From: gmw0622@venus.tamu.edu (Mr. Grinch)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.amateur-comp,soc.culture.usa,alt.activism
Subject: Re: [misc.activism.progressive] Clinton Office Requests Comments
Date: 5 Jan 1993 22:00 CST
Organization: GrinchCo
Distribution: inet
NNTP-Posting-Host: venus.tamu.edu
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <1ic9pvINNt8@armory.centerline.com>, mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes...
 >In article <4JAN199322424251@venus.tamu.edu> gmw0622@venus.tamu.edu (Mr. Grinch) writes:
 >>In article <1iab94INNsdv@armory.centerline.com>, mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes...
 >> >Considering that room, board, and tuition at most top-notch universities costs
 >> >close to the median family income in the US, its pretty obvious that
 >> >Libertarianism would tie quality of education to family wealth as closely as
 >> >it is tied in most third world nations (and used to be in most modern industrial
 >> >nations.)
 >>>
 >>Most taxes are paid by the middle class.  The middle class can't possibly
 >>save money by paying taxes to subsidize universities rather than paying the
 >>university directly.
 > 
 >Actually, it can.  Simply because meritocratic distribution of college funding
 >can have better results than nepotistic funding.  And that's exactly my point
 >above: in most third world nations, college funding is primarily nepotistic. 
 >Reliance on nepotistic funding guarantees waste of the talents of the pool of
 >candidates that haven't wealthy relatives.

No.  I'm not making value judgements here,  I'm just talking about the total
costs of education.  Government subsidy of education has to make the net cost
go up because of 1)the administrative costs associated with collecting and
redistributing money and 2)people are more likely to choose expensive 
universities if they are spending other peoples' money than their own.

Your argument seems to be that there is a social advantage if the rich pay for
educating the mentally gifted poor,  which may be true but it is essentially
irrelevant;  government subsidy of education is primarily a transfer from
the middle class to the mddle class.

>>
 >I don't suppose you'd believe me if I were to claim the USA had a large middle
 >>class BEFORE there was massive public education,  that in fact without that
 >>large middle class we wouldn't have the tax base to support this government 
 >>spending in the first place?  Nonetheless,  it's true.
 > 
 >Yes, but that large middle class was a product of pre-industrial government
 >subsidy: ever hear of the Homestead Act?  And its long list of predecessors?
 >And state agricultural research?  That large middle class consisted primarily
 >of farmers until the major migrations to the cities that engendered massive
 >public education.  Giving small allotments of farmland away for free is a
 >subsidy that has seldom been replicated.

As has been pointed out elsewhere,  the government was not so much giving them
land as declining to prevent them from taking it.  Don't you see the 
difference between these forms of "subsidy"?  Allowing people to develop 
unused land will increase production.  Displacing a group of middle class
farmers and replacing them with another group will produce a net loss because
of enforcing the displacement.

 > 
 >>What I'd like you to find is instances of the head of a government agency
 >>declaring his agency to be superfluous and harmful and that it should be 
 >>eliminated.  Who knows,  maybe you'll actually find some and convince me that 
 >>governments can be trusted to regulate their own growth.
 > 
 >You set a standard for government that private industry won't meet either.
 >Let's ask a tobacco company to declare itself to be "superfluous and harmful
 >and that it should be eliminated."  Isn't it funny: both know they have
 >constituencies.

I think you've missed my point,  I'll spell it out more explicitly:
Consider a situation where a school spends 6000/pupilyear,  of which 4000
is payed from public funds and 2000 comes from the student (or his family,  or 
whatever).  Now,  if a private instituion existed which was much more
efficient and could charge only 3000/pupilyear,  all of which must be paid
by the student,  nobody would attend this university,  since as far as the
potential applicants were concerned they would be paying 150% more for
an equivalent education.  You also have an economy of scale in universities 
just like everywhere else (to allow for a wide range of classes,  a good 
library,  etc. you need a large student body to support it).  What I'm getting 
at here (the minor point,  which I don't think is disputable) is that the 
existence of heavily subsidized public education makes low cost private 
education impossible.

The major point is that it is generally the agencies in charge of doling out 
the public largesse that are asked what should be done to improve the state of
education in a nation,  and their answer will always be,  "give us more money 
and more authority."  Now,  for the reasons I indicated in the preceeding 
paragraph,  in general this "solution" MAY prove harmful and,  in a situation 
where the transfer payments are essentially from the middle class to the 
middle class,  this solution MUST prove harmful.

>Mike Huben

Mr. Grinch

"Governments grow for the same reason that dogs lick their own balls:
because they can"
-anon
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian