve all this is to have a citizenry that understands capitalism, freedom, individual rights (and the difference between negative rights and positive "rights"), government power, the purpose of government, and the evils of democracy, socialism, the Welfare/Warfare State, Empire, etc.
Can government schools, which are democratic, socialist, and coercive in nature--and which therefore trample on individual rights--produce such a citizenry? I don't think so! (You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear!) Talk to a random sample of government-school students and ask them, e.g., to distinguish between negative rights and positive "rights". Heck: ask their teachers!
Hmm many platitudes yet no real answers... interesting...
And how do you deal with conflicting rights since you are going to "secure all of them."
mwebb,
There are (and can be) no conflicts among real (i.e., negative or Lockean) rights.
mwebb,
Going back a few exchanges, you wrote,
Jimmo: The scholarly work that you describe is called "public choice."
I'm familiar with pubic choice, Buchanan and Tullock, and so forth.
If you look at my preceding comment closely, you'll see that I was quoting E. G. West, who was making an explicit reference to public choice theory.
Your right to life conflicts with my right to property.
mwebb,
How?
You don't undertsand the definition of free riding. Go look it up in a decent undergrad textbook. In your example there is nothing preventing the benefits from being internalized hence no free riders.
No.. I understand what the academic definition of the term is saying. My point is, that I reject the concept altogether. Any action you take to produce something valuable, inevitable benefits all of society in some fashion, so it is non-sensical to talk of free riders.
Your right to life conflicts with my right to property.
Yes...as Jim said, how?
Unless you are asserting that acquiring property can only be done by killing people, I can't fathom how there could be any conflict.
I own an apiary you are deathly allergic to bees...
to clarify you live next door to me, I own an apiarary you are deathly allergic to bees
mwebb,
Sorry. I don't see the conflict. If I'm allergic to bees I simply stay away from your property.
(I think you're really stretching on this one!)
To return to CapFree's original post, let me ask, does there exist a right to education?
but my bees fly onto your property thereby endangering you. Conflict of rights.
MWebb: you said, "AL: firms can and do grow too large (look at the US auto industry). Therefore I still misunderstand your critique of Coase."
Of course firms overextend their span of control and their ability to perform effectively. It happens all the time. But, it happens in the marketplace which insures consequences as the US automakers very well know. Size, however, is not the only contributor to the US automakers' problems--other things are adding cost they are finding difficult to reduce.
My critique may be less of Coase's inquiry per se than it is of the notion some take from it--that the "command and control" structure of a firm is an appropriate model for an economy or even segments of an economy. The success of a structure such as a firm depends on division of labor, focus of effort, economies of scale, and a market environment for inputs and outputs. It also depends on the efficacy with which it is managed, which diminishes with size. It is also interesting to note that there is no single model of a firm, but rather a whole spectrum of possible structures with various directions and degress of integration.
I don't think market theory precludes cooperative effort or the variety of forms that might take.
You also said, "You [Jimmo] amy beleive that the coercive power of the govenrment is so scary and so evil that it should be everywhere and always eliminated. There are places where this has occured, Somalia, Eastern Congo... Thing is they don't seem to be very nice places"
The point is not to eliminate government. That is anarchy, which generally degrades into a state of continuous tribal warfare. Government's necessary purpose is to protect individual rights by banishing (or providing consequences for) theft, fraud, and violence in individual interactions. Such government must operate by objective principles; rule of law not men. There is essentially no role for government in the conduct of economic affairs beyond its purpose of securing our rights. The general welfare means 100%, not rent-seeking or special privileges supported by government coercion. Commerce means the liberty to interact to exchange without government interference (tarifs etc).
If you wish to raise bees on your property, that is no problem. If the next door neighbor has the special circumstances of being allergic, then he might wish to negotiate with you up to whatever point he finds it worthwhile, or he can relocate, or he can erect netting, or he can keep adreniline close by, take his chances, and sue if attacked. There are no conflicts in rights. There are no guaranteed outcomes in our pursuit of happiness. There is no such thing as rights to education, medical care, retirement, or even livelihood; all that is for our pursuit.
It is not that government is someway evil. It is not. Government is necessary. But, its role is properly a quite restricted one. The power imbued in government blinds and corrupts which is why it must be made subservient to the rights of individuals.
