What's The Deal With Education?

MeAgain

That’s basically what we have had public schooling in the UK (and I wouldn’t call that socialist), which is being slowly dismantled.

LOL - Sorry this is another example of the indoctrinated ‘evil communism’ which instantly views it as dictatorial Soviet style Stalinism.

I think there would be some government input, it sounds similar to historical education in some areas and in those there was usually some government input.

It may have been tough but I think you nailed it.

 

Blake

I agree – it also puts pressure on teachers to ‘succeed’ as in produce ‘profitable results’ rather than spending their time teaching their kids that education is enjoyable.

You're in the UK so you can listen to the radio programme - Sick of School - about the high level of teachers taking time off work due to stress burnout -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b055g8zh

 

I have a friend who is a teacher, so I'm well aware of these issues.

 

Yep same here and also my wife is a school governor.

 

For several years, there was a lot of talk in the US about deregulating power companies and introducing free market competition. I don't know exactly how anybody planned to pull it off, because you obviously can't have multiple sets of power lines running down every street, so they surely had in mind some kind of semi-bogus paper transaction. The idea never did get very far. People realized that this is a specialty that needs to be a regulated monopoly forever. Buying power is nothing like buying a pizza.

Banking (large scale) is currently our most thoroughly screwed-up industry. It used to be telephone service, but the wireless revolution fixed that problem.

People need to learn that the success of the free market system in one area of the economy does not prove that it's best in all cases.

 

We do have a 'free market' in energy. The infrastructure is not owned by the separate companies who provide energy - they buy it in bulk so to speak and sell it on to the consumer. I can't see much advantage in it, as obviously private companies want to make as much profit as possible. It's also lead to a situation where a lot of the energy providers are owned by overseas companies. It is another example of the neo lib agenda to do away with anything that has a flavour of socialism IMO.

 

Free market system

Hi just to say something that niggles me, but I’d like to point out that there has never been and there never could be a ‘free market’.


As Blake points out we did privatise our energy supply its not a free market (its regulated and its subsidised) and is dominated by what we call the Big Six of those only two are UK companies the others are French Spanish and German and one the French company EDF is largely owned by the French government (as wits have pointed out we privatised our nationalised energy and it was renationalised by the French).

Often the privatisations seem to be driven by ideology as with our railways and the post office. And it’s the same with the marketisation of the NHS and education.

 

So how would we want it – Just throwing out some ideas

All publically funded (no private) local money with a central fund for topping up poorer areas?

A national curriculum decided on by an independent body staffed by educators and specialists not politicians?

Fewer tests?

Small class sizes?

A national independent inspectorate to gauge and advise schools?

Free kindergartens?

Free adult education?


*

Anything else?

 

What do you choose to call what everybody else calls a free market system?

 

Karen

Everybody?

I’m very happy to acknowledge the market economy, but as I’ve said there never has been a ‘free market’ as in one free of manipulation or regulation.

An under regulated system results in manipulation (monopolies, cartels and corruption) oh and the increased likelihood of boom and bust, a huge rise in inequality and the subsequent ills that brings about resulting in the demand for regulation.

The ‘free market’ envisioned by the promoters of neo-liberalism is a impossible utopian dream.

 

There isn't much regulation in the small business world, except for safety and health regulations, and the minimum wage law. There are some exceptions in specialty areas, such as independent electricians having to be licensed and have their work inspected.

 

To me, the way the banks were bailed out after the 2007-8 crash is pretty convincing proof that the idea of a free market is purely a fiction. And it's interesting, because as I'm sure you know, the City of London is one of the most poorly and inadequately regulated financial markets in the world.

Still, they went bust, and under a truly free market would have been left to collapse and die. Instead, massive bailouts of tax-payer money, billions of new money in QE, continued multi million bonuses paid out.

I think the neo lib dream is not only impossible, but a deception.

 

What do large investment banks have to do with other types of business?

I'm getting really tired of the assumption in the online world that all companies are huge. Most people do at least half their personal business in a typical week with companies that have less than 500 employees. Nobody ever bails those companies out.

 

What I'm getting at is that whilst it's a free market for ordinary small or even fairly large businesses, it's a different story for the banks, who after all are businesses. Also, their activities prior to the crash had devastating consequences for many companies, and of course their staff.

 

While I'm not minimizing the problems with major banks or the consequences of their actions, I don't want anybody to lose perspective. Mainstream media loves to tell horror stories about huge companies, because it's high drama that holds the attention of the public. Absolutely, changes need to be made to the banking system at the highest levels, but all hope is not lost.

Think about the way the average person spends money. (I have to use American examples, because that's what I know.) They may be paying off a large mortgage. It may be to a large or small bank. You have a choice. Either way, the builder of your house was probably a small contractor (<500 employees). Credit card interest goes in part to MasterCard and Visa, but gets split with the bank that issued it, which can be a small regional bank. Your car was built by a large company, but the dealership is a small company. Okay, the power company, oil company (gasoline), phone company, and cable TV company are all large, and you don't have a choice about that. Your doctor and dentist are probably in a small private practice in the US. Food, medicine, clothing, recreational and sports supplies can be bought from stores owned by small companies, if you choose to do so. The local bar (pub) is almost surely locally owned, like the local dry cleaning place. Little kids go to small daycare centers. The guy who mows your lawn almost surely works for himself, along with your plumber, electrician, and the guy who does your income taxes once a year. Your air conditioning is repaired by a small company. So is your car.

Then there are all the semi-invisible companies. You don't think about them because you never hand them cash or send a check in the mail. Many of them do things for other companies that do something for you, directly or indirectly; not all of them, but many. Advertising agencies, marketing firms, TV and radio stations, property surveyors, engineering consulting firms. Most of them qualify as small.

When people throw stones at all of capitalism, they are including all kinds of situations where things are going very well, and there is no significant problem or controversy. So many companies are not on our minds because things are going so smoothly that they bore us. That's the way it needs to be.

I've said this before, and I'll surely say it again; capitalism gets bad when it gets too big. We need size limits on companies.

 

Karen, I agree that it's big corporations that are the problem. I'm not against capitalism in the sense of small or medium sized enterprises, I just think things need to be done differently so that we can have a fairer society.

I don't rely on mass media for my information or analysis of the world of finance and banking. I've read into all this a bit more deeply. My main worry is that their could be, and almost inevitably will be, another crash at some point. The news over the last decade about the way British banks such as HSBC and RBS have behaved, does nothing at all to inspire any confidence that anything has changed. We have seen what amounts to serial criminality which goes largely unpunished - market rigging, exchange rate rigging, money laundering, stripping company assets - the list goes on.
Meanwhile, debt goes up, asset bubbles, based on debt, expand.

It's not actual business that worries me so much as this kind of hyper level of the financial and investment sector.

 

Previous generations in the US dealt with similar problems by enacting anti-trust acts. We need modernized versions.

It's become a form of legalized gambling, not true investment.

 

The separation of retail and investment banking would be a good place to begin.