I feel compelled for the second time in a few weeks to express my disappointment with the unsubstantiated views of Hasenmiller in his column “Capitalism could ease current budget strains” from Feb. 24.

First, the title of the column is misleading. I do not think capitalism has much to do with the main view of the article, which, in a nutshell, is to “eliminate” public education.

Second, although I can see why private education might have been much more beneficial for Mr. Hasenmiller himself, the majority — if not all — of the points in his article are put forward with poor judgement. The entire first section of his article, detailing the competition between Catholic and Protestant schools — both private — in the early 19th century, has very little to do with his advocacy for eliminating public education on financial grounds and on grounds of free competition. In the second section, Mr. Hasenmiller — who I am afraid is also an economics major — is giving us some numbers on how much each individual would save if all public support for education was eliminated. Moreover, savings, he claims, would be even higher because of lower taxes in rents, properties and other goods. All is well, until someone realizes that, on the one hand, Mr. Hasenmiller does not tell us anything about what the expenses would be for these services to be bought on an individual basis, and on the the other, what the effects on society would be when a large percentage of the population would not even be able to afford these services.

Finally, in the apogean of logical argumentation, Mr. Hasenmiller argues that it would be best if “our schools would be run by people who, through their greed, very legitimately care about the quality and price of education.”

In providing any kind of services, in capitalism at least, we are very truly experiencing the effects of greed on quality in our current financial crisis. It is, therefore, extraordinary — at least under our current predicament — to argue for Mr. Hasenmiller’s point. As far as price, I am not sure how buying something on an individual basis would be better over the established measure of entire communities pulling resources together to support common values, such as education and health care. Maybe it would be wiser for us to preserve the few gems, such as public education, that are surviving the uncontrolled greed that results from eliminating any and every oversight.

George Voutsadakis

Graduate Student

Computer Science