The government doesn't tell the parent where they can school their kids. But its because the parent has no other options. Not anyone can afford private school.
If you use the voucher system, how much do you expect private schools to charge the government? That will merely add to the deficit.
FYI, the public school system is the one main fundamental reasons for the prosperity of the USA for well over a century. It led to a high literacy rate in the population. Its success led to similar systems being made around the world---including China where its high literacy rate is considered a fundamental key to its economic success.
The decay of the US public school system is a phenomenon that seems strictly within the US itself, and not because the concept itself is flawed but this decay is due to cultural factors surrounding the schools. If the concept is flawed, then every other public school system in other countries should have common flaws right? If scores from the US public school system is lower than than kids from Korea, Japan and China, its not the fault of the public school system as a concept, because all those CJK kids are also coming out from public school systems.
Understand this, the alternative economic cost of having an illiterate population, especially with teenagers and adults, would be far higher. Not just in poverty, but anything from crime rates to social disorder.
Who's talking about illiteracy? I'm not trying to promote illiteracy here. Are you?
The government definitely does tell where the parents ought to send their kids by the virtue of the fact that the tax dollars forced out of the pockets of the parents are mandatorily spent on local public schools. I fail to see how this would be different from a scenario where the government taxes you on medical services and puts that money in an arbitrary clinic, where it's only 'free' if you go there, but you'd have to pay additional to visit other health care providers if you find that the doctors at other places are better. Put it this way, the parents that live in crappy school districts almost have no choice to send their kids elsewhere because a portion of their income had already been taken by the government to spend on those schools. That's not freedom. That's government force, paternalism, and ineptitude.
None of the private competition is willing to deliver mail around the US for .41 cents. Neither will UPS or DHL deliver packages for less than five dollars for a pound. The USPS actually makes money. Private companies cannot have the sheer volume of scale that is important for the efficiency required.
Ha. You really ought to look at the numbers themselves.
In the year 2007, USPS incurred an operating loss of $5.327 billion dollars on $74.9 billion dollars of net revenue. On the other hand, UPS achieved an operating income of $578 million on a lesser revenue base of $49.7 billion. I'll let the operating margin speak for themselves. Another indicator of efficiency is the revenue per employee, not profit, but revenue. The average revenue per employee at UPS is around $117,000, while that of USPS is $95,394. The facts clearly are not on your side.
And again, don't think for a second that your tax dollars aren't paying the salaries of dead weight in government run services agencies.
Only the government can be truly neutral when it runs independent product testing which can be very expensive. If a private institution finances product testing, its neutrality would be in doubt in relation to whoever pays for this institution. If a series of leading companies in an industry decides to form a standard on their own, then creates an institution to do that product testing, then so much the better. That would be a case of self regulation and policing. Lawyers bars are an example. Another are the various standards created within the computer industry.
However many industries don't do that, so the government has to step in until this industry as a whole decides to formalize standards and testing. The auto industry is one example where no consensus has ever been made on standards and testing, leading to the government interventions of Detroit in the sixties. In every developed country, automobile regulations are there and tight, and it should be noted that it is tightest in countries like Germany and Japan where the best cars are made.
There is merit to government regulations in certain instances. I just don't think that the government ought to step in and place a floor on risks that consumers themselves are fully willing to take. After all, if you are a proponent of the government telling everyone that they ought to spend an extra thousand dollars in each car for airbags to protect themselves, what's stopping the government from restricting the freedom of consumers to purchase products that may hurt their health, like alcohol or tobacco? Are we going to have the government regulating NASCAR and other 'non-safe' sports too?
But the issue relating directly to China is the issue of whether a government that has no oversight on local officials, no independent judiciary system, is magically going to regulate itself. What makes me laugh is that the same people who are so vehemently opposed to the idea that markets self-regulate are the same ones selling the idea that somehow, a government with no oversight can regulate itself. And when you tell them that it's possible with the establishment of independent judiciary, they automatically counter with the "2000 years of history" bs that has no relevance. Again, I find this all very laughable.
