US Federal Government

[bode]

I don't know much about bolivia but I imagine a third world country with private utilities has a lot of crony capitalism going on so I doubt that is a great example of privatization gone awry.

Your paragraph about education is annoying because it doesn't state any facts at all other than your opinion that for-profit enterprise is an abomination if that enterprise is a school. It might be true that privatizing education will result in lower quality education, although I doubt that. That wouldn't however change the fact that state budgets are in deep shit all over the country because of runaway spending on education, while schools are getting worse and worse. Interestingly, since states cannot run massive deficits like the federal government can, we'll probably see public schools dumped in state after state in the next few decades, I think. Either that or they'll start handling schools federally, which would be the other direction it could go.

i can't say whether it would lower the overall quality across the board, but it would most certainly create an even bigger gap in quality between the lower and upper classes than we already have.

[Renton]

i can't say whether it would lower the overall quality across the board, but it would most certainly create an even bigger gap in quality between the lower and upper classes than we already have.

Why is that certain? There will be a fierce market for low cost education, just like there's an aggressive market for toothbrushes. I bought a perfectly functional colgate brand toothbrush a couple of weeks ago for 30 cents. Is it as good as a 5 dollar toothbrush? No, but there isn't a very large gap in quality. Most people won't bother paying for a fancy toothbrush or can't afford it so theres a great demand to minimize cost while maximizing quality. This principle can be observed in every market for every product or service we enjoy.

Also, there already is a wide gap because the rich often choose to go with expensive private schools anyhow. The differences would be in the incentives. Private schools would have strong incentives to constantly improve the product or fail financially. Government schools' incentives aren't as strong as that. Essentially the only driver of improvement in gov't schools is public outrage and demand.