The Dawn Treader

"A sad thing"

Only from your perspective.

This candidate did not run a stealth campaign. She ran boldly on a platform of throwing Darwin out of the schools ... and lo and behold, was elected. The people have spoken. Democracy works.

At least 51 percent of the residents of Christiansburg find great joy in this.

Now, you want to see some politics in action. Wait till the ACLU sues. That will be sad.

"Perhaps you changed your mind now that your side won one?"

I can tell you have not been to a pigfest yet. You have not learned how to sniff the devil's rule in action ;)

Context switch: I have recently detected rumblings in the Roanoke Valley emanating from a certain apologetics class ... the question I keep hearing is, is the famous Tom Girsch coming to town this year?

A while back, we were talking about whether ID has reached a tipping point. Right now, for me personally, this whole thing has reached a saturation point. Round and round and round we go, and the whole thing, from both sides, seems to have become an exercise in posturing.

I mean, Paul, how can you seriously argue that the results of an open election for a local office is a "flaw" in democracy? What should we do -- impose a test of scientific orthodoxy on everyone who wants to run for office? Prohibit public speech about any ideas that differ from some official line? Close off the marketplace of ideas to every idea that challenges the market leader? Don't they do stuff like that in China and North Vietnam?

And why is it, Paul, that I have no say over whether my hard-earned tax dollars can only be used to teach an extreme form of logical positivism and a materialist metaphysic when it comes to questions of origins? Will you at least support school choice vouchers so that I can afford to educate my children as I believe best for them, or is letting parents raise their children another "flaw" arising from sentimental notions like liberty and freedom? And what does any of this have to do with the holocaust? You have film footage and tens of thousands of eyewitnesses who observed the billions of years of natural history before man? How is the way we establish truth claims about the holocaust even remotely comparable to comparable to the way we investigate cosmology? Why imply that everyone who questions neoDarwinism is a holocaust denier?

On the other hand, when I read some of the materials from the Dover ID case, many of the tactics on the ID side also make me ill. Politicizing all this made some of those Dover folks into liars, plain and simple. If you want to promote young earth creationism, admit it. (This isn't directed at Jeff, BTW). We should be having high level discussions about the unity of Truth, the problems with neoDarwinism, and the limits of empiricism, but instead we get ugly posturing and politics (again, not directed at Jeff).

So there. I will close the steam valve again and go back to my regularly scheduled boring day.

"how can you seriously argue that the results of an open election for a local office is a "flaw" in democracy?"

I didn't, and challenge you to show where I did. The flaw (in this case) is that people with little to no knowledge of science and the needs of education get to decide what should be on a curriculum based on popular vote. The examples I gave are all things that so far as I know are taught in the average school, and yet you maintain that this should be put up to a vote - "hey everyone, who thinks we need to waste time on this 'reading' thing?"

I don't suggest that people who deny evolution have anything at all in common with holocaust deniers, chiefly because such a claim would be patently absurd. My purpose in using that example is to highlight that there are plenty of people who do deny the holocaust, but I don't think we should put it up for a vote.

The purpose of the gravity example, similarly, was to show that gravity is 'only' a theory (sure there's stuff out there that *looks* like gravity in action, but nobody has ever actually *seen* a graviton), but it's a well-tested one and that's why it gets to be taught in schools. Evolution is very similar - it's covering a lot more ground, and therefore has an understandabe amount of work left to do, but it has proven its worth sufficient to make it into a curriculum.

"And why is it, Paul, that I have no say over whether my hard-earned tax dollars can only be used to teach an extreme form of logical positivism and a materialist metaphysic when it comes to questions of origins?"
I have no idea what you're talking about. Evolution doesn't discuss origins, and if you have school teachers in your district who are using it to teach origins you do and should have a say in it being taught, because it sounds like they're incompetent.

School vouchers is an entirely separate topic, but briefly no, I don't think you have an absolute right to have your child educated as you see fit, so I don't see why anyone should be paying for you to do that.

Finally, I'm all for a discussion of the meaning of truth, the limits of empiricism, etc. It would be great if we could introduce some of these concepts at school. But they're NOT SCIENCE, so putting them in a SCIENCE class is utterly nonsensical. Unless of course I can walk into a shelter funded under the faith-based initiative and force people to stop doing particular things because we took a vote and we don't think what you're doing accords with faith.

Sorry, I meant "running against an incumbent who held anti-ID views."

Paul,

...holocaust deniers, chiefly because such a claim would be patently absurd. My purpose in using that example is to highlight that there are plenty of people who do deny the holocaust, but I don't think we should put it up for a vote.

Fair enough, but you have to admit it's an incindiary example, and it is the kind of rhetorical device anti-ID advocates like to use in these debates. Question Darwin? It's as evil as denying the holocaust. Not fair.

gravity ... but it's a well-tested one and that's why it gets to be taught in schools. Evolution is very similar...

Not really so similar. We directly observe gravity in action every second of every day. We don't directly observe speciation through natural selection every day; we've never directly observed the development complex biological structures solely through natural selection; and it's impossible to directly observe the birth of our universe through purposeless forces. The method we use to assess arguments about the validity of neoDarwinism and design is different in scope and kind than the method you use to verify a theory like gravity. (Observation and verification versus Popper's falsifiability criterion or some other inductive method). Not to say the methods we use to assess theories like neoDarwinism are invalid, but comparing what we know about how life developed to what we know about gravity is apples to oranges.

More importantly, rhetorically, this is similar, in some ways, to the holocaust rhetoric. Not only are folks who question Darwinism right wing wacko holocaust deniers, they're also so stupid they think they can jump out of ten story building without crashing to the ground. I'm sure you didn't intend that, but lots of anti-ID folks who talk like this do intend it. It's part of what is making me ill about the way all this is being debated.

but it has proven its worth sufficient to make it into a curriculum.

