(((My Fellow Americans))) #113: Corey DeAngelis

DISCLOSURE

FULL TRANSCRIPT TEXT

i’ll be buried in my grave
before i become a slave yes
that is
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but it seems like since that day yeah
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before i become a
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but it seems like since
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we have sorely changed
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oh
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and now live from beautiful myrtle beach
south carolina you’re watching my fellow
americans
with your host spike
yes
oh thank you it’s me thank you
yes oh
oh thank you thank you so much
no i’m copying for you no i’m so happy
thank you so much for being on
how would we know that you wanted the
miracle if you didn’t keep clapping
welcome to my fellow americans i am
literally spike cohen this is
wednesday september the 8th this month
this year
is almost three quarters over and that
is horrifying this summer is almost over
that’s almost as horrifying but we’re
gonna have a very special episode why
because you’re here
and also our guest is here but uh this
is a very very special episode uh yes i
know that i i don’t know it doesn’t
really show as well but i am extremely
extremely sunburned it hurts
everywhere that i was out in the sun
because i just got back from the spite
cohen florida tour
that’s supposed to be the miami vice man
anyway i had a really good um tour of
florida
it’s very sunny down there and i now
look like this but i’m very happy to be
back and uh and i’m very happy for us to
be doing the show and uh we have a
really great guest for you but we will
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to help old joe there who’s a fantastic
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mud water the most appropriately named
product on muddy waters media because
it’s mud water uh if you woke up today
and said my god if i never have another
cup of coffee it’ll be too soon well i
have some great news for you because i
have this stuff it’s made of masala chai
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sounds those things don’t seem like they
taste great together at all well i mean
you’re not wrong
but that’s not why you’re getting it and
frankly if you put enough honey on
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do that um and uh this has one seventh
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jack casey oh i didn’t switch off the
thing hold on crap
he’s gonna jack casey uh we’ve been
saying he’s gonna have a third book out
for quite some time and then we didn’t
think it was true but it turns out yeah
no it is true now i got to resize it
here we go
he finally did his books his third book
i’m having to do this live that’s fun
there we go that’s good enough uh so he
had the royal green and in silver thrown
it but now he has his third book crowned
by gold which is i don’t know what this
book is about i don’t know what any of
this is about because as i’ve told you
many times before if this book if these
books are
good
then i’m going to feel bad for making
fun of them every week and if they’re
bad then i’m going to feel bad for
trying to get you to buy them so what
are these books like what are they about
find out for yourself by going to
theroyalgreen.com
written by possible cult leader jack
casey
adderpan the most horrifying thing that
i’ve ever experienced in my life
available on steam i played uh out or i
actually didn’t play adderpan because i
don’t want to die from being scared i
did watch a
walk-through gameplay walkthrough video
and my god i don’t get this genre of
games i don’t understand the desire to
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and anxious and then not want to go to
sleep that night i don’t get it but if
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thomas quiter is running for state
senate he’s not really running he’s in a
wheelchair but he does like to say that
he runs better than albany which he
finds funny because he’s crippled um
it’s weird that he tells me to say that
but yeah here we are uh he finds it
funny that i feel uncomfortable calling
someone else a [ __ ] but here we are
thomas quitter is actually one of the
most incredible people i know um
incredibly principled incredibly
you can’t find someone with more
character than thomas quiter um he cares
about people so much he is incredibly
high energy there is no one who would be
better suited to be in the state senate
than tom squeader and i mean that from
the bottom of my heart not just because
he’s paying me i’ve been saying that for
months i campaigned with him last year
during the my vice presidential campaign
i went to binghamton and knocked on
doors with him he’s incredible
and if you want to help him become the
first libertarian state senator in new
york go to tom42.com
t-o-m-f-o-r-52.com
if after looking listening to all of
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i’m gonna sue you back so hard i’m gonna
get all of your money but
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then go with it go at it
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like dumb money like st like where you
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oops i mistook this giant stack of
benjamins for my phone again oops like
you’ll be able to do that kind of stuff
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shout out to tara and turks and mom and
him as always folks my guest tonight is
going to be a real treat if you don’t
already know him he is the national
director of research at the american
federation for children he’s the
executive director
at the educational freedom institute
he’s an adjunct scholar at the cato
institute he’s a senior fellow at the
reason foundation he was named on the
forbes 30 under 30 list for his work on
education policy he received the buckley
award from america’s future in 2020 blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah ladies and
gentlemen my fellow americans please
welcome to the show mr corey deangelis
corey thanks so much for coming on man
hey thanks for having me
yeah this is this is gonna be fun i’m
really looking forward to this and uh
this uh
yeah you uh you have an impressive
resume there even though you are i
believe you are you are
are
17 correct
17 what
years old
oh no i’m you actually can’t call me 30
under 30 anymore because i had a
birthday i’m 30 now
oh you’re 30. oh okay so you’re part of
this no longer than one
you’re not with the 3100 i was
i received the 3830 award when
i was under 30 but now i’m 30. so okay
perfect okay great so you are now among
i’m going to say that you’re now in the
spike cohen 31 under 31. or no all right
yeah yeah 31 under 31. so folks uh be
sure to ask us your thoughts and
questions and corey and i will tell you
if you are right or wrong now corey uh
before we get started whenever i have a
libertarian on my show for the first
time i always ask what is it that
brought you to libertarianism what’s
your genesis story what was it a kind of
a gradual evolution over time was there
an aha moment where you realized you
were a libertarian you know everyone has
their genesis story tell us the cory
d’angelo story
i was born
i was born free
that’s it boom
i’ve always been this way yeah i i don’t
know if i had a a particular moment
where things changed i i mean i remember
in high school
in my government
class we had a political ideology tests
where
we answered all the questions and then
the teacher placed everybody on the
board and showed
put everybody where they were on the
spectrum and everybody was kind of in
the middle and then there was a dot on
the very far as far as you could go in
the corner and that was me i was the
sole person in the in the very far
libertarian realm no government
intervention
and uh it’s just so i’d even be before i
started thinking about things through a
political lens i’ve always been this way
um very skeptical of government
and as far as like i guess a better
question would be when i turned into an
from a menarches to an
anarcho-capitalist was sure yeah when i
started reading david friedman’s david
freeman’s work in machinery and freedom
once i started to figure out that we’ve
had private provision of policing and
and that there is a way to
provide law and order privately
then i switched from being a monarchist
to an anarcho-capitalist
nice and that’s kind of a similar thing
for me too because i was always like
well yeah i mean government’s evil but
they’re a necessary evil we can’t have
certain things without having a coercive
entity and then people were like no you
can do this and that and this and that
and i’m like
oh okay so we don’t need them at all so
you are
mostly known uh and you are i mean
you’re on everything you’re on more
stuff than i am you’re you’re on you’re
on fox you’re on newsmax you’re on i
think you’ve been on oan too right
yeah i think that was the first time
i’ve been on national tv was oh oh a nnn
oh okay and uh i mean you’ve been on all
over you are routinely featured in uh
the national review and many other
publications um so but in your kind of
your main wheelhouse as it were is in
the realm of education school choice uh
policy on on schooling in general uh you
know getting the teachers unions out of
schooling and all that what made you
decide that that was the thing that you
were going to focus most it’s not
obviously not the only thing but the
thing that you were going to do your
your heaviest focus on
yeah so i attended government-run
schools all through k-12 education in
san antonio texas but for high school i
was able to go to a something called a
magnet school something that you’re not
residentially assigned to it’s still run
by the government but you can at least
choose a particular type of
specialization in this with with the
magnet school model
and that magnet school was actually on
the campus of the school that i was
residentially assigned to
and so for four years i was able to see
the night and day difference of the
quality of education and just different
school cultures and so i feel like that
opportunity to go to a school that i
wasn’t residentially assigned to that
didn’t have that geographic monopoly had
a positive impact on my life and so i
i’ve
thought about that and how i would like
other families to be able to have those
kinds of options as well but it really
shouldn’t be it shouldn’t be limited to
government-run schools families should
be able to take their children’s
education dollars to private schools
charter schools
and to home based education as well but
that’s really where i first got a
glimpse into this idea of school choice
and then i did my bachelor’s and
master’s in economics which really
opened my eyes to the problems with k-12
education which really stemmed from
having these geographic monopolies
you’re in in general in the united
states you live in a particular place
and you’re assigned to a particular
government-run school regardless of how
well they do which creates huge monopoly
power especially when you combine that
with the compulsory funding through the
property tax system so i had and i had a
great advisor throughout my bachelor’s
and master’s experience at the
university of texas at san antonio
and he recommended that i go do my
phd in education policy at the
university of arkansas and that’s where
i really started to study the effects of
these voucher programs and private
and private charter schools
uh in more detail my first study looked
at the effects of the milwaukee voucher
program on criminal activity uh but i
had great advisors out there as well
patrick wolf and and jay green and
robert moranto we’re on my dissertation
committee and they and they’re some of
the biggest uh private
school choice researchers in the nation
so that’s how i really got
started into all this but right after
the phd
i
started at the cato institute and then i
hopped over to reason foundation and now
