KD Rosa objects to the idea Sara Mead and I put forward for a different federal role in education innovation. He sees it as futile but in a different way than other objections. Sara and I are betting that objective criteria and transparency can flip the incentive problem Rosa writes about enough to drive some progress, but time will tell.
If you enjoyed the gay marriage – school choice question then check out Leo Casey’s smart response. Coming at it from a rights perspective Leo delves deeply into why this point:
The primary difference is that supporters of gay marriage are seeking a right to make a choice while in the case of school choice parents and advocates are seeking to have an existing right made more accessible through public finance of individual choices.
is the key issue because one is a rights question while the other is a policy decision. Leo, simply unable to resist a dig in the same way western trout simply can’t resist a Green Drake, also wonders why I didn’t ask about the inconsistency of the Right in terms of supporting gay marriage bans and more school choice. From a libertarian standpoint there is an inconsistency there but almost everyone advancing both those arguments is not a libertarian. Rather, on both counts, they are trying to inject their view of morality into public policy and while I disagree with that position I don’t see inconsistency there.
Gay marriage and public finance are both moral issues. One might add that public finance is by far the weightier. Government displaces individual choice via theft: call it taxation, inflation or borrowing (debt paid via taxation). If one conceptualizes rights, then it is logical to understand that all rights stem from property. Taxation, then, is a violation of right. So is the usurpation of the individual’s ability to plan that comes with government interference.
It is that simple. But people are too into statist positivism or democratic mysticism to get it. Anyway, didn’t PJ O’Rourke say “Giving money and power to Congress is like giving whisky & car keys to teenagers”?