This I agree with. Darwinism should be taught. Whether it should be taught exclusively, as the only legitimate way to look at origins, is a different question.

I don't think you have an absolute right to have your child educated as you see fit

Fair enough. We shouldn't let people beat their kids with metal rods. But don't I have a first amendment right to the free excercise of religion, which includes the right to educate my children consistent with my religious beliefs? Is teaching my kids to question neoDarwinist orthodoxy excluded from my free exercise rights?

school vouchers is an entirely separate topic

I don't think vouchers is an entirely separate issue. Much of the furor over ID would die down if we had more of a free market for education. You think ID is bunk? Fine, send your kids to a Darwin-only school. You like ID? Fine, send your kids to a school that teaches it. You want them to hear both? Good, there will be schools that offer that too. Let the marketplace of ideas really function like a market.

And no one else should pay for it.

Vouchers don't mean I get to use someone else's tax money to pay for my kid's education. It means I get to allocate the taxes I pay towards educating my kids as I choose. After all, my wages are presumptively my monies. The government takes some of the wages I earn only through my consent as reflected in the tax legislation passed by my elected representatives. As it is now, I'm forced to surrender money I earn to fund education for my kids I may not want or believe in. If I suggest the education funded by my tax dollars should include alternatives to strict Darwinist orthodoxy, I'm told stuff about the holocaust, gravity, and a failure of democracy. If I suggest I should get to keep more of my hard-earned wages if I choose to send my kids to an alternative school, I'm told the "scientists" know better than me how my wages should be spent. Something's wrong with this picture, I think.

David:I'm not sure I buy the analogy of a public school to a public good.There's little that benefits the public good more than public education does. Well, universal education, anyway, although I'd argue that this is a distinction without a difference. You may not see the public benefits of eduction every day in an in-your-face kind of way, but when you live in a city like Memphis, where the schools aren't very good, and the city has difficulty attracting and maintaining employers precisely because of this, and you think about the impact this has on the economy, you can absolutely see how this qualifies as "public good." Lots of the older folks in my town certainly reject it, which is why they vote against every school budget that would affect their property taxes.If the older folks in your town are anything like the older folks in mine, they're against damn near anything that raises their property taxes. But boy-oh-boy do they get upset when services they like get cut as a result. A typical neighborhood association meeting in my neighborhood consists of blue hairs alternately complaining that the schools are bad, the roads are bad, there aren't enough police, and I don't want to pay property taxes any more. They never quite make the connection.If my district elected a pro-astrology / tarot candidate, I wouldn't call it a "failure of democracy" or imply that anyone who believes in tarot or astrology should be banned from running for office.I'll let Paul address that, as I don't recall ever having characterized it as such. But in a general sense, if ignorance rules by popular vote, then I would have to say that this is a failure of democracy, yes. And no, I wouldn't bar anyone from running because of their views, but that doesn't stop me from bemoaning the state of affairs when those knuckleheads start winning. :)

Jeff:Ever wonder why we don't just have one federal school board ... one ring to rule them all? ... Apparently, in the history of this country, people felt that the decision of what to teach their children ought to be ultimately decided by them ... and not the federal government. They wanted the communities most affected by what gets taught to have control over what gets taught.Intent aside, what makes sense is to have a certain set of federal standards which must be universally met, with increased local control over in what ways they want to require exceeding those standards or what additional material gets taught.

From a historical perspective, of course, the idea of public schooling is fairly new. Some of the framers were apparently perfectly content with a wealthy elite and an uneducated underclass. There really wasn't even anything resembling nationwide public education until around 1918.Philosophy and ideology will always be hotly debated. I, for one, like the idea that the communities most affected by these philosophical decisions get to elect someone whose philosophy and ideology they are comfortable with. It seems like representative democracy at its best ... rather than a flawed version of it.The problem here is that, as you often argue, truth isn't subjective. Yet what you're saying here is that you like a system which allows groups of people to teach what makes them comfortable even if it's wrong. Whether or not astrology is claptrap is not subject to the popular vote; I don't see why teaching it as fact ought to be.I think the whole concept of school boards is unique to American democracy.You'd be wrong. :)

Just to put some numbers into perspective, Tennessee has a population of roughly 5.9 million. Of these, it's safe to estimate about 80% of them are taxpayers (a low guess, actually), meaning that there are 4.7 million taxpayers in Tennessee. There are roughly one million school-age children in the state. Assuming an average of two kids per taxpaying household, that means that there are about half a million taxpayers with kids in school, being supported by 4.2 million others with no such kids.

What does all this mean? If you could make these assumptions, and further make the patently absurd assumption that everyone had equal housing value and equal spending habits (TN has no income tax), then each parent pays roughly 8.5% of the cost of sending their children to school, with the non-parents paying the remaining 91.5%. So, using the $6,900 number from above, your voucher value using the "dopderbeck method" is roughly $586.50 in Tennessee. And if that's all we're talking about here, then knock yourself out with the vouchers. But that's not really what anyone's talking about when they talk vouchers.

Note that all the giant leaps of logic and ill-founded assumptions I had to make above should also point out the difficulty in determining how much "my" share of the tax burden of public education actually is.

It also goes to show how little each taxpayer actually pays for public education. With the above numbers, and assuming an average per-student cost of $7,000 per year statewide (a high estimate), each taxpayer pays (on average) less than $1,500 per year to support public education, whether or not they have children in school. Given that the typical voucher value ranges from $3,000 to $5,000, you'd be hard pressed to make a case that you're simply redirecting "your" money.

(But despite all of those assumptions, the numbers I used are real.)

(And don't get me started on issues that involve math, because I tend to do stuff like this.) :)

Paul,

I'm just too tired right now to fisk what you've written, and to some extent I'm not sure what you're arguing. We elect local school board representatives to do stuff like design the local school curriculum. What does that have to do with political appointments like the head of FEMA or the Fed Chairman? Are you saying the President should appoint local school boards instead of letting local people vote for them? Seems pretty extreme to me.

