It is true that currently a student with limited resources who wants quality higher learning most likely will have to attend a public institution. Tuition at private institutions has inflated at about 5 times the average inflation rate, as bad as health care. One university that I know of charged $800 a year in 1957 and $24,000 in 2000. Demand for higher "education" (the demand for learning isrelatively low) is is only a little less "inelastic," as the economists say, than that for health care. Also, in both cases the nature of the services provided has changed in ways that make it more expensive. But also, Charles Murray's principle, quoted in my post #42 above, is in operation here. The availability of government grants and low interest loans has been a factor in driving tuition costs up, just as medicaid and medicare have helped to drive up health-care costs. The driving up of costs has probably had a negative effect on the quality of instruction, as witnessed, in particular, at the ivy league schools. When students are paying so much, professors can hardly bring themselves to gave them anything but an A or a B, much less to actually fail them.
Insurance operates like your worst-case socialized system: it removes competition, drives up cost, and takes away accountibility. It is one of the worst developments of the modern economy. Basically, it is a private regulatory system. Just because it is "private" makes it no better than government regulation.
Insurance has made so many things expensive: auto parts & repair; health care, building construction, and so on. The only classes it has uniformly benefited are investors and lawyers.
And its worse than even that: participation in this "private" enterprise is no longer a voluntary act (even if not mandated by law, such as auto liability insurance). The individual cannot "opt out" of the insurance system any more easily than taxation.
If you want to know how business is as bad as government, try negotiating anything in your car loan contract. Sorry, you either sign or walk. Sure, you can walk, but you won't get a loan elsewhere. Business protects itself and screws the rest just as much as government. Pick and choose your evils carefully.
Carry_Okie: I'll look forward to your reply. Do I get to be a fascist welfare queen, too? lol! Please think about what I have said here to Aurelius about insurance: it acts like the worst government program. Just because it is private doesn't mean it works well. Likewise, just because it is government doesn't mean it is wrong. Each has its place. I know that doesn't fit into any clean political philosophy, but nothing does.
My objection is to the blanket condemnations and self-loathing of the "conservative-anarchists" (how sad, that label). Crab Tree is right to say that the world is complicated.
Our political system has dealt with reality better than any system ever. I am infinitely proud of it. (And I still have plenty to bitch about, so the discontent in me is readily served by it.)
Also, in both cases the nature of the services provided has changed in ways that make it more expensive.Indeed. But I can't say that is entirely due to government grants. Haven't private subsidies -- and tuition privately paid -- had even larger effect? (Damn, if only my very rich Uncles had given money to me instead of those dumb-ass socialist schools they've supported...).
That is, the "Murray principle" that " When you subsidize something, you get more of it and the cost goes up" doesn't apply to government alone, does it?