By J Clifford at Irregular Times
…Andrew Horning, Libertarian candidate for Congress in Indiana’s 8th congressional district, lectures us that, “Politics’ only rational role is to use its inherent violence for the defense of liberties and contracts; and against fraud, real crime, and in general, to oppose aggression or abuse of persons, property, or shared (unownable) resources.”
One of the weaknesses inherent in a political movement that is based upon abstract logical reasoning is that it tends to lead its followers into categorical positions like this one. Horning tells us that rational thinking leads to the inevitable conclusion that politics is good for nothing at all except for protection of liberty and contractual arrangements against aggression, crime and abuse. Every other project in politics, Horning suggests, is irrational.
Once again, education is a weak spot for Libertarians. All we have to do to test the validity of Andrew Horning’s broad claims is to find just one rational purpose for politics other than the one he listed. If we do find one, Horning’s argument falls apart. So, we can ask: Isn’t it rational for people to organize politically in order to establish systems of support for science and education?
Read the full article here.
I agree with basically all of that.
I don’t think it is necessarily all that obvious, but I have reasons that I explained why I elieve it is likely to be.
If the only case to be made for libertarianism was a rights-based one, but it had negative utilitarian consequences, libertarianism would have a much weaker case.
I think you misunderstand my position. I’m definitely not saying that a free society would be worse than the status quo from a utilitarian standpoint. On the contrary, I’m arguing that it would be better. Where I disagree with you is the idea that “better” would obviously include more funding for science, art, etc.
I get that we would be much richer, but no matter how big the pie is, it still has to be divided, just as it does now. The difference is that in a free society, the way it gets divided would be a much more accurate reflection of the value that people actually put on various things. So, if there really is a lot of demand for these things, they would get more funding than they do now. On the other hand, if people would prefer to spend their money on other things, then those things (science, art, etc.) would get less funding.
For example, many people might rather spend less money on space exploration, and more money on homeless shelters, or vice versa. There’s no way to be sure of exactly what the distribution would look like, but it would almost certainly be different than it is now. But in either case, I would argue that it would be better from a utilitarian perspective, since it would better reflect the actual demand for these various things. The comment that I originally replied to seemed to suggest that even if there weren’t much demand for these things, they should still be heavily funded, apparently for no other reason than his own personal preference for them. That attitude reeks of the kind of arrogance that is unfortunately common among statists.
In the long run, I believe we will be much better off (though by no means perfect) pretty much across the board.
I agree with you, but this does not mean that everyone (or anyone, for that matter) will be happy with every aspect of life in a free society, or even that everyone will prefer the free society (although I think most people will). However, just as many drug dealers oppose legalization because it would hurt them financially, so many people who profit from statism would undoubtedly hate to see its demise.
Also, consider the case of certain controversial activities, such as gambling or pornography. Some people love these things, while other people hate them. It is very likely that in a free society, there would either be a lot more or a lot less of these things. In either case, some people would be unhappy.
Of course, this is not really any major cause for concern. It’s just like when an unpopular TV show gets cancelled. There will inevitably be some people who liked the show that will be sad to see it go, but there will be many others who will be happy to be rid of it, and it will probably turn out that even some of the fans of the old show will end up liking whatever replaces it even more. But regardless, that is the way that a free market works, and I definitely consider that to be a good thing, from both a moral and a utilitarian perspective.
There’s a pretty strong track record that when societies become wealthier they place a greater emphasis on such “luxuries.” There’s also a strong track record that economies which are more free become wealthier faster.
Likewise, there’s a long history that shows that when people are heavily taxed and regulated, and when some of those taxes go to allegedly provide various things such as charity, education for the poor, and funding for the arts and sciences, people are far less likely to support them with their own money than they would be if monopoly government was not doing those things. So I’m not just shooting in the dark here.
If the only case to be made for libertarianism was a rights-based one, but it had negative utilitarian consequences, libertarianism would have a much weaker case. Fortunately for us, both the moral annd utilitarian ways of determining the best policies are aligned and point towards liberty.
I don’t believe it will be a panacea or utopia. The transition period may be especially difficult, with many people quite plausibly suffering in the short term. It’s possible that we could engineer a soft landing, but it may be too late. In the long run, I believe we will be much better off (though by no means perfect) pretty much across the board.
Agreed, but we need to address the fears that some people have about what will happen if that happens.
It’s not regardless to the people who care about outcomes more than about theories of rights they do not agree with. The message to them should be that these things will get more support in a free society. And it is a message that I believe is true.
You may believe it, but that belief is really more a matter of faith than anything else, because, as I said earlier, it is impossible to accurately gauge how much value people actually put on something when they are spending other people’s money.