Tom

There's little that benefits the public good more than public education does.

You misunderstood the term "public good." "Public good" as I used it is an economics term. It means something that is non-rival and non-excludable -- it is equally consumed by everyone regardless of how much (or whether) they pay for it. Good examples are lighthouses and armies. Classical economic theory tells us public goods should be supplied by the government using funds from the common treasury. In contrast, private goods -- some of which may be very good things for society -- are not consumed equally by everyone and therefore typically are best provided through market mechanisms. Of course education generally benefits everyone in society, but it doesn't necessarily fit the economic definition of a "public good" because not everyone consumes it equally. Since education is not a true public good, a decent argument can be made that it should be supplied through private markets rather than by government. (Education isn't really a purely private good either, so you can also argue in favor of government intervention, but I'm suggesting the economics aren't so simple.)

The problem here, though, is that now there's absolutely no control over quality of education.

Quality control would be provided by the market. Except in the case of public goods, private markets typically provide far better quality control than governments.

As I understand it, vouchers are generally offered only to lower-income families, who are generally paying a lower share of the tax burden

There are proposals for means-tested voucher programs floating around, which might be fairly subject to this criticism. Other voucher programs would target kids in failing schools, regardless of family income. Yet others would provide universal vouchers. There are lots of different combinations and options.

that's over half of the total taxes I paid last year to all taxation authorities, local, state, and federal.

You only paid $12K in taxes in total? Please, send me your accountant's phone number. I pay over $6K in local property taxes alone, and that's for a normal house in a normal northeastern town. Federal income taxes I can't even think about, it makes me ill -- and that's on a college prof's modest salary.

$586.50 in Tennessee. And if that's all we're talking about here, then knock yourself out with the vouchers.

I need to move south. Things are much more expensive in the northeast, I guess. Like I said, over $6K in property taxes alone, and a significant portion of that goes to the public schools. Those numbers might be real in Tennesee, but they don't buy you a cup of coffee in New Jersey.

I'm suggesting that there are things that should be done by popular acclaim (such as managing education generally, providing sufficient facilities, etc) and others that should be done based on expertise (e.g. deciding what is based in fact and should therefore be included in curricula). We don't decide what should be decided by elected people based on public interest, or anything else particularly concrete so far as I can tell, otherwise we'd have elections for the head of FEMA or the Fed.

One issue with the idea of public good is that so very few things really meet the definition. I, for example, don't consume lighthouses equally with a fisherman. Now at some number of removes I benefit from them due to lower shipping costs, but then that argument applies to education too. And once you go through the list, there's essentially nothing left. I don't even consume the armed forces as much as others, because I don't upset armed foreigners as much as some people. I know that's a stupid example, but if you're going to try to quantify your preference for "Internal order, external defense, maintenance of currency" you quickly find that it's an assumption the same as most other things.

Oh, and quality control in the market depends on a couple of things that we can't afford in education. One is customer satisfaction (I don't let my kids pick their teachers) and the other is feedback. So in 30 years time, when the kids of today have demonstrated that a particular educational approach that their parents freely chose didn't work, can they get a refund?

Oh, and quality control in the market depends on a couple of things that we can't afford in education. One is customer satisfaction (I don't let my kids pick their teachers) and the other is feedback.

The kids aren't the immediate customers, the parents are. It's often more difficult to manage customer satisfaction in a public school environment; dissatisfied parents usually vote with their feet by moving out of the district if they can afford it. Failing schools, however, don't have to respond to this market pressure, becuasue they're guaranteed funding even if high tax base parents move away. In fact, we often perversely incentivize poor performance by throwing additional public subsidies into failing schools. A more market-based system might mitigate some of this kind of balkanization by aligning rewards (such as voucher dollars) with incentives to excel.

As for feedback, standardized tests are of course one (flawed) measure, and perhaps more importantly, involved parents get daily feedback just by being involved with their kids. I know if my daughter is struggling in math, and I can pretty quickly figure out if it's some problem with the teaching approach or if she's just being lazy. I also think I'm in a good position to assess whether she'd be better off in a school that, say, stresses literature and the arts, or classical training, or math, or whatever. I don't think you need to wait 30 years to assess educational outcomes.

Tom,

Very little actually fits this definition

I don't know about "very little," but generally you're right, which is one reason why markets typically are more efficient than governments at providing most goods and services.

I'd wager that a lighthouse is an exceptionally poor example

I'll take that bet! The lighthouse is a "textbook" example of a public good. I'm not sure you're quite getting the concept. The point isn't whether everyone in the country gets the benefit of the lighthouse. The point is that you can't exclude any ships in the area from taking advantage of the lighthouse, even if those ships haven't paid to use it (the good is non-excludable); and, no matter how many ships consume the light from the lighthouse at any given time, the light never becomes scarce (the good is nonrival). If you could put a barrier around the light, you could charge for access, or if the light was diminshed by each person who viewed it, you could charge for the portion consumed -- and thus you could create a market for the light. Since you can't do either of those things, you can't create a market, because consumers will soon realize there is no way to keep them from using the good, even if they don't pay. This is called a "free rider" problem -- those who pay subsidize those who don't.

Likewise, with respect to national defense, every citizen gets the same benefit from it regardless of how much or whether we pay for it. (You're joking about Bill Gates, right?) If you have some references that suggest the concept of "public" versus "private" goods is invalid, I'd like to see them. If you Google it, you'll find I'm not pulling this stuff out of some Heritage Foundation talking points -- it's all mainstream regulatory economics 101.

Again, I'd argue that everyone is far more likely to "consume" it than about any other "public good" resource.