i’m at the american federation for
children
and that’s an interesting thing about
education is that
it’s sort of a self-fulfilling thing
when government’s in charge of it so if
government is in charge of telling
people
how to think and
how to learn and what to learn and what
to think
then it’s that much easier to condition
everyone from being a child to you know
what the government says is right and
you should always listen to their
authority and you should always presume
that they’re correct or at least that
we’re correct if the party that you know
the people in that school like is in
charge as if that matters and and they
can kind of create this conditioned herd
mentality uh within people while also
giving them a terrible education
you know we look at the fact that when
the uh national education association
was
created or i guess recreated in 1979
in that uh what 41 years 42 years since
the u.s government
adjusted for inflation has spent
something like three or four trillion
dollars
and education’s gotten worse across the
board by every metric every way they can
measure it’s gotten worse
in every way the only thing that’s
improved or increased is the amount of
money that’s being spent um
what are your thoughts on
why the federal government and there’s
been a few different people that have
asked this kind of similarly so i’m
trying to figure out exactly how to say
this in one um uh you know
in one question but
what are your thoughts as to why the
federal government ever got involved
with with especially k-12 education in
the first place
yeah i mean it’s really hard to say what
the motivation was uh you can you can
look at the intentions of particular
policies and
why they created the department of
education uh but but i think you’re
right in that since the department of
education was
created which it should have never been
created in the first place because the
word education is not included in the us
constitution it should be left to the
states
but academic outcomes haven’t gotten any
better whether you’re looking at math or
reading outcomes and if you look since
the 19 since 1960 we’ve increased
inflation adjusted per pupil education
expenditures in public schools by 280
percent
uh and as you’ve said the outcomes have
been pretty stagnant but it might be
because the the purpose isn’t really
about getting a better education maybe
it is about controlling people and
having them uh listen to authority so in
another way maybe they are they are
doing what they’re they’re supposed to
and maybe it really isn’t about the kids
in the first place maybe it’s about
creating a jobs program for adults which
they’ve been really great at doing
they’ve increased
the number of employees in the system
just a few years ago they the number of
support staff or all other staff besides
teachers have finally
surpassed the number of teachers in the
system there’s about three
million teachers in the system but
there’s about 3.1 million non-teaching
staff in the system
so there’s been all this administrative
bloat and staffing searches which is
actually great for teachers unions
because it means more dues paying
members
right
but it’s not so great for the students
in the system which they’re not seeing
the money and and you know what the
individual teachers aren’t really seeing
the money either because if you’re just
putting more people into the system
while that benefits your bureaucracy and
and your
the the power of the labor unions for
the individual teachers they’re still
digging into their
pockets to pay for for supplies each
year and teacher salaries have been
pretty stagnant over time too
because again the money’s going towards
administrative blow and not into the
classroom because these are monopolies
they don’t have any particularly strong
incentives
to cater to the needs of their customers
yeah because it turns out like we talk a
lot about socialism almost as this
obscure thing socialism is bad this is
actual socialism this is government
creating a monopoly by taking over the
means of production and distribution and
provision of a specific sector of the
entire society that we live in and this
is what we get and and it’s not the only
thing they do that way and we can talk
more about that in a bit but you know as
a result of that
we see what happens when government is
totally in control of something total
unaccountability uh massive cost
overruns
the service that they’re providing gets
worse and worse and not just does it get
worse from a measurable outcome
standpoint but it also becomes more and
more self-serving and more guided
towards just convincing people that
government is right in all things as
opposed to actually
teaching or educating them or providing
the actual service um and so it’s really
so there have been a couple questions
here one about a a few about
homeschooling and a few about school
choice so let’s talk about let’s start
with homeschooling uh what are your
thoughts in general on on homeschooling
yeah i mean i’m i’m an advocate of
school
choice i don’t care what type of school
that is if that’s a government-run
school and that works best for you for
whatever reason i think you should
still be able to choose that as an
option but if not you should be able to
choose a private or charter school or a
home school so i’m usually
hands off i don’t care what type of
approach that you take but personally i
think homeschooling is is the best
approach i mean education is simply a
form of raising children and the best
way to do that is to home educate the
child um but the thing is a lot of
people have to go to work it’s really
complicated to to to have home-based
education so there are other ways to do
it and a lot of families have figured
this out over the past past year one
they figured out that they could do it
on their own because they were kind of
forced into this situation where all the
schools closed in march of 2020 and some
families that didn’t think that they
could do it figured that started to
figure out that well maybe i’m maybe
maybe this isn’t so bad and they’ve
become they’ve become more confident in
their skills with educating their own
kids at home but then other families
started to
started to figure out these other kinds
of situations like micro schools or uh
the the new hip term over the past year
and a half has been pandemic pods where
five to ten children
get together in a household family’s
essentially economize on the process of
homeschooling
and it’s
not one-on-one instruction where it’s
your own kid but it’s kind of a similar
situation where you have very small
class
sizes you’re in a home-based setting
and you can outsource that to another
family and make it more economically
feasible since a lot of families can can
get together and
kind of team up in order to get the job
done so i think that that’s another
feasible option that’s i don’t i
wouldn’t i would say not as good as
homeschooling but uh you know in some
ways it could be better than
homeschooling and that it’s less costly
and maybe if there’s another family
that’s um really good at math
instruction maybe your family is better
at the english instruction you can kind
of uh team up in order to provide a
really well well-rounded education
right division of labor and and like you
said you know homeschooling
might be the ideal for a family that’s
able to do that and devote that kind of
time and resources to it as opposed to
if you know you have a single working
parent for example that might not be
feasible you know they may need to have
the child going somewhere or the
children going somewhere to learn uh or
if you know you you might have a parent
that’s not very well educated and feels
more comfortable having the child go so
whether it’s a private school charter
school even a well-performing public
school or like one of these like you
said the homeschooling pods or
homeschooling co-ops or micro schools or
whatever this is the beauty of the
market is if you let parents decide and
they look at all the available options
they can put their child where they
actually want them to
um and
they can flourish or they can take them
there and they go ah that wasn’t quite
as good as i thought it would be let me
try this instead can you describe
briefly because i i think we often get
caught up in you know uh specific
questions of schooling but can you
describe briefly
what the current
system looks like for example for like a
low-income per low-income family
low-income child what like the public
schooling mandated option looks like
absence something like school choice
yeah i mean it is this
uh educational socialism that you kind
of hinted at earlier is that we really
shouldn’t call them public schools
uh because one they’re not public goods
they are uh
excludable and rivalrous in in
consumption
um so they’re not economic public good
they’re not uh in a lot of ways they’re
not good for the public and that they
don’t provide a great education public
education
and then they’re not open to the public
like a public park whereas you know if
you walk by a particular park you can
attend you can attend the park that you
want to attend and and go to but but
when it comes to schools for the most
part in america you live in a place you
live in a neighborhood and you’re
geographically assigned to a particular
government-run school so i i would
rather we call these government schools
i mean they’re not accountable to the
public they’re not open to the public
they’re not public goods they are run by
the government they’re operated by the
government they’re regulated by the
government they’re assigned by the
government their attendance is compelled
by the government they are government
schools that’s the better term for the
for what we’re talking about
um but the basic situation is if you’re
assigned to a lower quality school which
happens to be be the case for lower
income neighborhoods you happen to be
assigned to the worst government schools
if you want to get out of that situation
you don’t have a lot of options and
there’s huge transaction costs with
getting out of that situation one is
you can
you can move to a better neighborhood
and for a lot of low-income individuals
that’s not just that’s just not a
feasible option even if you do have the
income to move to a better neighborhood
if you want to switch schools that’s a
huge costly endeavor just imagine if you
didn’t like the grocery store for
whatever reason that was in your
neighborhood and in order to leave the
walmart that you were geographically
assigned to you had to move houses to go
to another safeway or trader joe’s that
wouldn’t make any sense and the grocery
stores wouldn’t have any
incentive to cater to your needs to do a
better job because they
would know that they pretty much got you
if if you want to leave you have to move
which is extremely costly and then two
if you
don’t want to move houses another option
is you can pay out of pocket for private
school tuition and fees essentially
paying twice once through the proper
property tax system or if you’re renting
through higher rents uh which include
higher property taxes
or
and and look for lower income families
if if you can’t afford to pay twice if
you can’t afford to pay out of pocket
for private school tuition and fees
you’re pretty much again stuck with the
current system
in the lower quality public schools
meanwhile in the us according to the
2019 data from the u.s census bureau we
spend about 15 or 16 000 per student per
year whereas average private school
tuition is about 11 or 12 000 per year
so we’re
paying a ton of money
per child to go to these schools that
aren’t working for them and we’re
forcing the kids to go to a particu go
to to schools that aren’t working for
them it’s a huge
um infringement on individual liberty
particularly to for the least advantage
because let’s face it
the most advantage in society today
already have school choice in the sense
that they can afford to live in the
better neighborhoods they can afford or
at least be more likely to afford to pay
out of pocket for private school tuition
