Economics Questions

Re: The Texas Constitution States That You Have a Right to Education

Knight_of_BAAWA — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:52:48 GMT

TravisWadman:
Are you serious?

Very.

TravisWadman:
You call what I am saying "blatant assertions"?

They are.

TravisWadman:
I came here to learn and get educated

No, you didn't.

TravisWadman:
You say my nonsense has been refuted to death? Then why is this my first time asking the question?

So no one ever in history other than you has asked the question? What arrogance you have!

Now behave or begone. Choose wisely.

Re: The Texas Constitution States That You Have a Right to Education

Chris — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:03:20 GMT

TravisWadman:

Haha this is HILARIOUS. Please allow someone more intelligent to do the arguing for your side. Teachers CHOOSE to be teachers. Many of them (and I would know, as I have spoken to many of them) would not get good jobs elsewhere. Teacher get moderate salaries and benefits. They are able to buy houses, cars, support their families.

Also, I just graduated from public high school. I am happy. I have a good education that I got for extremely cheap and I got into a fantastic college (which is also extremely cheap and public btw).

This isn't slavery at all.

Why on Earth would people not be happy with this? And you are 100% wrong about people doing something better with their time than going to school. I would NEVER attempt to learn calculus if I had not been forced to, but I was, and now I got an A in the class, passesd the IB examination with a near perfect score, and will study statistics in college. You are obviously extremely ignorant of teenagers today if you think they would do other things with their time.

Your broken window fallacy has been fixed.

Nobody is saying that teachers would not "choose" to be teachers absent the government socializing education. The main difference would be that teachers would be funded voluntarily by people who chose them to educate their children. This seems far more sensible than saying we need people to be coerced and steal their money even if they don't utilize public education. I don't know where you get the idea they would not have jobs elsewhere. Without the state involved in education, there would be many people who would seek alternative means such as private schools, tutors, home schooling, etc. There would be a great incentive for private enterprise to get involved in education.

How do you define "cheap"? All value is subjective, perhaps your publicly funded education wasn't so cheap for all the people who had their money stolen from them to pay for it. Maybe those people would have used that money to put food on the table for their families, pay for their child's operation, or put it into a trust for their children. Perhaps you feel it is OK for A to steal from B to give to C, even though it is not in B's interest.

Education is not cheap today by comparison with earlier times when the government was not involved. A person could work over the summer at a regular, low paying job and afford the following year of college tuition at a decent school. Show me one person today who pays for their tuition working at some low paying job. The government creating an excess demand for something does not make it cheaper; I hate to break the news to you. This goes for anything, not just education. Resources are scarce and hence private enterprise has to make the best use of the limited resources to keep costs low, so they can compete with others. This is competition, and competition is what creates efficiency. Obviously an efficient firm is able to offer goods/services at the lowest possible price. The government's resources are not based upon how well they utilize what is scarce, but rather how much they steal from people directly (taxation) or indirectly (borrowing, inflation). If you can explain to me how obtaining and preserving otherwise scarce resources because you can steal them will give you incentive to be efficient, then you can claim that somehow public education or anything public has a lower cost than what is private - however, this is obviously laughable and why you sound ridiculous.

How can anybody be wrong when they say people might have something better to do with their time than go to school? Value is subjective - do you have some kind of measurement, a yard stick of values that human beings all use to measure their own personal values? Is there a measurement of value like centimeters or inches? You can NOT know, none of us can know, what somebody else would deem to be the best use of their time. Only the individual knows what they believe is best for them, and they demonstrate this by acting and preferring one thing to another. Your autocratic mindset is simply ludicrous. On a final note, you don't even know what a broken window fallacy is.

In liberty,

Chris

Re: The Texas Constitution States That You Have a Right to Education

limitgov — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:42:29 GMT

TravisWadman:

Also, I just graduated from public high school. I am happy. I have a good education that I got for extremely cheap and I got into a fantastic college (which is also extremely cheap and public btw).

This isn't slavery at all.

It seems quite pointless to debate whether you are happy about going to State controlled schools.

The, main point is, the State isn't authorized to control schools. That's the end of the debate. There's no reason to debate state controlled schools vs private.

Re: The Texas Constitution States That You Have a Right to Education

wilderness — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:28:37 GMT

TravisWadman:

There is no free market, it doesn't exist.

The free market is everywhere. It's where all production and non-coercive human action takes place in this civil society. It's the parasitic governmental interference upon the free market that coerces it to give up it's goods by the point of a gun. The thieves and murderers go to the market every day and night coercing it to hand over the goods. Property is stolen and life is taken. The free market is what makes possible North Koreans to exchange and get food, but full blown coercion in such a communist state buckles it periodically leading to mass starvations.

The free market is the only market, and all government and thus criminal interactions with the free market and civil society are coercive and unjustly manipulates its action.

Re: The Texas Constitution States That You Have a Right to Education

wilderness — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:16:17 GMT

TravisWadman:

Teachers CHOOSE to be teachers.