This would be wrong. 100% of us "consume" the national defense. Regardless, whether something is a "public good" in economic terms has nothing to do with how many people consume it. It is defined solely by non-excludability and non-rivalry. Read up on it a bit.

Of course, if you could make a better case for the typical American benefiting more from a lighthouse than from public schools, I'd be willing to reopen that point of debate.j

Again, we're talking past each other because you're not getting the economic meaning of "public good." Here is why education is not an economic "public good": education is excludable -- you can refuse to let some people into the classroom; and education is rival -- there are a non-infinite number of inputs (teachers, administrators, classrooms, ect.)

Blech, accounting theory. Fortunately, as anyone who's spent any time in real life can tell you, most of that theory goes right out the window. :)

But you're right, to an extent, we were talking past each other, in large part because the meaning you were using for "public good" was one that probably less than 1% of the population would share. :) When most people talk about "public good," that's not what they're talking about. By that definition, highways are not public good, police are not public good, parks are not public good, etc.

I will, however, take exception to your statements that markets are generally more efficient at providing most goods and services, because history simply hasn't borne this out. When the stars and planets align just right this is true, but sooner or later, somebody "wins," competition dissolves, and then the market simply doesn't work all that well. Bottom line is pure capitalism is every bit as poor in the long haul as pure socialism. There has to be some balance there.

Generally speaking where markets don't do well is where you have a universal need and a limited ability to distribute that need. Transportation is a fine example of this -- it simply cannot be profitable and as such cannot be left to the market. (Yes, some small subsections of the transit industry are profitable, but these are heavily subsidized).

I'd argue that education is another such area. After all, what's the profit motivation for putting a top notch school (or anything approaching it) in an inner-city neighborhood with lots of high-risk kids none of whom have parents who can afford to pay for their education? Even with vouchers, any profit-minded company would have to think twice before engaging in such a venture, because they would be wholly dependent upon government subsidies. Public schools, flawed though they may be, are the only hope these kids have.It isn't often true when government is providing the goods or services, because there are no market pressures disciplining the government. And this is exactly the point I'm making concerning education: tax dollars can go down a black hole much more quickly and much more persistently than dollars paid in a market transaction.I'm sorry, but this is exactly wrong. First of all, there are market-like pressures in the form of other localities. Governments that do a better job educating and providing infrastructure attract and keep more businesses and residences, and those both pay more money for the privilege of being there.

And if you think market transaction dollars can't go down a black hole just as quick, you haven't bought any IPO stock. (Or Enron, or WorldCom, or K-Mart, or Delta Air Lines... you get the idea...) :)

Wow, we've drifted off-topic quite a bit, haven't we? I'll stick to the education-related stuff, since the textbooky economics stuff with little resemblance to real life has never held much interest for me. :)

The problem with your schools-as-competitive-entities scenario is not one of startup costs, but of support ability. In larger cities, where neighborhoods are large enough to support two or more competing schools, it could work; but is small towns, where there's only one school of each level (elemenatry, middle, and secondary), how is this supposed to work? Two elementary schools cannot survive together for long, so sooner or later one "wins," the other dies, and whatever competitive pressure may have existed is gone.

Further, education is not a product like any other. Sure, I have a choice of several brands of milk, and I have a choice of many other beverages besides milk, including water, which in many cases I don't have to pay for at all. Thus, milk has to stay competitive because not everyone needs it and there comes a (fairly low) price at which people will simply stop buying it. How does any of that compare to education, which is a big-ticket item that everyone needs and relatively few could afford (if paying directly)?

I'd argue that education isn't like those small-ticket items you mention, but like health care. And we see what a relatively free market has done to health care: costs accelerating at triple the rate of inflation, and a growing number of people with insufficient access to adequate health care. I'd prefer if education didn't follow that example.This is partly true, but the perverse result is that poor people are stuck in failing school districts in crumbling cities, while wealthier people flee to often de facto class- and race-segregated suburbs.No argument here.Introducting some market pressures would help change that, I believe.Here we have an argument. You seem to be of the assumption that the market abandoned the area because the neighborhood deteriorated, when it's more of a feedback loop. The "free market" abandoned these neighborhoods when they started to head south. So what you have to do is artificially inject those pressures, which essentially requires government involvement. Once you have that, it looks nothing at all like a market. And again, show me a profit-minded entity that's going to willingly put a new school in, say, Watts.

And even if you manage to pull that off, any market-like pressure that gets applied is temporary at best, because the introduction of such a school is far more likely to kill the existing school than to improve it. So in very short order, you'd be right back where you started -- no school choice; except in this case, the only school available now would be a private one, unaccountable to the taxpayers, rather than a public, accountable one."Market" doesn't mean only or primarily a stock market.I didn't mean to imply that it was. The point is that in a market, it's far, far easier to lose money than to make it; and in an unregulated "free" market, this is even more true.

Regardless, the fact that some people lose money in the stock market doesn't mean the market has failed in economic terms.I'm frankly less concerned with the health of the market as a whole and more concerned with the health of the populace as a whole. I think it's clear that unrestricted markets tend to lead to what we've been seeing over the past decade or two: a greater concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, a shrinking middle class, and a growing lower class. (Uh oh, I've gotten into economic theory after all.) Ultimately, you wind up with a plutocratic oligarchy (which many argue is what we already have).

You may think that's a noble goal to shoot for, but I'll disagree, which is why I'm more in favor of several blatantly anti-competitive things like universal education and (increasingly) universal health care.

Competition produces winners and losers, and anywhere you have a market with more then negligibal costs of entry, then you are going to get consolidation.

This is simply false as an empirical matter. I mean, this is basic stuff, and it isn't seriously disputed by economists. Costs of entry have to be significant before they foreclose competition. If what you are saying is true, we would see antitrust problems (such as the gilded age oil and rail trusts) in nearly every product and service market. That isn't what we see. Antitrust problems are the exception rather than the rule in the vast majority of product and service markets. And, we have antitrust laws that help rectify those problems.

