Gold.

Likewise, I suggest reading “Yes, Mr. President, a Free-Market Can Fix Health Care”: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10646

Lastly, regarding pre-existing conditions and other insurance rigamarole and the ability for a free market to provide this, I suggest this fascinating paper on Health Status Insurance: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9986

Not that we need to rehash the health care debate here, but it is worth noting a few points. Undoubtedly, if one had taken a snapshot of regulatory landscape surrounding healthcare 6 months ago, and prior to the passage of Obama’s plan, it would be tough to term it as the US health care industry as “loosely regulated.”

However, it is worth noting that there was just enough wiggle room under the existing legal framework for health insurers to conveniently avoid costly inputs – sick people, people with pre-existing conditions, the elderly, etc. – and to use insanely unequal bargaining power to draft contracts that maximized costs to consumers while minimizing health insurers responsibilities and liabilities when those consumers got sick and required care. This was a pretty solid plan for maximizing profits for health insurance mega-conglomerates. When rather large classes of people are reduced to mere inputs – branded as costly and then easily avoided – on the road to industry giants securing large profits, I’d say that theres also some wiggle room to through around the term “loosely regulated.”

The history of health care regulation in this country is also worth noting. For one, its worth asking: why was the social security acts of 1935 and 1965 necessary? Some say it wasn’t and still isn’t. However, I’ll ask fiscal conservatives to show me a credible plan, based on more than pure economic theory, for how to deal those that the health care industry has traditionally branded too costly and thus excluded from the system. When I see one, I’ll jump on board in a heartbeat.

Lastly, in that snapshot from six months ago, it’s also worth asking “Qui Bono?” with regard to the laws that were in place pre-Obamacare. In addition to what I described above, is it just a coincidence that interstate health care was non-existent and that healthcare companies were exempted from anti-trust laws, and that in many states literally one – or very few – healthcare company(s) had captured a monopoly?

Since Truman – the first president to wholeheartedly pursue some sort of federalized health care system – left office in 1953, the party that prides itself in fiscal conservatism has held the presidency for some 36 years -opposed to 20 yrs for the Dems. Seems like plenty of time for them to have addressed the issues posed above at a federal level.

So what’s the difference between being “loosely-regulated” and having enough economic clout and political influence to make up your own rules?…while simultaneously crying that the heavy hand of big government is holding you down. So long as government exists, winners in the marketplace will also win vast influence in the political process. Qui bono? Not us.

A few points. I don’t believe in a completely unregulated free-market. I think that reality will dictate that a voucher-type program, at least initially, will require some type of government certification to qualify those schools who can receive federal money. I also worry about this because it is entirely possible, if not probable, that such a licensing entity will simply turn into another system of state-run education. This also may be constitutionally necessary, however, in order to prevent government entanglement with religion.

My faith in the free market is far from limitless. There will be pain and suffering and failures. As you point out, the free market runs off of failures. This is the cost to having a dynamic, efficient, and effective system of providing goods. The benefits, however, outweigh the costs. In the end I would rather rely on the self-interest of possible pedagogical entrepreneurs whose well-being will be tied to the success or failure of their students rather than bureaucrats who cannot get fired, are watching the clock for 5 o’clock and counting the days to their posh guaranteed retirement package. This is not to say that I think there are bad people in school bureaucracy, but only to say that they are people without the proper incentives.

Also, it is about time to ignore the Republican party on all matters of “fiscal conservatism.” Regarding the health care debate: calling the health care market “relatively loosely regulated market” is simply laughable. We have an extremely regulated market that is FAR from a free market. Moreover, almost all the money in health care is directly or indirectly controlled by the government (75%). Characterizing Obamacare as a victory over an unregulated and inefficient free market is remarkably false.

Yet again, however, it is oft-spoken mistakes such as this that constantly paint the free market as a failure when, more often than not, it is the government’s heavy hand that causes the failure.

Lastly, call education a right if you want but it still seems that you are calling it a right because it is really important. This is not what a right is. A right describes the essential domain of human agents who live together–a domain that is required for peaceful and non-combative living. Your characterization of the other things that the Constitution provides, military, Bill or Rights, etc, is mostly a list of negative rights. Education is a positive right. More specifically, it is a right to another’s property.

Positive “rights” are another entity entirely. A positive right mandates that the corresponding duty requires expending time and resources. Contrast a positive right to health vs. a negative right to life. A negative right to life means that all others hold a duty to omit killing me. Currently I am enjoying that right as fully as possible. A positive right to life means that all others have a duty to take care of me. In order to be absolute, everyone would have to devote all their time and resources to keep me alive for even one extra day. But, of course, there are other people to take care of, other people to educate, other duties to fulfill. This means that the distribution of resources will depend upon some concept other than a right. In short, it means that the right is an irrelevant concept that answers no normative questions. 10 people, 5 vaccines, all are sick; all have a “right” to health care. The invocation of a “right” does not answer this question. The only moral answer to this question is to advocate a system in which more vaccines are produced and available to more people; i.e. capitalism.

Most importantly, a set of positive rights includes necessary contradictions. When the resources for a right to education and the right to health care butt heads, which wins? Politics, favoritism, and nepotism win. In short, positive rights are not the necessary domains held by agents in order to live together cooperatively and not combatively. Actually, they are political concepts that engender combat and strife. In short, they are not rights.

Lastly, as I think you know, the reason I advocate free market education so strongly is because of the downtrodden and lower classes that you say will slip through the cracks. This is doubly true for the special needs kids that you mentioned. My white, wealthy upbringing in excellent schools is the last problem that needs to be solved here.

