If you can’t do it cheaper and better than a government agency, you’re not trying very hard OR, more behaviorally: If you can’t do it better and cheaper than a government agency, you must be getting government money OR If you can’t do it better and cheaper than a government agency, you’ll soon be out of business.
The government would like to be the car and the driver, but the best it can be is a noisome, free-riding passenger.
Tooley, J. (2009). The Beautiful Tree. Washington, DC, Cato Institute.
I’ve enjoyed working through The Beautiful Tree for many reasons. One is that it illustrates in both fact and analysis, the principles of the IS-DOES distinction. It shows the tremendous arrogance, the aura of infallibility and true ignorance of government agencies. They should never be taken seriously. An adjunct is the HINIBU (horrible if not invented by us from Ogden Lindsley) assumptions about private and government enterprise held by unaccountable elitists. Another principle it illustrates is that government assumptions are FACT-FREE–stating emphatically there are no private schools for the poor when there are thousands and FACT-IMMUNE–nothing changes when the facts contradict the “official” line and they almost always do. Ignoring facts is a sure outcome of having non-contingent income.
The teachers in private schools were less “credentialed”, on average, than those of government schools. The data are in flat contradiction to the official stance that “better” qualified teachers would do a better job. This follows the well-known distinction of acquisition and maintenance. It is one thing to acquire knowledge, but the conditions under which it is applied determine how effective it will be. The conditions of accountability in the private sector are much more effective than in government service where showing up is usually necessary and sufficient.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
