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Overwhelming the System as a Means to an End.
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Author:  Rynar [ Wed Oct 07, 2009 4:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Overwhelming the System as a Means to an End.
I have been doing alot of thinking recently about what the average middle class tax payer can do in order to exact real action and change from our local power structure. Elections are ineffective, because of what Americans have been conditioned to expect from our government, and because of our government's own opperating structure and mercantilist economic system. Protesting is equally ineffective, because our major media outlets who used to cover and help drive rebellion are part of that same system, and are now nothing more than the public face of major international conglomerates who make their profits living on the public dole.

Here in Rhode Island, our teachers and other state employees and their unions don't view our current problems as taxation based, or unemployment based. They view them as a "revenue problem". Our unions are protected by layers of law and precedent, making it near impossible to combat them.

My local property taxes are schedualed to rise this year, as state funding for most aspects of education are being cut, but the unions refuse concession because they are legally protected from having to come to the bargaining table when it is not to their benifit to be there.

My proposal is this:

Eleven percent of Rhode Island students attend private schools according to the Friedman Foundation. This means that in addition to the roughly $15,000 it costs to educate their child in public school, most are spending a minimum of $14,000 over that on the sosts of a private of parochial education. Arming ourselves with this information, and knowing that our household budgets have tightened, I belive it is time to coordinate a mass enrollment of private school attendees and home schoolers into the public schools. Thusly overwhelming the system.
Author:  Kaffis Mark V [ Wed Oct 07, 2009 6:18 pm ]
Post subject: 
Reminds me of the school prank I wish my senior class had been cool enough to follow through on -- pick a day, and every senior who has a car, rides the bus, instead. In a modestly wealthy town such as the one I spent my high school years, that would have ground the system to a halt.
Author:  Micheal [ Wed Oct 07, 2009 8:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Overwhelming the System as a Means to an End.
Amusing idea Rynar, but it wouldn't work for any number of reasons.

1) You assume that a significant percentage of the parents of the 11% of students who do not attend public school would be willing to grind the system to overload. Few actually do, fewer still would be willing to mess with their kids education to prove a political point.

2) The Unions would actually benefit from this action, as the School districts would have to hire more employees to babysit teach the new students. The contracts call for those employees to be Union members. Those new employees would be hell to lay of when the 11% went back to private or parochial school.

3) The State would have to cut elsewhere, the Education budget is (State) constitutionally guaranteed on a per student basis (not sure about Rhode Island, many States do it that way.)

4) The private and parochial schools would be ruined by even a short trial run, as the teachers there would be going to work for the State, if they are qualified. The ones that aren't qualified will have to take jobs elsewhere, just to make ends meet.

A) Write it up as a script for a movie. Could be next years blockbuster summer comedy.

Kaffis, the local transit system would fill up quickly, then tell the kids waiting to catch the next bus. Most of the leftover kids would then get in their cars and drive to school, a prank isn't worth the punishment, especially for those already riding the edge of disciplinary action.
Author:  Diamondeye [ Wed Oct 07, 2009 8:42 pm ]
Post subject: 
Let's not **** up the one part of the education system worth a damn just to prove a point.

This general concept might work elsewhere though.
Author:  Arathain Kelvar [ Wed Oct 07, 2009 9:23 pm ]
Post subject: 
Yes, everyone else should overwhelm the system, while I continue to make sure my kid gets a decent education.
Author:  Monte [ Wed Oct 07, 2009 10:19 pm ]
Post subject: 
I don't quite understand what someone would prove by artificially overloading a government system. I mean, you can later point and hop up and down claiming "see how it failed", but that's not really an honest accounting of it's success or failure. It would be like hacking a computer and then blaming the computer for being hacked.
Author:  Diamondeye [ Wed Oct 07, 2009 10:42 pm ]
Post subject: 
How is it "artificially" overloading the system to have everyone paying for the service use it?
Author:  Vindicarre [ Thu Oct 08, 2009 4:19 am ]
Post subject:  Re:
Monte wrote:
I don't quite understand what someone would prove by artificially overloading a government system.