We agree far more than you think. If I could summarize my prior post with a one liner, it would say something like:

“Proceed with caution, particularly when unchecked proselytizing for the free market comes to the fore.”

This is not to say education reform should not proceed or that I do not share a more tempered version of your faith in free market’s ability to drive progress. I agree that ideas surrounding a government-funded, but not government-managed, approach to reform that incorporates increases in school choice are ideas that hold much promise. The budding charter school movement provides many examples of government funding going to more privately managed charter schools and resulting in success in terms of increased student performance. I look forward to the advance of this trend.

Also, there’s no need for one-uping. The failure of inner-city schools across the country is obvious and well known to anyone that takes this issue seriously. Again, my prior post was intended to highlight the fact that blind-faith in free market principles will not necessarily deliver us to the promise land…not to deny the historical failures of public education in urban schools or otherwise.

In defining the polarized approaches to this public/private debate, you define the left’s view as:

“markets must be perfect to be justified (e.g. the persistent fallacious invocation of “market failure”), whereas governments must only be adequate.”

I take issue with this approach. The fear that many center-left-minded observers hold regarding aggressive privatization of the education market is based on as profound an understanding of free market principles as held by anyone on the right, and likely a more honest appreciation of the free market, its effects, and the reality in which it operates. The fear is not that the free market will “fail” – whatever that’s supposed to mean – but that the market will perform. At the level of the individual or individual firms, free market theory generally dictates the survival of the fittest, that competition will force individuals or firms in a certain market to maximize the efficient use of scarce resources (human, financial, and otherwise) or fail. Therefore, in competitive markets, successes or failures are measured in terms of the successes or failures of individuals or individual firms.

However, on a societal level, the consequences of broadly adopting free market principles is not measured in terms of individuals or individual firms, but in terms of the consequences created among entire classes of the population. In terms of public education, the consequences will be measured in terms of the groups of students as special education students, English language learners, students with mental, psychological, and developmental disabilities, and the children of immigrants (legal and illegal), etc. Many of these groups already suffer from a lack of educational opportunities. These groups have been cited as being the first groups to suffer from decreased access to educational opportunities in instances where experimentation in applying free-market principles in the realm of public education via voucher programs, charter schools, and increases in school choice have been attempted. In the realm of a fully privatized, completely deregulated, free market system of education, no framework would exist to protect such groups from severely decreased access to quality educational opportunities. Again, the point here is not that progress should discontinue, but that explicit efforts should be made throughout the reform process to ensure that educational opportunity is increased for as many students as possible, not merely for a few.

The historical failure of free-market advocates, libertarians, and fiscal conservatives to provide a credible plan for how to deal with the lower economic class and minority ethnic and social classes has been and continues to be its major downfall. With regard to education, I agree with much of the free-market speculation that eventually the free market will fuel the creation of more diverse and dynamic schools and systems of schools that will be more equipped to meet the ever varied needs of the millions of students currently attending public schools. However, I disagree that blind faith in free market ideals will deliver American education to an era that increases

The failure of generally Republican fiscal conservatives to reconcile their opposition to healthcare reform with the stark reality that some 30-40 million Americans cannot attain health insurance either because the legitimately cannot afford it, or because in a relatively loosely regulated market they are deemed inefficient and unprofitable inputs and are thus excluded from participation by insurance companies is the latest example of this. The reluctance of fiscal conservatives to confront the externalities, in human, governmental, and fiscal terms, associated with avoiding the lower economic and social classes is has also exposed many a half-baked pseudo-libertarian fiscal conservatives. To be clear, I am not offering my opinions above as a defense of the status quo, a call for bigger government, or to demonize the free-market. Again, I merely wish to flash some bright yellow lights to illuminate the sign which reads “proceed with caution.”

Regarding the failure of the Framers to address education: For the sake of argument, I’ll argue that an education-related right could have been adequately defined by employing general concepts regarding “access” and “quality” and expecting interpretation across time…or by simply adding “education” to the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration; a move which would have really killed the flow of that great passage, but ensured education’s historical status as a foremost domestic priority. While I agree that difficulties would surround any attempt to define the access to quality education as a right, I don’t think “difficulty” is a reason to avoid an issue. Define “liberty.” Surely it is difficult to define such a transcendent notion. If anything, “access to quality education” exists as a peripheral right derived from the notion of “liberty,” and is thus as fundamental right under substantive due process jurisprudence.

Ultimately, Trevor, your point is well taken, and I agree with you that education probably should not a “right.” However, the point I was attempting to illustrate in contemplating education as a right remains the same. The Framers provided the dream, but failed to address or prioritize one of the most important preconditions to the fulfillment of that dream. The Framers had no problem addressing other elements that they considered essential to the future success and preservation of the United States. Via the inclusion of the Bill of Rights, provisions regarding the separation of powers, the military, the regulation of interstate commerce, the Framers ensured that the Federal Constitution would stand to promote certain specific individual rights, and the political, military, and economic security of the US. What about education? Ultimately, whether the Framers failure to address educational issues stemmed from a lack of foresight or deliberate efforts to institutionalize the white, educated, aristocracy of their time is irrelevant to the underlying point that their failure to address the issue has largely resulted in educational inefficiency, inequity, and ineptitude.

While we may disagree about certain minutiae regarding the left, the right, and the free market, I think we both agree that education reform is important, necessary, and needs to incorporate more elements of the free-market to increase school choice and promote the creativity and innovation at the school level that will be necessary to make any reform successful.