Sean Andrews writes:
"Lawyers may not have unions (though they do have a bit of a guild, IIRC), but
they have the ability to make "partner" which gives them a say in how the firm
works. Would you allow someone to make decisions about your firm who had no
experience as a lawyer? Would you approve of a professional practice where
partners could be fired in order to hire cheap new lawyers coming right out of
law school?"
In large law firms, the normal practice is to hire a bunch of baby lawyers out
of law school every year, who will then attrition away until maybe 10% remain
after 8-10 years, at which point a handful are made partner. Those not made
partners are usually encouraged to leave, even though they are much more
skilled and experienced than the incoming new batch of baby lawyers. So, for
what it's worth, an entirely different model than that espoused by the teacher
unions.
Even crazier, in connection with the recent market crash / recession, many baby
lawyers hired in 2007 were fired in 2008 and 2009, even though the firms
continued to hire new baby lawyers in 2008 and 2009.
"It is ridiculous to think that some private initiative in schooling--a
precarious system for so many reasons--will be able to overcome the obstacles
created by the privatization of every other social institution. This is a
bankrupt way of administering public services and the sooner we realize it, the
better we'll be. Yes there are problems with public bureaucracies; yes there
are problems with unions; but none of those problems will be solved by a slash
and burn effort to subject ever more aspects of our human existence to the
creative destruction of the market. There is a reason we started building these
bureaucracies to begin with--namely that the market wasn't providing these
services."
Ironically, from the Volokh Conspiracy today:
http://volokh.com/2010/10/15/of-racist-progressives-and-hard-hearted-libertarians/:
"As for public education, its extremely poor record over the last several
decades and its repeated use for indoctrination suggests that libertarians have
no reason to apologize for Mises views. To put it a different way,
libertarians can support educating the public without supporting public
schooling. As E.G. West describes in his classic Education and the State,
education levels in Britain and the United States were rapidly rising before
the introduction of public schooling, which was largely motivated by a desire
to indoctrinate students in government-approved religious and political views.
In the words of John Stuart Mill, an important intellectual forebear for both
libertarians and progressives, A general State education promotes whatever
view pleases the predominant power in the government.... in proportion as it
is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading
by natural tendency to one over the body.
David Shemano
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