Unnatural Selection

David Boaz comments on the impact of the Scopes trial and the relationship it has with the free market:

A state monopoly on electricity generation may be economically inefficient, but it’s not likely to generate political conflict over moral values. But the state education monopoly is something else again. Education deals with topics that many people feel strongly about, and a monopoly requires them to fight over whose values will prevail in the single school system.

What sorts of conflicts can arise? Parents, taxpayers, and other voters can disagree over school prayer, ethnic history, the Pledge of Allegiance, school uniforms, gay teachers, teaching tolerance, drug testing — or evolution vs. creation.

In a market system, customers can choose from a wide variety of options. Don’t like steak? Eat at a vegetarian restaurant. Don’t like traffic? Live in a bucolic neighborhood.

In a political system, like the school system, however, one group ‘wins,’ and the losers are stuck with products or services they don’t like. Different preferences become the subject of endless political, legislative, and judicial squabbles.

Thus the reason why school choice and the free market have so much more to offer than state-imposed monopolies.

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