Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
id740986391
One of the most direct ways to improve a flawed system is simply to end the ability of rich and powerful people to exclude themselves from it.
id740986408
for example, you outlawed private schools, the public schools would get better. They would get better not because every child deserves to have a quality education, but rather because it would be the only for rich and powerful people to ensure that their children were going to good schools
id740986438
In practice, governments are generally happy to ignore broken things if they do not affect people with enough power to make the government listen.
id740986525
Private schools and private limos and private doctors and private security are all pressure release valves that eliminate the friction that would cause powerful people to call for all of these bad things to get better. The degree to which we allow the rich to insulate themselves from the unpleasant reality that others are forced to experience is directly related to how long that reality is allowed to stay unpleasant.
id740986602
If you can afford a lawyer, your sentence will be lighter. If you can afford bail, you will not sit in jail. If you can afford a nice home in a nice neighborhood it will be generally understood by police that their job is to work for you and not against you. In every aspect of its operation, our system of crime and punishment produces vastly nicer outcomes for the rich than for the rest of us.