SlateStar's most recent post is gold. He defends school vouchers by analogizing it to food stamps.
First, vouchers + taxes/subsidies let the rich and poor participate in the same system...
Second, vouchers + taxes/subsidies balance the government’s interest in preventing mis-alignment with poor people’s ability to control their own lives. If I love soda, and it’s the only good thing in my life right now, and I’ve thought long and hard about how unhealthy it is, but I’d rather improve my health some other way and stick with the soda – I can. I can buy soda (at slightly higher price) and compensate by cutting back on something else – maybe Twinkies. If I’m stuck going to the government cafeteria which only serves healthy foods, I’m out of luck.
Third, under vouchers + taxes/subsidies, everyone could eat in their own kitchen, with their own family, on their own time. Under a public option, rich people could eat in the privacy of their own home, but poor people would have to go to the centralized cafeteria.SlateStar provides examples of government subsidizing the least healthy foods (High fructose corn syrup and pizza) and restrict production of the healthy ones. He also provides examples of government spreading misinformation about a healthy diet.
Given our existing government, it shouldn’t be let within a light-year of getting to determine anybody’s diet.SlateStar then transitions into the public choice argument,
Because the whole “public food” argument hinges on a giant case of double standards.
Presented with evidence that corporations do bad things, it concludes that the inherent logic of capitalism demands badness.
Presented with evidence that governments do bad things, it concludes that if we just put some nice people in power, everything would go great.
Why is that? Could someone with the opposite bias propose that Coca-Cola Inc would be fine if it just got a socially responsible CEO? But that the inherent logic of government demands that people who focus on electoral demagoguery and bureaucratic empire-building will always outcompete the altruistic public servants?The best defense of the private sector is an attack on government. David Friedman would be proud.