and fees and adequate home-based and
adequate home-based education
uh so in a sense school choice i would
argue is an equalizer because funding
the student directly
with that 16 15 16 000
would allow more families to have
options when it comes to their kids
educations
yeah exactly the interesting thing is
like you said it’s govern it’s a
government school it’s also a segregated
school you are literally
segregated by your zip code you know
this is the new redlining and it’s yes
it’s done based uh on income and not on
race but especially in urban areas where
income and race are almost directly tied
where you have you know a direct
correlation between income levels and
race you know you have the people that
you know traditionally lived in that
neighborhood and who are people of color
black and brown people who are typically
lower income and then you have you know
people coming in and gentrifying
specific areas that are higher income
and now suddenly the higher income areas
have better schools but the lower income
people who are typically also uh
black
racial minorities uh they now are
segregated into poorly performing
schools even though it wasn’t racial
necessarily racially based it is income
based so it’s classist at the very least
um and they’re basically telling people
like you said either pay more out of
pocket or move to a richer area in other
words stop being poor and your kids will
be allowed to have a good education now
an interesting thing about this cory is
that you know using the language of the
left you know
most people on the left will say that
even if a policy isn’t explicitly
intended to be racist if it has
disproportionately bad outcomes
for people of color then it is
inherently systemically racist meaning
that it may not be
explicitly intended to be racist but
it’s from a system-wide standpoint it
has a bad racial outcome so
i mean explain to me how again using the
language of the left that the current
government school system that is heavily
advocated for by the teachers unions
explain to me how that isn’t by their
definition systemic racism
it is i mean it is systemic racism
according to their definition at least
inequitable outcomes it leads to
inequitable opportunities by by race and
by class so
um
if you if you corner them on this and
and and pointed out
they won’t say that it isn’t
systemically racist they’ll they’ll
agree with you they understand that it’s
a problem
but then they’ll turn around and support
policies that force kids into these
inequitable systems they’ll force kids
in to systemic racism which is
absolutely ridiculous on the one hand
they’ll say their argument will be well
that’s right but the solution is we just
got to throw more money at the problem
but the
issue is that it’s a systemic problem
you can throw more money into a
a a systemic issue and that’s not going
to fix the root cause of the problem
because
you can spend a hundred thousand dollars
per kid and still get the same results
if you don’t fix the incentives to spend
that money wisely and as i said before
we’ve thrown more money into the system
before for example there’s a study by
kennesaw state university’s ben scaffidi
he looked at the data from
1992 to 2014.
it’s called back to the staffing surge
he found that there was a real inflation
adjusted per people expenditure increase
in public schools by 27 percent
uh but teacher salaries in real terms
actually
dropped by two percent so you can throw
infinite resources into the system but
if they have an incentive to waste it
nothing’s going to
change and as we’ve seen over the past
few decades nothing has changed and it’s
horrific that people support and prop up
a system that we know is not going to do
anything different going forward i mean
how long do parents of of
how how long do parents
in low-income situations have to wait
for their kids to get a better education
that their their approach is always ah
just wait a couple more years it’ll get
better we just put we’ll just raise
property taxes we’ll just spend more
money on it your kids will be fine in a
few years
and then here we go we wait we wait
several years decades later your kids
out of the system and the system has
already failed them despite getting more
resources families shouldn’t have to
wait a second longer we already have the
funding in the system that’s more than
adequate to pay for a great private
school education or a home based
education 16 000 per kid give that money
to the families let them find something
else that’s where our side kind of
differs with the solution to the
systemic racism which is give the money
to the kids education funding is
supposed to be meant for educating
children not for propping up and
protecting a particular institution
and that’s why i’ve said we should fund
students not systems
yeah absolutely the interesting thing
about this is um
all of the uh
things that you’re advocating for right
now where the government’s still funding
it uh at least at this step the
government’s still funding it they’re
just letting the
consumer
uh decide where it where the
what service provider gets the money
that’s the argument for medicare for all
that you have this you know a health
care system that the government pays for
so everyone can get it but
they decide where it goes as opposed to
for example the va
or um or like the national health system
in the uk uh or some of the government
health care systems in other countries
where not only does the government pay
for it but the government actually
staffs the hospitals and you know uh and
and the doctor’s offices and decides
what is or is not going to be covered
and basically covers it you know from
the top down and you know even though
obviously a fully free market system
where the government wasn’t even
involved in you know extracting these
trillions of dollars from everyone to
pay for education would be the best in
the meantime as a step down from that
this is basically what democrats and the
left call for constantly which is you
know a a medicare for all system this
would just be you know basically
schooling for all where they get to
decide where it goes uh it’s a very
interesting thing so let’s break down
some of the
well i guess before we get into that
let’s let’s give an example of just what
a mess we’re facing under the
current system so uh a few weeks back
the cdc doubled down on their
recommendation that the uh that the uh
school systems should not drop the mask
mandates and if they don’t have mass
mandates that they should implement them
and they showed a bunch of different
studies uh they showed that schools that
had implemented better um ventilation
had improved the ventilation in the
schools um had a much lower spread of
covid which would make sense if air is
moving more freely then it’s harder
harder to spread a virus that’s spread
by droplets um if that when the schools
where the teachers were i believe that
where the teachers were vaccinated that
had a lower rate of spread which would
make sense you have some people that are
vaccinated there were a few different
things but the
the thing that they were actually
calling for
the studies they had done had shown that
there was no difference
between the schools that did have mask
mandates and the ones who didn’t have
mask mandates in terms of the spread of
covid whether that’s because you know a
certain number of kids were still using
masks or because masks aren’t that
effective when you’re dealing with kids
who trade them with each other and get
snot all over them and you know a
seven-year-old doesn’t know how to
properly use a mask in a clinical way um
whatever that reason is it didn’t really
affect things and yet they were
recommending that that continue and that
seemed weird but then something recently
we found out something earlier today
didn’t we corey
yeah yeah i mean they’re not they’re not
following the science they’re following
the political science they’re following
the pressure groups that are interested
in these types of policies and we saw
this
a couple of months ago in may amaze
first i think the new york post had the
article come out where it was exposed
through a foia request that the american
federation of teachers uh who
randy weingarten is their president
second largest
teachers union in the united states had
lobbied to the cdc to change their
guidance on school reopening
things they and it just so happened that
the cdc took two uh
two of uh they they adopted the language
of the aft on at least two occasions
nearly verbatim and one of
the biggest ones that really made a
difference was that they they tied the
reopening of schools and that
recommendation to community level
transmission range
rates which had been found not to been
related to school level transmission
rates right right um which which so
didn’t make any sense with
the science so that that blew up in
their face and then just today
um fox news uh exposed uh some
information that was leaked to them from
an organization called americans for
public trust
through a similar foia request
and months ago what they found out
through the emails was that the largest
teachers union the nea the national
education association was lobbying to
them to change the masking guide
you might ask well why are the teachers
unions real interested in the masking
guidance uh well there’s a couple of
reasons for that and why would they want
to force kids in public schools to wear
masks one is that because there isn’t
any school choice they don’t have any uh
particularly strong incentive to care
about what families and their customers
actually want and at the same time they
want to reduce any risk whatsoever even
if that’s just a perceived risk and no
matter how low that risk is whatsoever
so the mass they may feel more safe even
if the science shows that they’re not
actually going to be more safe by
masking kids because they don’t really
have to worry about what the families
actually want but then because there’s
no accountability yeah so there’s no
there’s no feedback mechanism so they
can do whatever they want to abuse the
kids and and their customers without
feeling the pain by from families voting
with their feet but then secondly they
profit from chaos
uh the teachers unions can use the state
of disorder
as an argument for why that for lobbying
to the taxpayers for even more money as
a prerequisite for re returning
to a state of normalcy it’s kind of hard
for you to make an argument that you
need more resources for things to get
better if things are actually already
fine
so if you have people that are upset
with the service and you have a lot of
this
back and forth nonsense with either with
going in person versus remote or having
mass or not having mass when parents are
upset and customers upset or upset the
unions can make the case to the taxpayer
that well you know it’s it’s because we
just need more resources
and so they profit from the state of
disorder and so this was some breaking
news that just happened today that um
i i posted um i posted on twitter there
it is and then on facebook
i shared it and said knew it i i knew it
i i also have a similar cdc uh foyer
request
that’s pending right now
um trying to see if there was a
a another type of collusion with the
cdc and the unions on something else but
we’ll see what happens if that comes out
i haven’t gotten
i got expedited uh approval
for the request and it’s already been
over a month and they still haven’t
gotten me the information yet so we’ll
see how long it takes but
i listen nothing would surprise me at
this point it’s like you said that the
teachers unions and the basically the
government let’s call it like the the
the
school industrial complex the the
government agencies the unions and the
crony corporations that have built a
cottage industry around controlling this
system of education
they grandstand they cause
suffering
immeasurable suffering among mostly you
know poor and middle class students and
families and then they grandstand on
their stuff written to push for even
more money and even more power and more
control
