Comment by avs733 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by avs733 | Hacker News Reader

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thank god the government no longer has a monopoly on...checks notes...the money I give the government to provide government services. Now we can...check notes...collect more tax dollars so that disabled students have access to segregated education and somehow that will show us who is making too much money. You have invented the idea of accounting and presume that it is impossible that it will not show you are right.

I hear this type of logic a lot. If you don't start with an assumption that the ideology is true and therefore the outcomes from the ideology are better then what comes out is functionally incoherent. It begins with the assumption that public organizations are poorly run and then uses that assumption to conclude they are poorly run. That's not thinking, its not argumentation, and it should not be respected as a serious viewpoint.

When the charter schools get to pick the students they want and leave the the more expensive students to the group that is required by law to educate them they haven't improved. They haven't innovated, they've stolen from the public and claimed their moral superiority for doing so. This comment is representative of the fucking inanity (not insanity) of this ideology.

I think people's own experience tells them that public organizations are poorly run, not their assumptions that you have no basis for making judgement on. If government proponents spent half the effort making the DMV and TSA friendly and work that they do attacking people they would serve their cause way better. But no, just tell me my lying eyes are wrong. BTW if you are trying to have a discussion with people, profanity against those with a different view does nothing but make your argument look weaker. Moving the voucher claim from the theoretical (which I totally supported) to what we have learned from the actual (which has converted me to against) is a much better argument to make then attacks on people (telling them their assumptions are wrong, even though you have no idea what they have based them on, is never going to work). Maybe your post made you feel better, but next time maybe make a post that improves discourse and maybe leads to a better world (and doesn't alienate someone like me who is leaning to the outcome you desire).

My own experience tells me that most private institutions I interact with are also poorly run.

Really, anyone that has worked for a living can tell you that most institutions are poorly run.

At best, despite being poorly run, some institutions have a more consistent track record of mining value from their customers and employees than others. Those are the ones that tend to survive. As both a customer and an employee, those aren't the metrics that coincide with me having a good time with them. As a shareholder, though, they are pretty great.

> Maybe your post made you feel better, but next time maybe make a post that improves discourse and maybe leads to a better world (and doesn't alienate someone like me who is leaning to the outcome you desire).

I found myself saying recently that I can no longer respect people who hesitate to vote for a group of people who have done a bad job fixing something and instead vote for the people who broke it.

I have found, over a lot of sad experiences, when people's assumptions become their ideology, those assumptions then become their experiences. Largely, there is no arguing with them and stridency is called for to point out to others the error of their ways. Your call is for respectful discourse and argumentation. That call is seemingly reasonable on its face but is easily weaponized to protect bad faith arguments. It shifts responsibility to prove a negative instead of someone proving the claim. If you reread the post I reacted to, critically, it is a truly nonsense set of talking points masquerading as an argument. I hold no ill will to the poster - its just regurgitation that is presumed to have meaning. "create more options" "figure out who is overpaid" that have no connection to each other besides the underlying ideology that government bad industry good. That isn't an argument - it's an ideology. And you can't argue with ideologies because they aren't argument based.

If we are speaking of argumentation, then evaluating the * basic coherence * and credibility of a claim made is perfectly reasonable. But it isn't my job to argue people out of a position they didn't argue themselves into. That is not a good use of my time, and defending those people isn't a good use of yours. What has value is laying bare, for others who might be misled, just how hollow that non argument is.

Your points about the TSA and DMV are ones I to an extent understand, because they match my own experiences. But if one steps back and looks at evidence they tend to fall apart - because its an ideology not an argument. What matters isn't is the DMV good or bad, its would industry run it better. I have experienced two states with privatized DMVs. Those were categorically the two worst DMV experiences I have had - because they had no staff on hand, no ability to do anything, and they charged me more for the service. I would argue the TSA has worked exactly as intended - create the appearance of doing something and line the pockets of (shocker) industry by buying useless equipment. It is regulatory capture, it is the purest vision of what industry will do if given the opportunity to influence government services - as little as possible for as much money as possible.

The discussion of which is better is a red herring, as you correctly noted. But its one that exists and is viewed as an assumptive way of making things better (industry! run the government like a business!) that is accepted with farcically lacking evidence. Maybe the side suggesting that privatization is better should spend their time teaching government the lessons of industry rather than wasting our time trying to steal from the public.

