RE: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction (fwd)

[Matthew James Gering <mgering@ecosystems.net>]

Brown, R Ken wrote:
> Same applies to education - I might be able to pay for my 
> daughter to go to school but we want everybody else's kids 
> to go to school as well because my life is better if they do. 
> So we pay for it through tax.

"SHOULD EDUCATION BE COMPULSORY AND TAX-SUPPORTED, AS IT IS TODAY?

The answer to this question becomes evident if one makes the question
more concrete and specific, as follows: Should the government be
permitted to remove children forcibly from their homes, with or without
the parents' consent, and subject the children to educational training
and procedures of which the parents may or may not approve? Should
citizens have their wealth expropriated to support an educational system
which they may or may not sanction, and to pay for the education of
children who are not their own?" -- Nathaniel Branden

Absolutely not.

But even if you take a strong socialist/statist position and answer
"yes," how can you justify expounding on the evils of coercive
monopolies, their arbitrary power, abuse and inefficiency, and then at
the same time make Education, one of the most important services to
society, a coercive monopoly?! This simply does not make sense.

Education needs to be brought into the marketplace so it can be
objectively evaluated. VALUED. As an entitlement, education is not
valued as it should be, and as a monopoly there is no leverage to choose
standards which to value, to discriminate service.

The educational system has failed worse than any other industry, not for
lack of supply and demand, but for lack of free competition.

	Matt