in this sort of you know constant uh
ever worsening cycle of make things
worse say that it’s because you need
more power and more money then make
things worse say that it’s because you
need more power and more money and this
is what happens when you don’t have a
viable alternative when the people are a
captive audience this is what monopolies
look like this is what actual
government-run socialist programs look
like is
no accountability things getting worse
and those things getting worse being
used as an excuse to push for even more
control and even more money and so forth
let’s talk about well i want to talk
about the alternative to that but i need
you to admit right now that you are
actually aft you got me you got me well
not what actually that okay so you are
corey deangelis but
that randy weingarten
weingarten is actually you in a randy
weingarten costume trying to make
government school advocates look bad
will you admit that right now
well we’ve we’ve never been seen in the
same room at the same time so it’s uh
it’s quite the possibility that i’m
actually wearing a randy weingarten mask
and going around
and getting myself ratioed on her
twitter account non-stop uh every single
day i mean did you see that one uh
a few
i get so lost on the timeline maybe it
was a month ago but um
she had said something along the lines
like desantis is gonna cause millions of
deaths or he’s killing millions of
people which was just like are you
serious yeah like it’s just so absurd
and just out just like
just extreme
yeah and and she she she or
maybe it’s me that’s doing it maybe it’s
you misspells misspells thing yeah
maybe maybe i’m doing it on purpose on
her twitter account just misspelling
everything
every time she she or
maybe it’s me
tweets governors uh
it’s governor apostrophe s
but it’s not supposed to be possessive
it’s just more than one governor but
it’s always wrong it’s not like it’s i
don’t know it doesn’t see it’s so often
that it doesn’t seem like it’s just a
typo it just happens all the time
makes you wonder who’s in
charge of the education system but if if
it were me i mean that would be a great
strategy for a school choice advocacy
advocate to make the teachers unions
look bad
you’re doing a great job if this is
indeed you you and your constant
misspellings of basic words uh are are
definitely doing i i like the one where
she put out that by the way for those
who aren’t on twitter this is one of
cory and my’s favorite hobbies on
twitter is helping ratio randy
weingarten and other similar uh
government choice advocates who will put
out some of the most of stupid thing you
know school choice is rooted in racism
and their proof of that is that someone
who supported school choice was friends
with someone who said something racist
it’s like you’re advocating for literal
segregation that has mostly affected
poor children and students of color but
we’re the racists for saying that should
end and that they should be allowed to
go to richer whiter schools that we’re
the we’re the real races here um but
let’s chicago that was
the chicago teachers union by the way
who also had a tweet that they deleted
shortly after after i was responded to
the tweet with evidence that the school
closures had led to inequities by race
and income uh chicago
teachers union had tweeted out something
along the lines of the push uh for
reopening his schools is rooted in
racism sexism and misogyny they included
all of it in there it’s pretty much you
know you know you’ve you know they’ve
lost the argument when they go straight
to the oh it just must be racist i mean
school choice is really hard to argue
against so i kind of feel bad for them
like
what else are they supposed what else
are they supposed to there’s no logical
argument against allowing families to
take their children’s education dollars
to the school that works best for them
whether that’s a public or a private
school you can still choose the public
school so they start to create all these
narratives about things that you
actually didn’t say they’ll say that
you’re anti-public school or that you
just hate teachers or that you um
and they’ll they’ll try to create
they’ll try to question the history of
school choice for example which they get
completely backwards but even if they
did get it right that’s a genetic
fallacy that’s in
just because something was bad long
ago doesn’t mean it’s bad now um which
they get the history all wrong on school
choice as well but that’s another
conversation
yeah it’s it’s it’s funny to watch them
like you know that’s bigoted and it’s
like but
how like i
you and me saying i think that poor kids
of color uh should be able to uh and
poor kids in general not just but
including poor kids of color should be
able to go to uh better performing
schools uh and i think that by removing
the monopoly uh you could have better
performing schools that are in those
poorer areas you know it wouldn’t just
be in the rich areas that the schools
are because now the money’s tied to the
parents there are actually more kids in
poorer areas than there are in richer
areas typically speaking like per
household so naturally speaking more
than likely a lot of these new schools
are going to pop up in those poorer
areas and be far better performing and
then we say that and they go europe
you’re obviously a bigot and a racist
well no that’s true right the charter
schools are more likely to show up in
areas that have lower performing
traditional public schools that’s that’s
the market feeling feeling a need right
and and and
that’s what we’ve seen in the charter
school sector if you look nationwide at
the students that use charter schools
they happen to be more a higher
proportion of lower income students in
charter schools than in traditional
public schools for that reason
um but i also want to hit on something
that you touched on earlier
where you said like you know the money
following the child is kind of like
medicare for all and what’s interesting
to me and what i like
to point out in these conversations
every single time is that a lot of the
policies that people support on the left
fund individuals as opposed to
institutions for example with higher
education we have pell grants the pell
grant funding doesn’t go to a community
college that you’re residentially
assigned to and then you’re forced to
spend the money there instead the pell
grant funding goes to the student and
they’re rightfully able to choose to
take that money to a public provider of
educational services or a private
provider of educational services it
could even be a religious or
non-religious uh university of their
choosing the same thing with the federal
head start program with other and other
pre-k programs the funding doesn’t go to
a residentially assigned government-run
provider or pre-k regardless of your
choice the money instead typically goes
to the family and then they can choose a
public or private religious or
non-religious provider of pre-k services
we do the same thing with medicaid
dollars you could use them at catholic
religious hospitals if you want you can
we do the same thing with food stamp
dollars we don’t force low-income
families to spend their food stamp
dollars at a residentially assigned
government-run grocery store instead the
funding goes to the family and you can
choose walmart trader joe’s safeway
harris teeter the funding follows the
decision of the family and all i’m
arguing for is to keep the same funding
in the system but instead of giving it
to a government-run building regardless
of how well they do
and from what we’ve seen over the past
year regardless of whether they even
open their doors for business give that
money to the families and let them take
it to the the government building if
they want if that works for them but if
not let them take it to another provider
just like we do with all of these other
programs
where the funding follows the decision
of the family
and and a lot of the people that that
support funding individuals
directly when it comes to food stamps
and pell grants and pre-k programs they
only oppose it when it comes to those in
between years of k-12 education and the
only difference there is one of power
dynamics choice is the norm with higher
education and pre-k and just about
everything else
but choice threatens and entrenched
special interests the teachers union
monopoly only
when it comes to k-12 education so they
fight tooth and nail against any change
to that status quo because they want to
have that monopoly on your kids
education dollars even if that means
those kids being stuck in a situation
where they’re
bullied getting horrible academic
outcomes and uh are just not in a
situation that’s working for them
because they got to protect their grift
exactly
this is uh it’s it’s incredible
and every debate we’re having right now
over things like critical race theory
over things like trans kids and sports
all of these things the reason that
these debates are so white hot is
because the people having them
are stuck in that school regardless so
if it goes against what they wanted if
if they’re in favor of critical race
theory being taught and that doesn’t
happen well now they’re kids stuck in a
school where crt isn’t being taught and
vice versa if they they don’t want their
kids being taught crt and then that gets
implemented then they you know their
their kids are stuck in the school where
it is whereas if you simply let the kids
go where they want oh this school is
implementing crt that’s great i want my
kid getting crt okay good i’ll go to
this school and it’s a high performing
school i’ll go to that or they’re not
teaching crt that’s great that’s where i
want to go or they are teaching crt no i
don’t want that or they do have trans uh
sports trans-friendly sports great i’ll
take my kids there because that’s what i
want or no i’ll take my kids somewhere
else because that’s what i don’t want by
allowing the market the consumer to
decide where their money goes
that allows for more uh diverse and
equitable outcomes as a result of people
being able to choose where they actually
go let’s talk about some of the myths
around um
uh some of the myths around uh school
the school choice both from i guess on
the left and also from you know with
even within libertarian circles tell us
some of the most common um
some of the most common uh i guess myths
or detractors things that they say
critiques of homes of school choice and
you know tell me what your answer is to
those
yeah and real quick when you mentioned
all of these one-size-fits-all problems
that are popping up with critical race
theory debates and the masking debates
whether you want in person or remote
instruction you’re right that all of
these problems are just symptoms of the
larger issue which happens to be the
one-size-fits-all government school
system
uh and the obvious solution if we ever
want to get out of these fights and
these battles at the school board
meetings is to allow
all the funding to follow the child to
wherever they’re getting an education to
the educational provider that best
aligns with their fou
families values and preferences if you
want critical race theory in your school
i’m totally fine with that as long as
it’s chosen and you’re not forced into
that situation same thing if you want a
school that’s masking all the kids or is
not masking all the kids uh the only way
that will solve these disagreements ever
i mean and it’s always going to be
something right because people disagree
about what should be included in the
curriculum um and so one
one one one size fits all curriculum
just isn’t going to work for a large
society and we shouldn’t try to force
our views on other people’s kids through
the government school system so i think
we should all be in favor of of school
choice but let’s hit yeah the biggest
myth in the school choice debate uh
we’ve all heard it before right school
choice sounds great and all but um
school choice steals money from the
public schools or school choice siphons
away funding from the public schools
and my typical response to that is that
