More Libertarianism?

It seems to me that libertarianism is the right's anarchy... or else that anarchy is the left's libertarianism. As the cosmologists teach us, if you go far enough in one direction, you end up coming back from the other direction...

So anyway, back to homeschooling. This is a subject dear to my heart, mainly because I've invested so much time making a movie about it. (Still in postproduction, wait for it...) It seems to me that what's-his-name's article about how silly it is to have so-called "government" schools instead of leaving education to the private sector (along, presumably, with everything else) fails on a few grounds. First of all, it seems to me fairly obvious that if public education is abandoned, then lots of kids will be abandoned with it; and abandoned kids are not prone to work toward social goods. They tend to work instead toward various forms of bad behavior, many of which will, I promise you, be bad for lots of people besides themselves.

It is not a valid response to this concern to point out that public schools often do a poor job or that they abandon kids, too. A system that isn't working well is still a system, and can often be fixed or gamed or used regardless. But if there's no system... who you gonna call?

I also find it unpersuasive to argue that "historically" education proceeded in thus and such a way, without public schools. Historically, people sent their children to work in factories at a young age; historically, inequalities in resources ensured inequalities in education, which in turn ensured that it was almost impossible to escape one's (lower) class.

Finally (for now), while it is true that almost anyone who really, really wants to, is intellectually capable of homeschooling their children, or else of seeking out an optimal education for them (assuming they are able to pay for such a thing)... why should children be made dependent on the goodwill of their parents to receive an education? What basis is there for equating the "good" (read, economic benefit) of the parents with the "good" of their offspring? Again, it comes down to the preposterous assumption that people are rational actors, possessing good information, and in agreement with the author of the paper about what constitutes a "good."

I would argue that in making "receiving a free education" the default situation for children, the state has done a lot of good (yes, including economic good) for a lot of people. An awful lot of people, including those who don't own the children in question. You can call it welfare and wish you didn't have to pay those taxes, but what is that to me?