Exactly my point. So why would teaching disappear if public schools disappear? It won't as you also argue here cause "Teachers CHOOSE to be teachers".

TravisWadman:

Also, I just graduated from public high school. I am happy. I have a good education that I got for extremely cheap and I got into a fantastic college (which is also extremely cheap and public btw). This isn't slavery at all.

Public school is not cheap and is not free. It cost tax dollars to run, but you may not even know how to pay the bills by the answers you are giving so you haven't reached the awareness of what it means to have a job and sustain a household instead of living off of somebody's else's honest efforts.

Re: The Texas Constitution States That You Have a Right to Education

hayekianxyz — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 12:19:22 GMT

TravisWadman:

How on Earth would a 6 year old child educate itself? In a libertarian society more than any other, the parents would have to work, so unless you are expecting a 6 year old to teach itself how to read, write and do arithmatic, I think state schooling is a must.

Not everyone can, or wants to go to private schools. Also, state schools provide thousands upon thousands of jobs.

Just lock them in a room with Human Action and tell them they don't get any food until they've read 100 pages and can summarize it in 200 words. They'll soon learn.

Re: The Texas Constitution States That You Have a Right to Education

In Restraint of State — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 08:47:52 GMT

liberty student:

I have no idea. I am not a forecaster. Too many potential black swans.

Academia is meaningless anyway. The battle has to be won outside the colleges. The internet is undermining the concept of establishment public intellectuals.

I'd generally agree but I also think that academia should be swayed as well, since the general intellectual atmosphere of the time has a great influence on the direction of where things may go after peopel realize the current way of dealing with things isn't working.

Re: The Texas Constitution States That You Have a Right to Education

liberty student — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 07:57:21 GMT

I have no idea. I am not a forecaster. Too many potential black swans.

Academia is meaningless anyway. The battle has to be won outside the colleges. The internet is undermining the concept of establishment public intellectuals.

Re: The Texas Constitution States That You Have a Right to Education

Andrew Cain — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 07:39:34 GMT

liberty student:

Laughing Man:
That is an interesting and provocative statement. Do you think that the resurgence is because of Ron Paul in politics or people like Peter Schiff in economics?

Both Paul and Schiff (and to a lesser degree, Faber, Celente and Rogers) are all relevant right now because the state is shooting itself in the foot, and the internet has changed the rules.

Forecasting exercise: To what degree will Austrian economic swell to and does it have a chance of stealing light from Keynesian and Chicago school in public academia?

Re: The Texas Constitution States That You Have a Right to Education

liberty student — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 07:31:16 GMT

Laughing Man:
That is an interesting and provocative statement. Do you think that the resurgence is because of Ron Paul in politics or people like Peter Schiff in economics?

Both Paul and Schiff (and to a lesser degree, Faber, Celente and Rogers) are all relevant right now because the state is shooting itself in the foot, and the internet has changed the rules.

Re: The Texas Constitution States That You Have a Right to Education

Andrew Cain — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 07:26:04 GMT

liberty student:
AE is making a massive resurgence right now. It might even be on track to be the mainstream of economics in your lifetime.

That is an interesting and provocative statement. Do you think that the resurgence is because of Ron Paul in politics or people like Peter Schiff in economics?

Re: The Texas Constitution States That You Have a Right to Education

sicsempertyrannis — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 07:21:55 GMT

This guy is the most obvious troll thats posted here in awhile. I knew something wasnt right when he said how awesome the Second National Bank was, how Jackson was 'wrong' about - people might start using non-uniform, private money, which is bad you see.

Re: The Texas Constitution States That You Have a Right to Education

liberty student — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 07:20:01 GMT

TravisWadman:
Already seen that video... and I have been reading the articles for the past week. Sorry for not knowing these were high level discussions, I thought they were basic :(

They are basic. They assume a basic AE understanding. You keep posting without much knowledge of AE.

I cannot stress enough, read and ask questions without tossing out a bunch of your high school econ or preconceived ideas. If you are serious about not believing in things blindly, then please stop repeating the status quo.

AE is worth learning about. It gives economics context. AE is about understanding human action, and how the sum of many humans acting creates complex markets that are as sophisticated as any ecosystem.

AE is making a massive resurgence right now. It might even be on track to be the mainstream of economics in your lifetime.

Re: The Texas Constitution States That You Have a Right to Education

Andrew Cain — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 07:09:07 GMT

TravisWadman:

Already seen that video... and I have been reading the articles for the past week. Sorry for not knowing these were high level discussions, I thought they were basic :(

I am a failure

Then why do you say you know absolutely nothing of AE? When you say that people will actually take your words as they mean. We're not Marxists divining the true definition of value here. If you are beyond laymen literature like Thomas Wood's Meltdown then might I suggest Rothbard's Man, Economy & State that is an in depth treatise on economics.

Re: The Texas Constitution States That You Have a Right to Education

TravisWadman — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 06:58:25 GMT

Already seen that video... and I have been reading the articles for the past week. Sorry for not knowing these were high level discussions, I thought they were basic :(

I am a failure