Why Is the Education Minister Charged with My Son’s Education?

In our own lives, we understand decision-making can only be performed by those individuals paying the price for those decisions’ results. It is only when it comes to the state, this axiom vanishes.

Grandparents, for example. If the father decides to punish his son by withholding his father’s presence and/or presents from his son, grandpa has no say in the matter, and not only due to Chinuch obligations. Who potentially pays the price of a spoiled child, father or grandfather?!

In the family, this is clear (although this is harder for people with an authoritarian streak to live by). This is clear, too, when it comes to allowing the US or UN or people abroad generally to interfere with the internal governance of foreign states (such as US Jews in Israeli matters).

So why is it any less clear the state has no right to educate my child, for instance? Unlike private owners, who win or lose based on results, the government’s thugs pay virtually no price in any arena, ergo they ought to get no say on any question, including energy, roads, security, diplomacy, arbitration, etc.

Thomas Sowell: “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”

In other words, the very notion of distant government is absurd.