Forum Post: Abolish the public schools! Privatize the Fire Department!
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 27, 2011, 10:10 a.m. EST by HardcoreLibertarian
(10)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
The public schools are a completely absurd! The government steals my money, as a taxpayer, and waste it with FREE schools to the kids of LAZY people who can't get a work and earn enough money to pay a private school!
This is absurd!
Why people think they deserve FREE elementary schools and high schools to their kids?
There is no FREE LUNCH! The money to give FREE school to the kids of those lazy people are coming from my pockets! The government is stealing it from me, with those absurd taxes!
All my kids are on private schools, and I don't want to pay taxes to provide FREE public schools to the kids of LAZY people!
I demand the privatization of ALL the elementary schools and high schools!
And I also demand the privatization of the Fire Department! It's absurd that the government steals my money to provide FREE firefighters to rescue people.
Fire Department should be privatized, and should have competitors, several private Fire Departments, some of them linked to insurance companies.
If you want to be rescued, you must pay personal insurance against acidents and fires, and have the services of a private Fire Department!
The sad thing is, this parody of hardcore libertarians isn't all that far off from the real thing.
It was a parody, right?
I'd love a system like that. Except the OP misstates that schooling is "free" if provided by the government - it is not. I would vastly prefer local control of education and private / volunteer firefighting companies (luckily I have the latter) than Federally controlled education and public firefighting.
If you dont like paying taxes move to bangladesh
Taxes are bad, and so is regulation.
education drives jobs... without a education i only pay/hire min wage.
I work my ass off. There is no way I could afford a private school. What would happen to this country if the vast majority of people couldn't give their kids a basic education?
Wow calling all of America lazy??? I pay taxes too probably way more then you. Public school isn't free. I pay for it. Joe Down the street pays for it everybody pays for it. You act like it's only your money. Move to a country like Bangladesh there you won't have to pay taxes on those items.
Exactly. Fuck me goddamn commie!!! I am such a parasite. I hate myself.
Public schools are meant to educate a workforce so corupg businesses have people qualified to do there jobs. This is ignorant. Do you want to be Mexico??? It will be great when we have a country full of drug cartels telling us what to do instead of corporate America. A child has a right to public education. This type of legislation helps nobody. Your taxes will go up idiot. The govt pays more to imprison a man than educate him. This bill is just a plan to further separate the haves and have nots. Hell even corporate America isn't this stingy
You keep going on about the government stealing your money - and it's absurd.
The covenant document of the US is the constitution. This covenant grants the authority to levy and collect taxes. One could easily argue that the federal government has exceeded it's constitutionally appointed authority, but to decry taxation wholly is foolish -- libertarian or not.
The vast majority of libertarian thought sees taxation as a necessary evil. It's the fiscal unaccountability and excessive taxation that they see an issue with.
I understand you're a troll, but you're being too extreme to take seriously.
I hate when the government regulates the way I dress myself.
All so 16th century of you.
There is no benefit to having schools or the fire department being a “for hire by individuals” type service. They should remain available to all. However, frustration such as what is voiced by the original poster may come about due to the fact that people in some locations feel these departments are not delivering quality equivalent to the moneys collected. For instance, in NYC the annual budget for the Department of Education is $24 billion dollars and the system serves approximately 1,100,000 students. That’s roughly $19,000 per student per year yet many residents do not feel they are getting $19,000 worth of value for students. Maybe these systems, while still taxpayer funded and freely available , could be run more effectively by something other than government.
My frustation is because the government steals my money and gives FREE education to those poor kids!
Everyone should pay for education! The private schools exist, why they just don't put their kids to study in the private schools?
It's not my fault that those LAZY parents don't have money to pay private schools.
NO MORE FREE EDUCATION!
Everybody does pay for education have you heard of taxes??? My kid uses public schools and I'm definetly not poor. You aren't being robbed. You and your children can use public schools. Quit being a snob
Everybody does pay for education have you heard of taxes??? My kid uses public schools and I'm definetly not poor. You aren't being robbed. You and your children can use public schools. Quit being a snob
So the kid should not have the benefit of a basic education (I'm talking 1st grade to 12th grade--the basics) because his parents are lazy?
Nobody has the right to free services. Nobody. The kids of LAZY parents should not have the right to free healthcare or free education.
If your argument was that some municipalities mismanage schools, fire departments etc and that maybe these services should be contracted out, I might agree with but if your position is that BASIC services should only be available to those that can afford them I guess we have to agree to disagree
What BASIC services?
