Re: OT: Politics [Was:Social Contract]

Mumia W wrote:

Your quotes don't help your argument for two reasons. You're not
comparing public to private, and the people making those statements
don't begin to envision what society would be like without public
schooling.


You mean that things would be better?

This is another part of the Right Wing mantra: "It doesn't outperform
the private sector, so it should be scrapped."

The problem is that in both social security and education there is *no*
incentive to perform *at all*. Look at the Postal Service for a good
example of a government agency that knows how to perform. Even that is
not the best example, because they are hampered by the fact that
congress *will not* let them turn a profit.

Where both Social Security and public education are concerned, the
purpose is *not* to outperform the private sector. If they tried to do
that, the private companies would scream bloody murder.

Please look at the Postal Service example again. They outperform all
their competitors and the competitors are still there.

The purpose of the public programs is to ensure that *something* is
there for the middle class and poor. It doesn't have to be gold-plated.

Except that I don't want to live in a welfare state, which is
essentially what you are advocating.

The purpose of public education is to prevent the formation of a sharp,
two-class system, where an elite class understands how the society is
run, and everyone else knows so little that they have to accept the
decisions of the elite.

Hate to break it to you, but that is how things are right now.

When this happens, it is absolutely guaranteed that the elite will
structure society so that they will forever be the elite, and no one
else will ever be given the opportunity to understand how the society is
run or why it's run the way it is.

Again, how things are now.

It would be like Medieval times, where an Aristocracy ruled, and the
peasants, by both education and law, had no choice but to accept their
decisions. A system like this can last 500 or a thousand years.

The purpose of public education was to ensure that this could never
happen again.

No. The purpose of public education *was* to ensure that the most
disadvantaged, who could not afford a private education, could get an
education. It has mushroomed into the mess we have now.

The purpose of public education in America, was to destroy the power of
the old aristocracy of the South, and to fertilize the formation of a
new white middle class that would never allow themselves to be dominated
by an elite group of plantation owners ever again. (It worked).

The purpose of public education is not to compete directly against
private education. It is to teach the masses how to see it when their
rulers are about to give them the big shaft. It worked. In 2004, at
least 55 million Americans saw the big shaft coming and tried to stop it.

Please go read the Communist Manifesto and see why Marx said it was a
requirement that the state control education in order to have a
Communist society.

-Roberto

--
Roberto C. Sanchez
http://familiasanchez.net/~roberto

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