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Do you use the roads?
Mary Anne — (archived)

Benefitting from the services and stability of the society in which we live is not free. Someone has to do the work to keep it that way.

We tout ourselves as a land of freedom, justice and equal opportunity. What do these things cost?

Freedom needs structure or it's anarchy. It needs safety, not only provided by police but also adequate roads, safe bridges, structurally sound buildings, safe and adequate water, utilities. You will tell me that the "market" will take care of that. Tell it to the people whose structurally unsound houses were knocked down by Hurricane Andrew. The suppliers didn't have to live in the houses, and the regulations were pitiful, so the houses fell down. Another example: the government was the one that paid for rural electrification. There was not an adequate market there for the suppliers to go to the expense of providing the service. Freedom requires underpinning. Someone has to do that work, and needs a paycheck for it. Government workers support families, spend money to help the economy and pay taxes, too.

Justice has an entire structure of its own. The people who make, enforce and interpret the laws are all government employees. The support staff for them is enormous. Don't even get me started about publishing, housing and researching law documents. (In many cases, a private endeavor, but one that owes its existence to government employees' needs, and the needs of their private co-workers in the law field.) Also, prison is an industry in America. Have you looked at how many prisoners we have lately?

Equal opportunity is an area upon which I know we disagree. I believe that people ought to get the tools they need to make something of themselves. I believe you do to. Where I think our opinions diverge is that I believe that equal educational opportunity is key, and that the only third party that is going to bankroll this is the government. A dirty school in a dangerous neighborhood filled with teachers waiting for an opening at a better school is not the same as a clean school in a tranquil neighborhood with teachers who enjoy coming to work each day. Corporate schools are corporations, not schools, who view the children as products. Some corporate cultures are poisonous. Would you want your child schooled by one of them? Home schooling is only as good as the parent delivering the product. I have seen some outstanding home school parents, and I have seen some wretched ones. What happens to the kids in the bad situations? You tell me that vouchers are the answer. I have my doubts. First, that's still government money. Second, we will have to clarify that the right to expel is not the same thing as the right not to admit for preexisting problems (salting the sats, or cherrypicking). Third, once a target school becomes overcrowded with people whose school choice prompted them to selected it, watch the downward spiral of acheivement again.

I also wonder if a child who hasn't had a decent breakfast, or one suffering from untreated stress because of domestic violence, or one with a low-grade infection not bad enough to go to the emergency room, is getting an equal opportunity. At what point do we turn our backs on the young? Does this take us back to freedom, at the top, and its good friend security? When the abandoned children grow up, how much ownership will they have in either of those ideas? Why should they care about a society that didn't care about them? Childhood is short; its product is important to us all.

So, yeah, I think a common pot is a good thing. And I do, in fact, believe that if one has more, one needs to make a bigger investment in keeping it safe, because one has more to lose. (Gated communities inadvertantly substantiate this idea.) In the past, those who didn't wish to pay could live in the wilderness without societal support. It's too bad we don't have much left. The market has taken care of that. Although we still have Idaho and parts of Alaska.

Regards--
Mary Anne

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