In many African countries, the only schools are the private schools. There are no public schools. That's the right thing to do.
Education is a commodity. You want it, you pay for it.
Evidently you don't have the mental capacity to separate goods into public classes and private classes based on the properties of excludability and rivalrous consumption.
Africa is a great place to live you could move there and not pay taxes
Taxes are bad, and so is regulation.
The one african country I am aware of that has no compulsory education at all is the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is also one of the poorest nations in the world and a shithole to live in. That should be our role model?
I have nothing to do with it.
I don't want to pay taxes.
BTW, the term of art these days for "public school" amongst real hardcore libertarians is "government school".
That's "gubbmint" not government.
oh,. that is hardcore. if you are referring to a core of imbeciles who have a quasi-religious belief in a mythic "free-market". It is just like religion, as they will happily tell you, that true capitalism has never happened, and that is what they want,. a thing that has never been,. . Don't bother pointing out the huge gaping holes in their "free-capitalist" ideology,. as with all people of "faith" no amount of reason, can convince them otherwise. In the end these people will have to live outside of civilisation as they can not co-operate with any others,. they are pure individualists,. lets just let them survive on their own.
This is non-sense. We can do much better than this.
We don't have to live like this anymore! Read “Common Sense 3.1” at ( www.revolution2.osixs.org )
Most of our wealth is being stolen. Nothing is free. We earned the public schools and much more we're not getting. And we're going to get even less for our labor and time unless we get a get smart.
FIGHT THE CAUSE - NOT THE SYMPTOM OsiXs (Revolution 2.0 - The Smart Revolution)
Hi HardcoreLibertarian, Just so you know, those schools aren't free to the families that attend them, they also pay taxes. Taxes are a pool of money that a society puts together so they can use it to do something large, like build and run a school or fire department. If your priorities of what to do with that money are different than the general consensus, you only have the lack of interest in your cause to blame. Maybe you should run for office or try to find another way to bring more attention to your interests.
I don't want to participate in this " pool of money". Where are my individual rights?
No free education to anyone with my tax dollars!
If you can find a way to avoid using any municipal services, and I mean not one, you should fight to keep your money out of the pool. To do that you will have to refuse city water, power, and gas. These are all subsidized, the price you pay for that service does not cover the full expense. Municipal employees run the lines to get all of these things to your house. Also, don't take public transportation, walk on the side walks, drive on the streets, use traffic lights, vote, expect protection from police in any situation, expect an ambulance to show up if you are in an accident (but you wont be driving anyway), go to court,.. I think you get my drift. You benefit from the pool of money, just like everyone else. Just try to influence where it goes by staying involved with your local politics.
Dude, the Tea Party rally was last year.
Also, ready about the history of New York City to learn why a privatized fire department may not be the best idea.
COMMIE!!!
You want to steal my tax money to provide FREE firefighters to rescue LAZY people!
Those LAZY people who can't pay personal insurance against acidents and fires, with rescue services included, should be let to DIE! The DEATH of LAZY poor people is not a tragedy!
This real lazy people are the people on wall street that sit around and make money off of our money while we work our butts off - Think about it!
FIGHT THE CAUSE - NOT THE SYMPTOM OsiXs (More Power and Technology to the People!)
Yep, I have no problem stealing tax money from those who don't understand the basic workings of the major forms of government. More to the point though, just like high levels of vaccinations provide herd immunity, there is a public benefit (and cost saving to all of us) to keeping the fire department public.
PS Wikipedia is a great reference. I'd encourage you to read a few articles all the way through
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
PPS FYI I fall very squarely into the capitalist bucket. I just don't mind paying into centralized systems when I feel there is a clear benefit to me.
PPPS I do pay fire insurance, they pay for what is destroyed. I'm happy though I don't have to call a 1-800 number and wait through a phone tree while my house burns to the ground
Thank you, we need to learn that our old ways won't work anymore guys.
FIGHT THE CAUSE - NOT THE SYMPTOM OsiXs (Common Sense 3.1)
Being hard core of anything is frightening. Take for example your MASSIVE oversight and generalization that parents of kids in public schools are lazy. After reading that, I discarded your post as bogus because insensitive extremism gets us nowhere.
Rather than work on finding solutions, your extremist approach (and others like you) would simply rather "get rid of it".