The fact is that in a free society, there will be some outcomes that will disappoint some people. Overall, the world will be a better place, but it will not be a panacea. To pretend otherwise is to embrace the utopian idealism that libertarians are so often falsely accused of believing in.
Government schools should be turned over to the private sector, or parents.
Horning does not even mention education on his issues page. Clifford brings up that red herring. Horning says
“Politics’ only rational role is to use its inherent violence for the defense of liberties and contracts; and against fraud, real crime, and in general, to oppose aggression or abuse of persons, property, or shared (unownable) resources.”
Clifford brings up the beef that this does not cover government education spending. Horning is running for Congress; the Federal Department of Education was created in the 1970s, so even for those of you who believe some level of government needs to be involved in education (I do not), why would the federal government be involved in it?
A candidate for a Federal office needs a message that deals with Federal Issues.
If you actually follow the links back to Horning’s page, I believe he does exactly that.
In a free society, science, art, etc., might receive more funding than they do now. On the other hand, they might receive less. But regardless,
It’s not regardless to the people who care about outcomes more than about theories of rights they do not agree with. The message to them should be that these things will get more support in a free society. And it is a message that I believe is true.
I think that is the wrong approach.
If you are referring to my comment, it is not an “approach”, but rather an observation about the nature of value. In a free society, science, art, etc., might receive more funding than they do now. On the other hand, they might receive less. But regardless, the level of funding they received would be more appropriate than the status quo, because it would be based on the amount that people would be willing to spend on these things, and thus would be a more accurate representation of the actual value that people put on them. It is impossible to accurately gauge how much value people actually put on something when they are spending other people’s money.
Any candidate lists their position on a variety of issues on their website, and can focus on more than just one.
A candidate running for office should pick a message that covers the office that they are running for.
Robert Sarvice – “Open Minded and Open for Business” was a great message for a Candidate for a State Government election.
A candidate for a Federal office needs a message that deals with Federal Issues. Pick a message, stay on that message and whenever someone tries to draw you off of it get back on message. Try and relate all questions back to your message.
Clinton’s 1992 internal campaign message of “It’s the economy stupid” is one that we need to think about. For a federal government office, the message should stick within the confines of the constitution but addressing goals such as improving the economy by using libertarian ideals. The constitution does set a purpose of promoting “the general Welfare”. Reducing the drag on the economy by reducing Federal Spending, Federal Taxation and Federal regulations that are there to distort the markets rather then about keeping markets honest, level and insuring that the hidden costs of products are captured.
So…. spending on education and science are small potatoes. I, in general, support science and education. We need these to have a growing competitive economy. But science and education have plenty of supporters in the other parties. We should focus on getting the other parties to fix the serious problems that we have or in convincing the voters to let us have enough power to fix the problems.
In short…. its the economy stupid! just don’t mess up the planets ecology while we get business to get people back working.
Yes, examine it. That includes being open to the possibility it could be right.
pf: I believe that was the point Jed and I were making to J Clifford.
me: Perhaps you are, but Jed is using a conventional wisdom point to challenge conventional wisdom. Seems to be that he undercuts himself by doing so.
Yes, imagine liberty. Be radical in doing so!
OTOH, it’s also possible that “conventional wisdom” is wise at times, so no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, either.
I think that is the wrong approach. Folks who talk like that need reassurance that the money will be there to address their concerns if it is raised voluntarily. I think the wealth of our society, and our generosity, would both grow so exponentially when fully freed from the shackles of monopoly statism that not only would science, the arts, research, and education for people of all backgrounds survive, but that they would thrive like never before.
Imagine liberty!
Science is not … about what people are willing to pay for.
Everything is about what people are willing to pay for. If people are not willing to pay for something, that means that it is not worth what it costs, i.e. it is a poor use of resources.
What gives you the arrogance to believe that others should be forced at gunpoint to pay for your personal pet projects?
http://schoolandstate.org./case.htm
Home-schooling is an area where I’ve done a tremendous about-turn. I used to think it was very arrogant of a parent to think he or she could be all things to their child, and that the youngster needed to go to school for exposure to different types of people, and to learn how to get along with those different types. To a degree, I still feel that way. I think that a child from a family with economic stability might learn by realizing that some children’s families have less, or that som,e children’s families have more. The only high school in my town does have children from upper middle class homes (unless their parents sent them to private school), and about half the students are hispanic apartment dwellers who might fall closer to the lower middle class category. For the most part, the kids all get along, and that’s one of the things I like best about my town.
Homeschooling wasn’t an option for us because we had a one-parent home. However, I was able to keep a close eye on what my son was being taught, and, perhaps more importantly, I knew the kids he hung out with and their parents. Just sending a kid to school and not staying very involved is just too risky, in my view.
