Private education, positional goods, and the arms race problem

Politics, Philosophy and Economics 15 (2):150-169 (2016)
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Abstract

This article defends the view that markets in education need to be restricted, in light of the problem posed by what I call the ‘educational arms race’. Markets in education have a tendency to distort an important balance between education’s role as a gatekeeper – its ‘screening’ function – and its role in helping children develop as part of a preparation for adult life. This tendency is not merely a contingent fact about markets: It can be traced to ways in which education is a partly positional good and how markets respond to demand for positional goods over non-positional goods. The problem with arms races is that they allow markets to facilitate wider use of defection in a collective action problem. Using these claims, I argue that markets in education have a distinctive tendency to become objectionably exploitative. I conclude by applying some of my conclusions to illuminate various egalitarian claims about justice in education

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Daniel Halliday
Stanford University

Citations of this work

Public Goods and Education.Jonny Anomaly - 2018 - In Andrew I. Cohen (ed.), Philosophy and Public Policy. New York, USA: Rowman & Littlefield International.
The rat race and working time regulation.Malte Jauch - 2020 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 19 (3):293-314.
Positional Goods and Upstream Agency.Daniel Halliday & Keith Hankins - 2020 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (2):279-293.
Poverty, partiality, and the purchase of expensive education.Christopher Freiman - 2017 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 16 (1):25-46.
Circadian Justice.Jonathan White - 2021 - Journal of Political Philosophy 30 (4):487-511.

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References found in this work

Exploitation.Alan Wertheimer - 1996 - Princeton University Press.
Democratic Education.Amy Gutmann - 1989 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 18 (1):68-80.
Legitimate parental partiality.Harry Brighouse - 2008 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 37 (1):43-80.

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