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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   16120 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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The downside of school choice is more car traffic and less buses.

As a travelling technician, my quality of life is much lower during the school year. Urban planners trying to minimize car traffic hate this trampling of the commons. And a certain striver mentality is going to look down on parents taking shortcuts to go where the good schools are instead of applying "the grass is greenest where you water it" and actually getting involved.

It's all tradeoffs in the end. On the whole, I'm no fan of your solution.

Good example of the strategy I described here https://www.themotte.org/post/1405/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/285720?context=8#context

The grass, in this instance, doesn't grow nearly as quickly as my children do, and I'm not going to gamble their early education on the hope that I can unilaterally drag an underperforming school district out of the mire.

Who says it has to be unilateral? It's very unlikely you're the only one who wants better conditions. You may just not know your probable allies yet.

That's just it: I don't know who my probable allies are (or if they exist), and finding/mobilizing them will be part of my initially-unilateral effort. Meanwhile I have to live somewhere and send my kids to a school district today.

Your objection to school choice is traffic? Of all the trivial and unimportant objections to the greatest good.

I drive my kid to school. I pay taxes, a very small portion of which are spent on roads. I paid for these commons and I'll "trample" my kid to school through them. I'm also entitled to use of public infrastructure.

There are more. It's the first thing I thought of.

It's also a self-inflicted isolation from one's neighborhood, and that carries knock-on effects where it becomes harder to put down roots. Less chance to see the talents of your neighbors, less chance to share your talents with their families, less Slack in your systems to absorb actual shocks.

Maybe you don't value that as much as I do. That's okay.

You drive your kids to school and also they play with neighbors. It is not either or. There's a small park with play equipment hundreds of feet from my house. Most houses on my street have children. We know them.

When I was a kid I had to bike a few miles to public middle school and high school. Selfishly trampling on the public commons. I also had friends in my neighborhood. There was no exclusive choice.

But that striver mentality is retarded and destructive and needs to be discouraged.

Correct. Voice >> Exit Exit >> Voice; you can't make your local stabby school much better but you can move to a non-stabby district.

(Edit: damnit, got it backwards the first time)

For a certain income level & standard of living, yes. I know where the "good school districts" are in my state, and we don't earn enough to afford housing in them. Cheaper states are a net decrease in quality of life for commute time, job prospects, and quality of community. It's a local maximum with a lot of activation energy to find a new maximum.

I'm aware this is not your problem to solve. The incentives are greatest for me to make lemonade where I'm at, and uncover opportunities where I'm at.

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