allowing families
to choose their grocery store doesn’t
steal money from walmart allowing people
to choose their school doesn’t steal
money from public public schools and we
all understand that when it comes to
groceries because we understand that
your food stamp money for example
doesn’t belong to walmart or trader
joe’s it belongs to the families and
they can choose to take it to walmart
trader joe’s that they want
but it’s not uh it doesn’t uh just
automatically go to one particular
institution over the other similarly
k-12 education funding is meant for the
child and their family is the direct
beneficiary of that funding not the
institution the
money doesn’t belong to the government
schools in the first place so no
allowing families to choose their school
doesn’t steal money from the public or
the private schools
um yeah
and my second response real quick is
that well if your first knee-jerk
reaction to allowing families to choose
is that your institution is going to be
destroyed or defunded what does that
tell you about your confidence in the
services that you’re providing to those
families
well i mean this this
main argument against school choice
actually turns out to be one of the best
arguments for school choice if family if
you’re if you think that families are
going to run somewhere else and that you
have to track their kids and your
institutions that’s an argument to allow
those families to have choices not to
trap
them into your institutions and then
third my last response to that is more
of a technical point but
mathematically
public schools actually financially
benefit when they lose students to their
competition they’re funded
based on enrollment counts but they’re
not totally funded based on enrollment
accounts
uh in texas for example
the
funding formula shows that about
two-thirds of the funding is based on
the amount of students that you have in
the school so what does that mean
mathematically when you lose a student
you get to keep thousands of dollars for
students that are no longer there
and so that means you’re going to have a
higher per pupil revenue
in the public schools when you lose
students to your competition
i just imagine if you stopped shopping
at walmart started shopping at trader
joe’s for whatever reason and walmart
got to keep a third of your grocery bill
each week that would be a great deal for
walmart and i would argue that it’s a
similarly a great it’s similarly a great
deal for the public schools
that get to keep thousands of dollars
for kids that are no longer educating
[Music]
yeah exactly i’m actually quoting you or
paraphrasing you
and retweeting this episode so that
people can see what it is you’re saying
right now um school choice school choice
doesn’t steal money from public schools
public schools steal money from families
school choice initiatives just return
the pan the money to the hands of the
rightful owners
the kids and their families
and if they want to take that money back
to the public schools they can
and you’re giving me too many quotes
school choice doesn’t steal from schools
school choice doesn’t steal money from
public schools public schools steal
money from families
school choice doesn’t steal money school
choice doesn’t defund public schools
public schools defund themselves when
they fail
to meet the needs of families
i got tons of i got tons of one-liners
okay no those those two are good doesn’t
defund
public schools
public schools defund themselves by
failing to meet the needs of families
year after year
to meet the needs
of families gosh there we go but that’s
i mean look
that’s that’s the main argument that’s
put forth by the teachers union and it
goes to show
the mindset that they have they believe
that your children and the dollars that
are meant for educating your children
belong to their institutions whereas our
side says well
families should be able to take their
money to those institutions but
from the get-go that money belongs to
the kids and their families it doesn’t
belong to the government-run schools it
doesn’t belong to the private schools
either just like food stamps don’t
belong to walmart or trader joe’s k-12
education dollars don’t belong to public
or private
schools that they belong to the families
and i think that’s a winning message for
our side
it would literally be like if the way we
were feeding poor people right now was
like breadlines like they did in the
soviet union and someone said hey why
don’t we instead just give them
vouchers and they can go wherever they
want to get food and people say you’re
stealing money from the bread lines and
it’s like well i mean i guess sort of
we’re actually just letting them take it
to where they want to get it no that’s
absolutely so let’s let’s talk about the
there is a at least one libertarian
critique of school choice and it’s one
that i’ve talked about in the past that
is i will say at least partially still a
concern of mine
by
switching to a system of
um
well so actually let’s there’s there’s
another libertarian argument that i
actually don’t i’ve never really agreed
with um but we we can talk about that
which is this isn’t fully free market
education because it’s not simply
getting government out of it entirely
completely you know eliminating all
taxation for schooling and simply making
it free market and therefore
libertarians shouldn’t support it
because it isn’t an immediate step
towards you know basically pushing the
rothbard button on education and getting
government out of it entirely what what
is your your response to that yeah i’ll
just say for your listeners if you
didn’t hear me at the beginning i’m an
arco capitalist um so i understand the
concerns
that
libertarians might have with school
choices not being the perfect solution
but we shouldn’t make perfect the enemy
of the good
school choice
does a step in the right direction
towards reducing the amount of
government intrusion in the entire
education system and towards allowing
families to have more of a say in their
children’s education and the way that i
put it before uh is that i like to use
the food stamp analogy we’ve been
talking about this the entire episode
that just imagine if you had two
situations one where we had food stamps
for everybody and everybody had to use
those food stamps at a residentially
assigned government-run grocery store
that would be horrible right but imagine
if we also had another situation which
is far from perfect but everybody had
food stamps that were funded by the
taxpayer but at least you could take
them to different providers of the
service that you weren’t residentially
assigned to that were privately managed
privately operated
neither of those situations would be
that great but obviously the latter is
more preferable to the former where
everything’s run by the government
completely and you have to take the
money to a residentially assigned
uh government-run grocery store that
would be absolutely horrible
with school choice
the default option is that 90 percent of
the school age population essentially
has this funding
and all of the taxpayer funding
essentially goes to these residentially
assigned government-run institutions
with school choice mechanisms families
and schools are able to decide whether
they want to take that funding away from
the government-run institution to a
private provider of the education
services and the great thing about it is
that the family has a choice in the
matter they can say i don’t if the
regulatory costs exceed the financial
benefits of the program the families can
say you know what i’m not going to do it
because i don’t want to do the
standardized test or i don’t want to do
whatever else
type of string is attached same thing
with the private schools with more
regulations
if you have a specialized private school
they can say i’m not going to take the
money i’m not going to take any of the
voucher students i’m going to remain
specialized and we do see that play out
in the real world too one of the most
regulated voucher programs is the
louisiana scholarship program they
require you to surrender your admission
standards over to the state you have
to have a random admissions policy they
require that you take the state
standardized test you can’t even pick
your test test to be a particular test
and they require that you take the
voucher amount let’s say it’s seven
thousand dollars is full payment so if
you have about a tuition of eleven or
twelve thousand you have to accept the
seven thousand dollar voucher as full
payment so all of these things are
highly restrictive and problematic for
for for
private schools that want that want to
remain specialized
and what we’ve seen in louisiana program
was in the first year of the program
about two-thirds of the private schools
decided not to participate
so even if you have a market of some of
the private schools having some of these
government strings attached one a lot of
those private schools might have not
existed otherwise because they had
financial hardships
uh because they’re competing with the
free good essentially uh the
government-run school system and so you
can help them
remain intact and then two you still
have a sector of the market that that
says i’m gonna remain specialized
and
so you increase the demand you allow for
a larger supply of private providers and
then some of them will remain highly
specialized regardless of the of the
type of program that you have enacted
because they don’t have to participate
if the schools had to participate and
the families had to use the funding i
would be
a little more skeptical of these
programs but look they’re a step in the
right direction there’s choice at every
um step of the way on the part of the
family on the part of the school
and uh because of that i think it’s a
libertarian solution that’s better than
what we have today which is
look if you can’t afford these these
alternatives you’re stuck in a very
highly regulated government-controlled
system
yeah and and it does two other things
and which you touched on one it it
introduces the idea of market-based
choice to parents who have been told
this is the only way to do it which can
open that discussion for
continued deregulation and continuing to
get government out of it especially if
schools are able to show that they can
do it for a lot less
you can begin to see a reduction in
funding for it and things like that it
also creates an ecosystem of
market-based schools who are uh
marketing to the parents to get their
money instead of you know basically
becoming unions at unionized and going
and joining
the uh the government and and just you
know
basically marketing to government you
know advocating to government through
their unions as opposed to marketing to
the the consumer um this i think mostly
or at least partially addresses my
concern but we can talk about it a
little more which is that
you know in a
school choice system so let’s say if
tomorrow if you know in the next you
know later by the end of the year
100 of um of states uh and the federal
government have implemented school
choice so any parent uh has the ability
if they wish to take their take the
money you know the amount of money
assigned to their kid and go to whatever
school they want even though the parent
is the consumer it’s still the
government that’s paying the bill and so
my concern has been that or my concern
has been even as a step down that unless
we were still constantly trying to
advocate for more and more deregulation
you could end up with a situation where
sort of foot in the door for edu for
government to end up kind of taking over
the the private schools and the charter
schools and yes there is the fact that
like you said uh private institutions
could choose not to accept the money
but if there is a bunch of money they
can be getting a lot of them might
choose to accept it um
what what is your thoughts about that
that concern even in that short term
period as a step down yeah i mean it
could even be a long-term problem
too right where the program starts out
being unregulated and then
