From: nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu (Nathan Engle)
Subject: Re: Government and religious freedoms
Organization: Psych Department, Indiana University
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 21:43:37 GMT

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?

>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?

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