TL:DR - make an argument, talking points aren't an argument and should not be treated as one just for the sake of making discourse feel nice.

> thank god the government no longer has a monopoly on...checks notes...the money I give the government to provide government services

There's no inherent reason why I shouldn't get to decide how my own property taxes are spent. If my city decides through an election that those property taxes should be given as vouchers, why shouldn't that be allowed? You're proposing taxation without representation.

> collect more tax dollars so that disabled students have access to segregated education and somehow that will show us who is making too much money

Local tax dollars, which are raised by local elections approving those tax dollars. It also sounds like you haven't actually been in a school this decade because special needs students are _already_ segregated and take separate classes with separate teachers.

> You have invented the idea of accounting and presume that it is impossible that it will not show you are right

If I'm wrong then the tax dollars all flow back to public schools anyways. That's how a market works.

> It begins with the assumption that public organizations are poorly run and then uses that assumption to conclude they are poorly run

I don't see why we shouldn't give parents the choice to decide themselves whether those public organizations are in fact poorly run. And speaking from experience growing up in public K-12 and a public university, a lot of these organizations _are_ poorly run.

> When the charter schools get to pick the students they want and leave the the more expensive students to the group that is required by law to educate them they haven't improved. They haven't innovated, they've stolen from the public and claimed their moral superiority for doing so

You mean just like how gifted programs pick the students they want and leave the more expensive students (in dollars per student graduated or however you want to measure it) to the group that is required by law to educate them? You seem to assume that charter schools automatically haven't shown any improvements in outcomes when you say this.

I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say let's wait and see how they do. I think parents are more than intelligent enough to select the best school for their kids. I'm happy mandating that charter schools be nonprofits if that reduces the grifting but I think we need choice. The other alternative is I move to where the good schools are and pay $$$$ for a house in a good school district. I think one is definitely going to help more people than the other, don't you think?

Isn't the whole point of taxes that they are for spending we don't get to choose, because if we did, it wouldn't happen? Otherwise what is the point? They aren't Credit Unions or crowd sourcing, they are taxes. You are proposing taxes by direct democracy, and the United States at least is not based on that, because most of our founders came from minorities that were having penalized by popular rule, we tend to favor protection from the tyranny of the majority that you propose. WHile special needs may be segregated, they are still funded by the general pool, you completely failed to address his argument. You also seem to say criticize his opinion for not being in a school this decade, so are you arguing that maybe people who are say, more expert in schools, should make schooling decisions and not just any old person, say someone handed a voucher? The voucher side always touts the free market, but it completely fail to address that in markets there are ALWAYS winners and loosers, and if we as society are willing to increase that aspect when it comes to children and education. Instead of fixing a sinking boat, it just figures out a way for some to get to lifeboats. I'd like to think we can do and be better than that. BTW I was pro voucher in theory, but the outcome in reality just isn't morally acceptable to me.

> Isn't the whole point of taxes that they are for spending we don't get to choose, because if we did, it wouldn't happen?

No, the point is that as a city we should be able to choose, not individually. I said if my local election decides we should be able to funnel our property tax dollars to vouchers then we should be allowed to do that. I don't mean each individual gets to decide what line-item taxes they're paying that year.

> WHile special needs may be segregated, they are still funded by the general pool, you completely failed to address his argument

I said we should separate the funding for special needs because it's fundamentally a different cost structure and hides inefficiencies in the non-special needs costs.

> You also seem to say criticize his opinion for not being in a school this decade, so are you arguing that maybe people who are say, more expert in schools, should make schooling decisions and not just any old person, say someone handed a voucher

I think people whose kids are in school should get to decide. I criticized his opinion because it seems like he's trying to impose his one-size-fits-all public option when he's neither a parent nor a student. The US has never been a technocracy.

> Instead of fixing a sinking boat, it just figures out a way for some to get to lifeboats

Curious how you think we can do better. The US spends the most out of any nation on education per capita and has among the poorest outcomes out of any developed nation. More money doesn't fix the sinking boat, it just lets it take on more water before it sinks. Vouchers aren't perfect but I think they're better than pouring more money into a black hole with no accountability.

In my state, most special needs students aren't segregated, but mainstreamed. This has been a movement in education for the last decade. Yes, they might have additional classes with specialized instructors, but mainstreaming is an important goal for most k-12 education systems.

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