No conflict at all. You have no right to allow your bees to enter my property without my permission. Nor do you have a right to allow your doberman to enter my property without my permission.
But let's turn the discussion away from bees and back to education, which is the central theme of this thread.
Is there a right to education? Any thoughts on that?
yes
mwebb,
Very pithy of you!
But the answer is, there is no real (natural, Lockean, or negative) right to education, healthcare, social security, etc. If these are "rights" they are welfare or positive "rights", not real rights. Moreover, when people use government to enforce these "rights" they can do so only by violating the real rights of others. For instance, when people use government to enforce one person's "right" to education, they can do so only by violating (through coercive taxation) other people's real rights to their property. I.e., welfare "rights" can only be enforced by violating the non-agression principle.
Have we come full circle yet?
Come on, mwebb, 'fess up: you work for the NEA, don't you? 
So you don't favor all rights only one's which you consider "real".
Nope don't work for the NEA. I'm an economist in private practice focusing on the energy industry.
mwebb,
Sorry about the NEA dig. It's Friday, it's been a long week, . . . .
You're right: I do not consider welfare rights (positive rights) to be real rights. The only rights I consider to be real are natural rights (Lockean rights or negative rights).
Sheldon Richman's 2001 book, "Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State" (ISBN: 1890687022, 2001), is reviewed by Edward W. Younkins of Le Quebecois Libre (http://www.quebecoislibre.org).
Here's an excerpt (http://www.fff.org/aboutUs/press/younkins.asp):
The author convincingly points out the absurdity of the welfare rights idea itself. Welfare rights are counterfeit or illegitimate rights. Richman explains that for a right to be authentic it must be capable of being exercised without anyone's positive action. To respect a person's legitimate and moral natural (or negative) rights, all that others need to do is to abstain from interfering in that person's pursuit of his own happiness. On the other hand, a positive or welfare right to products and services implies the right to compel others to provide them. To be a legitimate right, it must be possible for all persons to exercise the claimed right simultaneously without logical contradiction. Whenever a right claimed by an individual imposes an obligation on another to perform a positive action, it is impossible for the alleged right to be exercised by each simultaneously without logical contradiction.
to clarify you live next door to me, I own an apiarary you are deathly allergic to bees
Yeah... so? I could own a gun store and you could be deathly allergic to bullets....big deal.
There is no conflict such as you describe... The fact that you own an apiarary doesn't rob me of my life. I can live while at the same time you can own your property.
So...where's the conflict?
but my bees fly onto your property thereby endangering you. Conflict of rights.
Then that is a violation of MY property... A right you do not have. Your rights end at your property line.
I'm still looking for a conflict...
Re: "real" rights, positive vs. negative rights...
I think, webb, you need to ask yourself a simple question... If a "right" in question imposes a duty (beyond simply not infringing on that right) on someone else, then it is not a right.
If one has a right to an education, then by definition, someone else has a duty to provide it. And as you ask government to enforce this right, you ask that someone else be forced to provide it.
That, my friend, is slavery.
Enslaving others is not a right.
The same holds true for health care. If you have a "right" to health care, then someone...a doctor or a nurse...should be forced to provide it to you. So maybe you don't want to force the doctor or a nurse...so you ask the government to force other people to surrender a part of their income so that you can hire a doctor or nurse.
Part of a persons labor is stolen from them for someone else's purpose.
That is still slavery.
What you veiw as "rights" are simply alternative forms of slavery.
MWebb: "I'm an economist in private practice focusing on the energy industry"
Wonderful. Watched some testimony by energy company CEOs today regarding mergers and acquisitions. Presumably someone thinks mergers are causing high prices.
This is an issue that properly is outside the realm of the federal government. There is literally nothing that the bureacrats can do that will improve the energy industry other than let it do its work.
You also said,"So you [Jimmo] don't favor all rights only one's which you consider "real".
Here is some definition of rights that you may find helpful, certainly it will help put some of the comments here into context (even if brief):
"Rights are a moral concept--the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding his [the individual's] relationship with others--the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context--the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law" [Ayn Rand. Virtue of Selfishness. "Man's Rights" p.92]
And further... "A right is a sanction to independent action; the opposite of acting by right is acting by permission. . . . A right is a perogative that cannot be morally infringed or alienated." [Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, "Government" p.351]
Politics rests upon Ethics, which in turn arises out of metaphysics and epistomology. The rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness are the only rights rooted in philosophical politics. "A man's rights impose no duties on others, but only a negative obligation: others may not properly violate his rights." [Ayn Rand, Virtue of Selfisness, "Man's Rights" p.94]
Now that we've seen what Richman, Rand, and Peikoff have to say about rights, is it time to consult with P. J. O'Rourke?
