Gordon Brown’s idea to educate the world is a silly one, says Jamie Whyte:
Mr Brown’s scheme will divert resources in poor countries towards education and away from the production of other goods and services. It is a good idea only if this reallocation of resources improves on the current allocation, only if Africans are better off with more education and less other stuff. So, are they?
Mr Brown cannot know. He does not know where his extra educational resources will come from, nor what their current use is worth. For all he knows, recruiting millions of teachers in just nine years could cause economic calamity, decimating other important industries. But, whatever Mr Brown thinks, one thing is clear: Africans prefer their current allocation of resources.
Mr Brown concedes as much when he insists that education must be provided free of charge. If required to pay the cost of providing it, many Africans would not send their children to school. And if Mr Brown gave them not an education but £50, they would spend it on something else. In other words, these Africans value education less than it costs to provide. Which means that diverting scarce resources to education misallocates them. They would be better devoted to whatever Africans prefer to spend £50 on.
So, he takes your money that you would spend differently and spends it on people, who if they had a choice, would spend it differently. I guess that’s politics, eh? Knowing better than everyone else?
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