January 26, 2023
Common Sense: Pro School Choice
By: Brent Regan

Life is competition. Every organism on the planet, from virus to human, is the champion of a generations long struggle for the right to exist. Every product you consider, collect or consume is the result of innumerable competitive transactions. There are so many competitive transactions that must occur to produce even the simplest product that economist Milton Friedman observed, “There’s nobody in the world who knows how to make a pencil.” While pencils obviously get made, his point was no single person has the knowledge to build the tools to collect all the raw materials and then process those into a pencil.
Competitive pressure is so strong that not only did the device you are likely using to read this not exist a generation ago; neither did the market for it. The smart phone you find indispensable was unknown at the turn of the century.
In all but a few limited situations, competition and the free market outperform monopolies. However, as a society we do find some situations that require a regulated monopoly. Utilities are an example. It would be impractical to have three different water companies competing to supply domestic water. It would be a nuisance to have trucks from five different garbage collection companies crisscrossing the city to collect the trash. In the days of wired telephone it was desirable to have everyone on one system so that they could call everyone else. If there were two systems you would need to have both and then have to know who was on which system before placing a call.
One downside of monopolies is they are essentially static systems. The rotary dial telephone remained an unchanging fixture in American households for nearly 80 years. Monopolies abhor innovation. As soon as technology allowed different systems to communicate, competition brought us the smart phone in a handful of years.
Public school education needs a cure, competition has always improved product. Certainly public education system has proven it’s failures are at the critical stage. Welcome school choice for the sake of public school education.