Looks like you don't understand Alinsky's writings as well as I thought.
Author:  Kaffis Mark V [ Thu Oct 08, 2009 8:08 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Overwhelming the System as a Means to an End.
Micheal wrote:
Kaffis, the local transit system would fill up quickly, then tell the kids waiting to catch the next bus. Most of the leftover kids would then get in their cars and drive to school, a prank isn't worth the punishment, especially for those already riding the edge of disciplinary action.

If they did this, they would have to delay classes for all schools in the town -- the same busses that service the high school/jr. high went immediately afterwards to serve the elementary schools. The schedules were too tight to make a second run without making the second run and all elementary students late for classes.

As such, I have no idea what the decision would be...
Author:  Corolinth [ Thu Oct 08, 2009 9:34 am ]
Post subject: 
There shouldn't have been a decision at all. Said students have a slot on the bus. If you're enrolled in the school and live outside a certain distance, then the school district is legally obligated to provide for transportation in some fashion as dictated by their policy. The number of students with cars is insufficient to overload the buses on their particular route.

The problem comes in when you have the students in more out of the way regions, where the bus picks them up in front of their house rather than an appointed bus stop. In this case, the bus company doesn't know to send transportation to those students, so they aren't overloading capacity either.

In the rather unlikely event that there was some sort of issue, the cab companies would make a killing.

As for disciplinary action, the school can't take any against a student if the reason the student missed morning classes was because the district-provided transportation didn't come through. The fact that said students "have cars" is moot. The school can't take disciplinary action because, "Well you have a car, you could have just driven to school when the bus didn't show." No high school student has a car - they're not old enough to legally own property. Their parents own cars, and parents have been known to restrict high school age children from driving for a variety of reasons.
Author:  Arathain Kelvar [ Thu Oct 08, 2009 2:42 pm ]
Post subject:  Re:
Diamondeye wrote:
How is it "artificially" overloading the system to have everyone paying for the service use it?


Because then the system would be operating outside its design threshold?

It's not designed to serve everyone that pays for it, you know.
Author:  Diamondeye [ Thu Oct 08, 2009 6:33 pm ]
Post subject: 
That's not artificially overloading the system; that's artificially designing the system with insufficient capacity.
Author:  FarSky [ Thu Oct 08, 2009 6:58 pm ]
Post subject: 
How many people here would be complaining about government waste if the system continually ran not at used capacity but at maximum potential usage?

Plan for likely usage, not for absolute maximum possible usage, and adjust accordingly when the demand is greater (or less) than expected. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?

I'm not really sure what this is supposed to prove, anyway.
Author:  DFK! [ Thu Oct 08, 2009 7:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re:
FarSky wrote:
How many people here would be complaining about government waste if the system continually ran not at used capacity but at maximum potential usage?

Plan for likely usage, not for absolute maximum possible usage, and adjust accordingly when the demand is greater (or less) than expected. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?

I'm not really sure what this is supposed to prove, anyway.


Or, we could design the system so that people don't have to pay twice to educate their children at the non-government school. This can be done, some European countries already do so.
Author:  Diamondeye [ Thu Oct 08, 2009 7:09 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Re:
DFK! wrote:
FarSky wrote:
How many people here would be complaining about government waste if the system continually ran not at used capacity but at maximum potential usage?

Plan for likely usage, not for absolute maximum possible usage, and adjust accordingly when the demand is greater (or less) than expected. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?

I'm not really sure what this is supposed to prove, anyway.


Or, we could design the system so that people don't have to pay twice to educate their children at the non-government school. This can be done, some European countries already do so.


This.

Besides, the government is already engaging in massive waste in education.
Author:  Rynar [ Thu Oct 08, 2009 8:19 pm ]
Post subject: 
Actually, organzing this exact sort of protest has precedent in RI. A few years back, under pressure from our general assembly, many RI districts tried to suspend public bussing to private schools. What happened went pretty much exactly as described. A massive organized base of parents who were private schoolers enrolled their children in the school system and overwhelmed it. The money the state was trying to "save" by denying bussing was completely unproportional to the money they stood to "lose" by not aquiessing to the bare minimum demanded by tax paying parents of private schoolers.

