I'm still amazed some people can look back on a time when children as young as 12 performed industrial labor with nostalgia.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of efficient government. Large transfer payments with less bureaucracy would be preferable to what we've got now.

"yeah, we'd be much better off if all these programmers we hire from state schools weren't able to afford an education."

Your comment superficially sets up an argument I never made, which is the definition of a strawman.

Anyways...

I'm all for government sponsored programs that work along side the private industry (and force competition) in order to contribute to the general welfare, which is what the constitution states. For example: defense, infrastructure and education among others.

However, I'd love to rid our government of all the pet projects, pork, worthless organizations (and employees) and general waste that rape our income.

It's near impossible to fire a government worker, which is a crime in and of itself. Our government is so inefficient that consulting firms are rolling out in mass "staff augmentation" programs that take over the responsibilities of a given agency/department.

Think about that...you hire government workers to do job X. They are so incompetent at job X you hire high priced consultants to complete job X while not firing any of the workers. The end result? Job X is completed at two - three times the original cost. Ridiculous. If you ever want a first hand look at how inefficient the government is, live in DC for a few years.

Now let's address this efficiency claim. Do you want to know what we did most of the time? Absolutely nothing. We hung out, did some cleaning, hung out some more, played some play station, hung out some more, took a nap. Yeah, that was my usual day.

We can also attack this efficiency claim from another angle. The U.S. spends almost as much as every other nation combined for military purposes. No company that did such a thing would be considered efficient.

As for defense...if we focused on "defense" instead of "offense" that 50% could be sliced in half if not quarters. Think of how much money not invading Iraq would have saved us. There's no reason our defense budget needs to larger than the next 25 countries combined.

As for healthcare...I'm with you man - not a clue.

No, because you made no specific argument. If you make a statement that is so short that it can be interpreted to be anything anyone wants then it isn't a strawman if I fail to read your mind!

We all know that government is inefficient, but I think the blame is misplaced. I don't believe it's inefficient because it's a government, but because it's a giant institution. I've worked for the government, for large corporations, and for start ups. Large corporations are equally as inefficient as the government most of the time.

Such an ideology is simply the naive opposite of communism.

You can't seriously claim that this would have been cheaper for me if only the government had gotten out of education.

Sum up the total cost of increased prices due to taxation and your personal lifetime tax burden and it's not nearly as clear-cut that you come out ahead with public schools. Add to that the distorting effect of school monopolies on incentives and quality (virtually all public school teachers are in the bottom half academically, etc.) and you've got a shaky argument for government education, even for your case. I'd bet that even you would have been better off if schools were provided on the market.

This makes us all richer in the long run, and is not the zero sum game you claim it to be.

When the government is the monopoly supplier of a good, it's difficult to visualize the world being any other way. But there are instructive test cases: just look at how much more vibrant religious life is in the absence of a state religion. (I'm a Pastafarian, BTW. ;-) Or look at how much scarcer and less varied food is in command economies.

Education is tremendously valuable, and there are powerful incentives to unlock that value. I think you'd be surprised at the institutions that would arise to help you become a competitive worker in the absence of a government monopoly on education.

Maybe if Patri's Seasteading Institute (http://seasteading.org/) takes off, we'll get to find out. :-)

Yes there are. Look at all the countries at the top of the list on education. They all have strong federal education. No country with a purely private education system is even on the list!

That's because no such country exists. But no country had freedom of religion (in the modern sense) until 1787, the year the U.S. Constitution was ratified. That doesn't mean it was a bad idea.

So there was no country in the world prior to 1787 that ever allowed it's citizens to practice the religion of their choice? Are you sure about that?

edit: you do realize that the US primarily had private schools in the early days. The idea that no one ever tried private education is simply false. So is the idea that America is the first country that ever allowed it's citizens to practice the religion of their choice.

Transfer payments aren't the same thing as a centrally directed allocation of goods. You can still choose where to spend them. Even targeted assistance for education still lets you choose what institution to attend.

The transfer payments in the current system pay huge dividends over market allocation of educational goods, because the market tends to give these goods only to the children of those who are already well-off.

However, the primary and secondary public school system is radically broken, mostly through the fault of the government. It needs not only more competition, but also the elimination of local funding through property taxes.