I submit that you currently have no idea how much you pay to send a letter. Only how much you pay for a stamp.

This applies also to the examples in your cartoon.

“The whole point of the market is not to provide a service to everyone – the whole point is to only provide it to people who can pay at a certain price.”

Standard. Diminish the free interactions we describe as “the market” to a harangue about some people getting too much while others are left with nothing. Just Critical Theory B.S. from someone who hasn’t properly thanked his intellectual forefathers.

Compared to what? Other U.S. public high schools? Japanese public high schools? Parochial or other private high schools? U.S. public high schools fifty years ago?

I’m betting that your alma mater only compares well to other U.S. public schools of this day. Versus all of my other examples, I’m guessing that your high school doesn’t fare so well, and I’m quite sure that Virginia Beach Senior High circa 1950 had a curriculum far more demanding and challenging than VBHS offers today, and I’d go so far as to wager that VB-1950 would rival the University of Virginia today.

Imagine the benefits (especially to poor people) of better schools and drastically reduced school spending. Policy changes that would introduce market forces into education may be possible and would help both reduce costs and improve quality.

Funny how similar that is to the situation with healthcare, and yet these retards in Washington (and their useful idiots among us) want the government to step even further in there!

You seem to be contrasting a market free of all government involvment with one totally controlled by government. Those are not the only two options for education or for mail service. The latter is very close to what we have in education today – where government funds and operates almost all schols and where government forces parents to consume its services. But again, there are not just two choices.

While I think the education funding issue cannot be changed, the actual operation of schools can be.

No, what you asserted was:

“If the service in question is providing some sort of education to all people, the government is leaps and bounds better than the market.”

Private companies can provide education to all children just as electric utilities currently provide electricity to all homes in the geographic area for which they hold a license to do so.

They call it education, and Danny believes it. It’s a perfect system!

Yes, it is. And it’s also an example of a market. It is the competitiveness of the contract renewal and bidding process which makes it far, far different from a government education system which currently exists.

In my scenario, the government may or may not be funding the education of schoolchildren. Government can grant local monopolies without funding a service. Or it doesn’t even have to offer a local monopoly.

But in your example, it’s still a government deciding to use tax revenue to pay for the education of all children in the district, regardless of their ability to pay for that service in the market. You have to have the government’s coercion to provide education to all kids, just like you have to have the government’s coercion to make sure everyone has health insurance. The whole point of the market is to balance supply and demand and not provide goods or services to people who cannot afford to pay.

RE: “why wouldn’t that be incentive enough for the private company to provide a better education than would a government entity?”

I agree – it would likely be better. Which was exactly why I never said the government could beat the private sector when it comes to quality. Now I’m sure it’s possible – I went to a pretty good public high school. But I wouldn’t expect it.

You are so easily led.

“Baaaa baaaa.”

Quiet, Danny.

“Baaa”

How do you know that? A private company – through competitive bidding – could contract with a school district or a community or a county to provide education to all children in that district or that community or that county. How do you know that such a private company would not provide leaps and bounds better education than would a government entity? If renewal of that contract were dependent on performance measures, why wouldn’t that be incentive enough for the private company to provide a better education than would a government entity?

Exactly. Daniel imagines that all of ‘society’ met together and agreed that education must be paid for out of tax money. When was this big meeting, Dan? Were you present?

My thinking has nothing to do with rabbit holes, magic or pretending – unlike somebody who claims that society thinks…

Even if that’s true, do you think that taxpayer-subsidized education must be provided by government-employed, union labor?

Right now, everyone who owns property subsidizes education. If you do not like the product offered by the teacher’s union, you can choose to educate your kids yourself, or enroll them in non-government schools, but you still have to pay the teacher’s union to educate your kids.