Dave Smith (44:56)
Well, of course, this isn't, you know, abolishing the Department of Education wouldn't even be abolishing public school. It would simply be kind of kicking it back to the states and not having Washington, D.C. you know, centralize the, the control of education and the. What's the word that I'm looking through the curriculum. It is, first of all, just because a few people, and I know particularly this is. I've seen some libertarians who were saying this. It is true that doing this through an executive order is not as ideal as doing this through an act of Congress. You know, the concern being another Democrat could come right back in and then just undo all of Trump's executive orders. While that is true, it is still preferable to not doing it at all. So this is. I don't know why I'm telling you. I'm going to have to get out of the game of making this exact point because I just make it too much that it's starting to drive me crazy. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, yes, okay, by the way, Thomas Massie has just introduced legislation into the Congress to do this. So what? The move here would be to do it through executive order immediately and then really champion codifying it into law through the Congress. But this would just be such a remarkable win for the country. I mean, just a win for education, a win for the taxpayer. There's just nothing but wasted money and totally at the expense of children's education to have this ridiculous, ridiculous socialist model of centralized control over the indoctrination of children. Like, why? It makes no sense. And by the way, I will go a step further and say public school in general makes no sense. You know, there's. It's really funny because there's kind of like, these things. Let's take it Back to Libertarianism 101 for a second here. But there are so many of these things that, like, because we're used to the government doing it, people just take it for granted that the government does it. And then if you're against the government doing it, they're like, well, you must be against the service. You know, like. Like, if there was. If there was like the. The Department of Shoes in, you know, in D.C. that we make all the shoes in the country, which, you know, it sounds kind of goofy, but, like, socialist countries actually had things like this. You know what I mean? Like, they had centralized, you know, like in the Soviet Union, you could only get that one crappy car or whatever. You know, like, there were experiments like this, but it. So you have this department of Shoes, and they make all the shoes, and all Americans have the exact same shoes, and obviously the government's making them. So it's like the crummiest pair of uncomfortable shoes. And then you were like, hey, I think we should abolish this department of Shoes and just let the market take care of this. And then someone's like, oh, so you're against people having shoes on their feet? You think everyone should just walk around barefoot? And it's like, no, that's not exactly my claim. Now, when I use the example of shoes, nobody thinks that way because we already have it. Completely decentralized. And if you may notice, everybody's got shoes on their feet. Like, notice that next time you're outside, even drive through a really poor neighborhood and people have shoes on their feet. Okay? There's some exceptions to this. Generally speaking, though, it's not a major issue of, like, getting shoes to people, you know, because the market takes care of it, though. As. As with everything, the market provides a better quality product at a. At a cheaper price that is more tailored to what the consumer actually wants. But yet somehow, when it comes to education, there is this idea that the government must do it because. And look, I can understand on some level where people feel like, well, look, we want to make sure that every kid is provided with education. But again, you could make the same argument with shoes and say, well, we have to make sure that everyone is provided shoes. And the truth is, like, once you take an example, like shoes, you realize that you're like, okay, yeah, but even if our concern is that everyone is provided with these or that if somebody's so poor that they can't get shoes, they can't afford them, we want to make sure someone gives that to them. That you can't jump from that to, therefore it must be Centralized in Washington, D.C. you just be like, like, yeah, we could have charities do that. We could raise money for that. You know what I mean? Like, we could have, you know, the companies themselves can do things like ask you if you want to pay a dollar more when you get your shoes, because that goes toward the shoes of less fortunate people. Like, there's just lots of other options. And likewise with education, when you think about it, you think about public education, government schools, the idea that you're going, hey, there are these, like, there are the. There's poor people and they can't afford school, so the government comes in and gives it to them. That is just not what happens. That's not actually true. The. The truth is that when in all of these neighborhood, even in, like, poor communities, in poor neighborhoods and poor towns, they. The people there are paying taxes, they're paying for the schools. And you could say, like, maybe these people are. Maybe they're. They're unemployed, or maybe they make so little money that they don't really pay any federal income taxes. But what's paying for the schools is the property taxes, and all of them are paying that either directly or indirectly. You know, like, if you. Even if you rent an apartment, you are paying for the property tax, because that has to be. That has to be factored in to the rent price, you know, like if, if, if, if somebody is paying, you know, $500 a month and a landlord, let's say just to keep the numbers easier, say they're paying a thousand dollars a month for, for their mortgage and then another 200amonth for the property tax. Well, they've got to charge you at least $1201 to make a profit off that. It's not a business, otherwise, it's a charity. And so you're paying for the property tax. So really what the government is doing is stealing your money from you and then coming in, paying a whole bunch of bureaucrats six figure salaries and then with the crumbs that are remaining, giving you these government schools. And again, if you're, if your argument was that, you know, like, well the, you know, there are some people who just can't afford to educate their children, we must have the government