And what's with your "I demand" bs, you sound so, oh what's the word...yes I got it, ignorant. You're the type of person who makes a scene in a grocery store checkout because you didn't get that discount on the gallon of milk. "I demand my DISCOUNT dammit!"
Relax dude. Your paranoia solves nothing.
Public Health Care
NO WAY!!! We need MORE education spending! New Jersey spends $75,000 per student per year on education and it's still not enough! There are no factors except money! More money = better students! If the rich would quit being greedy maybe we could get some real education!
Actually there are a # of private fire departments look up Oley PA. They have survived and expanded for a long time.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2010/10/firebugs_rightb.php
Old news and an exception to the rule. But in all fairness they refused a service. I am sure if they paid the retro immediately they would have put it out but hindsight is twenty-twenty as they say.
Abolishing public schools will deprive us of many things one of them is the people that might run your vision of the world or make it come true.
Feeble minded moral degenerate. PISS OFF!
Also your grammar is quite poor. All that awesome private schooling...
That would just hand all control over to private companies. Companies have tried running whole towns before and ended up disastrous. Google privatized townships and see what I mean.
Well, actually a district in Illinois called Elk's Grove privatized their fire department and my understanding is that service improved and costs were reduced. However, this is basically just contracting out by Elk's Grove, not making the service a "for hire" enterprise as the OP recommends.
Right, there are some cases where it's actually worked to hire out running some parts of the infrastructure. It's a rare case and should be taken into heavy consideration, in large cities there's been numerous cases where a company will come in and take over certain parts of infrastructure and leave it worse than they found it.
Another example might be charter schools in New York City which have been reported to have substantially outperformed their public school counterparts in reading and math. More importantly, the residents want them as is evidenced by the huge turnouts at the "lotteries".
Shut down the trolls!
I understand you're trolling but you might be interested to know that something like 2/3rds of all fire departments are all-volunteer and effectively are private. The percentage is even higher for the vast majority of those outside of major cities and something like 70% of firefighters are volunteers. The degree to which they receive local government funding varies but they rely very heavily on private money. That's increasing significantly as state and local budgets have been cut back.
I don't care, the fact that 1/3 are funded by my tax dollars is immoral!
No tax money for "free firefighters service"! Stop stealing my money!
Regardless, not a real good example for trolling purposes since private volunteer fire services have worked very well for a long time in this country. Sounds good to young urban guys who have never lived any place where there wasn't a sidewalk in front of their apartment though I guess. lol
Trolling?
I'm just demanding the end of ALL the government-funded Fire Departments.
I don't want to pay taxes.
Good stuff, HardcoreLibertarian. I'd present it differently though. In order to truly educate the students we need to get the govt out of education. As in so many other things they have failed to deliver the goods here. They have succeeded in creating indoctrination centers that provide unthinking supporters of the present corporatist regime. It is through control of education & the media that the elites keep the people in line. At its worst this combination produces the people willing to go fight the empire's wars. Only a private, unregulated, & unlicensed education system can get us out of this mess.
Then there is the moral side. Anything based on theft (taxation) is immoral. It doesn't matter if the stolen money goes to feeding the orphans. Stealing is stealing & must end.
I don't care about "truly educate the students".
I just don't want to pay taxes.
TAXATION = STEALING.
again, unless you genuinely don't use anything that taxes pay for, you are not being stolen from. You have to completely remove yourself from society in order to do that. You are online, so you haven't done that. A portion of your taxes goes to putting in the infrastructure that brings you your internet and cable TV.
Yeah, goverment public schools are doing a bang up job. Ever notice that the politicians and the 1% don't send their kids to them?
Here's a 'real' Libertarian's take on public education ...
http://www.dollarvigilante.com/blog/2011/10/13/the-education-trap.html
Freebird, I looked at the link you provided. That guy is a paranoid extremist. He may have a few legitimate points about flaws in the educational system, but he takes it to a crazy place an undermines his whole argument. He also doesnt offer any alternate solution. What would he have us do instead? Allow our children to run wild and form child gangs like NYC in the 1800s? In order to live as a society, we have to set standards. The first video on your site takes objection to telling children they can't hurt one another. That is crazy. There are developmental phases in a child's life where they must learn that other people deserve the same rights they have, or they will not progress through the natural stages of development. Honestly, that page mostly sounds like sour grapes. Schooling isnt for everyone, and once you finish the basics, you can leave. It is sad because the person who wrote the page is still carrying the scars of not doing well in school and not being socially accepted. They are not seeing the big picture beyond their own emotional response to disliking school. I went to a very good public school, and excelled academically so I was placed in the advanced programs. There I had teachers that encouraged critical thinking and questioning of authority. I took art, and music classes and was encouraged to be creative. I wouldnt have had anyone to teach me these things at home. My parents could have tried, but they didnt have the training to teach me to play an instrument or paint. Maybe we need to find ways to enrich the 'not honors' students in the same way. I'm sure many schools need better curriculums, more individual attention to students, nicer facilities etc. but we still need kids to be interacting with others, learning about how to coexist with people who are different than they are etc.