they get the private schools on the hook
and the private schools have this
source of revenues that they’re relying
on and then in the long run the law
change changes and then now you’re stuck
in a situation where the private schools
opted into the program under one set of
regulations and then later on there’s
essentially from one year to a net to
the next all of these in
huge um uh costly regulations which that
is a possibility um and and i understand
it but at that point
one
private schools still have the option of
opting out which is it’s not it wouldn’t
be as easy to
do if they’re already hooked and
accepting customers using these vouchers
um and then two look i mean it’s still
it’s still a situation where
uh it’s better than what we have
today that the status quo is that we
have very few private providers of
educational services and the money is uh
the money’s still there it’s just going
to a government institution rather than
a private institution
and
and i don’t think we should make the
perfect of the enemy of the good when it
comes to
to this just because there might be
something
in the future that uh makes us worse off
i think
i think the thing that we should pay
attention to and learn from is to
fight back against any of these types of
regulations into the future so whenever
a program comes into play push back
against parts of the bill that have
regulations for private schools or
private providers of educational
services and they do differ for example
the louisiana program is extremely
regulated the florida program is a lot
less regulated for example
uh one way to
to fend off these
potential regulations is to push for
something called tax credit scholarships
which florida has they’re privately
funded
they the funding never
enters the tax collector’s hands but the
teachers union still fights against it
because it reduces the likelihood that
they’ll they’ll have enrollment counts
uh in their public in the traditional
public schools
and the donate the the donations
towards these scholarships you get a tax
credit kind of benefit for doing so uh
so the teachers union will
still call them publicly funded they’ll
say the money should have went to the
government so therefore it’s government
funding
or taxpayer funding
right but according to the law these are
still these are privately funded
programs because they never enter the
tax collector’s hands so they tend to be
less likely to be regulated with uh
uh with the types of regulations that
you see in louisiana
so that’s one way to kind of reduce the
likelihood of this happening uh and then
uh
two another
another a type of school choice that
we’ve seen to be less regulated than
others is something called an education
savings account so it’s kind of like the
voucher idea where the the money that
would have followed your
fed to the public school you can take it
instead of in the form of a voucher to
pay for private school tuition and fees
it goes into something called an
education savings account for your kid
you can then take the funding to pay for
private school tuition and fees but you
can also use it to pay for any approved
education expenditure which could be
tutoring textbooks special needs therapy
and because there’s all these different
providers that you can spend the money
on it becomes more and more difficult
from a regulatory standpoint because
with vouchers you just have to regulate
the private schools that participate in
the program when it comes to education
savings accounts it becomes infinitely
complicated for the regulator and what
we’ve seen on the ground is that these
education savings accounts have been a
lot less regulated than voucher programs
so that’s another way to to
reduce the likelihood of long-term
regulation is to push for these things
called education savings accounts and
thankfully what we’ve seen this past
year in 2021 which i would call the year
of school choice partially because of
randy weingarten and the teachers unions
for over playing their hand and really
just stepping in over and over again and
showing us their true colors
um but what we’ve seen in these states
is that education savings accounts have
been some of some of the
um
most often introduced bills in different
legislatures
so i’m i’m optimistic going forward
one because we’ve seen so many victories
but then two because we’re seeing the
best gold standard type
of educational freedom being put on the
table
and by giving the parents the ability to
have it in a savings account
they now
as opposed to use it or lose it now
they’re going to not just look for the
best performing schools they’re going to
try to get good values on it too because
that will allow them to have money to to
leave behind for maybe a
college scholarship or trade school or
you know educational whatever they can
determine to be educational uh in in
nature for their kid which could even
potentially be things like you know
extracurricular programs sports programs
summer camp you know you have a
situation where the parents are actually
trying to get really good not just good
value in terms of you know the school
being good but actually good money good
you know value you know uh dollars per
donuts value so they can actually have
money left over to spend on stuff but
long story short whatever way we go with
this you’re you’re saying pretty much
what we’re saying with everything
school choice is not the end victory
it’s just one of many steps we need to
take towards complete liberation of all
of us in all ways including in education
so we we certainly agree there
and i mean look the government’s trying
to regulate homeschooling and private
schooling already regardless of the
funding going to families
right so
if at least we arm families with more
um freedom to choose their educations
and to be
more um just okay and
experienced with private providers of
education i think we’ll have another
constituency that could fend off
regulations in the future whereas if we
have a really small market share of
private schools and homeschoolers it’s
easier for the rest of the population to
look at that small minority of private
educators and to say oh you know that’s
that’s a little different we might not
be okay with what they’re doing over
here let’s regulate the
crap out of them whereas if you have a a
broader base of people participating in
the private sector
you’ll have more of a likelihood that
you’ll be able to fend off those
government regulations with power in
numbers essentially
right uh no exactly that’s that’s
exactly what ends up happening the more
you have people whose mind is towards
i get to decide this
i get to decide where the money goes
the less you have people saying please
just provide this to me because they
realize a lot of people don’t realize
they’ll actually make a better choice or
they they do know that but they still
get conditioned and brow beaten into
being told no no we’ll make a better
choice for you once they see over and
over and over and over again that
they’re making better choices be even if
they’re not the most intelligent people
on earth uh they’re probably at least as
intelligent as the people working in the
government but if not even if the people
in the government were more intelligent
than them they actually have a vested
interest in making the right choice
whereas the government sometimes has a
more often than not has a perverse
incentive to make the wrong choice or
the bad choice
i’ve had a few people that have
requested that you explain what kind of
briefly explain what a charter school is
yeah um we’ve talked about charter
schools but they’ve said what exactly is
that
yeah and on paper charter schools are
defined in every state that has them as
quote unquote public schools but it’s a
little bit more complicated than that so
you have private schools right that are
pretty much pure private entities
they’re operated by private entities
they’re mostly funded by private
out-of-pocket funding
then you have the the government-run
schools uh what most people call public
schools
and um they’re highly regulated they’re
mostly funded by the taxpayer in the
middle you got
this kind of quasi-public quasi-private
entity that people call charter schools
and charter schools are run by private
entities so in that sense they’re
private schools
but on another hand they’re mostly
funded by the taxpayer but with
quote-unquote public dollars they’re
highly regulated by the government in
most places or to start a charter school
you have to go to these authorizing
boards which a lot of the times are the
schools that they’re competing with it’s
kind of like mcdonald’s having to
approve every burger king that opens in
an area which is a huge conflict of
interest yet we have that in a lot of
states with the charter schools and
uh they
they’re so they’re regulated they’re
highly regulated by the government they
are funded by the taxpayer but they’re
they’re privately operated and managed
so they’re i would call them a
quasi-public quasi-private school
and one of those regulations
is that they have to accept all students
by at random
so in a sense charter schools are
actually more quote
public than government schools in that
they can’t discriminate by zip code for
the most part for most part charter
schools in general
can’t have admission standards they
can’t whereas like magnet schools which
are run by the government and are quote
unquote public schools they can have
admissions criteria um
and but charter schools can’t generally
can’t have that they can have admission
standards and they can’t discriminate
based on your geography so
in a sense they’re more public like a
public park than a government-run school
but i would call them a quasi-public
quasi-private school and i wouldn’t call
government schools public schools i
would call them government schools
okay so it’s actually a challenge it’s a
public school
yeah but but as far as the provider it’s
not government-run um so that i mean
that’s another reason why i like to call
quote unquote public schools or the
traditional schools government schools
because it provides some clarity
between charter schools and traditional
schools
charter schools are not run by the
government but
most state governments define
the district schools and charter schools
as quote unquote public schools which
creates a lot of confusion but if you
just say that the district schools are
government-run schools whereas charter
schools are
charter schools
and you call private schools private
schools it allows you to really um
uh specify exactly and
clarify what you’re talking about
right uh stephen shepard just says that
the correct term should be government
indoctrination center um but regard so a
really sharp pivot on kind of the same
subject but applied to something
completely different uh like we alluded
to earlier this isn’t the only place
where government has just completely
taken over the provision and control of
it of a service you and i actually did a
panel together uh in um at freedom fest
a couple months ago uh with it was you
me and uh and maj turay and is it tate
begley is that his name dave fegley yeah
he’s at uh
university of pittsburgh he’s a postdoc
there
yeah and uh but and we did it on
something called the failures of police
socialism and it was funny because the
freedom fest crowd was
mostly conservative there were certainly
a lot of libertarians there but it was
mostly conservative and i think that the
people coming in to look at that panel
had no clue what we were about to talk
about and it was the it was a lot of yes
exactly it was a bunch of boomer cons
who showed up
i think primarily because majterray was
there and we talked we’re talking about
the failures of socialism and they
weren’t
ready for what we were about to talk
about and i think it was well received
talk to me about what police socialism
is and how that applies to what we’ve
been talking about today
well it’s the same arguments right um
that the problems with the school system
is that we all live in a particular
residence and we’re assigned to a school
regardless of whether we like that
school regardless of how well it meets
our needs and we have to fund that
school through the property tax system
so there’s a huge amount of monopoly
power in the k-12 education system
we have the same problem when it comes
to the provision of police services
you live in a particular place
and you have these police departments
that
are in your area that receive your
funding regardless of how well they do
regardless of how fast they come when
you call them and regardless of how
well they respect your rights in terms
of not discriminating against particular
types of citizens or
regardless whether they
respect your rights in other ways as
well and so because
you don’t have a choice
in the provider of policing services
they have very little incentive to cater
to your needs and to do the right thing
for their customers it’s the same
argument for for the schools as it is
for the police departments so i actually
made a i actually wrote an article in
2018 in a
journal called
libertarian papers and the the the title
of the paper was police choice
and i think i believe i’m the first
person that came up with the idea i just
applied the same logic of school choice
to this idea of police choice where you
can choose your provider of policing
services and you can choose it based on
how fast the police respond to your
calls
whether they are
discriminating against their customers
whether they are uh
killing innocent people uh you can
essentially defund the police in a
different in a better way right you can
defund the bad police just like we
defund the bad schools with vouchers
right
and so you can think of
a couple of ways of doing it you can
have private providers of policing
services or if you’re not okay with that
and you feel like that’s too much of a
stretch you can also have like a
government-run police model just that
you’re not it’s not a residentially
assigned
type of situation where instead you can
choose the provide the police
departments that receive your
uh family’s uh police services dollars
or
just like with education it would be
your
family’s education dollars but in this
sense it would be the money that’s
allocated for protecting your family you
could direct it to one one police
department over the other
and then you’d have a true free feedback
mechanism so like when you had the
george floyd incident for example that
was a huge problem everybody understood
that was a problem
and
um kind of what we saw in the aftermath
was just you know people got upset about
it
and there
you know maybe you can argue there was
there was some accountability through
the court system but it took so much
national pressure for anything to
happen and this is happening all across
the country
and and not all of it has always been
recorded on camera for example not not
all of these things are clear-cut cases
just imagine if instead you could say
okay there’s a problem there i’m going
to take
my
family’s policing dollars
to this this department over here that
respects my rights and so you’d have a
marketplace
for
uh policing services
that’s that’s that’s the basic concept
and an interesting parallel another one
of the many parallels obviously policing
and schooling are different many ways
but in terms of the
socialist monopolies create
unaccountability and
harmful and abusive and inequitable
outcomes and that it would be better to
have a market you know market-based
provision or at least a choice-based
provision like you said uh another
interesting parallel
one of the reasons that uh we as you
called last year the the year of school
choice was because for the first time
parents could actually watch and see
what school was like for their kids they
didn’t like it they were like wow this
is what school is like when you come
home and i say how was school and you
know it was okay and you figure well
yeah i guess it was okay
this is what it’s actually like that’s
also true with police the reason that
we’ve seen such an increased outcry
about police abuse is because they we
can no longer those of us who are in
more comfortable communities who don’t
have as much experience dealing with
over policing and abuse and police
we can no longer say oh i’m sure the
perp got what they were asking for we
have to watch hd video of these things
happening with the full context so that
we can go
that was terrible they shouldn’t have
done that that that was murder or that
was assault or that was whatever that
was abuse
technology and people being able to see
behind the veil and see what government
provision
government mandated government
monopolized and government enforced and
as you said residentially based meaning
that when you’re richer you get better
stuff and stuff that’s more reflective
of what you want and if you’re poorer
screw you
that’s what it looks like with policing
as well and you know it’s very
interesting that uh you know like i said
i i was
especially with maj turay being there
and talking about shooting cops over and
over again
i was actually surprised by how well
our conversation was received by that
largely boomer con audience because we
were just talking about the fact that
yeah government sucks at health care and
education and uh and all these other
things uh you know infrastructure and
everything else it also sucks at
policing and it kind of forced them to
think yeah i guess government’s not good
at that either that was a very
interesting thing well it puts them in a
weird predicament how they supposed to
argue argue with that we’re consistent
we use the same
arguments whether it comes to education
or whether it comes to provision of
policing services these are just
different types of services yes there’s
there’s uh there’s some differences
obviously that you can come up with but
of course the basic arguments of
monopolies and socialism still apply and
and why this creates problems for
for so many families i mean and and like
hey you pointed out that the
government-run police system creates
inequities too right you have
areas in detroit where they have signs
saying enter at your own risk because
the neighborhoods are so dangerous the
government police won’t even go to
certain neighborhoods
and so there are inequitable there is an
equitable provision of policing services
just like there is an equitable
provision of government school services
as well so when people try to argue that
school choice or police choice leads to
inequities it doesn’t really make any
sense when you understand that the
status quo is extremely inequitable and
the most advantaged have access to the
best services already we should allow
other families to have access to better
one policing services and two
educational services
and i it’s always funny on twitter i
think i’ve sent you a few of these
tweets before where i’ll say something
in favor of school choice because i
stick i stick to school choice on social
media right so i could build coalitions
in order to advance this this one thing
that i’m specialized on but then you’ll
have like the troll that’ll that’ll
respond that is typically someone who
supports the status quo when it comes to
education they’ll say
oh you just want to be able to take your
tax dollars to whatever school why don’t
we do the same thing for police you know
yeah
for police in it and they they think
it’s a gotcha right they think it’s like
oh man you know this guy’s a
conservative so there’s he’s not going
to like this i’m going to get him and
it’s like oh by the way here’s this like
30 page report i wrote coming up with
that idea
oh what about the national defense what
about all these other things it’s like
yeah actually what about the road
yeah actually i do i do think i’m having
a toll road system instead of this
quote-unquote freeway system would be a
step in the right direction a a user fee
for for roads would be great but i don’t
get into it with them it’s just
but it is interesting i mean there’s
that account on twitter accidentally
libertarian and they post a bunch of
these some
sometimes it’s like
you don’t know who you’re arguing with
my favorite thing is when they’ll do
that and you and your you know you and
60 of your followers including me are
like yes yes let’s definitely do that
hey deal how about this we we defund we
defund the police through to police
choice but we also get to do it with
education then we both win you know like
it’s like yeah no we’re i’m perfectly
fine with that compromise of of you know
applying this logic to everything
government does absolutely let’s
definitely do it yeah mind blown right
it’s funny but it is you know they’re
trying to do a gotcha on you but the
reality is they’re the one being
inconsistent because yes we do agree on
that now you explain why you don’t agree
with that on education because it’s
literally the exact same thing yeah
because they would be cool with it for
policing but they want to be cool with
it when it comes to education and yeah
they’re stuck in this situation where
they just don’t reply
exactly exactly no i love it man that’s
one of my favorite hobbies on twitter is
making people accidentally be
libertarian um it’s it’s it’s fantastic
well uh uh
uh corey before i let you go i first of
all i want to say you’ve been a
fantastic guest i always love uh having
uh really anyone that that likes to talk
about this kind of stuff especially a
fellow and cap coming on and and really
diving into policy specifics with the
understanding and again i
you know we know the rothbard button if
it existed both of us i would assume
would press the thing until our our
fingers bled yeah but until it was
broken
there is no rothbard button there is no
way to make it go from status quo of the
ever increasing omnipotent state to
free market everything and we recognize
we need to start making transitive
real not not reforms that are no such
thing but real transitive reforming
steps away from ever increasing
government and towards market-based
solutions i i always appreciate the
people that that have that that
principled and dare i say radical or or
certainly principled step
tradition or or uh philosophy of
libertarianism but understand that the
dare i say pragmatic steps that need to
be taken so thank you again for coming
on but before i let you go i want to
give you a chance you’ve already
admitted that you may or may not be
randy weingarten so i already i feel
like i’ve won here already i feel like
that was that was a big win was that we
did admit this but um or you sort of
admit it you didn’t fully admit it but
you did admit that the two of you have
never been in the same room that’s good
enough for me it also might be because
she hates you and doesn’t want to be in
the same room as you so it could be
either but before i let you go i want to
give you a chance to give your final
thoughts on pretty much anything you
want to talk about anything you want to
promote that’s upcoming any upcoming
articles that are about to come out any
thoughts you gave you wanted to give
that we didn’t get a chance to talk to
think about or talk about pretty much
whatever you want to talk about for
however long you want corey deangelis
slash randy weingarten the floor is
yours
yeah i would say look the 2021’s the
year of school choice and the great part
about it is it’s partially the teachers
union’s own fault
um we should really give randy
weingarten an award for being the
best advocate of school choice and for
doing more to advance the concept of
school choice than anyone could have
ever imagined this past year
um we’ve had 18 or 19 states in 2021
enact or expand programs to fund
students as opposed to systems this is a
huge win all across the nation right now
and people are finally figuring out that
there isn’t any good reason to fund
institutions particularly closed
institutions or failing institutions
when you can fund students directly
instead and the latest real clear
opinion research polling on this found a
10 percentage point jump in support of
school choice
since april of 2021 with 64 support in
april of 2021 to 74 support in june uh
in
june of 2021.
