I would have to reject that a world with Hayekian free markets is utopian seeing as free markets are supposed to be the best at negotiating priorities system-wide in the face of imperfections and scarcity. Free markets epitomize the phrase "there are no solutions, only tradeoffs" and thusly are better categorized as anti-utopian. Up to this point, I firmly believe that the perfect is the enemy of the good, much in the way that any genuine vision of utopia will come with it drastic consequences if honestly pursued.
Now if he were interested in an honest and empirical look at the ramifications of school choice in an inner city setting, Bessner should check out Sowell's "Charter Schools and Their Enemies," which actually came out rather recently. In it charter schools are not always miracle schools, but rarely do worse than their public school counterparts. The most crucial part in my mind was the analysis, in which Sowell outlines his criteria upon which to compare schools and qualifies these criteria thoroughly.
And lastly about his rebuttal to the Ivy leagues being meritocratic, which I am very much open to, the explanations given by Charles Murray in the first half of "The Bell Curve" might be satisfactory to explain why so many Ivy-leaguers come from the richer side of the spectrum. Briefly, the idea was that the Ivy leagues were more meritocratic in the early-to-mid 20th century and basically became a highfalutin way for more intelligent people to network with each other, equipped with a pipeline to positions of prestige within the business world. Inevitably when these people marry and have kids, most such families will be quite wealthy relative to the rest of the population, which contributes environmental pressures towards scholastic achievement. Further, the heritability of cognitive ability would further predispose children of these families to be successful in school. From there, the Ivy leagues can capture with frightening efficiency the top however many students into their graduating classes without looking outside families from the top 10% of the wealth distribution, and then the cycle continues when those students marry and have kids. And of course the Ivy leagues are happy with this setup because then they can seem virtuous by being need-blind in their admissions while still extracting plenty of money from the rich families of kids populating their rolls, both in the form of tuition and later in charitable giving to the school.
I would have to reject that a world with Hayekian free markets is utopian seeing as free markets are supposed to be the best at negotiating priorities system-wide in the face of imperfections and scarcity. Free markets epitomize the phrase "there are no solutions, only tradeoffs" and thusly are better categorized as anti-utopian. Up to this point, I firmly believe that the perfect is the enemy of the good, much in the way that any genuine vision of utopia will come with it drastic consequences if honestly pursued.
Now if he were interested in an honest and empirical look at the ramifications of school choice in an inner city setting, Bessner should check out Sowell's "Charter Schools and Their Enemies," which actually came out rather recently. In it charter schools are not always miracle schools, but rarely do worse than their public school counterparts. The most crucial part in my mind was the analysis, in which Sowell outlines his criteria upon which to compare schools and qualifies these criteria thoroughly.
And lastly about his rebuttal to the Ivy leagues being meritocratic, which I am very much open to, the explanations given by Charles Murray in the first half of "The Bell Curve" might be satisfactory to explain why so many Ivy-leaguers come from the richer side of the spectrum. Briefly, the idea was that the Ivy leagues were more meritocratic in the early-to-mid 20th century and basically became a highfalutin way for more intelligent people to network with each other, equipped with a pipeline to positions of prestige within the business world. Inevitably when these people marry and have kids, most such families will be quite wealthy relative to the rest of the population, which contributes environmental pressures towards scholastic achievement. Further, the heritability of cognitive ability would further predispose children of these families to be successful in school. From there, the Ivy leagues can capture with frightening efficiency the top however many students into their graduating classes without looking outside families from the top 10% of the wealth distribution, and then the cycle continues when those students marry and have kids. And of course the Ivy leagues are happy with this setup because then they can seem virtuous by being need-blind in their admissions while still extracting plenty of money from the rich families of kids populating their rolls, both in the form of tuition and later in charitable giving to the school.