I sure would not want an insurance company (insurance policies being one of the alternatives to taxation that Mr. Weiss sees as holding promise) in charge of my fire, police and emergency medical services. Can you imagine the conflicts of interest if doctors worked directly for insurance companies?
Because individuals that work at insurance companies are automatically less virtuous than those that work for the government? But for the record I don’t think the Police force should be privatized. I don’t have to “imagine…if doctors worked directly for insurance companies”, that’s part of the problem as medicine is currently practiced! Thanks to the rigidly stratified level of socialism already in place across the board in the medical industry, doctors (& health care providers in general) can’t even look at a patient without calling an insurance company to make sure they might get paid for the work they do & they hopefully won’t get sued out of existence.
He states further “the only moral purpose of government is to protect individual rights — to protect individuals from the initiation of physical force by other individuals or foreign armies.” That definition is a bit narrow.
That’s not an argument. “Narrow” does not equal “inaccurate”.
There is a moral reason for the existence of the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Unfortunately, we cannot leave it up to the good will of individuals (individuals either alone or working for a private company) not to provide citizens with contaminated meat and polluted water.
Because, as Mr. Weiss says in reference to teachers’ unions, “all organizations pursue their own interests,” good will toward others eventually loses when competing against the insatiable desire for profit. I do not wish to take any chances. I will gladly pay higher taxes to avoid being poisoned.
It is admittedly a stretch, but I can see that the FDA &/or the EPA might be useful but only if they acted consistently on the principle of individual rights. For example, the EPA could be a branch of the govt. that would handle making Exxon pay for ruining someone’s beach front property. As opposed to how they operate now, which is to use taxpayer money to clean up Exxon spills through the SuperFund parasite program. I was told this by a friend that is an environmental engineer, so I don’t know exactly how accurate that is. I am assuming what he told is factual.
But again, why will Mr. Boothby not be poisoned by the govt. but he will by greedy companies? How will the companies satisfy their insatiable greed if they kill all their customers? How does a higher rate of taxes equal being safer from poison? Does that mean if Mr. Boothby gives all of his money to the govt. he is guaranteed to be safe from poisons?
Also recommended is a charitable system, which, although I would love to believe would work, most likely would not. This is precisely the reason we have government, to do the jobs individuals cannot or will not do for society as a whole.
No, Mr. Boothby, does not believe it would work. He is being dishonest there, because several paragraphs before he was busy insisting that the world is full of maniacs that want to get rich by poisoning everyone. & also that they would be able to if it wasn’t for our govt. that is 7 trillion dollars in debt. Furthermore, notice the sloppy definition offered as “precisely the reason we have govt.”. Under that definition, it could be the proper function of the govt. to set up concentration camps to imprison jewish people & burn them in giant ovens. It’s a job that an individual certainly couldn’t do; you’d need the full force of an armed govt. to get it done.
Moving along to education, I am sure many people particularly enjoyed the timing of Mr. Weiss’s extreme libertarian ramblings in saying “public education is not in your child’s best interest.” Meanwhile, in the past week or so more than two million high school seniors have graduated from public high schools across the country…
Contrary to what most critiquers of public education say, I generally say I am quite impressed that public schools are able to accomplish the things they do. I am quite surprised that more public schools aren’t complete hellhole dens of drugs, guns, chaos, etc.
The Real Problem with Public Education is how it’s funded.
Like every collectivist program/dream/ideal, there is a system by which x amount of people pay in & x plus more people expect to get something out of it. It’s constantly a losing proposition. I really don’t see a problem with public education as long as I am not required to fund it, unless I want to use it. It’s not a “noble goal”; it’s a half-assed solution to a serious problem: there are many poor people that are uneducated, specifically meaning that they are unable to deal effectively with reality on a level at which they can be productive in society & thereby support themselves & their families.
Furthermore, public educators, or “experts” (quotes by Mr. Weiss), to whom he sardonically refers, mistakenly believe they know more than the average person because the teachers possess a few worthless degrees.
Mr. Weiss, teachers must actually attend many “classes” run by “professors” who possess their own advanced “degrees” as a part of their educational quest to become a teacher.
Thus, teachers generally receive six years of education beyond high school…
Is this whole process a bunch of garbage? Are students who study to become teachers, like the students they will be teaching, also not learning anything useful?
THIS is where it gets ugly. Because the vast majority of “this whole process” of higher ed these teachers go through is literally, unfortunately GARBAGE. I work at a private college where they offer a Masters Degree in Ed. Some of the stuff I have seen that passes for coursework, thesis work…imagine Rand’s “The Comprachicos” written not as a warning of what NOT to do when teaching children, but instead, written seriously as a method book of how to teach children.
I am not exaggerating. I wish I was.
I do admit that, in some districts, it would be beneficial overall to put a system in place that could remove the worst teachers. This should not be done, however…
Teachers are evaluated regularly in most districts, as they should be, but introducing merit-pay, as suggested by Mr. Weiss, would have a deleterious effect on the school atmosphere…
Our society does not rank doctors at the bottom of the heap if they have a lower proportion of patients survive treatment. Cosmetic surgeons would surely be at the top, whereas oncologists who see the sickest cancer patients (usually the best doctors see the most severe cases) would appear to be failing. Why should teacher pay succumb to this type of assessment?
Actually, our society does rank other professions in this manner. Furthermore, it is usually due to effectiveness & then market forces. Also, notice Mr. Boothby recognizes it would be beneficial to remove the worst teachers…but it shouldn’t be done! Let us apply his standard to the medical field, as he suggests: a doctor is guilty of performing an operation intoxicated & removes a person’s healthy kidneys, what should be done? Should he be fired? Possible jailed? Or should he just be ignored & allowed to continue operating on patients?
Public education, although not perfect, is one of the great equalizing forces in America today. Privatizing education would increase the disparities between rich and poor and contribute to the further polarization of our already stratified society.
That is true. Of course, “equalizing” means “dragging down to the lowest common denominator”; just like “socialism” means “equally spreading the misery”. However, we’ve had public schools for about 80 years (yes? no?). So why is our society still “stratified” into disparities between rich & poor?
I’m glad that approximately 61 percent of my property taxes (not 80 percent of total taxes, as quoted by Mr. Weiss) goes to education.
Mr. Boothby’s emotional state is not justification for socialism.
As Derek Bok, the former Harvard president once famously stated, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
That’s an excellent quote. Unfortunately, it does nothing to support his claims. A good education IS expensive & probably will always be fairly expensive. The point is that I am willing to pay for mine & my child’s education. I have no moral obligation to pay for anyone elses.
but I have thought about these issues before & I want to make some comments.