Here's an excerpt from his book, "Eat The Rich: A Treatise On Economics":
The first 9 Commandments concern theological principles and social law. Fair enough, but then there's the 10th Commandment: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour's."
Here are God's basic rules about how we should live, a very brief list of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts, and right at the end of the list is, "Don't envy your buddy's cow."
What is it doing there? Why would God, with just 10 things to tell Moses, choose as one of them, jealousy about the livestock next door? And yet, think about how important to the well-being of a community this Commandment is. If you want a donkey, a pot roast, a cleaning lady, don't bitch about what the people across the street have. GO GET YOUR OWN.
Well, that about wraps it up. If you want an education for your kids, go out and earn the money to pay for it. If you feel badly for the poor kid next door, go out and earn a little extra money so you can voluntarily help pay for his education, too. But only if you want to. If in fact you do help, you can feel good about yourself for doing so. Besides, the kid you help will learn the difference between charity freely given and a government "entitlement" (welfare), which first had to be taken away from some other human being at the point of a gun. When he grows up and has a little left over after paying for his own kids' education, chances are he'll remember your kind, charitable act and find some other poor kid who needs some generous adult to help pay for his education. It's all voluntary. It's all real charity. It's all beautiful. It's all real: one human being voluntarily helping another, without a coercive government in between, violating the rights of one and giving an "entitlement" to another.
If you find you can't earn enough to pay for your kids' education, ask your neighbors, friends, and family for help. But ask, don't steal. And don't get the government to steal for you.
That's what freedom and rights are all about. YOU--not the state--get to choose what you do with your life and your property, as long of course as you don't violate the rights of others.
But leave your buddy's cow alone. You have no right to steal it, not even to pay for the education of the poor kid next door. The commandment is, "Thou Shalt Not Steal", it is not "Thou Shalt Not Steal Unless Thou Findeth Thineself In The Midst Of A Simple Majority, In Which Case Thou Mayest Plunder With Abandon".
hmm now that we are actually using precise clear definitions this is getting interesting. OK to return to my apiary example, would you suggest that I have an obligation to erect large nets around my hives to prevent my bees from violating someone's property (since its presumably impossible to train bees). What if rather than being allergic to bees my bees increase the yield in your orchard. Can I come demand money for the service my property provided to your property?
I still think your assertion that rights cannot conflict is naive. For example, imagine that you are walking along a common easement (i.e. not your property not my property) and my bee comes and stings you. It seems my right to property has violated your right to life.
would you suggest that I have an obligation to erect large nets around my hives to prevent my bees from violating someone's property
I would suggest that you could do whatever you damn well please, so long as you don't infringe upon my property. If that requires you to put up giant nets, then so be it. If you did not take proper precautions, then I am entitled to sue you for damages.
I don't see how that creates a conflict between my rights and yours. If you are asserting that the mere existence of certain responsibilities that you have regarding the abstention from violating my property constitutes a "conflict", then you are grossly distorting the concept beyond any rational ability to respond. Since you have no "right" to violate my property, there is no conflict in the first place.
What if rather than being allergic to bees my bees increase the yield in your orchard. Can I come demand money for the service my property provided to your property?
You can certainly come and try, but absent some prior contractual agreement, I don't see what basis you would have to collect.
Besides...if a bee apiary really did help my orchards to some measureable degree, then I might have the incentive to maintain a small one on my own property.
(i.e. not your property not my property)
Therein, lies the problem. Whenever property rights are not defined, then we do encounter conflict....which is the common problem with all forms of "public" property....and which is why the political realm is the only area where people truly fight over policy.
If one was on private property, then all one needs to do solve this dilemman is to consult the terms of property. It's just as simple as that.
It seems my right to property has violated your right to life.
No. Because as I explained, your right to property ends at your property line. You have no right to use your property to violate the property of others (ie. one's life is one's property).
Really, webb...this is a very simple concept. Either you're toying with us, or you really are not that bright.
Geez, Mwebb, how often must you rehash points that you’ve made previously that I have rebutted (to which you have provided no counter-rebuttals)? I refer to your | 03.16.06 - 12:47 pm | post on this page in which you mention the Somalia example again:
“There are places where this has occured, Somalia, Eastern Congo... Thing is they don't seem to be very nice places. I'd be interested in knowing of any places with little or no governemnt that are nice places...”
That bears a rather striking resemblance to your | 08.16.05 - 11:40 am | comment in Capital Freedom’s 08-16-05 post, “Redefining Moral Obligations”, in which you state over seven months ago the following:
“CF if you find taxes so offensive why don't you taxes Tiebots suggestion and go to a country that does not have taxes. Somalia presents a good candidate. BAsically no taxes no governments.”
I responded at that time to that fallacious—even if “sarcastic” and “empirical”—point as you later state that it is, in my | 08.19.05 - 11:12 pm | post in “Redefining Moral Obligations”. To summarize, I basically stated that you implicitly use the non causa pro causa fallacy, a type of false cause fallacy—this particular one involves correlating events, conditions, etc. One who uses the fallacy concludes that in a particular such correlation, one causes the other merely because they correlate.
In your most recent update above, you imply that little or no government causes the undesirable conditions in places like Somalia and Eastern Congo. Again, as I stated seven months ago: “The poor conditions in countries like Somalia did not occur because free-market and libertarian thinkers successfully implemented their deliberate and systematic visions for small governments and reduced tax burdens in the firm mold of the rule-of-law.” Roughly, it is as if you are saying, “implementing a small government framework will result in conditions like those in Somalia, and since we don’t want those conditions in the United States, we don’t want to implement a small government framework in the United States.”
You may respond by saying that you only meant to make an empirical observation, not imply what I think you implied. In other words, you may claim that I am reading too much into your comment. However, what other reason would you have for making it other than to dissuade others from thinking that scaling down our government, particularly in the area of education, would be a good thing by implying, if only implicitly, that Somali conditions will result?
Government needs to be scaled down in this country so that it only secures negative rights (as if “positive rights” is even a valid concept), such as the ones in the Bill of Rights. To the extent that the government does more than secure and protect individual, negative rights is the extent to which it is too large. In no way will restricting government power to the security and protection of negative rights lead to the United States devolving to Somali-like conditions.
The problem with allowing government the power to go beyond just securing negative rights is that it's tough to know where to draw the line after that. And it's easy for government to quickly assume absolute or near-absolute power (can you say, "Patriot Act"?).
This reminds of a 1994 book by R. J. Rummel, "Death By Government". In a 1994 review of this book, the Future of Freedom Foundation's Richard M. Eberling wrote (http://www.fff.org/freedom/1094f.asp),
How many people, in fact, have been killed by government violence in the 20th century? Not deaths in wars and civil wars among military combatants, but mass murder of civilians and innocent victims with either the approval or planning of governments — the intentional killings of their own subjects and citizens or people under their political control? The answer is: 169,198,000. If the deaths of military combatants are added to this figure, governments have killed 203,000,000 in the 20th century.
The numbers boggle the mind! No wonder so many thoughtful people throughout history have come to the conclusion that government must be limited!
Which was worse: Somalia, Congo, Nazi Germany (21 million killed), or the Soviet Union (62 million killed)?
Further to the point of my previous post, see Butler Shaffer's review of "V For Vendetta" at http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/
shaffer132.html.
MWebb:"I still think your assertion that rights cannot conflict is naive. For example, imagine that you are walking along a common easement (i.e. not your property not my property) and my bee comes and stings you. It seems my right to property has violated your right to life."
It all comes down to property rights (the most fundamental of which is one's own life and the necessity of sustaining it without violating the same rights of another). The law is esssentially all about property rights and represents (at its best) the working out of how that applies to a variety of human interactions.
Rights are in essence clear title to each individual's life (including the thoughts, actions, and obtaining the values necessary to sustain it). These rights are absolute and alike for each person, individually. There are no rights other than these and certainly no such thing as collective rights.
"The rights of man, Ayn Rand holds, can be violated by one means only: by the initiation of physical force (including its indirect forms, such as fraud). One cannot expropriate a man's values, or prevent him from pursuing values, or enslave him in any manner at all, except by the use of physical force. Whoever refrains from such initiation--whatever his virtues or vices, knowledge or errors--necessarily leaves the rights of others unbreached." [Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, Government, p. 359. Also see Ayn Rand's, Virtue of Selfishness, Man's Rights and The Nature of Government.]
