We should think about education the way we think about being armed — because being educated and being armed are the two principal tools for resisting over-reach by government.
That is, you have a right, not to have someone else (arm/educate) you, but to (arm/educate) yourself. And you have a responsibility to be (armed/educated), that you carry out at your own expense, because you’re expected to contribute to the mutual protection of society, which includes protecting it from government.
Note that having an armed citizenry doesn’t require a property tax, or a sales tax, or an income tax, or an ‘arms tax’. It doesn’t require any taxes at all. And yet, we have it. People with more money are better armed than people with less money, but almost everyone can be armed to some extent (even if it’s just with a pocket knife), if he chooses to be. Those who aren’t armed have chosen not to be.
We can use that same funding plan for having an educated citizenry, and can expect to get similar results.
Which is to say, if you were to pause now to make up a list of all the reasons why you believe that Gun Freedom Accounts (GFAs) would be a terrible idea, you would also have a list of all the reasons why you should also believe that Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs) are a terrible idea.
Conversely, if you make a list of all the reasons why you believe that EFAs are a good idea, you would also have a list of all the reasons why you should also believe that GFAs are a good idea.
As they say, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
(Are there any state representatives out there who would be willing to introduce legislation to create Gun Freedom Accounts?)
“But,” you say, “without tax-funded education, many people would end up unable to read, or do basic math.”
That’s already the case. It’s hard to imagine that proficiency rates could get any lower than they are already. And experience shows that the amount of tax money that we spend on schools has no correlation with student learning.
It’s worth noting that the cost of learning to read is less than the cost of an AR-15 or a Glock. And once you can read, you can learn to do anything else, often for free. So when you think about it, an educated citizenry has even less need for taxes than an armed citizenry.
“But,” you say, “what about our societal responsibility to ensure that children are educated?”
The problem with talking about societal responsibility is that, once you get beyond defense of self and property, there’s usually a lot of disagreement about the nature and extent of other responsibilities.
For example, some people believe that it is a societal responsibility to provide ‘gender-affirming care’ (which may involve amputation) to children; to suppress the expression of certain ideas; to ensure that only the police and the military have guns; and so on. I suspect that many Grok readers would disagree with these people.
Personally, I think that
There is a societal responsibility to be armed — by which I mean, it is part of the responsibility of an individual who is part of society to be armed. The 2nd Amendment to the federal constitution says that this is necessary to the security of a free state.
But this is very different from a societal responsibility to ensure that people are armed, if that is understood to mean that the government should tax people in order to pursue this goal.
Change armed to educated, and it’s exactly the same. That is,
There is a societal responsibility to be educated — by which I mean, it is part of the responsibility of an individual who is part of society to be educated. Article 83 of our state constitution says that this is essential to the preservation of a free government.
But this is very different from a societal responsibility to ensure that people are educated, if that is understood to mean that that the government should tax people in order to pursue this goal.
And because being armed and being educated are the two principal tools for resisting a tyrannical government, it makes no sense to let government be involved in either of those, let alone to be in charge of one of them.
But ultimately, when talking about societal responsibility, we must keep a crucial point in mind at all times:
Society is not government. Government operates by coercion, while society operates by cooperation.
Why not let those members of society who think that schooling should be funded go ahead and fund it, using their own money? If this is idea enjoys widespread support, then there will be plenty of money available.
But if it doesn’t enjoy such support, then as Jefferson said, to compel people to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas they disbelieve and abhor is sinful and tyrannical. As I asked in this piece several years ago:
If a public venture can’t be funded by passing a hat, how can we justify collecting the money at the point of a gun?
All of which is to say, if there is in fact a societal responsibility to ensure children are educated, then it should be up to society, and not government, to make that happen.
