"Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education," begins this post. It would be awful, suggests the author. "No family would be permitted to get groceries from a public supermarket outside of its district.... almost all public supermarkets would be worse than private ones. In poor counties the quality of public supermarkets would be downright abysmal." And there would be unsurprising efforts at reform. "The handful of radicals who call for total separation of supermarket and state-well, they would be criticized by almost everyone as antisocial devils." Via Greg Makinaw, who should know better. Call me a cynic, but my observation, given the need for food banks in even wealthy countries, and rampant malnourished and outright starvation in others, is that the free-market system of food distribution is not working.
So, suppose supermarkets were like public schools. No family would go hungry; indeed, even careless parents would be required to ensure that their children ate properly. Their health would improve, they would learn efficiently and well, and over time children would, as men and women, be tall, strong and self-sufficient. In addition to this basic offering, every town would have a restaurant where citizens old and young could sample foods from around the world - this would be called a 'library'. Nothing would prevent parents from taking their children out to dinner in the evening, and many would. In addition, children would use their own cooking facilities, called 'books' and 'games' and 'computers', to prepare their own food. There would be some people griping about the cost, and making the ridiculous assertion that ensuring that everyone is properly fed makes them somehow 'less free', but they would be dismissed as cranks, or at worst, as selfish and inconsiderate.
So, suppose supermarkets were like public schools. No family would go hungry; indeed, even careless parents would be required to ensure that their children ate properly. Their health would improve, they would learn efficiently and well, and over time children would, as men and women, be tall, strong and self-sufficient. In addition to this basic offering, every town would have a restaurant where citizens old and young could sample foods from around the world - this would be called a 'library'. Nothing would prevent parents from taking their children out to dinner in the evening, and many would. In addition, children would use their own cooking facilities, called 'books' and 'games' and 'computers', to prepare their own food. There would be some people griping about the cost, and making the ridiculous assertion that ensuring that everyone is properly fed makes them somehow 'less free', but they would be dismissed as cranks, or at worst, as selfish and inconsiderate.
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