As for the tiny minority who are truly in desperate want of education, that is hardly a reason for the great majority to be put in a straitjacket is it? Their existence only shows that we should assist the less fortunate. It provides no argument whatsoever to do it by coercion. (And to the extent that their desperation is caused by upstream government interventions such as taxation or inflation or killing employment, it is an argument *against* government interventions, not in favour of more.)

In any case, the problem could be solved by simply giving the small minority of truly desperate the money price of an education. The fact that governments don’t do that - because they don’t believe the money would be spent on education – is the last nail in the coffin of the desperation argument as it applies to education.

Poirot
Your (and Mollydukes and Squeers) post circularly assumes that voluntary relations are “predatory” and that employment is “exploitative”, which is what is in issue. However your problem is that, although I have repeatedly asked you to prove why employment is exploitative, you have never been able to do anything but *repeat* the claim without giving reasons; except the “desperation” argument as it applies to the Industrial Revolution.

For starters, that obviously doesn’t apply to modern Australia, nor does it apply so far as government interventions have caused the economic problems in the first place; nor so far as capitalism in responsible for the standard you measure by.

The argument is this. Voluntary relations are self-evidently mutually beneficial, otherwise they wouldn’t take place. Employers do not exploit employees, the relation is one of mutual advantage.

The scarcity of resources is caused by nature (remember our discussion of The Human Planet?). Capitalism isn’t causing the shortage of honey in the jungles of New Guinea, is it? By the same token, capitalists of the IR were not causing the poverty of the workers, and more than anyone else, they relieved it. Before capitalism, those people *died*, usually in infancy. Capitalism elevated them from death, not degraded them to poverty.

(cont.)
The fact you *now* consider the minimum standard to be that made possible by modern capitalism invalidates your entire argument.

To establish exploitation, you would need to show that the workers are entitled to more than the agreed rate for their services. Marx’s theory, which you are channeling, presupposes conditions which do not apply, and which you cannot rationally defend, including the labour theory of value, advocacy of full communism, and the supposed “iron law of wages.

Conditions improved in the factories etc. as a result of market processes and of state interventions. But only the market interventions involved mutual advantage
a) to the parties and
b) to society as a whole.

The state interventions, for all their improvement *in the factories*, caused *greater* poverty and hardship in terms of *worse unemployment and poverty outside the factories*, which is what you’re not taking account of. This must be so, else you’d be able to affirm that setting the minimum wage at 50 pounds per day would have improved the material conditions of the masses. That destroys your entire argument again.

To the extent that improvements *followed* those brought about by market processes, the credit belongs to the market, not government .

And to the extent that government improvements were *higher than* the market standard, they merely benefited richer workers at greater cost to the unemployed.

Logic and reality kick in eventually. There is no Santa Claus. The *motivation* of the parties is irrelevant.

Okay, so. Your proof that employment is intrinsically exploitative is….? Please make sure you take account of the corresponding cost to the unemployed of any intervention.

Mollydukes
Perhaps you will answer what Squeers keeps evading: can Pythagoras’s theorem be proved? He has given up any attempt at rationality as you can see.

How do you know that, if education wasn’t government-funded, your parents would not have been able to “afford” it? (Weren’t giving priority to lower values were they?) To what extend did government cause the problem?

As for Hayek, I don’t know why you think that lacking confidence entitles you to live at others’ expense.

(cont.)

At least you’re honest: - but your sense of entitlement to handouts paid for by coercing other people is not what’s in issue. It is whether government provision of education is ethically or technically better.

Firstly, it is moral fakery to categorise forced redistributions under “empathy”. Obviously they are not paid for out of empathy, but out of fear.

Nobody’s talking about forcing anything on you – you’re talking about forcing things on others, so your understanding is completely back-the-front.

All
It is enough for me to point out the irrationality of identifying empathy, sociality, caring, the social emotions, and the moral virtues, with a monopoly of unprovoked aggression, as against voluntary co-operation. At best you have a non sequitur.