um so it’s a huge groundswell of support
families are figuring it out i mean even
democrats if you look at the latest
reporting uh polling from echelon
insight insights i wrote about in wall
street journal a week ago
i don’t even remember the title of the
article but it was something like mask
turn mask debates turn democrats in
favor of school choice was the thrust of
the article
and the question in the poll asked
would you support a voucher to attend a
private or home school
if your public school did not mandate
masks 82 percent
of the democrats that responded with an
opinion supported vouchers for private
and home schools if their public school
did not mandate mass so they liked mask
mandates so much that they would support
school choice in order to get that
policy that they wanted um and so that
goes to show
that this shouldn’t be a partisan issue
everybody can get behind it for
different reasons i don’t care what that
reason is but you at the same time on
the other end of the aisle should be
able to reach across and say i agree
that you should be able to to take your
children’s education dollars to a
private school for
whatever it is maybe you don’t like that
crt is being taught maybe you don’t like
that crt is not
being taught in a fair way maybe you
don’t like that your school isn’t
mandating mass it shouldn’t matter what
the reason is for that decision we
should all be able to come together and
say
um the money belongs to the kids and the
families and you should be able to
educate your child in the way that you
see fit at the same time i should be
able to educate my children in a way
that aligns with my values and we
shouldn’t feel the need to force other
people’s kids
to be in institutions that align
that don’t align with their families
values i think we should all be able to
go our own ways with our own kids
educations i think this is the only way
forward out of this mess that we’re in
currently where people are fighting
um
sometimes violently about the
one-size-fits-all
government school system we don’t it
doesn’t need to be this way and the best
way out of this i think the only way out
of this that is feasible in the short
term
is to have the funding follow the child
to wherever they’re getting an education
so hopefully more people can get on
board i think we’re just beginning to
see
uh
the support for this nationwide i mean
there’s also two ballot initiatives in
california to have this uh
statewide have 13 14 000 per child
follow them statewide to wherever
they’re getting an education
we’ll see if it if it actually uh gets
approved through the ballot initiative
process but i think that’s the best
chance we have out in california to get
that done so hopefully we can get this
done in red states and in blue states
going forward and if you want to join
the fight to fund students not systems
you can go to fundstudentsnotsystems.org
and you can sign up and find
specific bills that are going through
your legislature
to do just that to fund students not
systems it’s kind of easy to remember
the website because i say this so many
times but funds
students not systems.org you can also
follow me on twitter at d’angelus quarry
i announce all these bills whenever any
developments um uh come into play to to
to expand these types of programs
yeah and uh i just put the uh the
website
funstudentsnotsystems.org in the in the
comments on on everywhere that we’re
streaming so people can see that you
know something you just talked about
libertarianism
free markets and free choices
completely eliminate the culture war
because all of these arguments over mass
mandates and crt and freaking transports
and whether this version of history is
taught or this version or you know what
all of these different fights you know
common core even stuff like the metric
system like stuff that you know often
you know is is fought even in a fringe
way and all these things are being
fought in this white-hot way like you
said sometimes violently fought uh are
happening because
everyone knows that
whoever wins everyone has to live under
that everyone has to exist under that
applying that to schooling
none of this matters as much anymore in
terms of fighting it
against everyone else because you can
simply take your kid
to a school whose values on masks and
crt and transports and literally
everything else reflects yours and
reflects what you want them to be taught
as opposed to this where if your side
loses
then you’re screwed you’re segregated
into your school district and it’s just
that you either have to move or pay out
of pocket um so and this is true of
everything
libertarianism and applied you know uh
um
consistently across the board
disinflames you know reduces the
inflammation in our society by letting
people to be free to choose who they
associate with and it’s just it’s an
incredible thing that like you said you
know you know almost what over 80 82 of
democrats were like yes i support school
choice
whether it was said that way or not they
literally support school choice so no i
think this can definitely be the year
for it like you said the momentum is on
our side for it corey thank you again so
much for coming on uh stick around
because i’m gonna talk with you uh
during the outro but thanks again man
thank you for coming on i really
appreciate it
thank you so much spike
absolutely man and
folks thank you so much for tuning in to
this amazing episode i told you it was
gonna be a good episode uh of my fellow
americans uh thank you again for tuning
in uh join us on monday waters media
tomorrow uh matt wright uh on the
writer’s block uh his guest is going to
be magnus panvidia he’s going to be
talking about the upcoming
and the damn wars rally in washington dc
on september 11th starting at noon at
the john marshall park in washington dc
we’re going to talk about that more in
just a bit uh and then on friday that’s
tomorrow at 8 pm eastern uh on the
writer’s block here on muddy waters
media on friday at 9 30 eastern is
another episode of cajun and eskimo from
bayou to igloo where noel and nullik the
cajun libertarian and the eskimo
libertarian talk about i honestly don’t
know what they’re going to talk about
but that’s a really fun show i love
watching that uh and then on saturday
you can join me in first in eastern
maryland in the morning
we are having a crab and chicken feast
i’m told it’s sold out
but
i bet if you
happen to email the chair of the
libertarian party of maryland at chair
lpmaryland.org they might be able to
cram a couple more people in there i
don’t know i don’t know just reach out
to them we’ll see they might be getting
mad at me because we sold out a while
ago and more people keep emailing them
but i’m going to see how much we can
fill this place with uh with with
libertarian interco cretarians um but
we’re gonna be you can see you can watch
me eat like 15 or 20 crabs you think i
can’t do it i literally can you can
watch me do it there uh but then join me
uh later that day we’re going to be
doing a caravan over to the end the damn
wars rally in washington dc at september
11th uh on starting it’s gonna be
starting at noon i’ll be getting there i
believe at four it’ll be at john
marshall park they’re gonna be a bunch
of speakers there uh including me uh
scott horton um many other uh great uh
anti-war activists across the spectrum
not just libertarians we are a this is a
coalition that is being built to end all
of the wars not just in afghanistan in
getting the troops out of afghanistan
out of iraq out of syria out of libya
out of uh being involved in yemen
bringing all the troops home and ending
the authorization of use of military
force and making the military into what
it was supposed to be a force to defend
us not to defend the interest of cronies
and bankers and foreign dictators and
drug cartels and pederasts and terror
groups and everything else that’s what
we’re going to be doing uh on saturday
then on a monday uh join us at uh uh
well if you’re in if you’re in the
baltimore area on sunday uh reach out to
the libertarian party of maryland
because we’re doing a waffle house get
together i i don’t know all the details
of that but reach out to us on that then
on monday join us right back here on
muddy waters media 8 pm for mr america
the bearded truth where jason lyon
deep dives into a specific subject every
single week and uh one of the smartest
people you’ll ever you’ll ever meet so
definitely be sure to tune in join us
next tuesday at 8 pm eastern uh for the
muddy waters of freedom where matt
wright and i will parse through the
entire week’s events like the sweet
little chipper boys that we are and then
next wednesday join us right back here
uh at same spike place same spike time
uh for uh another episode of my fellow
americans where my guest will be the i
wanna make sure i’m saying your name
right hold on one second where my guest
will be uh julia krill who is the uh
director of public relations for
students uh for liberty we’ll be talking
about all sorts of fun stuff so join us
for that but again folks thanks again
for tuning in to this episode of my
fellow americans and thank you for being
a part of money waters media i’m spike
cohen and you
are the power god bless guys
[Music]
yay
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so
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[Applause]
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though i view the world to another’s
iris if you slide in my kicks it might
fit we might just unite and come
together become hybrid at the least
slightly like-minded indeed the life
i’ve lived brings light to kindness all
you need is a sign
put a cease to the crimes put an ease of
the minds like mine sometimes darkness
is all i find you know what they say
about an eye for a night in a time where
the bloody the blood who am i to deny
would cry when a loved
that’s my sister mother father brother
is
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tell me why
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a change
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will make a change
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you