Hacker News Reader

Comment by fullshark | Hacker News Reader

I'd rather just make sure my kid gets a great education than sacrifice their well being and future to your cause, so I'm glad you're not emperor.

View on HN

That's how the world burns, everyone neglects the communal interest in favor of their own.

History has shown that the world burns because of some fanatic trying to impose their theory of utopia which overrides human nature. People caring first about their own family, then their extended family, then their neighborhood, then city, etc, in radiating zones of decreasing concern is a required part of human nature and does not cause the world to burn.

Exactly!

Me spending more time with my child doesn't take away from what other children receive. If I wasn't working with my child, then I certainly wouldn't be working with all of them in place of that.

Education is about more than just your particular children. We all benefit from a society where people are better educated. (A more informed electorate creates a better society.) If the act of pulling your kid from school causes that school to get just a little bit worse, you’re making society just a little bit worse as a result.

There’s a similar reason why, in countries that have state-funded health care, you’re not allowed to seek out private doctors or private insurance. The point is to not allow the rich to siphon the best resources away from everyone else. (This is obviously very anti-capitalist, but I think for some institutions like medicine and education, it may make sense.)

Once you have kids you really don't care about all of that.

I have kids. The reason I bring it up with an “If I were emperor” qualifier, is that for an individual, it doesn’t make sense to keep your child in a failing public school if you can afford to pull them out. It would take a unified effort of banning all private education, for it to actually improve things. I’m aware it’s a pipe dream right now, and as long as private schools exist, it still makes sense for individuals to use them.

It’s similar to the tragedy of the commons… people acting in their own self-interests (better education for my child) create a situation that is worse than if we had a collective strategy (we all get a decent education, and get to share a better, more educated society.)

Are you going to ban relocation to a better school district as well? I don't see where the rabbit hole ends.

There would ideally be no “better school districts”, because they would receive the same (population-adjusted) funding, and teachers would be paid similarly enough that schools couldn’t unfairly attract the best teachers. Getting rid of all private/charter schools can help with that. So can centralizing the school funding (so that richer districts can’t somehow secure more funding for their school.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com