(cont.)
When he was aged 11, and academically at age 6, his mother illegally withdrew him from school, and in 18 months with the mother who had no qualifications, he gained 3 academic years. And the school’s response? To threaten the mother with court action because *they* hadn’t authorised it!

The school, in short, were incompetent, uncaring, bullying, and obsessed with procedure over substance.

And that was only one kid. Another one, 13, was bashed so badly that her teeth grew up towards her eyes, and she needed special orthodontic treatment. The school had loads of bullying policies. They had EIGHT bullying incident reports on this girl, filed away in the bottom drawer. So they KNEW about the bullying. And their response? They just couldn’t care less.

Another one, also 13, was partly blind. After 6 years compulsory government schooling, she was at the reading level of a 6 year old, and they were teaching her GERMAN and algebra! She learnt nothing, was neglected and bored to distress. She wanted to work with music and animals, she has a terminal illness and is going to die in a few years, and they have abused her time and her life.

Now the point is this. My theory correctly explains and predicts all these phenomena. On the other hand, your theory couldn’t be more wrong, could it? What were you thinking when you identified *government bureaucracies* with *empathy*?

You have *projected* your *feelings* of what a nice society would be like *for you*, onto *government*, without doing a reality check, and without cognizing that government is *not* an instrument for caring or empathy, but of legalized aggression and demagoguery.

Who is responsible for these abuses? The teachers can say they are only doing their job trying to cope with the system. The politicians say they are only representing those - like you - in favour of compulsory government education. So kindly have the honesty to confess *your principal authorizing part* in the abuse of these children.

Get this: the fact of your disability does not justify coercing or abusing others.

Your assumption that it would be *harder* for you to find suitable employment in a libertarian society is invalid, because it’s based on our *non*-libertarian society - the high degree of taxation and regulation in COUNTS MOST AGAINST THE MOST MARGINAL.

Under the government interventions *that you are in favour of*, you are relegated to receiving handouts, and imagining that this constitutes your dignity!

Thus you have not justified your false *assumption* that you would be worse off in a libertarian society, BUT EVEN IF YOU HAD, IT WOULD PROVIDE NO JUSTIFICATION FOR COERCING OR ABUSING OTHERS.

Baygon
There is no need for anyone to establish some kind of abstract perfection as a precondition to action, or to freedom, and therefore your critique of the market is invalid.

Economic equilibrium is a theoretical construct to explain where the market is *tending*; where it would reach if no new data were entering all the time.

But
a) this does not and cannot describe reality
b) there is no *ethical* reason to prefer equilibrium
c) the equilibrium state is unknowable in practice
d) in any event, equilibrium describes a state of *inaction*
e) it does not justify coercion, and
f) government is in no better position of knowledge or efficiency – on the contrary!

It is enough that people voluntarily prefer A to B, and that the free market facilitates the satisfaction of their wants. The equilibrium argument is a complete furphy, but in any event, neither is government perfect! Government is made up of these same people! Government is not only in a worse position to know or to satisfy people’s values, but it also creates the castes, and causes the unnecessary conflicts described above.

Therefore you have not established that government can provide education better, while I have shown that it must necessarily be worse.

The public goods argument is just as much a furphy as the equilibrium argument; and is completely refuted here: https://mises.org/journals/jls/7_1/7_1_1.pdf

Peter Hume,

State intervention didn't cause greater hardship, poverty or death - interventions probably saved the system and has helped it to roll along.
Let's face it, any system that has proved itself so diabolically robust in the art of over-consumption and wanton excess must have hit upon the right balance of freedom and responsibility to fuel its toxic progress - sort of like a cancer....

Raw libertarian capitalism proved itself cruel and exploitative, What's the point of a libertarian system that flogs its participants into the ground? If the state hadn't intervened, it probably would have proved unsustainable in its debauched form. And speaking of liberty - the average cottage artisan and craftsman had far more personal liberty in his work and daily affairs prior to his servitude to his new masters under the factory system....and don't give me your old line "death was the only alternative". If that had been the case, the libertarian industrialists would have had no peasant-class to prey upon for factory fodder.

