nice article

[kandrathe]

Should all school be privatized? Well I fully agree with chesspiece face, you will get class warfare.

I think you already have a bifurcated system, and that was my point in my reply to him. Those who can afford to pay for private education have the advantage over those who cannot. Another option tossed around here would be vouchers. You give each parent a voucher worth the amount the government is willing to pay per child, and let the parent choose which school to spend the voucher whether that be public, private or parochial. This puts competition into school choice, and automatically holds schools accountable for providing the best product (an educated child). Then, to Nystul's example of the family of 6 in the trailer park, they would still be able to choose which school is best within the amount of the voucher (and it may be that some altruistic schools would give grants to low income students).

Anyway these are things that cannot even be changed like this, there is not enough money to go around to have everybody for his own education, fire department, roads, trash collection etc.etc. if they were privatized.

That statement makes no sense! You somehow believe that government can get things done, but private industry cannot? The tax money comes from somewhere currently to pay for all the things that government does. In my community we have private trash and recyclables collection, and there are at least three choices and three trucks which come at different times and different days. We are a small town community, so when we need road work done we put out an RFQ and people bid on doing the work. For police and fire we've banded together as 8 communities that are close together and created a joint system with sufficient coverage for all, yet support one medium sized infrastructure rather than 8 small ones. It works great, and we keep prices low. With education however the government mandates quite a bit, so our hands are tied on how innovative we can be.

My second point (main point actually) was the impact such a thing has on a society. There is no real stimulant to get skilled people to work on real problems we are facing. Things like world poverty, global warming, resistance of viruses to drugs, sustainable fuel economy.

I agree with you here. On the one hand we dangle the carrot of monetary success, on the other hand we expect certain professions (e.g. teaching, science, and innovators) to be done purely altruistically. That is, the thinking generally is that people who engage in those professions should know they won't be paid well because they are more interested in self actualization (contributing to humanity). So, you may not attract people to these professions merely by raising pay -- that is, it also must be fulfilling to the individual. The converse philosophy would be to design the Platonic socialist utopia where certain professions which are inherently altruistic are fully funded by State, such as artists, scientists, philosophers, and educators. It's a nice thought, but it won't work because without accountability these professions would become diluted with free loaders who don't care about their productivity or the quality of their work.

My thoughts on the role of government here is to stimulate demand for these professions, but not to fund them outright with grants and such. Government grants should be reserved for pure research into things which no capitalist would risk, but the research should be for very meaningful results rather than the fluff that we invest in now. I think JFK did a great job in stimulating science and engineering, as well as physical fitness. There is a leadership role in challenging the society to rise up and conquer tough problems, and if they want to back it with funding they should stimulate the demand for these professions and the formation of new businesses who would employ them. In this area for example, NASA is a great investment, not maybe for its overt missions like landing people on Mars, but for the impetus to conquering some very difficult technical problems in solving those problems end up creating whole new industries and innovations. The other great impetus for innovation in our history has been war, and I would prefer we find a less destructive source of inspiration.