It is possible, since your bee is not on a leash, indeed, we may not know if it actually is your bee, that there is a limit to your responsibility in the matter and there might be added responsibility for the person susceptible to severe reaction to bee stings to take extraordinary precautions. Thus, we take responsibility for our own lives without insisting on physical compulsion, coercion, or interference against another.
The concept of rights is poorly understood today. That misunderstanding is the source of terrible grief, much mischief, and worse.
Webb -
Why don't you have your own blog?
You should....
-LJ
OK I've been trying to formulate a throughtful resposne since most of you have actually taken the time to write fairly thoughtful defenses of your notion of rights (and why rights are a very limited set).
Basicaly as I udnerstand your conceptualization certain rights, like property, have the characteristic that your exercise of them does not infringe upon anyone elses rights. For this reason you place this "right" in a privelged position compared to other rights (such as education or say the right to carry a goldfish in a bowl around your neck). At first glance this seems very compelling. My sitting on my land say carving garden gnomes out of my trees does not appear to infringe upon anyone elses rights. However, if you look at things more closely I am taking actions to secure my rights. I am keeping other people off my property (perhaps with a fence or at least the threat of force) I am keeping people from "stealing" my trees (again by the threat of force). In short the dichotomy negative and positive rights is much blurrier than many of you seem to believe. I must take plenty of positive action to enforce my right to property just as I must take plenty of action to enforce my right to education (or to gold fish wearing).
Beyond this property as an individuals exclusive domain is a relatively recent innovation (for the good I would say) in Western history. Prior to this innvoation (in around 17th century europe) the concept of property was more accurately described as a set of reciprical obligations. For example, a Lord might "own" some property for which he could demand some payments BUT his ownership also placed certain obligations on him both to his overlord and to those below him (e.g. his serfs). Therefore, the concept implict in many people's minds that property has existed since time immemorial is simply false as a historical concept. Marx has an interesting invective on this point [and before you start flamming me for saying MArx I would suggest that while many of his followers are loathsome and evil he is indisputably one of the most profound thinkers in Western thought and therefore cannot be dismissed although his prescriptions should be opposed].
If property cannot have a privileged status because it DOES require action to obtain/secure etc the right does this mean that the concept of rights is meaningless. This is a difficult question and a reason that modern philosohpy often leads to nihlism and/or quietism. Ultimately, I would suggest the answer is no and the solution is basically a pragmatic/rhetorical one. Basically, I would suggest that we play a thought game of considering the consequence of eliminating a given "right." What happens if we elimiante a right to property? REALLY BAD THINGS!!! Therefore its an important right. What happens if we elminate the "right" to carry around goldfish in a bowl... probably not too much (unless it leads to a slippery slope problem). What happens if we eliminate the right to education: more ignorant people which is likely a bad thing.
My pragmatic solution certainly is not perfect. It sounds a lot like propositional morality (end justifies the means) which disturbs me. However, the problem of definitions that are not self-referential is a problem that has confoudned philosophers for 25 centuries (think Plato's solution of "ideal forms"). While there are some smart people here, I doubt any of us will solve a 2500 year old problem. NO harm in trying though.
Basically, I would suggest that we play a thought game of considering the consequence of eliminating a given "right." What happens if we elimiante a right to property? REALLY BAD THINGS!!! Therefore its an important right. What happens if we elminate the "right" to carry around goldfish in a bowl... probably not too much (unless it leads to a slippery slope problem). What happens if we eliminate the right to education: more ignorant people which is likely a bad thing.
We can't eliminate the right to education because it does not exist. We could however eliminate the public schools. What would happen if we did so? We'd have fewer ignorant people than we do today.
In fact, when government acts to secure the "right" to education it violates the property rights of a whole lotta people, property rights that you seem to think are important.
"We could however eliminate the public schools. What would happen if we did so? We'd have fewer ignorant people than we do today."
What's your empirical support for this (and a site to Lew Rockwell's site does not count). Must be peer reviewed.
