Privatizing Education: The Most Important Political Issue

Many people have asked me what my first policy proposal would be if I held some form of political office, or influence thereof. My answer is always: the privatization and deregulation of education to the greatest possible degree. Since education is the industry which deals with the intellect and knowledge, freeing it is critical to the liberation of man’s mind. A liberated mind has the greatest probability of acting in accordance with reason, and thus has the greatest probability of learning and implementing the earth’s first rational philosophy: Objectivism.

If you are at all familiar with Objectivist political philosophy, you are aware of the basic errors of socialized production. The first error is the violation of man’s property rights, which is inherent in any form of taxation; i.e. coercive expropriation. The violation of man’s property rights means the violation of man’s liberty, which means the violation of man’s life. This is both an ethical and practical issue, as even the most benevolent state agents would be unable to align the spending of their expropriated wealth in accordance with supply and demand. This always results in the misallocation of valuable goods and services, which would otherwise be put to better use under a market system.

All forms of socialized production sow discord between the interests of differing individuals. The zero-sum game entailed by coercive expropriation pits families and education personnel against each other. Any gain made by one party in this system entails an equal and opposite loss for the other. This conflict is exacerbated by the seemingly endless corruption and inefficiency of public teacher’s unions. Public school personnel have absolutely no incentive to care about the economic outcomes of their teaching methods. Primarily, they are interested in leveraging as much funding from the state as possible, which means: most thoroughly looting the taxpayer. Teachers who exceed expectations in their line of work are routinely shunned by teacher’s unions, who regard the slightest degree of competition as a threat to their livelihoods.

Yet these flaws of socialized education pale in comparison to the destructiveness of mandatory school curriculum. This form of government control makes it impossible for even the most wealthy to escape the destructive consequences of government regulation in education. By meticulously micromanaging what schools must and must not teach, the government has found a way to suppress nearly all innovation in education. This policy stops schools from being able to experiment with education methods, and thereby of discovering more economically efficient methods of educating students. In a free market, schools would gain a reputation based on the economic outcomes of their students, and thus the market would heavily tend towards true information, as it is the only information that is practical in the real world. Mass experimentation is critical to the advancement of every field of production, including education. A private education system would allow for the widest variety of choices for families, and the most advanced, up-to-date information.

Mandatory school curriculum is much more prone to error than a market system, resulting in devastating social consequences. Many schools are forced to teach creationism and abstinence because of this regulation. In contrast, a market system would quickly eliminate false or destructive information once it becomes apparent that superior theories have emerged. Such an education system is decentralized and dynamic, constantly evolving and adapting to the best information available. The consequences of falsehood would be minimized in a free market system, where they would be exacerbated in a mandatory curriculum system. A free market is a system whose goal is to prevent people from interfering in reality-based decisions. Socialized production is a system whose goal is to prevent reality from interfering in people-based decisions.

The conflict of interest inherent in mandatory educational curriculum cannot be ignored. Government agents will almost always skew historical information in favor of the state, regardless of its accuracy or fairness, because doing so will result in a generation of voters biased in favor of government control. This further entrenches the positions of regulators responsible for educational curriculum, allowing them to bolster and expand their bureaucracy. Whereas in a free market system agents focus heavily on the economic results of their choices, socialized production creates political games, favor-trading, and double-crossing.

Education is by far the most important industry to privatize, and the industry most thoroughly corrupted by state control. But even more destructive than the socialization of many educational institutions is their regulation by agencies interested in reinforcing their own positions. The privatization and deregulation of education would be one of the most beneficial policies, making the privatization and deregulation of other industries possible.