Free school

Let's say what is unsaid when Quebec student protesters talk about 'free school', or making government pay for higher education.

Schooling takes resources: teachers, spaces, books, etc.

These resources are produced by the private sector.

To move these resources from the private sector to the public sector requires taxing or direct expropriation.

What is the nature of tax? Taxes must be either intentional or accidental. The existence of prospective tax law rules out accidental, making them intentional. All intentional transfers are voluntary or coercive. The existence of tax prisoners, like Wesley Snipes and Irwin Schiff, rule out voluntary, making them coercive. The coercive means of the state is violence as embodied in the police. Taxes are violent.

To be clear, free school requires more violence. Assuming that the government adopts free school policies, the police would not peacefully sit down. They would have to go about taking the resources for schooling from the producers of those resources.

My disdain for violence goes both ways. I don't like seeing the students getting beaten either. But the students don't have the moral high ground simply because they are calm while they demand violent expropriation.

The peaceful approach is to put away the guns. Then these students may ask and persuade others to give or lend them the resources to attend school. Yes, this would make a lot of things change. Fewer students, fewer teachers, more OJT, more self-learning, more mentoring. The number of things that would change by a peaceful approach is an indication of how far we are from a peaceful society.

--Ashley Johnston