The evidence for my claim is all around you. Just open your eyes. We are surrounded by graduates of the government schools who cannot read, cannot write, cannot think, cannot spell (hint, hint!), cannot do arithmetic, etc., etc. (Ever wonder why it is there's a market for those little 10% / 15% / 20% tip cards?)
What happens if we eliminate the right to education: more ignorant people which is likely a bad thing.
What's the evidence for that claim?
mwebb: Just busting your chops on the spelling dig! I sure hope I don't commit a string of typos now!
All: Just noticed that much of David Boaz's book, "Libertarianism: A Primer", is online at http://www.libertarianism.org/. Readers of these comments might be interested in Chapters 3 ("What Rights Do We Have?") and 4 ("Property Rights"). It's a pretty decent, basic intro to Libertarianism.
bah spelng woo neads it!!
In response to your empirical question:
Philip Oreopoulos has an article in this months American Economic Review (the top Econ journal) where "I find, instead, that the benefits from compulsory schooling are very large whether these laws have an impact on a majority or minority of those exposed. (JEL I20, I21, I2
" You can look at the whole abstract here:
http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/contents/#10
Your "look all around argument" is specious. Basically you are saying that "I can find lots of people who didn't seem to get much out of education." I would not dispute this as a general statement. However, it proves nothing. I can find lots of exmaples of corporations making really bad decisions (think new coke). Howeer, such examples do not support a finding that capitalism is bad!! Instead it would be necessary to conduct a rigorous study of all decisions by corporations to see if on balance capitalism were good (however we defined that). I would strongly suspect that we would find that on balance it is "good" (new coke to the contrary notwithstanding).
Finally I would note that you still ahve not really addressed by basic philosophical challenge I raised against your definition of property as a "negative" right. That said, I'm willng to wait for a thoughtful answer
I would note Jimmo that you have yet to respond to my
Webb -
Thoughtfull response.
Let me ask you one question.
If property is not a bona fide right, but simply a "priveleged status", then how can any individual claim to make decisions over his own self? In other words, who owns you?
The reason property is a "recent innovation" isn't because property never existed, but rather because the idea that all men are self-owners just didn't occur to people. Those serfs you mentioned WERE property. As I'm sure you would agree, as we've evolved as a cognizant species, we've developed more acute notions of morality, and have resolved that there is an inherent right of property which exists and is possessed by all individuals.
From there, the rest just follows logically. If at any point, you decide that the right to property should be trumped, then the burden of proof rests with you to justify the morality of making slaves out of otherwise free people.
Now, regarding your points about the positive actions you must take in order to secure your property, my response is, so what? With any kind of property comes responsibility. Even as a self-owner, you have a responsibility to not infringe upon others. But any property you own naturally becomes your responsibility to use, care for, or dispose of, as you see fit. Yes, you have a right to property...but rights and responsibility are synonymous. You cannot get rid of one, without getting rid of the other.
The argument, though, was not about what positive actions/responsibilities you incur by owning property, but rather, the concept of a positive "right".... For example, asserting that one has a "right" to education, thus justifying making slaves of other people, thus, denying the most basic element of property: self-ownership.
To my knowledge, you have not responded to this apparent contradiction.
mwebb,
My only obligation with respect to your property rights is to not infringe upon them. I have no obligation to provide you with property of one kind or another. Notice all the negatives: "not", "no", etc.--that's why property is called a "negative" right.
Similarly, my only obligation with respect to your right to free speech is to not infringe upon it. I have no obligation to buy you space in a newspaper, magazine, etc. to help you broadcast your ideas and opinions.
In contrast, people who claim there is a "right" to education, healthcare, social security, yada, yada, yada are making a claim of a distinctly different sort: they are making a claim that I have (or society has) a positive obligation to help pay for everyone's else's education, healthcare, social security, yada, yada, yada. In other words, the claim is NOT just that I must not interfere with everyone else's efforts to provide themselves and their families with these things. Rather, the claim is that I have to go beyond mere non-interference and actually spend some of my money on everyone else's education, healthcare, social security, yada, yada, yada.
The abstract you cited does not really address the issue in question, viz., would kids get a better education from a completely free market in education than they do from today's government schools?
That's an important question, but here are some other important questions: Which system of education treats people as human beings with natural rights that must not be violated? Which system treats people as slaves by forcing them to do things against their will? Which system treats human beings as human beings--as ends-in-themselves, not simply as the means to the ends chosen by politicians?
