I don’t think I can wade into the ongoing education thread with the same caliber of fancy words that Roy and John have been using. Nonetheless, I’d offer one counter to Roy’s arguments on freedom in education that I really have not heard yet.
Market processes — indeed markets themselves — are a means to an end. The goal — the proper level of education, a high level of education, widespread education etc. — cannot be determined by a market. The goal must be determined by reasonable practitioners of politics and explained to John’s polity through acts of statesmanship. Markets and the bounty of choices, positive information and entrepreneurial developments, and freedom that result from markets are the way to get to the goal. To torture a metaphor: politians define the bullseye area, statesman explain the bullseye’s contours, and markets are the flight of the dart.
General equilibrium is not a definition of the end-state. Rather it is a description of what other conditions look like when we approach a given end-state.
Sure. The three paragraphs above are pretty abstract. But to get to brass tacks: Politicians acting through legitimate institutions — the legislature, statute, county government etc. — set the priorities and goals of our public life (society). Hopefully, we pursue as many of these priorities and goals as possible through market processes. Why? Not because markets are “our” way of doing thing or because we blindly adhere to an orthodoxy but because markets tend to maximize freedom.