I do think, however that if the child has any kind of a special need, whether he or she needs a little extra help, or the child is extra bright and is at risk for boredom, the current public school system might not work. If a parent is able to home-school, maybe that’s a better option so the child isn’t overwhelmed by the other kids. I understand now that homeschoolers form groups so that the kids can have social interaction and the opportunity for field trips. It does seem that government indoctrination is getting worse, though.
I found out after Marcus graduated that the police regularly, maybe once a month, came to the school with drug-sniffing dogs to check the kids’ lockers. I would have gone bonkers if I’d known that, and Marcus knew that so didn’t mention it to me
We certainly had issues with some of the teachers, and I had a terrible problem with his grammar school principal. I consider it a miracle that I made it through the public school system without totally insulting a teacher or administrator.. .
That’s one way of looking at it.
Another is that education spending takes up a much larger portion of state and local government budgets.
Another is that it is a top concern for many voters.
And yet another is that it molds the minds and world views of future generations.
And then there are also the teachers’ unions, which have a very strong influence in the Democratic Party and thus at all levels of government.
Off the top of my head…
For 2012 the US Federal budget was 3.5 trillion of that 1.2 trillion is spent on various federal departments of which we spent 65 billion on education.
2.3 trillion on Social Security and Medicare.
685 billion on defense.
If you want to rebuild a house to keep it from falling down you don’t start by polishing the front door knob.
I’m not sure how reliable US News and World Report rankings are, but let’s presume that you are talking about a nationwide trend. That doesn’t answer how long-standing that trend is.
Per wikipedia,
78% of admissions officers expect homeschooled students to do as well or better than traditional high school graduates at college.[25] Students coming from a home school graduated college at a higher rate than their peers¬—66.7 percent compared to 57.5 percent—and earned higher grade point averages along the way.[26]
Such students have matriculated at over 900 different colleges and universities, including institutions with highly selective standards of admission such as the US military academies, Rice University, Haverford College, Harvard University, Stanford University, Cornell University, Brown University, Dartmouth College, and Princeton University.
The sources for that are:
[Jones, P. & Gloeckner, G. (2004). “A Study of Admission Officers’ Perceptions of and Attidtudes Toward Homeschool Students” Journal Of College Admission, (185), 12-21.]
^ [Coogan, M. F. (2010). “Exploring academic outcomes of homeschooled students” Journal of College Admission, (208),18-52.]
^ A. Distefano et al. (2005) Encyclopedia of Distributed Learning (p222) ISBN 1-59781-572-1
It appears that all this testing is actually having results. Some of the results are not so good. However, for example, this year close to half our entering class — very large — had derivatives and integrals, though not multidimensional integrals or Taylor series. Years ago, that was 15% of the class. Colleagues who see writing report ability to write coherent pages rather than struggling with sentences. (Yes, I have urged accepting homeschooled children, and the ones we take are really good. However, that pool is extremely small. The ones who got to business math we simply would not take.)
Perhaps I should have said “preparation” rather than performance, as I was referring to what they had when they got here.
Readers may confirm that, alas, our USNWR rankings have deteriorated by a couple dozen schools, so it is not we are drawing better students.
Interesting, and a bit counterintuitive. How long have you been observing this trend? Is it possible that it is because your university is becoming more selective, or is this a general trend nationally?
I actually teach large numbers of incoming freshpeople at my university. The improvement in student performance in recent years is quite marked.
I believe that was the point Jed and I were making to J Clifford.
jz, yes, perhaps 90% think that. But is their opinion true?
Examine conventional wisdom….
Isn’t not knowing what right & wrong are the standard for whether or not they consider you criminally insane?
jz: I don’t care what 90% of the population does or doesn’t think, I care about what is right and what is wrong.
me: Cool. What are those alleged things…right and wrong? Are they “right” and “wrong” for you only, or are there such a thing universal “rightness” and “wrongness”? Or is there maybe a standard of “righter” and “wronger”? How are any of these things measured?
No reason why multiple issues can’t be dealt with. To you this may seem like small potatoes, but to others maybe not. Perhaps in the overall size of the budget it is, but to me libertarianism has always been more of a moral cause than a practical one.
that would be how I would state my position…..
First we have some real big issues to deal with…..
I’m not sure that Horning necessarily said it was his priority. He just stated his positions on various issues as a candidate, and naturally education, being an issue that is important to many people, is not one that he ignored.
J Clifford picked this position out to criticize, but did not say anything (unless I missed it) as to what level of priority Horning places on this.
just seems to me that going after spending on education and science before you deal with the elephants in the room of Social Security, Medicare and the Military let alone the prison system and other law enforcement agencies is the wrong objective.
