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Salting roads for the common good (and corroding vehicles) Private property owners have no interest in benefitting from commerce and trade--not! But what about the roads (and fire and police "services)! Nothing like institutionalized legalized monopolies as the best way to solve problems Bureaucratized utilities once again to the rescue; preservation of the status quo is always best, especially regarding the utility monopolies; thinking outside the statist electricity box; the genius of Nikola Tesla: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_energy_transfer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_tower#Theory_of_wireless_transmission But what about the schools! Most realize the massive failure in this area Harry Browne's hypothetical of government running the computer industry http://www.harrybrowne.org/articles/FreeTheSchools.htm Imagine if education worked like the computer industry; the sky's the limit So, in the spirit of Thoreau, we must strike at the root of coercive education, not merely hack at the branches http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/henrydavid161709.html Future School: Reshaping Learning from the Ground Up: Alvin Toffler tells us what's wrong -- and right -- with public education by James Daly http://www.edutopia.org/future-school It's way past time to abolish governmental schools, which are designed to produce "disciplined" industrial workers but don't even accomplish that; instead, they barely inculcate rudimentary skills while fostering compliance and obedient mentalities Leave it to Marx and Lenin to promote the essentials of authoritarian education And leave it to John Dewey and Horace Mann (and Henry Barnard and Josiah Quincy and Jacob Abbott et al.) to implement their authoritarian scheme Crossing Education's Rubicon With Horace Mann http://sixthcolumn.typepad.com/cubedseducationblog/2007/05/education_is_a_.html Becoming the property of the State via compulsory education Education: Free and Compulsory by Murray N. Rothbard http://www.mises.org/story/2226 And leave it to religion to lay down a framework of blind obedience to "authority," in which "authority" is seen as benevolent Mann is seen as the father of American "public education"; in addition to being a master of phrenology;) he was also a big supporter of the temperance movement (abstinence), which led to the prohibition era championed by big Mann-fan and despot Woodrow Wilson Following the Prussian educationist model, Mann promoted the following: the debilitating "whole-language," or "look-say," reading method; a centralized educational system at the federal level; and, getting private universities to be publicly funded With governmental schools, the bad ideas and bad money (extorted via taxation) drive out the good ideas and good money (voluntarily exchanged); it's hard for the private sector to compete with "free" governmental schools The Spread of Education Before Compulsion: Britain and America in the Nineteenth Century by Edwin G. West http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=3872 Families find themselves "...caught in a choice-restricted monopoly system serving the interests not of the demanders but of the rent-seeking suppliers."--as in all things involved in government, follow the money trail... Coercive education, like coercive government, is predicated on the belief that some people know what's best for all people In order to implement hi