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YouDebateIt.com -- Should a voucher system be used to give parents a choice of schools?
Topic: Should a voucher system be used to give parents a choice of schools?

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Opinion #1
Debater: The Wild Goose
Vouchers are only necessary to ensure education for the poor.
School vouchers stem from a desire to harness "market forces" to do two things. First, they are designed to "make public schools competitive", by supporting schools to compete with public schools, thus forcing the public schools to reform, as a private company might reform in response to a vigorous newcomer to a market over which it previously exercised total control. Second, and most significantly for this discussion, vouchers are meant to adjust the market to provide goods which, according to "public goods" theory, "would not be provided by an unregulated market in sufficient quantity". This, by the way, is the only viable reason to have public education at all- if this is not the case, purely private education is more efficient and just. In the case of vouchers, they are meant to provide poor families with an education that "would not be available to them in an unregulated market". If there is a flaw with vouchers, there is a flaw with public education as a whole.
Supporting URL[s]:
http://www.acton.org
Opinion #2
Debater: The Wild Goose
There is a flaw with public education as a whole.
It is true that "public goods" theory leads to the proposition that the state should provide public education, and it only seems to make economic sense that there should be vouchers to effect this. Nonetheless, these conclusions are based on an infirm foundation- they presuppose that "public goods" theory is true. The proposition that "there are vital goods which will not be produced by the market and so must be produced by the state" is fallacious. If they were "vital" goods, the market would produce them, and if the market does not produce them, they are not "vital" goods. It would be ludicrous for a politician in, say, Algeria to surmise that, because the Algerian markets are not producing parkas, the government must intervene and make them- the market is not producing parkas because parkas are nearly useless in a sweltering desert. Education is the same- the state need not produce what the market will produce in sufficient quantity. .Education can be completely private .
Supporting URL[s]:
http://www.mises.org
https://www.mises.org
http://www.mises.org
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