How is it harder for me to vote the bums out than to find a competitor that may or may not exist that may or may not do what I want?

Would you want to have to vote for your sole supplier of milk every three years, or do you prefer to go to the market and have several producers compete every day for your business? You can't seriously be arguing that electorial politics responds to consumer demand as nimbly as markets.

It can be more difficult to vote the bums out for several reasons having to do with political economy. The bums may be supported by entrenched interest groups; the bums may have financial resources that oustrip challengers; suitable challengers may not enter the arena for various personal reasons; a lack of term limits for some offices favors incumbents; the costs, in terms of time and money, of political organization are very high; and the two-party system often ensures a lame choice between equally vapid candidates (witness my home state of NJ's recent gubenatorial election).

private schools do not have to submit to state testing, do not have to have their progress or curriculum monitored, etc

Not so. Private schools -- even home schoolers -- have to satisfy state and local educational standards, including in many cases standardized state tests (maybe Jeff can share some home schooling experiences here). Further, kids educated in such settings have to take the same standardized college entrance exams as everyone else. I haven't been suggesting that we should abandon state and local standards altogether.

What you are asking is the spending of tax dollars on something that is supposed to benefit the entire population without any oversite or control whatsoever.

No, I'm asking for a regulated, but robust, market in which I as a parent can keep more of my own hard-earned money, instead of paying it out in taxes, so that I can afford to educate my children in a way I believe is best for their welfare.

So let me circle back to our original discussion and tie it together a bit. Here's why I raised school choice: when you argue so vociferously against ID being mentioned in public schools, and you also argue so strongly against school choice, you need to understand how it sounds to the religious person's ear. Belief in a creator/God is centrally fundamental to a religious Christian / Jew / Muslim's personhood. You are telling us religious folks that we are required to surrender a good chunk of our hard-earned income for public education to teach children something that is anathema to us -- something that strikes at the center of who we are and what we believe. When we suggest we'd like to instead spend our money on schooling we believe in, that we'd like to see some competing alternatives, you say no, we must subsidize that which the government is imposing. When we then elect local school board candidates who openly favor our views in free and fair elections, you say there was a "failure of democracy" and suggest the federal government should control our local school boards so that only your preferred materialist understanding of life is taught. Can you understand why many religious people are so deeply concerned by this? Do you see how you are systematically foreclosing every option for religious people who can't afford private school tuition? Aren't we still a nation that values freedom, including religious liberty, above just about anything else?

One more thing:Aren't we still a nation that values freedom, including religious liberty, above just about anything else?I'm increasingly fearing that the answer to this is "no." Recent trends indicate that we're far too willing to sacrifice freedom for the illusion of security, and that the nation collectively believes in religious freedom for me but not for thee.

"Not so. Private schools -- even home schoolers -- have to satisfy state and local educational standards, including in many cases standardized state tests (maybe Jeff can share some home schooling experiences here). Further, kids educated in such settings have to take the same standardized college entrance exams as everyone else. I haven't been suggesting that we should abandon state and local standards altogether."

Except for the college thing, I can find no evidence of this. i cannt find private schools listed in my state's collection fo school test scores, and I cannot find a provision in the NCLB act that applies the testing to private schools. I am not saying you are wrong, I am just saying I cannot prove you right :) I am perfectly willing to concede this, but I want some proof :)

"This is simply false as an empirical matter. I mean, this is basic stuff, and it isn't seriously disputed by economists. Costs of entry have to be significant before they foreclose competition. If what you are saying is true, we would see antitrust problems (such as the gilded age oil and rail trusts) in nearly every product and service market. "

There are several things wrong with this statement, it seems. First, anti-trust is not the be all end all of consolidation.. Cisco dominates the network routing market in a luiteral sense. They don't use that domination to muscle their way into other business or bully their customers, so the anti-trust laws don't apply to them.

Hardly anyone woudl seriously consider challanging Amazon at this point, not becasue the costs are so high, btu because Amazon completely dominates mind-space and has a huge eg up in distribution and relationships with publishers. Consolidation does not have to mean robber barrons -- but it does mean that I pay more for book than I might have otherwise becasue of it.

Not to mention the fact that it seems that economists have an absurdly narrow view of costs. Does the cost of changing the mindshare of Amazon count towards building a competitor? It should, but IIRC, it doesn't. In fact, it seems to me that consolidation immediately raises the costs, becasue to do business, the competitor almost always has to do business with suppliers and distributors that already have a relationship with the consolidated powers and ar ethus vulnerable to reprisals -- especially since the consolidated powers are the only game in town.

And, finally, your mention of the gilded age seems strange in a paragraph meant to disauade me of the notion that capitalism does not lead to consolidation. Becasue, obviously, it did. And, for that matter, look at the kleptocracy that Russia's weak state has allowed to flourish. So, again, history is pretty clear: consolidation is the natural state of capitalism.

"Would you want to have to vote for your sole supplier of milk every three years, or do you prefer to go to the market and have several producers compete every day for your business? You can't seriously be arguing that electorial politics responds to consumer demand as nimbly as markets."

And this has what to do with my point? Surely, you are not arguing that schools are the same as milk?

Again -- explain to me why I should think that politicians, people whose jobs are on the line, would be less responsive than compnaies whose jobs are also on the line. People are going to send thier kids to schools, so, again. all that has to happen is that the schools in the are all meet some bare minimum requirmeent to get people to send their kids there. In fact, the profit motive could kill schools - -since people have to make money, the schools will focus on doing just enough to fill the classrooms, and voila, you have a race to the bottom because profits demand it. there is no way to fix that like there is in an election. Governments don't have to worry about turning a buck, so their only concern is making their voters happy.

