If you go to a market and are offered free fruit and vegetables, they will be rotten. If you want fresh fruit and vegetables, you have to pay for them.
Well, it stands to reason, I guess. But wait--the vegetables in question are intangible. To what does the analogy refer? Private education in a poor section of Nairobi. (Thanks to James Tooley!)
I guess the under-educated don't necessarily lack intelligence, especially where their children are concerned. It seems fairly obvious, but I think the underlying principle bears amplification:
People will pay dearly for what they value. It follows that what people will not pay for, they do not value.
Now, for the policy implications: it is unwise to remove the costs of a service or a commodity by making it into a basic human right. Now before the emails start screaming into my inbox, let me say that removing the duty of payment does not automatically destroy the willingness to pay, nor does it necessarily kill the value people place on a given good or service like education, healthcare, food, or even voting.
Voting?
Yes--the franchise was once the right of land owners who paid a special poll tax. It was a way of preventing whole sections of the population from having a political voice, of course, but it was also a way of recognizing that the franchise was essentially valuable. Yet even when voting had a monetary cost, it was considered a political right (not a mere privilege granted by the government).
I know I've steered into territory that makes it easy for people to charge me with bigotry, but that's not the sort of argument I'm trying to make. What I'm attempting to say is that by removing the direct tangible costs from what we consider basic rights, we cheapen those rights and invite contempt of them.
So, in the interests of helping Americans take their political rights more seriously, I say make 'em pay. Speaking for myself, I'd pay for some fresh freedom--the free variety is rotten.
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