Bill, I have wondered why Public Schools still exist when alternatives have been thoroughly vetted. (If there were no government schools we would surly see a drastic rise in those choices) I once thought that perhaps it was because the community has a fiscal incentive to ensure their citizens ‘grow up smart’. Ergo, smarter people would equal higher taxes. So perhaps they believe other institutions couldn’t be “trusted” with such an important, albeit economic, responsibility. But that to me sounds more like an incentive to demand better performance in our schools.

All I hear is how underfunded they are, not how poor they perform.

I wonder if responsibility arises somewhat from the fact that our schools are not funded completely by local cities. The Department of Education at the federal and state levels have a lot to do with how much funding individual school districts receive as well as the curriculum used. If local governments were responsible for funding 100% would we see far more efficiency? Wouldn’t we see more attention paid to the quality of the education? It seems parents could actually make a difference in their child’s education that way.

Another idea I have contemplated… Could cities or school districts simply get vouchers? In other words, a school district receive funds from the state/fed but is not told how to spend that money, except to pay for educating their citizens. When the federal government was trying to encourage the building of highways, they offered a 92% federal match. All the cities responded by ceasing to fund streetcars, buses, etc. and instead built highways at the cost of only $.08 on the dollar, all cities except for one that is – Portland. They convinced the highway administration to allow them to use the funds for alternative kinds of transportation. It is pretty fair to say that it has paid off for them.

In the same way, would providing school districts with funding but with the ability to fund “alternatives” but still conduct business within the parameters of federally approved projects (just like Portland had to get approval for theirs) create an atmosphere of competition without disrupting the whole tax system?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not an advocate for government schools. My experience as a city councilman taught me the valuable lesson of eating an elephant one bite at a time. I do believe we can solve our education “crisis” in America but it will take us being willing to make small gradual changes, and for us to become willing to try new ideas. Subsequently, like in the case of Portland, we must also allow some cities to make good decisions and others poorer ones, even if most cities make the poor choice at first. Making the system more free in the long run will always improve it.

Bill, I have wondered why Public Schools still exist when alternatives have been thoroughly vetted. (If there were no government schools we would surly see a drastic rise in those choices) I once thought that perhaps it was because the community has a fiscal incentive to ensure their citizens ‘grow up smart’. Ergo, smarter people would equal higher taxes. So perhaps they believe other institutions couldn’t be “trusted” with such an important, albeit economic, responsibility. But that to me sounds more like an incentive to demand better performance in our schools.

All I hear is how underfunded they are, not how poor they perform.

I wonder if responsibility arises somewhat from the fact that our schools are not funded completely by local cities. The Department of Education at the federal and state levels have a lot to do with how much funding individual school districts receive as well as the curriculum used. If local governments were responsible for funding 100% would we see far more efficiency? Wouldn’t we see more attention paid to the quality of the education? It seems parents could actually make a difference in their child’s education that way.

Another idea I have contemplated… Could cities or school districts simply get vouchers? In other words, a school district receive funds from the state/fed but is not told how to spend that money, except to pay for educating their citizens. When the federal government was trying to encourage the building of highways, they offered a 92% federal match. All the cities responded by ceasing to fund streetcars, buses, etc. and instead built highways at the cost of only $.08 on the dollar, all cities except for one that is – Portland. They convinced the highway administration to allow them to use the funds for alternative kinds of transportation. It is pretty fair to say that it has paid off for them.

In the same way, would providing school districts with funding but with the ability to fund “alternatives” but still conduct business within the parameters of federally approved projects (just like Portland had to get approval for theirs) create an atmosphere of competition without disrupting the whole tax system?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not an advocate for government schools. My experience as a city councilman taught me the valuable lesson of eating an elephant one bite at a time. I do believe we can solve our education “crisis” in America but it will take us being willing to make small gradual changes, and for us to become willing to try new ideas. Subsequently, like in the case of Portland, we must also allow some cities to make good decisions and others poorer ones, even if most cities make the poor choice at first. Making the system more free in the long run will always improve it.

All: what about having states ‘foot the bill’ of education instead of localities, this would even out or eliminate education’s impact on the flight to suburbs. In Pennsylvania they’re trying to raise the state’s proportion of the education budget, and it would seem that this would exert some downward pressure on the high-end of the distribution for education budgets thereby evening them out (unless you factor in Bill’s comment that localities will “get whatever they can . . . increase their budget”

Of course, education is not my forte, but I’ll give it a shot.

