I wanted to reply to a question a few pages back regarding the 'right' of buying a better education through private school. And there's only one citation, from one of the founding fathers no less!
edited for you Jx3.
The 'right' to a better education based on wealth is not some intrinsic, natural thing. It's conferred to you by our society. Our society is very socioeconomically stratified, where your income is mostly determined by your parent's income, and as such, everything is determined, quantified, and segregated by this fact (vs. something else, like race or gender, it's now always wealth). And this is due to our pathological inclination to turn everything into a commodity, to a good to buy and sell on a market. Every aspect of your life has been commodified, from how well you're educated to falling in love. And this process, the process of transforming subjective qualities you experience or feel into something with objective value to price is almost a norm of our American culture. To put it into perspective, FB recently added the 'how you're feeling' button to a wall post, which people can like or comment on - so here, even feelings now obtain some kind of value depending on how many likes or comments it gets.
Given that context, when you make everything a commodity to be priced on a market, from education, healthcare, to love and feelings, it brings a competition on that market (e.g., how many likes did my feeling get compared to my friend?), and this competition brings a denial to its loser. This is also a norm of American culture, which is an effect of the one stated above: that everything, from getting good grades to the number of likes, is transformed into some concept of competition - to compete is the American way.
So here we are today, we now have education in the marketplace, where buyers and sellers can meet, compete, and parents can buy for their kids the best education they can, based on their wealth. As the wealthy get more wealthy, the cost of the best schools will increase, as we've seen the private grade schools and high schools going over 20k a year, and in many cases is as or more expensive than a university. This creates socioeconomic stratification, because quite obviously children in these schools will get a far superior education and a level of networking capability unmatched by any kid in most any public institution. Before they're even able to form a sentence, we've already stratified the kids based on the socioeconomic status of their parents.
This creates segregation. You're segregating children based on the wealth of their parents, and by society allowing the marketplace for education to exist, you're equally denying resources that could've been put to educating everyone, not a select few based on status. And this is education we're talking about, something everyone needs, something that benefits everyone the more educated everyone is.
I state the social structure of the marketplace for education has no right to exist, based on the call of society. Everyone should have a say in the education they receive, and they should receive the best we collectively can do, not the best you can buy, because in that buying and selling, in the creation of that marketplace, is where you create both the opportunity and the denial based on wealth, to do nothing but stratify and segregate - which then leads to the problems we all have and share in societylike the complete lack of ball shaving.
edited for you Jx3.
I'm going to open with the words of Benjamin Franklin regarding the right to property, which is relevant to my answer:Dumar_sl said:
Benny is saying that the right to private property is beget by society, and therefore it is subject to the calls of that society. You do not have the right to property without society conferring to you that right. So this 'right' is something that can, indeed, be taken away if society wills it because it gave it to you in the first place.Benjamin Franklin_sl said:
The 'right' to a better education based on wealth is not some intrinsic, natural thing. It's conferred to you by our society. Our society is very socioeconomically stratified, where your income is mostly determined by your parent's income, and as such, everything is determined, quantified, and segregated by this fact (vs. something else, like race or gender, it's now always wealth). And this is due to our pathological inclination to turn everything into a commodity, to a good to buy and sell on a market. Every aspect of your life has been commodified, from how well you're educated to falling in love. And this process, the process of transforming subjective qualities you experience or feel into something with objective value to price is almost a norm of our American culture. To put it into perspective, FB recently added the 'how you're feeling' button to a wall post, which people can like or comment on - so here, even feelings now obtain some kind of value depending on how many likes or comments it gets.
Given that context, when you make everything a commodity to be priced on a market, from education, healthcare, to love and feelings, it brings a competition on that market (e.g., how many likes did my feeling get compared to my friend?), and this competition brings a denial to its loser. This is also a norm of American culture, which is an effect of the one stated above: that everything, from getting good grades to the number of likes, is transformed into some concept of competition - to compete is the American way.
So here we are today, we now have education in the marketplace, where buyers and sellers can meet, compete, and parents can buy for their kids the best education they can, based on their wealth. As the wealthy get more wealthy, the cost of the best schools will increase, as we've seen the private grade schools and high schools going over 20k a year, and in many cases is as or more expensive than a university. This creates socioeconomic stratification, because quite obviously children in these schools will get a far superior education and a level of networking capability unmatched by any kid in most any public institution. Before they're even able to form a sentence, we've already stratified the kids based on the socioeconomic status of their parents.
This creates segregation. You're segregating children based on the wealth of their parents, and by society allowing the marketplace for education to exist, you're equally denying resources that could've been put to educating everyone, not a select few based on status. And this is education we're talking about, something everyone needs, something that benefits everyone the more educated everyone is.
I state the social structure of the marketplace for education has no right to exist, based on the call of society. Everyone should have a say in the education they receive, and they should receive the best we collectively can do, not the best you can buy, because in that buying and selling, in the creation of that marketplace, is where you create both the opportunity and the denial based on wealth, to do nothing but stratify and segregate - which then leads to the problems we all have and share in societylike the complete lack of ball shaving.
