phil osborn wrote:
>
> >From: "Michael S. Lorrey" <retroman@turbont.net>
> >Reply-To: extropians@extropy.com
> >To: extropians@extropy.com
> >Subject: Re: New Government?
> >Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 00:13:14 -0400
> >
> >phil osborn wrote:
> > >
> > > > >
> > > > > As I recently said, "The solution would be corporate sponsorship."
> > > > >
> > > > > If you value life, *value* life!
> > > >
> > > >Imagine the following:
> > > >
> > > >Welcome to Union Carbide High School, home of the UCHS Gassers...
> > > >because we care.
> > > >Tonite our team is playing the boys of the Mighty Lockheed Bombers,
> > > >visiting from Ground Zero Stadium...
> > > >
> > > >I am all for competition and merit in student acheivement, and no
> > > >mainstreaming. I am especially for competition and merit among teachers
> > > >(break the NEA monopoly), but pasting a corporate logo on my kid so he
> > > >can go to school? Thats the kind of irresponsible idea that the morons
> >I
> > > >talk of in my prior post would be all for...
> > > >
> > > So you actually think that it's better to take money from people who
> >happen
> > > to have preferences for lifestyles different from yours, at the point of
> >a
> > > gun, money which is then allocated by bureaucrats with no stake in the
> > > outcome toward whatever passes for "education" among the elite parasites
> > > from academia - the people who told my parents not to ruin me by
> >teaching me
> > > to read at the age of three; wait for the experts to do it at six. The
> > > jerks who spread racism throughout the South. Right.
> >
> >Hey moron, where in my post did I say anything about government
> >confiscatory policies to fund education? I'm the last person to support
> >that. Coming from New Hampshire, private school capital of the world, I
> >know how much better private schools are than public ones, and not one
> >private school that I know of even allows corporate logos pasted on
> >students or school property.
> >
> >Mike Lorrey
> >
> You didn't finish your quote....
>
> To wit:
>
> "My personal favorite is to fund education with taxes on stupid behavior:
> drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, pollution, gambling, logging... etc. Thus
> its a negative feedback effect: the smarter the kids become, the less
> need there is for more education... This to me is the optimum way to
> have 'price' signalling in education." Mike Lorrey
>
> Wonder why you cut it off???? ;)
I wasn't the one who cut if off, it was phil. As for my words that you quoted above, I was speaking contemporaneously, as an idea for the proper way to fund PUBLIC education today if a society were to choose to have public education, not in regards to a currently non-existent society where every child goes to private school.
As for your gripe that I advocate 'taking money at the barrel of a gun', the fact is that the behaviors I specified all are types in which the practitioners externalize some of their costs onto society or other individuals in the form of crime, accidents, health care costs, state assumption of bankruptcy debt, below cost harvesting of resources from public land, etc. In my mind recovery of externalized costs is the ONLY justifiable reason for government to impose taxes on its citizens, its merely a matter of extension of civil law as a standard policy of class action, which is totally in keeping with libertarian ideals. Taking money from a person at the point of a gun is just fine if the person with the money got that money by passing his costs on to someone else. Its called enforcement of judgement, and such enforcement of the decisions of any arbitrator will exist even in the most libertarian society. The type of people who still gripe about paying taxes in such a society are the type of people whos mindset is "whats mine is mine and whats yours is mine" to begin with. Once they've stolen their bit its 'obviously' a crime to recover that money and give it to its rightful owners.
Mike Lorrey