come in and do this. Ask yourself a follow up question. How's the government doing at that? You know, is it like, is it, could you say right now that like, you know, in America we have some poor neighborhoods, we have some high crime areas, but at least they, they're all getting a great education in their government schools. No, they can't even read at grade level. They're graduating illiterate kids. Kids. It's just the wildest failure. It's every bit as much of a failure as that shitty Soviet car that everyone makes fun of. I can't remember the name of it. And so it's just, you know, the whole thing, when you really think about it, it's like the, the task is so doable. Like what are we really talking about? When you talk about school, you're talking about what, teaching kids reading, writing and arithmetic, maybe as they get older, a little bit of English in history. You know what I mean? Like what? This is totally doable. Communities can come together and do this. This does not need to come from Washington D.C. and have orders barked at, you know, like from bureaucrats in D.C. and, and we've had an experiment in this. It's been it. The Department of Education has not been around that long. I mean, you know, I say that maybe that's my age speaking, but it's been, I think it was under Jimmy Carter. I want to say it's in the 70s. I think the late 70s is when the Department of Education was created. And so we've been running an experiment. We've done this for about 50 years. Does anybody here, does anyone think the country's gotten smarter over these 50 years. Does anyone think the country is better educated now than they were back then? I mean, I, you know, I, you ever see like, where they'll have like those old, like high school tests from like 1920, and you're like, whoa, this is what they were asking the kids back then. We were a much smarter country before we went to this bullshit socialist indoctrination model. And so this is a great step in that direction. And again, just another signal that Donald Trump might actually mean business this time and kind of want to do some big, bold things. And again, between Doge and this move and the USAID stuff, and like, it's like, it's not just that he wants to do big legacy building things, but it's like he wants to do big legacy building things. And he sees the way to do that as like draining the swamp, cutting the government, exposing the corruption. Everybody, every president, always wants to do big legacy building things. That's why George W. Bush wanted, in 2008 at the Bucharest summit, That's why he wanted to give Ukraine a full map, a full member action program. And he didn't end up getting that. They just made the promise that they bring him in, but they said that was it. Scott details it in his book. Provoked very well, but that's, he was just like, well, this is for my legacy. The war in Iraq didn't work out, so I got to do something big. And it was Angela Merkel who was like, you know, this really might piss off the Russians. You maybe don't want to do this. But anyway, so this is a very, I don't know what else to say, but it's a very positive move. Oh, I could say the other thing, by the way, which is to me is the compromise position. But like, Corey D'Angelos has been the guy who's really pushed this for many, many years now and had some real success in it. Now my, my position would just be abolish government schools, let people do it, you know, like people can. The unbelievable task of like, teaching a kid how to read is something that human beings are actually capable of figuring out and did figure out for thousands of years before it was done in Washington D.C. but the, you know, his whole, like, school choice thing is it's almost impossible to argue against. Like the, and essentially what, what the school choice idea is is that you basically just look at, so you could look at how much money, say and say, given in a state. There's a certain amount of money that they spend to educate the kids. So there's A certain number, like per student per year, it's outrageously high. I think in. In New York City, I think it was 20 grand per student per year was the cost of, of educating kids. And so Corey DeAngelis and other school choice advocates just say, okay, so you're spending 20 grand per student per year. Here's what we're going to do. You're just going to give that as a voucher to the parents. Okay? They get this voucher that's worth 20 grand a year, and they can choose which school to use it at. And now you'd have a situation where you empower the parents rather than empowering the teachers union, rather than empowering D.C. and you let the parents have the chips. And the schools have to compete now over getting the parents to give them their voucher because they get 20 grand for each parent who gives them their voucher. And so you immediately would just introduce market forces back into school. And now at least the schools would have to demonstrate some value. Now the school goes, hey, everyone in our school is reading at grade level. And there's very little bullying or there's very little violence. And there's very. You know what I mean? Like, they have the same. The same thing that private schools do right now. Right? Which is why wealthy people send their kids to private schools when they have the option to. It just introduce those market forces into school for everybody. And, like, there's no reason why, if, you know, it's so disgusting when you think about it, that it's like the people who, you know, okay, like me, you know, the people who are able to send their kids to, like, the elite schools that are very expensive, they're able to do that. And yet these people are forced. They don't have the resources that, that some others have, and yet they're forced to pay this and that. They don't even get control of it. You know, it's like the fact that New York city is spending 20 grand per student per year. Why shouldn't you let the parent. Now the parent has, like, real money that they can go and be in the same position. They can be as privileged as the people who get to send their kids to private school where they have the chips, they're the one with the money, and you have to work for them, and you have to work to keep their. To keep their business. It's such a better model than what we have right now. So there's just a lot of different things that can be done in education, even short of the ideal, which would just be to abolish government schools. But anyway, long. Long story short, this is a very good move. Anything you want to add, Rob? We'll wrap up on that.
