From: isbell@ai.mit.edu (Charles L Isbell)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Questions about the TEN POINT PARTY PROGRAM.
Date: 3 Oct 92 00:05:42 GMT
	<ISBELL.92Sep30094920@panther.ai.mit.edu> <60777@mimsy.umd.edu>
	<ISBELL.92Oct1105721@panther.ai.mit.edu>
	<9412@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM>
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
In-reply-to: mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM's message of 1 Oct 92 20:00:12 GMT

mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM (Mark Wilson) writes:
|>|Spurious.  Anyone who cannot defeat this argument deserves to take it
|>|seriously.
|>Eh?  I couldn't parse that.  There's a conjuction or something
|>missing.  In any case, the "level of customer satisfaction" and
|>quality aren't necessairly dependent on one another, which is my
|>point.
|Now this is getting rediculous.  Just because you don't think much of the
|quality of McDonalds does not mean that the majority of the people agree
|with you.  If people were upset about the quality of McDonalds, they wouldn't
|go back.  There are much cheaper ways to feed yourself.

I've answered this elsewhere.

|>...except for supermarkets.  Why not?  One possible reason is
|>that--for all intents and purposes--the supermarkets in the inner
|>cities have a captive market.  The citizens can't leave because it is
|>economically prohibitive.

|If inner city supermarkets were charging usurious rates as you charge, then
|other supermarket chains would be falling all over themselves to open
|new stores in these neighborhoods.  Supermarkets in the inner city
|charge more than supermarkets in other areas of town charge more
|because they have expenses that are not present or at least not present
|to the same degree in other areas of town.
|If you can find evidence that these supermarkets are making profits
|greater than those made elsewhere, then your analogy would mean
|something.

If I could?  I can.  Anyone watching Peter Jennings earlier this week
knows that.  So, I guess I've managed to mean something, haven't I?  

|Otherwise all you have managed to demonstrate is your own
|lack of grasp of economics.

Theory is not practice.  Anyone who says "can't be because the
economists say it won't" is looking for a religion to believe in not a
solution to any problems.

Try not to insult my grasp of economics again, if you please.  It's
pretty damn good--but then I'm a pretty smart guy.  I'd prefer to talk
about the issues without the usual ad homiem.  We'll pretend it didn't
happen this time, okay?

|BTW, a local K-Mart in a poorer section of Dekalb county has recently
|announce that it will close.  It has been losing money for years.
|Local civic leaders are up in arms.  They are demanding the K-Mart
|keep this money loser open, for the good of the community.

So?  I've seen K-Marts in rich sections close.  What does this mean?

|>As to where you get the students, I'll provide the stock Lib answer:
|>"if there are no customers, then the business (by definintion) doesn't
|>deserve to survive.  Such is the Free Market(tm)."

|There is no free market in education.  The government has already seen
|to that.  Anybody who wants to open a new school will have to compete
|with a heavily subsidized state run industry.  It can be done, but it
|is difficult as hell.  Get rid of the state monopoly on education, and
|new schools will sprout up everywhere.

There is no such thing as a free market if there is any government
making any decisions that affect it.  I don't recall difficulty of
doing something ever stopping a Libertarian from suggesting it.

|>|Vouchers only open up a market.  Just as expecting to have 50
|>|restaurants in Podunk, USA is ridiculous, so is the expectation of
|>|having much school choice there.  Choice is really a big win only
|>|where there are population concentrations to support a diverse market.

|>Of course.  But I wonder (aloud) how we reconcile the "trapped"
|>customers in the middle of a crowd (the inner city and the suburbs for
|>example) with the notion that it will help them.

|Since you like analogies how about this one.
|There are fifty people in the water, unless they are rescued they will
|drown.  Now I come by in a boat.  Due to weight constraints I can only
|take on 45 people.  If I follow your logic I should conclude that I
|should not stop since I would be unable to save all of them.

You are asserting my logic.  You infer what I do not imply.  Hence
this argument is silly.