The private schooling tax payer won.
Author:  Jeryn [ Fri Oct 09, 2009 11:50 am ]
Post subject: 
I have two kids in private school. I think the argument is supposed to go that I'm not paying twice for their education - once for the public schools we don't use, and again for the private schools we do. Instead, our taxes are paying for public education in general. An educated public means a (more) skilled base of workers, ideally a more lawful society, and a bunch of other things that you probably wouldn't see out of an uneducated public.

I'm personally willing to "pay twice" to do my bit in seeing that my kids enter a job force that's populated with literate and socially indoctrinated people, rather than the alternative. (See: cost of education versus incarceration). Do I think I should be compelled to pay? Nope, not really. But I do recognize the value in perpetuating the current system, for what I expect to get back out of it.
Author:  DFK! [ Fri Oct 09, 2009 11:57 am ]
Post subject:  Re:
Jeryn wrote:
I have two kids in private school. I think the argument is supposed to go that I'm not paying twice for their education - once for the public schools we don't use, and again for the private schools we do. Instead, our taxes are paying for public education in general. An educated public means a (more) skilled base of workers, ideally a more lawful society, and a bunch of other things that you probably wouldn't see out of an uneducated public.


Fair enough, in theory at least.

Jeryn wrote:
I'm personally willing to "pay twice" to do my bit in seeing that my kids enter a job force that's populated with literate and socially indoctrinated people, rather than the alternative. (See: cost of education versus incarceration). Do I think I should be compelled to pay? Nope, not really. But I do recognize the value in perpetuating the current system, for what I expect to get back out of it.


Except that it has been demonstrated that the system could function at least as well if not better while providing parents (like yourself) the choice of institution and only billing you once. Would you not find that preferable, provided it continued to fulfill the social obligation you listed above?
Author:  Elmarnieh [ Fri Oct 09, 2009 12:25 pm ]
Post subject: 
So I'm paying an infinite percentage in excess by supporting a non zero number of children while having none myself?
Author:  Micheal [ Fri Oct 09, 2009 12:50 pm ]
Post subject: 
You aren't getting your fair share out of the taxes you pay Elmo, go forth, get a bride and multiply.

I forget, are you self nominating yourself for a Darwin's Award by not returning your genes to the pool, or does the fact that you are doing it through choice nullify the 'remove the candidate from the gene pool by fatal misadventure' clause?
Author:  Elmarnieh [ Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:02 pm ]
Post subject: 
Now you sound like my Mom.
Author:  Diamondeye [ Fri Oct 09, 2009 4:32 pm ]
Post subject: 
So listen to your mom!
Author:  Hannibal [ Fri Oct 09, 2009 5:19 pm ]
Post subject: 
I fear Elm's mom for real
Author:  Micheal [ Fri Oct 09, 2009 6:24 pm ]
Post subject: 
If she hasn't been able to scare Elmo into matrimony, she can't be that scary.

Of course, living on a different coast thousands of miles away and having never met the woman, or Elmo for that matter, its real easy for me to say.
Author:  Hannibal [ Sat Oct 10, 2009 2:02 pm ]
Post subject: 
She would skin you and make your remains into a quilt. Shes like one of those B movie kung fu masters.
Scaring Elmo into matrimony isn't hard. It's scaring the other person into accepting thats the trick.

Now onto the OP.

It regularly comes down to pervcieved value for the dollar. Saying things like "An educated public means a (more) skilled base of workers, ideally a more lawful society, and a bunch of other things that you probably wouldn't see out of an uneducated public" ends up pissing folks like me off, because under the current system, I still see ignorant, unmoitivated, and unengaged high school dropouts/graduates. I do not see the return on investment of the money I am taxed for, but I rarely do. I consume far less public services then I pay for. In fact, I will over the course of my life, pay for many other peoples share of the social contract, yet I recieve no additonal benefit for my sacrifice.

Sorry, that sucks, and the idea of "thats just the way it is" is not an acceptable answer.
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