Quote Originally Posted by CoccoBill View Post
I agree completely, but my point is this choice does not exist in Finland. There are several public schools in all major cities, but you're assigned to one based on your address, you can't pick and choose, even by paying money. This is no big deal though, since they're all the same. All free, all pretty much the same level and same quality. If you're an artsy fartsy hippie you can opt for a private school like the Steiner's, if one happens to be in your area, but the vast majority won't. If you're an expat or an immigrant, you may want to apply to an international school. Other than that, there is no choice.
It can be the case that public schools on average will be better if there is less private choice because it doesn't allow more productive people to leave the public schools. This doesn't make a choiceless public school system better than it would be if it was choice-and-public or all private (which means inherently full of choice).

In Finland you don't have the expensive private school option, and no one takes the homeschooling option, though it is legal. I'm failing to see how Finland in your opinion has more choice, more competition and these are the reasons Finnish schools have been doing so well. Except of course if you're ignoring all facts counter to your beliefs, which state that only competition and choice can produce results. Experts that have been studying this for years have come to the exact opposite conclusion. It's the lack of competition, both between schools and between students, that has produced the results, together with the other issues stated in the article.
I don't know what elements of competition Finnish schools have. I'm going off of what the article I linked says and what you say, when it comes to Finland specifically.

When it comes to competition in theory, it is generally that more is better. This doesn't mean that a system without a certain kind of competition can't have better results than one with that certain kind.

Wouldn't it be great if all the schools were good? And wasn't competition supposed to drive even the bad schools to become much better? Who's forcing the private schools to price themselves out?
Government policies. Those policies incentivize people into public schools in very big ways. Private options only compete on the fringes due to these policies.

According to wikipedia there's scholarships, voucher programs, charter schools, magnet schools etc. I don't think any of these exist in Finland, at least for K-12 level. On top of those and the regular assigned public school options you have private schools and apparently homeschooling is much more popular there. At least to me that sounds like plenty of choice, at least a lot more than in Finland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_choice
There are a bunch of niches in the country. These aren't that normal though.

Like the article describes, that has already happened several times over. The automated gas pump killed hundreds of thousands of jobs. These technological shifts can be catastrophic to the current workforce who find themselves without jobs, their education and skills made obsolete. What you're describing is that at least so far, we've been able to adjust and bounce back over time, and undeniably over time the economy has become stronger for it. However, I don't see any reason to think this will happen every time, no matter how large a chunk of the workforce are replaced. Adjustments may take years, and all the while we'll have pissed off unemployed roaming the streets, getting drunk and voting for Trump or Brexit.
You're describing substitution of labor. Even though the gas pump substituted labor and some people lost jobs, in aggregate more jobs were created due to things like a more efficient allocation of resources. This is in a strictly economics sense. If you ask an economist, he'll tell you the substitution/aggregate thing. I asked one of my professors just the other day on something very similar. That was his response.

Quick question, do you still think exactly the same about the reasons behind Finland's PISA success as you did last week?
I don't know the reasons behind Finland's PISA success. The points I'm making are theory in economics.