Look, this whole thing started from a claim that vouchers would
improve education.  I'm just asking who it will help, if at all and
who it won't help and why not.  There is no leap from there to "if we
can't help everyone, we shouldn't help anyone."

"All you've managed to demonstrate is your own lack of grasp of simple
logic."  See, now we're even and we can go back to something useful.

|People who choose to live in rural areas also choose to except certain
|limitations, one of these being the lack of competition.  Their choice,
|their problem.

Arrrrrgggghhh.  I'll remember this next time someone says "you can
just leave the country and start your own Libertarian country" and
this net jumps all over him/her.

|We have told you before, and I will tell you again.  Because of the high
|concentration of people (and therefore also children), the inner cities
|will be one of the easiest places to start new schools.  They are only
|trapped by your lack of imagination.

Actually, it's my imagination that's causing the problem.  I forsee
all kinds of ways that this won't happen.  Can you not?  Surely *your*
imagination is richer than that.

|>|Note, however, that even having two or three businesses competing in a
|>|market, while not exactly the best that can be hoped for, does do a
|>|pretty good job of keeping up product quality, even if they can keep
|>|prices somewhat higher that a true market price.  (Picture here the
|>|Pepsi/Coke competetion.  They try to compete on quality, not price.)

|>MMMMMhmmmm.

|>Let me ask you:  hypothetically, what would you say if we kept the
|>system as is, but managed to vastly improve education anyway?  Would
|>you still push for the vouchers or would you not really care?  What if
|>one could demonstrably show that vouchers lead to a weaker system?

|If you could improve the system, that would definitely lessen the need
|for an alternative system, but it wouldn't eliminate it.  I would
|probably come back and say that it would have been improved even more
|under a system of choice.  BTW, the experience of the last 15 to 20
|years demonstrates the improbability of ever improving the current system.
|If you could demonstrate that some form of voucher will lead to an
|overall, permanent decrease in the quality of education, I would be willing
|to listen.  But I am confident that you will not be able to do so.

That isn't the question.  If I could, would you still want vouchers?

Of ocurse I could turn this around:  prove to me that vouchers will
improve the system.  Clearly you can't or else you would have inserted
more words between "if we go to a voucher system" and "the schools
will improve."

I don't expect a proof.  But I do expect a bit more... imagination.

|>I'm asking this because I'm curious about the real motivations here
|>(someone in emailed asked about the motivation for an opposition to
|>choice).

|OK, I'll bite.  I favor choice because I belive that it will lead to
|a vastly improved system of education.
|Now, why do you oppose it?

I never said I opposed it.  I just questioned the claim that it will
magically lead to improvement.  Why can't you "imaginative" people
with such a "grasp of economics" see the difference?

Furthermore, you missed the point of the question (but then you didn't
answer it anyway).

I'll try this slowly:

I am for choice/vouchers, in general.

I do not consider it even close to a panacea and I can see several
problems with it.  I am trying to see how some its more outspoken
supporters see the problems and their proposed solutions.

So far, as I've been called a statist, a defender of the system and
someone in opposition to choice, I've been quite unimpressed with the
responses.

[... deleted examples of difficulty of enacting choice ...]
|>|When the ship about to explode, sometimes it is best to leap before
|>|you look.  

|>Well, that's true unless you can stop the explosion by throwing the
|>bomn overboard (I wonder how long we can carry this analogy?).

|Actually the ship is about to sink because it was poorly designed in the
|first place and has now become completely unseaworthy.

So, I'm checking the structural integrity of the next ship and being
yelled at by the designer who keeps saying "it'll float, trust me."

--
Peace.
     "The US has a vital interest in that area of the country."
                -- Vice President Dan Quayle Referring to Latin America.
                                   -\--/-
    Don't just adopt opinions     |  \/  |       Some of you are homeboys
          develop them.           |  /\  | but only I am The Homeboy From hell
                                   -/--\-