Angiebot:
It sounds like politicians and administrators in your region need a few pokes with a cattle prod. Leaving asbestos in a school is tantamount to murder.

But direct funding of children can work. It was introduced in New Zealand in the 1980s. Each child is entitled to a certain amount of funds. If the parents decide to move their child to another school, the funds follow the child. So schools work really hard to retain students. In addition to student funding, schools also get grants for buildings and maintenance.

At the same time, they put the governance of schools in the hands of elected local representatives, usually parents. There have been problems, but on the whole it's worked quite well.

I think it's important for parents to have some choice about their children's education. I also think it's important for schools to see students as valued customers, not as cost items.

I'd just add that the instant you start sending tax dollars to private schools, they aren't really private any more.

"Just to get this out of the way: modern, young Libertarians are not what Libertarianism started as and most have no clue who Locke was. There are some older people, like Paul Rand, who have very good points and have put forth sensible issues, they are not part of this extreme movement I am talking about."

The Libertarian Party is a disgrace to the nation, and the movement surrounding it gives Libertarian a bad name- hence the reason I avoid the word. There is a reason why Rand Paul isn't part of the Libertarian Party, and more and more sensible libertarians have left it. I think it was Laura Southern who said that Modern Libertarians have come to switch loyalties from Capitalism as an ideal, to capital itself, which I believe is true to a degree, especially among Objectivists.

"To say I haven't the slightest clue is a mistake on your part, but I freely admit that I am not an expert and that you probably do have more knowledge than I on Libertarianism's origins and possibly on where it is on the spectrum now. I don't know how old you are or how long you have even known the word Libertarian. I was introduced to Libertarianism in the early 1980's and originally appreciated some aspects of it, but I have watched it's progress over the decades and it does not make good social sense to me, it only makes sense for raising a generation of slaves and for giving businesses real power over people's lives."

You have been around longer than I have, so I don't know how the Libertarian Movement had changed- I mostly focus on ideals, since groups and movements change over time and often come to betray their original ideals. I generally have problems with these trendy SJW and feminist libertarians, but most Libertarians are more centrist. Some are democrats, some are republicans, most are independents.

"The private prison system has created more prisoners, not less crime. Private Postal, while doing some positive things, has also stripped workers of rights."

Private Postal services gives consumers alternatives to the USPS, such as Fed Ex of UPS- since the market has opened up in postal services, the USPS has had to compete with them. As a matter of fact, since the UKs postal service is still a monopoly, you can see the difference yourself- I ordered a 250 ml thing of Brylcreem from the UK, and it takes over a month to get from the UK to the US, but only a couple of days to get from one side of the US to the other.

"Yes, there is something to be said for private contracts; for one thing, they can force government agencies to get their shit together. You won't catch me saying that any government is a-okay across the board. But major public services should not be controlled by an unelected, unregulated body of persons who want to make a profit. You sound very naive to me when you say that it leads to greater representation by the general public."

Services being offered by a private company isn't a problem. It doesn't really matter that they are unelected as long as they aren't granted government power. Hence the reason its an outrage that the Fed can create money, but not that Private Banks get to create money, because Federal Reserve notes are legal tender and the official currency of the United States, Bank Deposits aren't.

"But I can tell you first hand that the US private health care system sucks hard compared to almost everywhere else I've lived. That includes the Persian Gulf where I live now. That is not to say all market is bad or that private enterprise is bad, most of it is positive."

The US healthcare system is a mercantile, corporatist, abomination its what you get when you combine Government Bureaucracy with Private Enterprise. If we eliminated barriers to entry, allowed people to buy drugs and health insurance from other states and nations, and limited the time period which a patent on a treatment lasted for, it would be much better.