From a WSJ community discussion in the Libertarian group. Interesting reading the comments.
Add your own!

(Thanks to Draco for bringing up privatizing education in another thread here. )


Public funding of education?

I think virtually all libertarians can agree that a system of privately run schools competing with one another would be preferable to the current system of publicly run monopoly school systems. But what about the funding? In a pure libertarian world, your money is yours to do with as you please, so you would choose whether to send your child to an expensive school, an inexpensive school or no school at all depending on your preferences and financial abilities.

But another common libertarian principle is equality of opportunity, not equality of results. Shouldn't even poor children or children of neglectful parents have the opportunity for an education? Libertarianism is largely based on the idea that we should all succeed or fail based on our merits, namely our abilities and our work. From the perspective of the child, what did the wealthy kid do to merit an education that the poor or neglected child did not do?
http://online.wsj.com/community/grou...ion#identifier