"It can be more difficult to vote the bums out for several reasons having to do with political economy. The bums may be supported by entrenched interest groups; the bums may have financial resources that oustrip challengers; suitable challengers may not enter the arena for various personal reasons; a lack of term limits for some offices favors incumbents; the costs, in terms of time and money, of political organization are very high; and the two-party system often ensures a lame choice between equally vapid candidates ("

And all of these things apply to business. The local business may grab all the suitable land for schools, they may collude to offer the minimum required, you may not be part of a wealthy enough group for your opinion or bsuiness to matter to them, even if you are a numerical majority and on and on. And there is no way to change any of that aside from enticing a better company -- difficult to do, considering that said company must make money -- or starting your own, a capital intensive process not easily done. at least with elections, money doesn't decide everything and I have a regular chance to vote them away.

As to your last parapgraph: don't ever make the mistake of thinking that people who follow your religion are the only ones who could be called religious. Belief in ID is not required to be a religious person. Religious people can and do think ID and creationism is bunk. Something to keep in mind, lest you inadvertendly insult someone.

The taxes collected for your schools are meant to benefit everyone. There is nothing to prevent you form telling your kids that Creationism is correct and that evolution is flawed. But it CANNOT take place in a science clasroom becasure IT IS NOT SCEINCE. And since it is not science, its presence undermines the abality of kids to learn real sceicne, and thus undermines the benefit to the body politic that is the justification for the taxes. And you cannot teach creationism in school, becasue that is imposing your religious views on children.

What you are advocating, in fact, is a the equivalent of forcing roads to be made of sawdust becasue concrete roads offend some taxpayer's religious views and insisting that everyone acknowledge that sawdust and ashphalt are the same in terms of raod building quality.

As for vouchers, that is a whole other can of worms,. but would amadrass qualify for vouchers? How about a Satanist's school? No? Then you ar eimposing tests on who can and cannot get the money, whihc means you are forcing the state to choose winners and loser sin religions. Do you forbid money to schools that use textbooks that paint slavery as beneficial to Blacks (and both do exist)? Or that the Holocaust was a figment of someone's imagination? No? then you are involving the state in choosing winners and losers in the political arena. And we have to deal with the fact that in many places there ar eno schools to accept the overflow, there are almost no voucher plans that pay all the tutition to any school, that the Milwaukee voucher plan was working so poorely that the GOP stopped collecting statistics on it to avoid embaressment, etc, etc,etc.

Kevin,

Hardly anyone woudl seriously consider challanging Amazon at this point

Um, have you ever gone to barnesandnoble.com?

They don't use that domination to muscle their way into other business or bully their customers, so the anti-trust laws don't apply to them.

Antitrust isn't that narrow. Market share alone can give rise to a monopolization claim. I'm not sure about Cisco's market share or whether they've ever been challenged.

...the competitor almost always has to do business with suppliers and distributors that already have a relationship with the consolidated powers and ar ethus vulnerable to reprisals

Yes and this is another way markets work. Vertical (supplier and distributor) markets also help discipline horizontal (customer) markets.

And, finally, your mention of the gilded age seems strange ?

Go back and read it again. The point had to do with natural monopolies, such as the rails, which I agree must be provided by government or regulated.

Surely, you are not arguing that schools are the same as milk?

In some ways, economically, they are. They are both private goods. They both have some aspects of commodities. Regardless, the point about milk was to respond to the really astounding arguments you guys seem to be making against free markets in general. Are you socialists?

explain to me why I should think that politicians, people whose jobs are on the line, would be less responsive than compnaies whose jobs are also on the line.

I already gave about six reasons having to do with political economy and the two party political system. Go back and read them. Seriously -- do you really in your heart of hearts think governments typically are as responsive to the public as firms that are subject to market pressures? If so, I'd go back to milk again -- why not also have government provide milk for us if that's the case?

Governments don't have to worry about turning a buck, so their only concern is making their voters happy.

Google "political economy" and "public choice theory." Do you really think government it this simple? President Bush and Dick Cheney, for example, care more about what you and I think than about what big oil thinks?

And there is no way to change any of that aside from enticing a better company

The market entices them. If there is a profitable business model and free competition, competitors will come. They always do.

don't ever make the mistake of thinking that people who follow your religion are the only ones who could be called religious.

Never suggested that... in fact, I referred to a variety of faiths including Judaism and Islam as well as my own.

Belief in ID is not required to be a religious person. Religious people can and do think ID and creationism is bunk. Something to keep in mind, lest you inadvertendly insult someone.

Never suggested it was. But the fact is that tens of millions of Americans, and billions of people throughout the world, believe in a creator who in some sense, detectable or not designed us.

But it CANNOT take place in a science clasroom becasure IT IS NOT SCEINCE.

I don't have the energy to get into this. We've been through it zillions of times before. If you think shouting bolsters your view of the philosophy of science, go ahead and shout.

but would a madrass qualify for vouchers? How about a Satanist's school?

Yes and Yes. But I'm not concerned about radical Islamist schools or Satanist schools because there's not likely to be significant demand for them. The market will weed them out. And, as I said, the education market wouldn't be unregulated. We don't have to permit schools that incite people to violence. Inciting to violence has long not been protected by the first amendment.

Do you forbid money to schools that use textbooks that paint slavery as beneficial to Blacks (and both do exist)? Or that the Holocaust was a figment of someone's imagination?

Here we go again. Anyone who favors ID is a racist and a holocaust denier. Bull.

And we have to deal with the fact that in many places there ar eno schools to accept the overflow, there are almost no voucher plans that pay all the tutition to any school, that the Milwaukee voucher plan was working so poorely that the GOP stopped collecting statistics on it to avoid embaressment, etc, etc,etc.

A things a truly open, widely available education market would correct.

