Jonathan Wilde the difference between a real free market in education, and a business merely managing government schools on behalf of the government.
Conclusion:
Edison Schools has nothing whatsoever to do with the free market.
It's a point I often make, but I think "nothing whatsoever" is putting it a bit too strongly. Only a bit mind.
The basic point is sound, and one I make here regularly. But by running education as a business, even if governments are the only customers of it so far, Edison at least helps to establish the principle that regular education for regular people can indeed be a business. And by supplying an alternative to what I believe they call over there The Blob, Edison may at least help to break the power of that grim entity.
But I guess Jonathan's reply would be that Edison will soon become just another bit of The Blob.
Brian,
I see the point you're making but, well, what with British Rail Privatisation and all, I just don't know.
Our point is not, actually, about privatisation nor is it about running things as a business, it's about freedom. That's the big thing I learnt from the whole rail privatisation fiasco. Private enterprise can be just as unfree as state enterprise. In many ways, the privatised rail industry is less free than the nationalised industry that preceded it. And that is why the results are so bad.
I am not sure what point Jonathan is making (the link seems to have gone awry) but it wouldn't surprise me if, in a few years, the whole Edison project ends up in the same sort of stinking mess that we have here on our railways right now. And then we'll have all sorts of smart arses going around telling us how "privatisation" doesn't work.
Far, far better, I think, to keep the two as separate as possible.
Brian,
I am less willing to budge on the definition of 'free market' than you are. None of the qualities that make markets effective - choice, productivity increases, competition, diversity, entrepreneurship, 'crazy ideas' that demolish the status quote - are found in the Edison setup. It is no different than a school board election resulting in a change in the control of the bureaucracy. New suits, same system. Edison will not 'soon become' part of The Blob; it is already part of The Blob, and has been since the day the contract was drawn up.
Patrick,
------And then we'll have all sorts of smart arses going around telling us how "privatisation" doesn't work.------
Exactly. The blog I was responding to was Calpundit - probably the most highly visited lefty blog in the blogosphere. What is ironic is that a few inches above the Edison entry was a post warning of the 'danger inherent in steel tariffs.' I find it ironic that Kevin Drum can on one hand dismiss a government-enforced monopolistic corporation with special privileges such as Edison as a failure of the free-market, yet warn about the dangers of goverment subsidized corporations such as steel companies in the same breath.
This sort of state-solution-dressed-up-as-privatization needs to be called out for what it is - just another state remedy. We need to shout from the highest rooftops and never let anyone forget that. Otherwise, the bastardization of the language will defeat us before we have even started making our case.