You might note this last set of questions cannot be answered by designing and running empirical studies--rigorous or otherwise.
If you personally are OK with government forcing you to spend a large fraction of your life on things with which you disagree, that's your choice. I am definitely not OK with being used as the means to someone else's ends. I am definitely not OK with being forced to spend a large fraction of my life on things with which I disagree. I am definitely not OK with the government trampling on my rights.
I fear I've started (?) to repeat myself. Oh well, it's been fun!
MWebb: I believe you have missed the point of what "rights" are. The "real" property you refer to is a subset of individual rights.
You said: "If property cannot have a privileged status because it DOES require action to obtain/secure etc the right does this mean that the concept of rights is meaningless."
Not at all. Indeed, the fact that action is required is inherent in the concept. Our discussion is like jumping into the middle without the beginning--philosophically. Man is a certain kind of entity. As such, it is philosophy that sets his world view and thus establishes the base for his epistomology, ethics, politics, economics, and so on. In this short space, there is not room to develop the entire thought chain and we take some shortcuts, make some assertions, etc. I apologize for what will surely sound terse and perhaps disjointed.
We are what we are. Our very existence requires thought and action. Rights are a moral sanction. The moral standard is man's life in the full meaning of that (life as an individual, rational, conceptual being not as serf, or slave, or unthinking automaton). Each person is born into this world with the right to their own life and the obligation to think and act to support that life. As we each are born with individual rights (this is repetitious, since there are no other rights), we each have the moral sanction to seek and obtain the values necessary for life. Since we each have the same sanction, our ethics must prohibit violation of the rights of others. The most fundamental right (life itself, life as a rational being) includes the concept of property--first our own bodies and minds, and then to the values (physical and spiritual) we must obtain in support of that life. To obtain these, we must first determine what they are and then take action to get, keep, use, and dispose of them--thus property (as you usually think of it) and much more including the content and working of our minds. So, individual rights (the moral sanction) are the rights to life, liberty, property (the pursuit of happiness).
It is in a social setting where ethics are required. Our rights, says Ayn Rand, "are the means of subordinating society to moral law."
You also said: "This is a difficult question and a reason that modern philosohpy often leads to nihlism and/or quietism."
This is perceptive of you. Without the proper philosophical base, human thought and action is disconnected from reality with disasterous consequences in ethics, politics, economics and behavior in general. Unfortunately, what has passed for philosophy for a very long time has often discredited the human mind as capable of knowing reality, or even simply dismissed reality. Well (in a manner of speaking), it's not nice to fool Mother Nature!
You said: "Ultimately, I would suggest the answer is no and the solution is basically a pragmatic/rhetorical one."
Pragmatism is as dangerous philosophically as other non-reality based schemes that leave the human mind rudderless and unable to function.
You also said, ". . .What happens if we elimiante a right to property? REALLY BAD THINGS!!!"
This is true, but it is true for fundamental (and ultimately metaphysical) reasons. This observation is not some disconnected jewel magically appearing before us. The importance of our rights: life, property, and liberty (and all that entails in our "pursuit of happiness") is crucial to our very existence as the beings we are.
As an aside, your comment "(think Plato's solution of "ideal forms")" illustrates the formal beginning of philosophy's placing reality out of reach of humankind. Contrast this with Aristotle's reality-based approach and we have the two sides of the philosophical issue--Plato's side has been dominant for most of time since then and is the cause of much grief.
Ayn Rand, although primarily a novelist, developed the philosophy of Objectivism. I'd suggest reading Leonard Peikoff's "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand." This is, from Ayn Rand's intellectual heir the most coherent exposition of her philosophy. It begins at the beginning (existence) and logically proceeds from there. There are a number of other works on this philosophy or portions of it, but Peikoff's ties all of it to Ayn Rand's own words.
For those bored with this exposition, I apologize for its length which may be excessive for a Blog.
Jim and Al...
Marvelously said... You have out-done me, and yourselves, in explaining this issue.
Eloquent indeed!
-LJ
Thanks for the flowers, LJ. But, I hope MWebb and others find the posts helpful.
Sadly Al I think they miss the point. I'll try one more time when I ahve some time to write out in detail the issues. That said I think we are all getting a little tired of the topic (and unlikely to actually persuade anyone). That said, I will ask (at the risk of sounding int