I finished reading The Economic Laws of Scientific Research and one of the last thing Terrence talked about was education in the Britain during the 19th century. Apparently prior to the nationalization of education the vast majority of children were being educated through private means. This included the poor as they would pay a fee and the rest of the cost was subsidize by charity and the church. Thus we see that in a laissez-faire fair system the poor are educated without state intervention.

Interesting, British politicians argued for the nationalization of the education system when they saw other nations use the state to offer universal education. These politicians worried that these other nations would gain economic advantage over Brittan because of nationalized education. Ironically, its was the superiority of the private education system in Brittan that lead politicians in other countries to argue for nationalization of education in their own countries.

The most frustrating aspect of this though is that even after British politicians procured funding for state schools in England, they had difficulties filling the classrooms with students. The private schools were superior and poor families would gladly pay a fee to send their children to private schools. However taxes were eventually increased to finance the public schools making it to expensive for the poor to pay for private schools.

Thus Brittan, with superior schools that provided education to the poor, nationalized education, creating inferior schools, that it then forced the poor to use after it increased their taxes to subsidize it’s inferior schools.

Welcome to state intervention. It’s coercion guarantees the dominance of inferiority.

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