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by samatman 989 days ago
Childcare is a market, the same way bread is. Like bread, family might provide it out of their own time and money, but otherwise, you have to pay someone.

Doing what is best for the children and parents is a market intervention, and ignoring how markets work when coming up with market interventions has a pretty bad track record.

Markets don't exist in a vacuum, they can involve the public sector: primary education is mainly provided through public funds and institutions, but it remains a market nonetheless. Throwing out what we know about market dynamics isn't a good way to do what's best for children and parents.

1 comments

and if the state actors didn't supply their own police force, policing would also be a market.

the question isn't "is it a market", the question is "should it be a market"?

The issue here is the idea that the market is more important than the upbringing of a child.

Of course policing is a market, what on earth makes you think it isn't?

State funded, yes, but police departments are in a labor competition with other police forces, private security, and anything else a cop could be doing instead. If a department wants more police, or better ones, they have to pay for that.

The idea that the market is more or less important than the upbringing of a child is nonsensical, I have no idea what you mean by that, it's like asking if acceleration is more important than luminance.