From: budd@playfair.Stanford.EDU (David Budd)
Subject: Re: Government and religious freedoms
Organization: Stanford University
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 93 04:59:39 GMT

In article <nate.1127@psygate.psych.indiana.edu> nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu (Nathan Engle) writes:
>budd@playfair.Stanford.EDU (David Budd) writes:
>>nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu (Nathan Engle) writes:
>>>J056600@LMSC5.IS.LMSC.LOCKHEED.COM writes:
>>>>  Just for the record:  I favor vouchers for private schools, and I'm also
>>>>in favor of keeping abortion safe and legal--but I don't want the government
>>>>to fund it.
>
>>>It seems to me that your position is just as flimsy as that of the people 
>>>who favor funding for abortion but oppose vouchers. I'm obviously biased on 
>>>the subject, but I would have thought that the only thoroughly consistent 
>>>positions are to either oppose government funding of both (which, for the 
>>>record, is where I stand), or to favor funding for both (the ultimate "Big 
>>>Government" position).
>
>>It is fairly easy to reconcile. A parent who doesn't want his
>>child to go to public school is simply getting a rebate on the
>>money that he is NOT using for his child's public education.
>
>    That's a reasonable starting point, but I'd say it gets fairly 
>untenable when people who are childless start asking for rebates on 
>their money too (since they obviously aren't using it either). The quick 
>and dirty counter to that argument is the childless people aren't entitled 
>because the system is set up so that everybody's tax contributions are 
>used to educate whatever children are present in the system (i.e.- families 
>with large numbers of kids aren't charged extra because they have more 
>kids in the system). 
>
>    Unfortunately making that argument would require an assertion that the 
>benefits to which individuals are entitled from the system are *not* 
>dependant on either the money the individuals paid into it or the number 
>of children they have in the system. Therefore, fact that money isn't  
>being used to educate *your* child is sort of irrelevent. 
>
>    Basically, if you want the right to walk with "your money" then there 
>may very well be other people ahead of you in line who are paying more 
>into the system or getting less out, and how can we let you walk away 
>with "your money" when we're not letting these other folks walk away 
>with theirs?
>
>    The other way around the childless couples' request for rebates is 
>to completely abolish the public system and refund everyone's money. I've 
>seen a couple people trying to make this argument but not with much success. 
>Whatever complaints people have with the current system, I don't think that 
>anybody is that enthusiastic about the idea of an immediate shutdown of all 
>public schools. IMHO the whole crux of the voucher system, if it's to have 
>any credibility at all, is that the only schools that would be shut down are 
>those which are either inefficient or those which are doing a bad job of 
>educating their students.
>
>    I would say that proponents of a voucher program would be very unwise 
>to try to make their arguments on any other grounds than that free market 
>competition will cause drastic improvements in the existing system. I'm 
>not certain that I buy into that line of reasoning, but IMHO that's the 
>only way that voucher proponents can credibly position themselves as 
>true reformers rather than as non-constructive complainers. The primary 
>focus of constructive criticism must be to fix what's wrong, but if the 
>process of fixing what's wrong also destroys what's right then it stops 
>looking quite so much like reform as it does like dismantlement.
>
>>The government is not "funding" private ed at all. the person is
>>just, in essence, withholding his payment to public school, while
>>using that same money to pay for a private education.
>
>    You have sparked my curiosity. Are you a libertarian?

I am not really a libertarian in the sense that their position
tends to make government untenable. I certainly lean that way, but
I am not entirely in the boat. 
>>The abortion question is fundamentally different in this way.
>
>    I'm not sure that I see your point yet. If it's inconsistent for 
>pro-abortion-choice people to oppose non-public-school-choice then why 
>is it not inconsistent for the reverse?

OK. Here is the way that I see it. People certainly have the right
to obtain abortion. I am not going to try to prevent them from this
with laws. But, the school choice/voucher system is this. As a 
parent, sending students to school (public) is costing the system
money, if for no other reason then the fact that teachers
are baby-sitting the kids. If I think that the gov't schools
are doing a poor job, I simply want to go to the gov't and say,
"tyhe money you spend 'educating' my child is wasted. Give
me that amount that you would spend on him and let me put
it to better use in a private school. 
There is nothing comparable to that in the funding of abortions.
If there is, I am simply too blind to see it.

>--
>Nathan Engle                        Software Juggler
>Psychology Department               Indiana University
>nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu      nengle@copper.ucs.indiana.edu

You failed to answer my question. What is a "software juggler?"

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