Unfortunately, I don’t think funding itself is the problem any longer. Many inner-city school districts are very well funded on a per-student basis, but still have difficulty providing quality education.

The flight has already happened, the stigma already exists, and there isn’t much political incentive to actually improve city education. Politicians will just pump more money into failing systems to look like they are solving the problems.

I think trying to level the playing field will only be feasible on the state-level using some sort of program like vouchers that will allow city-dwellers to choose alternatives to failed public schools. A voucher system would probably cure the education system of the sprawl-inducing aspects as well as discrimination. However, as Rothbard notes in the book this article refers to, vouchers have problems of their own…

All: what about having states ‘foot the bill’ of education instead of localities, this would even out or eliminate education’s impact on the flight to suburbs. In Pennsylvania they’re trying to raise the state’s proportion of the education budget, and it would seem that this would exert some downward pressure on the high-end of the distribution for education budgets thereby evening them out (unless you factor in Bill’s comment that localities will “get whatever they can . . . increase their budget”

Of course, education is not my forte, but I’ll give it a shot.

Unfortunately, I don’t think funding itself is the problem any longer. Many inner-city school districts are very well funded on a per-student basis, but still have difficulty providing quality education.

The flight has already happened, the stigma already exists, and there isn’t much political incentive to actually improve city education. Politicians will just pump more money into failing systems to look like they are solving the problems.

I think trying to level the playing field will only be feasible on the state-level using some sort of program like vouchers that will allow city-dwellers to choose alternatives to failed public schools. A voucher system would probably cure the education system of the sprawl-inducing aspects as well as discrimination. However, as Rothbard notes in the book this article refers to, vouchers have problems of their own…

Adam(?): “elitist institutions often exclude others to their own detriment”, what kind(s) of detriment to they experience as a result of this?

Basically, if a business excludes certain potential customers, the profit from those customers would be lost. In the case of residential co-ops, if a co-op were to exclude, say people over 6′ tall, there would be a smaller pool of people who could potentially buy co-ops in that community. Thus, supply and demand tells us that the value of co-ops in that community would be less, to the detriment of the excluders.

Here’s a great article that includes examples. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Discrimination.html.

I can think of examples where exclusion may increase the value for some. Like, if a smaller co-op were to exclude children or pets in order to maintain a certain atmosphere. This seems rational for some situations. But, excluding for bigoted reasons ends up as an unnecessary cost to the excluders, as unbigoted institutions will have a distinct advantage.

One must be careful when examining exclusion when government interferes. Often, government enforced exclusion can create cartel-like mechanisms which hurt everyone except the cartel itself. The most obvious example of this cartel action is unnecessary government licensing of professions such as hair stylists, interior decorators, or street art vendors.

The above linked article also featured a great example as it relates to streetcars:

The Market Resists Discrimination

The resistance of southern streetcar companies to ordinances requiring them to segregate black passengers vividly illustrates how the market motivates businesses to avoid unfair discrimination. Before the segregation laws were enacted, most streetcar companies voluntarily segregated tobacco users, not black people. Nonsmokers of either race were free to ride where they wished, but smokers were relegated to the rear of the car or to the outside platform. The revenue gains from pleased nonsmokers apparently outweighed any losses from disgruntled smokers.

Streetcar companies refused, however, to discriminate against black people because separate cars would have reduced their profits. They resisted even after the passage of turn-of-the-century laws requiring the segregation of black people. One railroad manager complained that racial discrimination increased costs because it required the company to “haul around a good deal of empty space that is assigned to the colored people and not available to both races.” Racial discrimination also upset some paying customers. Black customers boycotted the streetcar lines and formed competing hack (horsedrawn carriage) companies, and many white customers refused to move to the white section.

In Augusta, Savannah, Atlanta, Mobile, and Jacksonville, streetcar companies responded by refusing to enforce segregation laws for as long as fifteen years after their passage. The Memphis Street Railway “contested bitterly,” and the Houston Electric Railway petitioned the Houston City Council for repeal. A black attorney leading a court battle against the laws provided an ironic measure of the strength of the streetcar companies’ resistance by publicly denying that his group “was in cahoots with the railroad lines in Jacksonville.” As pressure from the government grew, however, the cost of defiance began to outweigh the market penalty on profits. One by one, the streetcar companies succumbed, and the United States stumbled further into the infamous morass of racial segregation.