Let’s cut to the chase. You are in favour of government-provided education.

So how is government going to avoid the conflicts identified in the article:
a) What values and content should education be teaching?
b) Why should a small elite get to decide on behalf of everyone else?
c) How could they possibly have the knowledge necessary to know what would be best for each individual affected by their one-size-fits-all decision?
d) What is to stop them substituting their own personal or irrelevant values?
e) Who pays the costs if they are wrong?
f) What responsibility do you take for the lives blighted by compulsory indoctrination?
g) Why should everyone else be forced to pay for benefits to employers?
h) What about other important educational values that are not vocational?

None of these problems arises on the free market, which harmonises the different interests – and the desperation argument is simply bullsh.it.

These problems arise only because of government provision, which causes the conflict, benefits some at the expense of others, and sets up castes of privileged and exploited.

Thus the arguments for government education fail on both ethical and practical grounds.

Since you can’t defend government education except by irrational arguments – begging the question – I’m asking you honestly, what makes you think you weren’t brainwashed during your 10 years compulsory indoctrination?

Peter Hume,

The reason I continually cite employment conditions during the Industrial Revolution is because initially all matters of this nature "were" voluntary. Mill and factory owners, for the most part, were not under any obligation to provide decent conditions for workers - and consequently they chose not to. Cruel and abysmal conditions were the norm in most manufacturing towns and were the result of unregulated industry. It is plain to see in documents from that time that "voluntary" relations were most certainly "not" mutually beneficial.

Early industrialisation did degrade workers into poverty - it also degraded the nature of their daily toil. For the majority of mill, factory and mine workers it was an abomination which only improved when regulatory supervision was imposed by the state.

Btw, I home educate my son so he's not participating in a one-size-fits-all education. (It is possible to take a bit of freedom, even in this society, if one sets their mind to it) Nor is he working a 14 hour day in stifling conditions, exploited by libertarian industrialists as they did before state controls were introduced.

Peter all that you write is nonsense if you don't have any understanding of the psychology of human behaviour that underpins economic behaviour.

Your economic theory fails because human beings are simply not 'rational men'. All the evidence from psychology, and your own response - points to this awful fact. For example, amid all the nonsense you wrote, I did pull out the word 'desperation' and I wondered where that came from. I never mentioned desperation! Good grief, you people are like wind-up toys; only capable one type of response.

Did you miss the bit where I said I have read Hayek and Rand? That means I am familiar with all those hypothetical arguments that rely on deliberately perverting and misunderstanding ethics and make ignorant assumptions about the way the human mind functions.

If you can't respond as a real person, rather than as a libertarian mouthpiece, to my real life experience and arguments based on real life psychological knowledge, there is no point in continuing.

My experience of living among and being one of those people who would not flourish in a libertarian economy and who are increasingly finding it difficult to overcome their disabilities in this neo-liberal economy, is sufficient evidence for you to take my opinion seriously and respond as another human being, rather than take on your persona as the voice of the libertarian God who sees and knows all the answers.

Your response re-inforces my idea that you are an Asperger type person with no insight into yourself or others and clearly shows that psychology is far more important than economics as a solution to the human dysfunction we all see and want to make better.

In terms of game theory, The free market is supposed to be a game that yields not only equilibrium but the most efficient outcome possible. Adam Smith’s so called “invisible hand” intended his model for small markets – ie situations where it was possible to know all the information one needed to determine the equilibrium. Thus if I am one of three people selling widgets I can quickly see when my prices are too high – not only do I not sell any widgets but my competitors are selling. So I have a choice – I either lower my price or sell nothing. My competitors likewise lower their prices until they reach at the lowest point at which they are prepared to make a sale. Thus at the point where supply equals demand the market is at an equilibrium. The reality is of course that the free market only exists in the mind of economists – there are simply too many variables for anyone to be able to ensure that the market is both stable and efficient. (This implies defining efficient as a stable market where supply equals demand.)
It also highlights why public goods such as education are not amenable to a free market approach