[hackerlight]

One area where this already exists is private schooling.

In practice it leads to underfunding of public schools because the people with money are the people with political power. If their kids went to purely taxpayer-funded schools they would be higher quality and everyone would be getting a better education. (I know in the US things are a bit different, and there are are high quality public schools).

The argument then has two sides. One side is the freedom argument: parents should be able to do what they want within reasonable bounds. Seems valid and clear-cut. But then the other side points to the long-term consequences of having a bad education system. Lower economic growth, more populism if you have a stupid population with poor media literacy skills, and all the associated unpredictable unintended consequences that don't fit nicely into the whole "freedom" discussion. What was that freedom worth if I now have to live in a dictatorship because of all the accumulated unintended side effects that boiled over?

[Bostonian]

"One area where this already exists is private schooling.

In practice it leads to underfunding of public schools because the people with money are the people with political power. If their kids went to purely taxpayer-funded schools they would be higher quality and everyone would be getting a better education. (I know in the US things are a bit different, and there are are high quality public schools)."

The threat of students leaving for private school and reducing funding for public schools (since their funding is based partly on enrollment) likely causes public schools to be better than if there were no alternative.

[valty]

Schooling is a tricky one for the free market, and it ultimately gets a bit morally dubious.

I guess you are trying to sell the benefit of a highly-educated country to those who choose private schooling, and getting them to pay for this.

It boils down to how much are you willing to pay for another child's education and what is the acceptable standard of that education.

But if we think about the supply of education, a lot of it is about good teachers, and ultimately someone has to be stuck with the worst teacher in the country. And also class sizes.