From Jennifer Roback, “The Political Economy of Segregation: The Case of Segregated Streetcars.” Journal of Economic History 56, no. 4 (December 1986): 893–917.

Adam(?): “elitist institutions often exclude others to their own detriment”, what kind(s) of detriment to they experience as a result of this?

Basically, if a business excludes certain potential customers, the profit from those customers would be lost. In the case of residential co-ops, if a co-op were to exclude, say people over 6′ tall, there would be a smaller pool of people who could potentially buy co-ops in that community. Thus, supply and demand tells us that the value of co-ops in that community would be less, to the detriment of the excluders.

Here’s a great article that includes examples. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Discrimination.html.

I can think of examples where exclusion may increase the value for some. Like, if a smaller co-op were to exclude children or pets in order to maintain a certain atmosphere. This seems rational for some situations. But, excluding for bigoted reasons ends up as an unnecessary cost to the excluders, as unbigoted institutions will have a distinct advantage.

One must be careful when examining exclusion when government interferes. Often, government enforced exclusion can create cartel-like mechanisms which hurt everyone except the cartel itself. The most obvious example of this cartel action is unnecessary government licensing of professions such as hair stylists, interior decorators, or street art vendors.

The above linked article also featured a great example as it relates to streetcars:

The Market Resists Discrimination

The resistance of southern streetcar companies to ordinances requiring them to segregate black passengers vividly illustrates how the market motivates businesses to avoid unfair discrimination. Before the segregation laws were enacted, most streetcar companies voluntarily segregated tobacco users, not black people. Nonsmokers of either race were free to ride where they wished, but smokers were relegated to the rear of the car or to the outside platform. The revenue gains from pleased nonsmokers apparently outweighed any losses from disgruntled smokers.

Streetcar companies refused, however, to discriminate against black people because separate cars would have reduced their profits. They resisted even after the passage of turn-of-the-century laws requiring the segregation of black people. One railroad manager complained that racial discrimination increased costs because it required the company to “haul around a good deal of empty space that is assigned to the colored people and not available to both races.” Racial discrimination also upset some paying customers. Black customers boycotted the streetcar lines and formed competing hack (horsedrawn carriage) companies, and many white customers refused to move to the white section.

In Augusta, Savannah, Atlanta, Mobile, and Jacksonville, streetcar companies responded by refusing to enforce segregation laws for as long as fifteen years after their passage. The Memphis Street Railway “contested bitterly,” and the Houston Electric Railway petitioned the Houston City Council for repeal. A black attorney leading a court battle against the laws provided an ironic measure of the strength of the streetcar companies’ resistance by publicly denying that his group “was in cahoots with the railroad lines in Jacksonville.” As pressure from the government grew, however, the cost of defiance began to outweigh the market penalty on profits. One by one, the streetcar companies succumbed, and the United States stumbled further into the infamous morass of racial segregation.

From Jennifer Roback, “The Political Economy of Segregation: The Case of Segregated Streetcars.” Journal of Economic History 56, no. 4 (December 1986): 893–917.

Where o where do i start?

Bill:
1. why do you think sociopathic behavior happens more in lower economic classes?

2. one could argue that the wealthy lower school taxes for everyone else in a city where their real estate taxes are higher than average and hence subsidizing others’ children’s education

3. segregation is ‘only’ wrong when actions and policies are designed to keep out classes of people (such as the phoenix suburbs actions, co-ops to apparently)

4. on discrimination: “Why is this accepted and expected in romance, but taboo in real estate?” perhaps because real estate and employment are regulatable (is that a word?) in that entities have to be registered and make contracts with each other through governmental stamp of approval (agreement of sale/business registration). Also because romance is so fleeting and for the most part non-contractual (cough, i’m engaged). (please do not take this for a fully-reasoned argument, i’m just trying to throw ideas around)

Adam(?): “elitist institutions often exclude others to their own detriment”, what kind(s) of detriment to they experience as a result of this?

All: what about having states ‘foot the bill’ of education instead of localities,
this would even out or eliminate education’s impact on the flight to suburbs. In Pennsylvania they’re trying to raise the state’s proportion of the education budget, and it would seem that this would exert some downward pressure on the high-end of the distribution for education budgets thereby evening them out (unless you factor in Bill’s comment that localities will “get whatever they can . . . increase their budget”