Consumer sovereignty is a postulate, not a given

by Henry Farrell on December 3, 2016

Tyler Cowen on school vouchers:

Since Donald Trump has picked Betsy DeVos to be education secretary, many commentators have been pulling out their anti-school choice arguments from the closet, and for the most part it isn’t a pretty sight. To insist on a single government-run school and trash school choice, while out of the other side of one’s mouth criticizing Trump for “authoritarianism,” and other times proclaiming “Black Lives Matter” is from my point of view a pretty poor mix.

To be sure, we’re still not sure how well vouchers work, and I would suggest continuing experimentation rather than full-on commitment. Frankly, I find a lot of the voucher advocates unconvincing, but let’s not forget the single most overwhelming (yet neglected) empirical fact about vouchers: they improve parent satisfaction.

… Of course parents may like school choice for reasons other than test scores. To draw from the first link above, parents may like the academic programs, teacher skills, school discipline, safety, student respect for teachers, moral values, class size, teacher-parent relations, parental involvement, and freedom to observe religious traditions, among other facets of school choice.

Perhaps now is the time to remind you that how the buyers like the product is the fundamental standard used by economists for judging public policy? That is not to say it is the final standard all things considered, but surely economists should at least start here and report positive parental satisfaction as a major feature of school choice programs. In fact, I’ll say this: if you’re reading a critique of vouchers and the critic isn’t willing to tell you up front that parents typically like this form of school choice, I suspect the critic isn’t really trying to inform you. [emphasis in original]

…To be sure, you still might not favor school vouchers. You might think they cost too much, you might think they will politicize private schools too much, or you might think they weaken national unity too much, to cite a few possibilities. … You need some actual evidence.

[click to continue…]

Richmond Park and North Kingston

by Harry on December 3, 2016

Rachel Reeves was on Westminster Hour at the weekend and sounded like a perfectly sensible person with whom one might have reasonable disagreements, until she was induced, as she should have anticipated, to talk about the by-election, at which point she defended Labour’s decision to stand a candidate not as if she was a loyal party member willing to say something stupid for the sake of unity, but as if she really believed that it was sensible and morally defensible behavior. This piece by Neal Lawson of Compass, if what it says is true — that some local party members preferred to refrain from nominating a candidate, but were told that the London Party would impose a candidate if they didn’t choose one) is… bemusing?

The fact that it was retweeted by Clive Lewis (I gather from my students that the phrase “I retweet that” means “hear, hear, old chap (or chap-ess)”, so I assume he approves, but what do I know?) is maybe a hopeful sign.

An aside, again on language use. I heard a Tory on the Jeremy Vine show this morning commenting on Tim Farran’s interview by saying that “I think Tim Farran has lost the plot”. “X has lost the plot” used to mean “X is disoriented and doesn’t know what they are talking about”. Said Tory MP, though, seemed to mean “I am disoriented and have nothing worth saying so will say something offensive about Tim Farran who seems to have had a great success, and is being pretty sensible and modest about the whole thing”. Is that what “X has lost the plot” has come to mean, or is it a phrase that now has many meanings?