Freebird 1 points 28 seconds ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwIyy1Fi-4Q Amazing young woman talks about her/sibling's "unschooled" education (starts at 2:30)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/opinion/sunday/will-dropouts-save-america.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/
http://www.khanacademy.org/ The future of education - completely free.
http://www.montessori.edu/refs.html
By the way, are you trying to argue that there would be no musicians or artists without public school ... seriously? How is it that all the world's great artists and musicians ever came to be before public education? I took private piano lessons for 7 years and it did not put my parents in the poor house. My kids are teaching themselves, thanks to the myriad of YouTubers and web sites that offer instruction for free.
Frankly, anything my kids are interested in or is useful to them - they have taught themselves. Schools are not interested in teaching what my kids want to learn. Government schools have their own agenda.
I did not say, nor do I believe, that there would be no musicians or artists without public school. I am using the art and music classes I took to demonstrate that your video is wrong to say that school doesn't challenge you creatively. Maybe you should watch it, it's crazy.
I don't disagree with children doing things outside of school. I too took private music lessons until I graduated high school, in addition to the orchestra classes I took at school. The other kids who's parents could afford private lessons and I consistently outperformed the kids who didnt take lessons, so you see even with public education our society is divided in to haves and have nots. Do you really suggest that those kids who wanted to take private lessons but could not afford to dont even deserve to be educated to read music? You clearly do not understand what poverty is. When you say that your piano lessons did not put your parents in the poor house, you don't realize that there are families who genuinely can't afford pianos, or lessons at all. Children are innocent in this world and do not deserve the deprivation you prescribe.
I am familiar with the Khanacademy. Its great, but I do not think that it is adequate by its self for learning most science, but it is a helpful plain spoken supplement. Same for youtube and online learning content. It is a shadow on a cave compared to actually interacting with an instructor or dissecting a cat in a bio lab. If you were to actually limit your children's education to online content, they would be missing out on something called 'tactile learning', which is a valuable aspect to gaining and retaining knowledge.
I'm familiar with the concept of free schools, and summerhill (at the behest of my mother-in-law). You didn't mention waldorff. You might look into it if you are unfamiliar. I have 4 or 5 friends who were educated through waldorff and they are all excellent communicators and quite self actualized. I thoroughly support alternative education and child directed education, but not every family could sustain this. Alternative education is a wonderful thing for aplicable parties, but a basic education is necessary for everyone, even those who cannot afford private school, so that we can compete globally. We cannot afford to disregard the potential of children who do not have the privilege of engaged and intelligent parents. Their potential contributions coupled with the rising tide (and reduced crime rates) of an educated population are worth the financial cost of educating our people and the risk that weak willed children will reflect their weak willed personalities in an institutionalized setting rather than in the woods. Strong children will become strong people who rise above the system and pave their own way. More passive children can take comfort in the fact that there is a system to guide them and provide a comfortable ladder to climb. And if you think that if your children drop out of school they are increasing their odds of becoming the next bill gates, that is called a gamble. And not a good one. Yes, some people succeed without formal education, and some people fail with one. Those are the extremes, and like your extreme political viewpoints, they do not work for society as a whole.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNIgztvyU2U
This is SO stupid. Its like crazy selfish person sesame street, and it is just a bunch of opinions. There isnt ONE fact or real world example in this stupid thing. If you draw little cartoon circles and talk in a condescending voice, it doesn't make you right. I think you have been watching too many videos and it has affected your judgement. There is alot of information in the internet, and sometimes it can be hard to see the forest through the trees. This tree, is a dumb one.
How old are you? When did you finish school?
Which school?
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I DON'T WANT TO PAY TAXES!
No government has the right to steal my money, no matter if it's the Federal government, the State government or the City government!
Taxation = Stealing
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