Can you imagine being called a "zone cheat" because you've been to the "wrong" supermarket; or the "wrong" book store; or the "wrong" service station?What's the difference? Why do we have arbitrarily-drawn zones for schools when we don't have them for supermarkets, stores or service stations? Why? Simply because for the privately-delivered services we have something called a market, a place in which people can freely bid for the services they wish to purchase, and pricing and supply are set by entrepreneurs looking for a place in the market by meeting the needs and wishes of the customers they hope to attract.
There is no market in New Zealand's factory schools. Instead we have rationing.
In the absence of a market, we have government-imposed rationing -- rationing by zone; if you want to send your son to Auckland Grammar you will either have to pay $50-100-200,000 more to live in the zone, or you'll have to be a "zone cheat." If you're a "zone cheat," expect to be pilloried.
In a market, extra customers are a good thing. Without markets ... extra punters are a bad thing ... a bloody nuisance ... cheats!
Good thing we don't have markets for our schools, huh? Rationing is so much more civilised than the way we buy our groceries, isn't it.
LINKS: School insists zone cheats should stay out - Newstalk ZB
RELATED: Education, Politics-NZ, Auckland
2 comments:
rationing or market? surely this is irrelevant when there are a limited number of places available.
a supermarket with the ability to only service 1000 customers a day might well decide to impose a minimum purchase amount on shoppers.
either way, the rich get to go to pick what school their children go to, and the poor lose out.
Hemi -
Indeed. Whenever the supply is limited, the price goes up. And when the price goes up, people say "here's a chance for me to make a shitload of money!" and build /new/ supermarkets.
And then the price goes down.
Have you ever seen a supermarket turn away customers because they didn't have room?
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