Michael Gove to double spending per pupil in state schools

[vwdan]

It sounds like your definition of a right is whatever you think would be nice. In that case rights would be pretty meaningless - you can argue all you like amongst each other about pretend rights; I don't care.

What do you even mean by this - all rights are man made and break the natural order of things; this is a good thing and the world would be very different if every person was educated.

[Sysman]

Not surprising considering the man is innumerate.

Apparently all skools should be above average.



I suppose it shows the advantages of being ruled by a bunch of twonks who all did PPE.

Finally worked out who Michael Gove reminds me of. Louis Tully from Ghostbusters!

[CheeseSlice]

Finally worked out who Michael Gove reminds me of. Louis Tully from Ghostbusters!

That does seem to be his new look.

A definite improvement on this one:

[SpontaneousOrder]

What do you even mean by this - all rights are man made and break the natural order of things; this is a good thing and the world would be very different if every person was educated.

I'm sure I've already gone through all of this elsewhere, so I'll keep it short for everyone else's sake.

Rights are a consequence of morality, and objectively valid morality is rooted in man's nature, and the laws of reality. To talk of rights in a self-contradictory manner is meaningless - contradictions don't exist.
As such rights are objectively either valid or not. You cannot suppose that a man has such negative rights as the right to the product of his own labour, a consequence of his right to live free from violent coercion; the root right of which all others are derivatives, while also assuming the legitimacy of positive rights - which necessarily require the violation of those other supposed negative rights.

No positive right can be universally applied without contradiction. Negative rights can be. As such logic dictates that only negative rights could possibly be valid - whether they are a product of man's mind or not.

Rights to education, healthcare, work, food/water, housing, etc, etc are bogus. To call them rights is a perversion of morality rooted in a perversion of logic - that is, valuing such rights is to deliberately deceive one's self into valuing the objectively immoral, and abandoning the objectively virtuous. The word 'right' used in that way is syntactic sugar to make whim appear as truth; To attempt to hide from ourselves the fact that we're violating that moral axiom which we all know to be true - thou shalt not steal. Proclaim that it's in defense of man's 'rights' and suddenly theft ceases to be theft - if you believe in contradictions.

If the idea of an objectively valid science of ethics (and meta-physics & epistemology for that matter) interests you, then I'd point you towards Objectivism. I would guess that the Ayn Rand Institute is a good place to start, although i've never actually browsed the site.

[vwdan]

As it's only 7am I certainly hope the above remains the most idiotic thing I read all day, because I'm in for one hell of a difficult time otherwise.

Of course, though, I'm sure you're right and the rest of the world is totally wrong. Much as I normally love to formally debate such ideas, certain thoughts are so beyond reason that it's really not going to help either of us.

[Zero Liability]

What 'rest of the world'? Ad populum fallacies aren't a good start for any reasoned debate.

I'm sure I've already gone through all of this elsewhere, so I'll keep it short for everyone else's sake.

Rights are a consequence of morality, and objectively valid morality is rooted in man's nature, and the laws of reality. To talk of rights in a self-contradictory manner is meaningless - contradictions don't exist.
As such rights are objectively either valid or not. You cannot suppose that a man has such negative rights as the right to the product of his own labour, a consequence of his right to live free from violent coercion; the root right of which all others are derivatives, while also assuming the legitimacy of positive rights - which necessarily require the violation of those other supposed negative rights.

No positive right can be universally applied without contradiction. Negative rights can be. As such logic dictates that only negative rights could possibly be valid - whether they are a product of man's mind or not.

Rights to education, healthcare, work, food/water, housing, etc, etc are bogus. To call them rights is a perversion of morality rooted in a perversion of logic - that is, valuing such rights is to deliberately deceive one's self into valuing the objectively immoral, and abandoning the objectively virtuous. The word 'right' used in that way is syntactic sugar to make whim appear as truth; To attempt to hide from ourselves the fact that we're violating that moral axiom which we all know to be true - thou shalt not steal. Proclaim that it's in defense of man's 'rights' and suddenly theft ceases to be theft - if you believe in contradictions.

If the idea of an objectively valid science of ethics (and meta-physics & epistemology for that matter) interests you, then I'd point you towards Objectivism. I would guess that the Ayn Rand Institute is a good place to start, although i've never actually browsed the site.

Great post - Rand is a good intro, but the likes of Douglas den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen advance the reasoning further, as does David Kelley. Alternatively, Hans Hoppe, Rothbard, Anthony de Jasay etc also put forth good expositions of this sort of reasoning.

[doodab]

No positive right can be universally applied without contradiction. Negative rights can be. As such logic dictates that only negative rights could possibly be valid - whether they are a product of man's mind or not.

Your conclusion is bogus. A "right" can be contradictory and still be considered valid, indeed most of what are considered rights in most of the world are just that, and they aren't considered any less valid, in law or daily life, regardless of your philosophical meanderings. Such wordplay is all very well but it generally adds little of value because it usually presupposes it's own correctness over that of reality, which is clearly wrongheaded.

[vetran]

if you make it 'reasonable expectation' instead of right then it starts to make sense.

We need to educate our people, we need them to want to be educated.

We need to control the quality of education and have a 'gold standard' for education that government or education authorities can't fiddle.


I'm all for everyone sitting the common entrance exam and schools being marked equally on that. Maybe if as suggested grammar schools are reserved for the middle classes it would allow those without pushy parents access to these on merit? If all else fails it would show up those schools that failed to get their students to decent levels.

I would like to see the IB as a standard qualification because its standard is set internationally and therefore grade inflation would be difficult.

I'm sort of in favour of extending the school day to allow parents to work but it would require more staff and charging at market rates so the after school clubs don't get stuffed with teachers kids and those of the unemployed (yes it happens with the limited places now ).

[pjclarke]

I was gonna try and make sense of the rest, then I read this

I would guess that the Ayn Rand Institute is a good place to start

and decided to return to my Unit Testing. WTF is a 'negative right'?

Oh and LazyFan nailed it on the original point. Except for class sizes. When I trained as a teacher (and packed it in pronto) class sizes up to 40 were not uncommon and the situation is not much better now, that's not teaching, that's crowd control.

[SpontaneousOrder]

What 'rest of the world'? Ad populum fallacies aren't a good start for any reasoned debate.



Great post - Rand is a good intro, but the likes of Douglas den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen advance the reasoning further, as does David Kelley. Alternatively, Hans Hoppe, Rothbard, Anthony de Jasay etc also put forth good expositions of this sort of reasoning.

Thanks for the heads up.
I understand that Rothbard's philosophical grounding came from Rand - such a shame that they had a falling out after he wrote such a nice letter acknowledging the 'intellectual debt' he owed her. I imagine them as a kind of reverse Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader situation.

I'll check out Douglas Rasmussen - not read anything of his before.

as does David Kelley

Which reminds me - perhaps the Atlas Society would be a better place to look around (again i've not really looked there, but i would guess these kinds of places are starting points). The big 'O' objectivists can sometimes be a little dogmatic (For example I think Yaron Brook is generally an awsome teacher, except as soon as you broach the subject of anarchy he get's all religious about it. Perhaps the the Atlas Society kind of guys would have been a little less aggressive to Rothbard).