^NetRunner:
>> To quote Wikipedia on a commodity: A commodity is anything for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market.
Education isn't a commodity. It's a service, with a ton of "qualitative differentiation across the market".
Also, education is not elastic, like milk. If milk costs $8/gal, I'll probably cut back on it, or stop buying it. If sending my hypothetical kids to grade school cost me %50 or more of my income, I'd find a way to do it, but you can be damn sure I wouldn't be voting for a Libertarian in the next election.
There's probably some price elasticity in education, though I hope there aren't many parents telling their kids "sorry, even though I can afford to send you to MIT, your future isn't worth enough to me, how about a nice state school?" Student loans create a different situation, with kids having to decide how much individual debt they're willing to take on, but is that really superior to a system that places students in colleges based on desire & ability, with the costs spread amongst the society in the form of progressive taxes?


Education isn't a commodity like milk, because it has varying levels of quality. However, the analogy with milk is still valid. I can sustain myself in many ways--be it mcdonalds, frozen dinners, milk, vegetables, fruit, or gold-laced packages of caviar. To force an education on me which is more or less expensive, or of higher or lower quality than I would have chosen is economically inefficient. You don't make everyone eat the same food, or live in the same size house, so why would you make everyone learn the same way? If I can teach my children with online video lectures, .pdf class notes, and electronic text books--why would you deny me this cost-saving option? Likewise, if I aspire to be a manual laborer--say a carpenter--because it runs in my family--why would you force me to achieve a higher level of education than is economically relevant? If I want to be a doctor, why are you sending me through economics, calculus, and chemistry? Shouldn't I be free to learn these things on my own time--and focus on advancing the skills relevant to my career?

Also, a free market isn't a democracy. In any form of democracy I'm familiar with, everyone gets an equal number of votes (generally speaking, just 1). I'm pretty sure I have a smaller number of dollar-votes than Bill Gates.

It is true you have less "dollar-votes" than Bill Gates, but do you think Bill Gates is going to be buying that much more milk than a typical family? Or that many more loaves of bread? He will be spending money--perhaps on luxury items which you wouldn't buy anyways--but he will also be investing the largest portion of his income in small business--like the grocer, shoemaker, or car salesman who just opened business in your neighborhood. That is because all those millions of his dollars aren't just sitting in his closet--they are in a bank, which is giving out loans to business owners like your neighbor, or maybe even yourself.

As for taking a gun and forcing people to pay $8 for milk, it's more like taking a gun to people and saying "provide your share to the community or else," though usually they just send paperwork in the mail and say "we already took your share out of your paycheck, fill this out to make sure we got the right amount."
The "or else" is only implied to people who think of law as something imposed by a gang of thugs called "the government" or "the Police", forcing people to bow to their will through violence. Then it's "don't kill people, or else", "don't steal, or else", and all kinds of other democratically created circumscriptions on your freedom imposed artificially by others, tragic as that is.

There is no such thing as a community. Can you go outside and touch the community? Can you tell me where it is, or what it is currently doing? The community is an illusion--the only thing that exists is the individual. It is individuals that make up the community, and to forsake the individual for the sake of the community is to lose all bearing of what really exists.

Don't poor people like latte's also? Is it really the caviar of coffees?

I hear they make great caviar.

>> ^arnor:
Just an aside; since when is Wikipedia an online dictionary?


Does Mr. Big Words Fancy Pants want some caviar with his "encyclopedia?" This is network news, give them a break.

Dick Cavett is still alive, but I don't see much of him these days.

I agree, he's a pretty clever fellow, too.

"Somehow I don't think the caviar was the finest — I don't know much about caviar, but I do know you're not supposed to get pictures of ballplayers with it."

So relevant..this album gives me chills. *save


Doctor Doctor what is wrong with me
This supermarket life is getting long
What is the heart life of a colour TV
What is the shelf life of a teenage queen
Ooh western woman
Ooh western girl
News hound sniffs the air
When Jessica Hahn goes down
He latches on to that symbol
Of detachment
Attracted by the peeling away of feeling
The celebrity of the abused shell the belle
Ooh western woman
Ooh western girl
And the children of Melrose
Strut their stuff
Is absolute zero cold enough
And out in the valley warm and clean
The little ones sit by their TV screens
No thoughts to think
No tears to cry
All sucked dry
Down to the very last breath
Bartender what is wrong with me
Why am I so out of breath
The captain said excuse me ma'am
This species has amused itself to death
Amused itself to death
Amused itself to death
We watched the tragedy unfold
We did as we were told
We bought and sold
It was the greatest show on earth
But then it was over
We ohhed and aahed
We drove our racing cars
We ate our last few jars of caviar
And somewhere out there in the stars
A keen-eyed look-out
Spied a flickering light
Our last hurrah
And when they found our shadows
Grouped around the TV sets
They ran down every lead
They repeated every test
They checked out all the data on their lists
And then the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed
But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise
They logged the explanation left
This species has amused itself to death
No tears to cry no feelings left
This species has amused itself to death


(switch channels)
[Alf Razzell:]
"Years later, I saw Bill Hubbard's name on the memorial to the missing at Aras[?]. And I...when I saw his name I was absolutely transfixed; it was as though he was now a human being instead of some sort of nightmarish memory of how I had to leave him, all those years ago. And I felt relieved, and ever since then I've felt happier about it, because always before, whenever I thought of him, I said to myself, 'Was there something else that I could have done?'
[background: "I'd rather die, I'd rather die..."]
And that always sort of worried me. And having seen him, and his name in the register - as you know in the memorials there's a little safe, there's a register in there with every name - and seeing his name and his name on the memorial; it sort of lightened my...heart, if you like."
(woman) "When was it that you saw his name on the memorial?"
"Ah, when I was eighty-seven, that would be a year, ninete...eighty-four, nineteen eighty-four."