State intervention and its continuing reach into ordinary lives is a symptom of its partnership with business and industry in the capitalist system. Strangely enough, our system has more in common with Soviet communistic practice that Marx's theories ever did

Peter Hume,

Speaking of state intervention and the education system. I happen to agree with you that our one-size-fits-all system is possibly the worst place to install a child with Aspergers or high-functioning autism (both are near equivalent in presentation). Some of the most profound frustrations and heartaches of these children and their parents emanate from their involvement with a rigid education system. Bullying is rife and ignorance amongst the teaching profession is equally damaging to these children. I personally am aware of many children with ASD whose anxiety levels soar once placed in school and who are subsequently often medicated just for school issues - their parents taking them off medication during school holidays.
My son is diagnosed high-functioning ASD and, as I've mentioned, is not constrained by institutionalized learning - suits him beautifully as he can learn through his special interests at a pace that suits him.

Peter, I think you're probably correct in your assertion that government "empathy" is a double-edged sword. It's not real empathy, but serves instead to mitigate the worst excesses in greed and exploitation of the capitalist system. This system requires such a mechanism or it would fail. Compulsory institutionalized education is part and parcel of the system and its continuity - but, like the system, it doesn't tolerate "misfits".

Peter Hume you use the same old same old arguments about how people were better off because of the industrial revolution. That is not relevant to the point I am attempting to discuss with you, that the psychology of human behaviour means necessarily that your system or non-system will not work.

Your descriptions of cruelty by damaged teachers and poorly implemented policies are not in the same league as my explanation of one common scenario in which a job seeker has less power and consequently a lower possibiity of making a choice that advantages them. You seriously think that it is because they are employed by a government that they are degenerate? What's your point?

Of course, institutions cannot have empathy; they can have policies that are based on an understanding that empathy and ethical behaviour is the foundation of functional human social systems. Your system provides no guidance or encouragement for people to behave in an empathic and ethical way rather than choose the easy, greedy way that ensures we rip each other off when we can.

Where to start is for you to explain why those mill owners choose not to provide decent conditions for their workers when they were free to do so?

Mollydukes,

An appropriate question, indeed....and it wasn't only the conditions in the workplace that degraded the working population during early industrialisation, but also the domestic arrangements.

I've just glossed over a few documents pertaining to the time and the following is a brief reference to the state of the factory and mill towns of the time.

Reports of water polluted by decaying animals and other refuse - this water being used for "culinary purposes" by the poor. Of taps being "turned on" only for certain hours in the day in poor areas.(1845).

Reports of houses hastily erected court style - privies in filthy condition often without doors - overflowing with filth (also privies in many of the manufacturies in the same condition).
Contagious fever extending from house to house, ravaging whole streets (1843)

Reports of sewage in "inferior streets" running in open channels. Main sewers ot towns discharging into brooks and canals which run into the "lower" point of town where poor workers live.(1845)

In Sheffield, the air so charged with soot that folk are commonly imbued with dust and grime. "One cannot be long in the town without experiencing the necessary inhalation of soot which accumulates in the lungs..."

In Leeds...ashes and garbage thrown from house windows. filthy privies of which their are few. A "blunted decency" of the people arising from the contaminated state of their surroundings. Vast amounts of ill-health, increasing poverty and premature death. (1845)

In Nottingham....surface drains, filthy privies, accumulated refuse allowed to putrefy (which increases its value and is sold on as manure) (1845)
Dunghills were a common feature amidst the mean streets of libertarian industrial Britain.

One could go on and on. It's the same story over and over. Workers squashed in cobbled-together tenements - many families often sharing a single abode. Open sewers, doorless filthy toilets, widespread illegitimacy and base morality.

This what happens when you lift people out of organic communal arrangements and transplant them into an industrial setting (to which one report referred as a "receptacle of demons") with "no care" for their welfare...the state was forced to intervene.