(February 24, 2018 at 2:51 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote:(February 24, 2018 at 12:06 pm)shadow Wrote: I love his argument: that someone who promotes education and rational thought is more likely to have left wing beliefs, therefore... it's the left that's wrong?
Out of curiosity, Shadow, (since you're a libertarian) what are your feelings on public education? How robust a system of public education ought we have?
In my opinion, it is crucial that an education system is both as strong as possible and socialized, for a few reasons. Firstly, education is almost paradoxically what informs people of the value of education. If a child is born into a society that supports public education and really drills skills into them, by the time they need to choose their path, they are as ready as possibly to make that decision. In Canada's that's around 16/17 years old... you either choose a university/professional path or you don't, and that path shapes your standard of life heavily. I strongly support individual freedoms, but you can't expect someone unaware of the world's opportunities to have a real chance to exercise their will. Thus, education is like the first great equalizer for decision making and freedom.
Related to that, until a child is economically separable from their parents, they're not really an individual economic actor. Giving parents complete responsibility over their children's fates largely denies the child the chance to make their own decisions once they've started thinking for themselves. As well, it's not fair that if someone's parents are economically unable to provide for their education, they should be locked out of any opportunities upon birth.
Thirdly, education is the backbone of economic functioning. This is also why I support socialized healthcare (though that's another essay I'd have to write). If there is something that completely inhibits or deters people from otherwise creating more value for an economy that's totally outside of their control (like how much money their family has, or getting sick), that's not efficient at all. Education is an investment that pays off so massively in the long run, it would really pain me to see people not going to school because they cannot afford it. That benefits no one: not the economy, because they then do less skilled labor and add less value to the economy, and certainly not their own welfare.
Fourthly, given that our society employs democracy, democracy without an educated populous is disastrous. The more people know, the better they are able to see through the kind of populist crap prevalent in some countries (ahem) that is a pure distraction from policy, tell the real news from the fake news, and provide reasoned opinions on collective decisions. Kind of related to that, people can't even be rational economic actors if they're uneducated, so that's a further level of inefficiency that poor education causes.
Basically, education is such an efficient and fair tool, the more we can promote it, the better. That's the ideology I've always been after... efficient and productive systems, in which our policy serves to maximize the ability of people to make their own decisions and pursue their own goals. In doing this, we end up with as much effort towards human endeavors as possible (goods/services/arts/sciences), but balanced so we get what of those fruits of our labour we, as individuals, desire. It's technically a libertarian view, but just one that doesn't naively assume chaos leads to equal opportunity.