Libertarians routinely earn well into the double digits when not running against both a Democrat and a Republican, and have elected hundreds or perhaps thousands of people over the years, mostly to minor offices, a few to state legislatures, mid-sized city mayorships and the like. Libertarian ideas are more popular than the Libertarian Party per se, as is true with other alternative political parties, due to the persistent “wasted vote” myth and the fact that we get outspent by something like 1,000-1 in elections. Random surveys of public opionion generally place libertarian-leaners in the 15-25% range and rising. Support for libertarian views on single issues is higher than that; for example, some people who agree with us about government education disagree with some of our other views such as maintaining and strengthening separation of church and state, bringing troops home from around the world and cutting back the military-industrial complex, reining in the police-prison-industrial complex and the domestic surveillance state, ending the “wars” on drugs and terror and the wars overseas, legalizing sex work, and ending immigration quotas.
I don’t care what 90% of the population does or doesn’t think, I care about what is right and what is wrong. And as someone who was homeschooled, I find your assertions offensive & small-minded.
I don’t think that is true, but even if it is, that has nothing to do with whether the statement is accurate.
I suppose we would also have to begin by asking: failure at what? Most people today probably assume – incorrectly – that the goal of government schooling was to educate a population that was previously largely ignorant, or that we have always had government schooling. In reality, government schooling was rare in the early days of the US, and functional literacy was probably higher than it is now. The early proponents of government schooling were quite open in saying that their objective was to create a conformist population of factory clock punchers, cannon fodder, and magacorporate and government employees. I think they have been fairly successful by that standard.
I don’t believe that it is.
What is? Libertarian philosophy? No, I believe it is quite utalitarian. .
If our goal is a better educated populace, rather than a more compliant one as the actual stated goal of government schooling was at the outset, I would say it has been a bigger failure than either of your other examples.
Improving how?
Based on what evidence?
I’m not sure what surveys you are relying on, but even if you are correct, it has in fact been very practical in reality, with great results overall, especially when compared with government schools.
Could you provide anything more than assertion or anecdotal evidence for that?
I believe Jed is using free market in a sense that includes non-profits, charities, and cooperatives of all sorts. I know I certainly am.
Agreed, George. Jed and Paulie, when Libertarians begin their arguments with declarations such as “public education is an abject failure”, they lose credibility with 90 percent of the population before they’ve even had a chance to be heard. One of the weaknesses of Libertarian philosophy is that it’s detached from the way that people are actually living. It’s all in the head, as things ought to be.
Public education is not perfect, but it is also not an abject failure. There’s a big territory in between. New Coke was an abject failure. The Edsel was an abject failure. Public education has been going strong, and improving, for generations. For most people, in most places, it is regarded as, on the whole, successful. Homeschooling, on the other hand, is regarded by most people in most places as intriguing, appealing in the abstract, but impractical in reality, and often populated by anti-social conspiracy theorists, militia members, Creationists, cultists, etc.
If Libertarians are going to try to advance their cause with the idea of homeschooling, they need to confront the fact that homeschooling is used as a tool to preserve children’s ignorance at least as often as it is used as a tool of education.
Science is not a free-market activity, Jed. It’s not about what people are willing to pay for. The tendency to cram every human activity into the market metaphor is another Libertarian weakness. Marketplace activity is important, but it’s just one aspect of the human experience, and as long as Libertarians continue to make the market the be-all-and-end-all of their politics, they will continue to earn the support of only 2 or 3 percent of the population.
This one.
Depends on the standards you use. I’ve seen old tests that were required to graduate middle school, and most college graduates could not pass them today. Private schools educate students better and cheaper than government schools do, even when the students come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Government schools in many other countries are producing better results than govrnment schools in the US, for that matter.
Overall, homeschooling students are doing much better than government school students. Of course there is some variation within each group.
Given the amount of federal spending and unfunded mandates on education, I find that hard to believe. But even if that’s true, the statement was about government schooling in general, not so much federal.
And yet test scores remain stagnant, despite the vast amount of money poured into the failed system. I stand against statism. I stand against forcing children to attend government schools of substandard, segregated education & indoctrination toward total love of the state.
Also, the Federal investment of schooling is in large parts schools for children of diplomats and military personnel overseas.
Abject failure? What planet are you on? There are a lot of bad schools, but there are public schools that are far superior to anything that existed 40 years ago. WHile there are successful home schooling parents, there are also children whose math education stoppped at business arithmetic, meaning they are for the most part shut out from being accountants, doctors, engineers, scientists, computer programmers, nurses, quantitative hedge fund managers, etc.
Jed, I agree. I’ve been meaning to write an article as a rebuttal to the recent Irregular Times articles attacking libertarianism. Thanks for reminding me.
Given the abject failure of American government schools and the great successes of homeschooling & unschooling, I welcome decentralization of education. Science is a private, free market endeavor with no room for government meddling.