I found this on Timothy Sandefur's blog. Apparently the Florida Education Association may sue to force the state to shut down it's scholarship tax credit program. The program allows businesses "to donate to non-profit scholarship funds that subsidize tuition for low-indomce kids at private schools of their families' choosing."
And that's why I hate the teachers' unions. They say their main concern is the children, but it could hardly be clearer that they are simply using the power of government to pursue their own self-interest, kids be damned.
And I clearly remember a political science prof telling me that all monopolies were bad, except the government's monopoly on K-12 education. That monopoly was necessary. Why? Because education is "different." How is it different? It "just is."
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That reminds me of my Sociology 101 prof from ages ago, lamenting that no one had managed yet to invent a definition of aggression that excluded self-defense and parental discipline. We didn't discuss why that should be the case.
And people accuse economists of being naked partisans, sheesh.
It goes to show you that an organisation founded with the noblest motives can still be corrupted by the power it acquires.
A good historical examples are the guilds of Medieval and Renaissance Europe. They were created by free commoners to counterbalance the power of the aristocracy. By the 18th Century they were the entrenched power bloc.
Heh he, now I'm reminded of my sister complaining about a prof who complained that we don't have a theory about "aboutness."
Economists are supposed to be naked? Hmm, I'm a political economist, can I get away with being half-naked? It's spring up here, after all.
I didn't know the guilds were originated as a counterbalance to aristocratic power. Do you by any chance know of a good, not overlong, reading on that? I'd love to assign something like that to my political economy class.
I'm afraid not, in fact its more me reasoning things out, but my logic goes like this:
The free commoners who made up the citizens of the towns were at the mercy of the Fuedal lords because they had all the soldiers and all the food. The lords also controlled the administration of justice.
The only bargianing chip they had was their services. If a lord screwed with them they could blacklist them. Guilds also act as a way to protect intellectual property, secrecy acting as an alternative to a patent.
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