Pedagogical Panic

The Association of University State-Worshippers, AUS, have let it be known that they are going to be personning the ramparts (sheepparts?!) against what they call the "market model" in education. They will be smiting the dastardly "market model," they say in their new newsletter, Aus Sozialismus, & promoting the value of education as a "public good." What they mean by this, of course, is that they will be campaigning for the state to continue to force taxpayers to fund tertiary education so that the AUS witches can continue to peddle compulsory Ugly Wimmins Studies, compulsory pseudo-Mordi studies & other such Political Correctness ad nauseam. They want to be able to continue to push their neo-Marxist agendas in politics, economics & sociology, with no answerability to the plebs who pay them. They see the "market model" as a threat to their PC elitocracy.

Well they needn't panic. They can float their bloat unconcerned in the spa-pools that the taxpayers have so kindly provided for them. (I don't mention spa pools gratuitously. A member of Auckland Uni's philosophy faculty told me that he would enjoy his spa pool all the more knowing that we libertarians had been forced to pay for it.) There's not the slightest danger that this National Socialist government will introduce a market model in education. It wouldn't recognise a market model if it fell over one. Its idea of a market model is what it has given us in health — twice the number of bureaucrats taking twice as much of our money in return for half the service! (Something rather akin to the present university system, in fact.) Now we're told that 65,000 people on waiting lists are about to receive a letter from the bureaucrats telling them that Nanny State regrets their operations have had to be cancelled, partly to accommodate an extra $40,000 for the salary of the chief funding bureaucrat.

All of this, remember, under Nanny's auspices. What, pray, has any of it to do with a market model?!

As Sir Roger Douglas once observed, "a true free market in health care would mean an end to the medical monopoly, to the enforced licensing of health-care providers, to mandatory insurance cover, even to the distinction between prescription and non-prescription drugs." (Shame Douglas & ACT never actually proposed such a thing!) Consenting adults would buy & sell health services in the same way they now trade freely in food & clothing & a lot of other things. The state would have no role other than to protect citizens from force or fraud.

Equally, a free market in tertiary education would mean an end not just to the state's current monopoly in the field but to any state involvement at all. The difference between this & the status quo would be so great as to be nearly unimaginable to us right now. The legions of administrators, managers & statist ideologues for whose benefit the system is currently run would be deprived of their lifeline — forcibly acquired money. Educators would have to prove their worth in a free, open, competitive marketplace. It's the spectre of this, no doubt, even though that's all it is, that haunts the members of AUS. For what would happen to them if the existence of their courses in femi-fascist perspectives on Te Tiriti O Waitangi, etc., were dependent upon whether there was actually any market demand for such tripe? Who, if there were no such demand, would pay for their spa-pools?

As Isabel Paterson wrote in The God of the Machine, "The most vindictive resentment may be expected from the pedagogic profession for any suggestion that they be dislodged from their dictatorial position." It's just a shame that no one apart from Libertarianz is making that suggestion.

It's more than a market model we need; it's the real thing!

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