Tom,

Sure, our history classes teach that slavery was bad -- a moral teaching -- but they do so because virtually everyone agrees that it was.

and

John Q. Voter is qualified to gauge the benefits of science education in a general sense, but he's generally not qualified to determine, down to the particulars, what that curriculum ought to look like.

So, the "broad public concensus" matters except when it concerns science and Darwinism? Do you think the "broad public concensus" in this country is that the universe is the result of purposeless chance?

Kevin,

In response to your doubt about a state's ability to regulate private school standards, see this this link, which provides a decent summary of some of the legal issues, or Google it and you'll find links for many states (e.g., North Carolina) that show I'm not making this up.

"Here we go again. Anyone who favors ID is a racist and a holocaust denier. Bull."

I think you are reading your prejudices into someone else's words. Show me a single isntance where I accused IDers of being either racists or holocuast deniers. I did nothing of the sort, and you would know it if you weren't allowing your biases to color your reading. I pointed out a valid question -- where does this stop? Where does the government intervene? There are poople who would use the same arguments you do for vouchers to support those kinds of schools. So, I ask you, if the government is going to hand over taxpayer money to people to use vouchers, where do you draw the line? And how do you justify drawing the line at ID but not at madrasses? This is why I don't want the government giving money to private schools -- it will have to choose winners and losers, acceptable and not acceptable, among religion and ideas. That is a horrible idea.

"Um, have you ever gone to barnesandnoble.com"

Yeah, and I emntioned them earlier in the discussion about it. Again, consolidation != monopoly. that wasn't my point.

"Yes and this is another way markets work. Vertical (supplier and distributor) markets also help discipline horizontal (customer) markets."

Sometimes, yes,. But sometimes no. Walmart is not disciplined by its suppliers, for example.

"I don't have the energy to get into this. We've been through it zillions of times before. If you think shouting bolsters your view of the philosophy of science, go ahead and shout."

Then you need to stop bringin it up. Shouting is apprently the only way to get you to listen sometimes, so I shall continue to shout until you, at long last, deal with the reality that ID is not science. Even Behe admitted that ID could only be science if astrology was.

"The market entices them. If there is a profitable business model and free competition, competitors will come. They always do."

Sigh. No, they do not. There are ways to keep competition form forming. I laid out liek ahalf dozen of them in the alst point and you addressed none fo them. businesses actively strive to keep out competition - -and they very often succeed. Look at Walmart's patterns in small towns, for example. Business can and do kill competiton - -thats why we need regulations.

"I already gave about six reasons having to do with political economy and the two party political system. Go back and read them. Seriously -- do you really in your heart of hearts think governments typically are as responsive to the public as firms that are subject to market pressures? If so, I'd go back to milk again -- why not also have government provide milk for us if that's the case?"

Of course governments do. I gave you half dozen reasons why governments are more responsive in some areas than companies, and you ignored them. Companies care only about maximizing profit. The ways they maximize profit ar ento always good for the public, they aren;t always open to the public knoweldge, and economics provides no means of redressing the balance of power between those with money and those without. Even with competition, the competition doe snot allways respomnd to the entire public - -just those with money.

"Never suggested it was. But the fact is that tens of millions of Americans, and billions of people throughout the world, believe in a creator who in some sense, detectable or not designed us."

And billins fo those peope findnothing incompatiable with evolution and that belief. You did it a bit again there -- Evolution != aethism, as you seemed to imply here.

"Do you really think government it this simple? President Bush and Dick Cheney, for example, care more about what you and I think than about what big oil thinks?"

To a certian extent, yes, they do. Well, with what Jeff thinks at any rate. Miers didn;t go down becasue Oil Execs where unhappy with her. And the problem of moeny distoring elections is just a special case of the problem of money distorting markets.

" Are you socialists"

What??? I failed to notice the reference to state ownership of the means of production in either Tom's or my posts :) Regulation != socialism. I have ahuge problem with the fairy tale that the market will make everythign better. It doesn't. there are times and places and situations where the market makes problems worse, where it cannto fix problems, or where it distorts the situation to the benefit of those with collectiosn of capital. Just becasue markets do some things well does not mean that they are a panacea for everything.

"Yes and Yes. But I'm not concerned about radical Islamist schools or Satanist schools because there's not likely to be significant demand for them. The market will weed them out. And, as I said, the education market wouldn't be unregulated. We don't have to permit schools that incite people to violence. Inciting to violence has long not been protected by the first amendment."

This is the problem, though. What if neither is advocating violence? there are Xian schools that teach their students that I am going to hell becasue I was raised Catholic. How is that different than a madrass that says the same about Christians? Once you start funding private schools, there will be some that people object to, and we get back to the very bad place of the government choosing sides in religious matters.

"A things a truly open, widely available education market would correct"

No, they wouldn't. Becasue in places where they have run voucher plans, like Milwaukee, none of that has come to pass. You are dangerously close to "then a miracle occurs" reasoning :) And you haven't even begone to adress the questions of how poor kids will be educated, or what happens when the market excludes special eeds kids because they are too expensive to educate, etc. the market is not a panacea. it care sonly about making as much money with as little effort as possible. Schools cnanot work like that.

Wow, David, you just blew my mind with that fine example of the little guy elbowing his way in and gaining a meaningful foothold among large, well-established competitors! :) (And actually, no, I haven't...)

The point is, Amazon isn't even close to a monopoly player. Actually, Amazon is a good example of a "little guy" elbowing it's way in to become a big guy.

We simply disagree on what those things are

Fair enough, and I'm trying to make some objective arguments based on well-known principles of economics, such as public vs. private goods, natural monopolies, and externalities. What are your economic reasons for heavily regulating, or for the government primarily providing, education? Or are they really non-empirical moral reasons?

He made no such statement, nor any such implication, and I challenge you to show me where he did.

