Diff for "StatistFallacies/PoorWon'tBeEducated"

Fallacy:

In a free society, where all schools are private, the children of the poor won't be educated! They'll wander the streets begging or in gangs….

Response:

The best response I have seen from this is from Books/PracticalAnarchy, which begins by pointing out:

• The great lie of the statist society is that the ignorant are educated, when in fact they are made even more ignorant.

And then, the response examines whether or not a democracy with public education is reflective of the general (or majority) will or not, examines both cases, and finds a free society to be superior in either case.

• Whenever I talk about getting rid of public schools, the response inevitably comes back – automatically, it would seem, just like any other good propaganda – that it would be terrible, because poor children would not be educated.

  
  A person will raise this objection with an absolutely straight face, as if he is the only person in the world who cares about the education of poor children. I know that this is the result of pure indoctrination, because it is so illogical.

  
  If we accept the premise that very few people care about the education of the poor, then we should be utterly opposed to majority-rule democracy, for the obvious reason that if only a tiny minority of people care about the education of the poor, then there will never be enough of them to influence a democracy, and thus the poor will never be educated.

  
  However, those who approve of democracy and accept that democracy will provide the poor with education inevitably accept that a significant majority of people care enough about the poor to agitate for a political solution, and pay the taxes that fund public education.

  
  Thus, any democrat who cares about the poor automatically accepts the reality that a significant majority of people are both willing and able to help and fund the education of the poor.

  
  If people are willing to agitate for and pay the taxes to support a State-run solution to the problem of education, then the State solution is a mere reflection of their desires and willingness to sacrifice their own self-interest for the sake of educating the poor.

  
  If I pay for a cure for an ailment that I have, and I find out that that cure actually makes me worse, do I give up on trying to find a cure? Of course not. It was my desire to find a cure that drove me to the false solution in the first place – when I accept that that solution is false, I am then free to pursue another solution. (In fact, until I accept that my first “cure” actually makes me worse, I will continue to waste my time and resources.)

  
  The democratic “solution” to the problem of educating the poor is the existence of public schools – if we get rid of that solution, then the majority’s desire to help educate the poor will simply take on another form – and a far more effective form, that much is guaranteed.

  
  “Ah,” say the democrats, “but without being forced to pay for public schools, no one will surrender the money to voluntarily fund the education of poor children.”

  
  Well, this is only an admission that democracy is a complete and total lie – that public schools do not represent the will of the majority, but rather the whims of a violent minority. Thus votes do not matter at all, and are not counted, and do not influence public policy in the least, and thus we should get rid of this ridiculous overhead of democracy and get right back to a good old Platonic system of minority dictatorship.

  
  This proposal, of course, is greeted with outright horror, and protestations that democracy must be kept because it is the best system, because public policy does reflect the will of the majority.

  
  In which case we need have no fear that the poor will not be educated in a free society, since the majority of people very much want that to happen anyway.

The same argument applies to a large number of other statist “solutions” to existing problems, including old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, health care for the impoverished, and other forms of welfare. And the answer to "Who will do X?" is always people that care to do X.

Related: ../WhoWillBuildTheRoads