Let's make a deal then. Stop the references to "holocaust deniers" and such, or, alternatively, be honest about your rhetoric. There is no purpose for such comparisons other than the rhetorical flourish of comparing ID proponents to holocaust deniers. My offense at the way you guys have done that is justified.\

At what cost? How many children get left behind while the All Powerful Market(tm) corrects this?

Far fewer than the number that get left behind by the current grossly inefficient system.

But the whole thing breaks down if people who are wholly unqualified to make decisions start making them. And that's precisely what we move toward when we start fighting the ID battle politically, in the court of public opinion, instead of scientifically, among the people who are qualified to judge ID on its merits.

This deserves a lengthy response that I don't have time for just now. Short question -- where does this stop? How much do we take out of the hands of the average person and delegate to "experts"? I'm an "expert" at maybe one very, very narrow thing, that really doesn't have much to do with how I raise my family. Should I just turn it all over to the state?

And how do you justify drawing the line at ID but not at madrasses?

As I've said, I don't. Muslim Americans have the same free speech, free exercise, and free association rights I have. Don't you believe that?

This is why I don't want the government giving money to private schools

I never said anything abou the government giving money to private schools. I said I should get to keep more of my income, instead of paying it to the government in taxes, if I choose a private school. Do you think your personal income presumptively belongs to you or the government?

Shouting is apprently the only way to get you to listen sometimes

Yes, I'm the only one here who's stubbornly entrenched in his views. And now you're starting to sound like my wife.

I shall continue to shout until you, at long last, deal with the reality that ID is not science.

Shout yourself hoarse. It shows how RATIONAL and SCIENTIFIC you are, and how well your arguments are based in FACTS and REASON, as opposed to the KNEE-JERK RELIGIOUS SUBJECTIVE BIASED claims we ID-friendly folks keep making.

There are ways to keep competition form forming. I laid out liek ahalf dozen of them in the alst point and you addressed none fo them.

I addressed them all, you just refuse to look up the basic economics terms. I agreed, for example, that some industries are natural monopolies, some transactions present significant negative externalities, and companies in some rare cases can monopolize products and service markets, and that in each of those instances there are roles for government regulation.

If you want to dig a little deeper, we could discuss the ways in which transaction costs, information costs, and network effects can distort markets, and how those kinds of costs might negatively affect an education market. We could also cover how brand images and marketing influence markets, using the perhaps irrational pricing of elite private college tuition as a case study. And, you could challenge me on whether a system based on consumer demand -- which in some contexts could be considered "greed" -- is consistent with my Christian principles. But you'd rather SHOUT about SCIENCE.

Even with competition, the competition doe snot allways respomnd to the entire public - -just those with money.

What you're stumbling on here is the concept of elasticity of demand. For some goods, notably luxury goods, consumer demand doesn't fall significantly as prices rise. For other goods, notably commodities, demand is highly price-sensitive. Competition always responds to demand, but if the market is inelastic, competitors can charge a price premium and some lower-income customer might get shut out of the market. If you're interested in how this works in pharmacuetical markets, for example, see my article Patents, Essential Medicines, and the Innovation Game, pubished by Vanderbilt University. I would probably agree that regulation of an education market would need to account for the elasticity of demand for education to ensure that no one is shut out by price, but I'd need to see more empirical data about price elasticity of education markets before reaching a firm conclusion.

I failed to notice the reference to state ownership of the means of production in either Tom's or my posts

But you seem to think markets almost never work. I gave some specific examples of when markets don't work -- natural monopolies, acquired monopolies, excessive negative externalities, high transaction costs, bad consumer information -- and argued that those situations are either rare or appropriate for some regulation. In what other cases, in economic terms, do you think markets don't work?

hat if neither is advocating violence? there are Xian schools that teach their students that I am going to hell becasue I was raised Catholic. How is that different than a madrass that says the same about Christians?

Though I'd disagree with these teachings, the first amendment doesn't protect only those teachings I like. Nor does it protect only those teachings some particular body of "experts" like. Muslims are free to organize schools that teach that Christians like me are heading for hell. Don't you agree with that, or do you think the government should censor religious schooling about stuff like heaven and hell?

And again, I'm not talking about the government "funding" private schools. I'm talking about letting working people keep more of their wages if they choose private schools for their own children. Do you equate letting someone keep their own earned wages with "government funding"? If so, we have a fundamental disagreement about individual personhood and the state.

Becasue in places where they have run voucher plans, like Milwaukee, none of that has come to pass.

It's true that what I'm discussing requires a broad-based commitment, not just some isolated trials. Isolated trials often fail precisely because they don't reflect a truly open, competitive market.

And you haven't even begone to adress the questions of how poor kids will be educated,

Well, I have begun. As I mentioned, injecting some market competition into education might help stem the flow of wealthier residents from some city school districts. In fact, when asked what they poor parents in many failing city school districts want vouchers, because they understand this better than any of us chatting away here.

or what happens when the market excludes special eeds kids because they are too expensive to educate, etc. the market is not a panacea.

This is a fair point -- one of the better points against market-based education. I have a special needs child, and I can attest that my public school district provides services I could never afford privately, even with some tax credits. And, the folks who do the special needs schooling in my district are outstanding public servants. So, I agree that market-based reforms aren't a panacea for everything that ails education. There are non-market moral issues, such as caring for "the least of these," that play into education funding as well, and government has a role in that. But I'd also love to see some local market alternatives, to which I could apply tax credits, for my artsy daughter and my science-minded son, who don't have any particular special needs.

David,

You missed my question because we hit save at the same time. I am taking the conversation in a slightly different direction (more of an intramural discussion among Christians versus debating T and K who seem about as flexible as concrete on this issue ;-) )

David:

The problem, it seems, is that you're arguing from an economics textbook, and Kevin and I are arguing from history. Just saying... ;)