{"id":15971,"date":"2025-07-01T20:17:05","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T20:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/classicalconversations.com\/?p=15971"},"modified":"2025-07-07T19:03:58","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T19:03:58","slug":"when-education-is-free-responsibility-is-bankrupt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classicalconversations.com\/blog\/when-education-is-free-responsibility-is-bankrupt\/","title":{"rendered":"When Education is Free, Responsibility is Bankrupt"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For many parents, the desire for public education reform is growing\u2014especially as socialism gains popularity among younger voters and federal funding fuels both debt and bureaucracy. The promises of \u201cfree\u201d education often come at the cost of accountability, quality, and personal responsibility<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Leigh Bortins<\/strong><\/a>, founder of Classical Conversations<\/a>, has spent decades helping families understand how government intervention in education not only fails to solve the problem\u2014but actually makes it worse<\/strong>.<\/strong> In this article, she unpacks the relationship between public funding, student debt, and the rise of socialist ideologies\u2014and how it all stems from removing education from its proper jurisdictions: family, church, and local communities<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re confused by the complexity of government spending or wondering why things feel out of control, you\u2019re in the right place. Let’s learn practical advice for families to make wise decisions for their educational journey.<\/p>\n

The All-In Podcast on Education, Economics, and Politics<\/h2>\n

I am going to relate a rather lengthy discussion on how the government funding of colleges destroyed the historic success of American education. This conversation was part of the All In Podcast #233<\/a> on June 28, 2025.\u00a0 If you are unfamiliar with All In\u2019s cohosts, just know that they are friends and investors with Elon Musk.<\/p>\n

The four famous co-hosts were discussing the natural growth of socialism that comes from unrestricted access to other people\u2019s capital in any situation. When someone else\u2019s capital covers tuition while attending a K-12 school or loans and tuition while attending college, the market is manipulated, so no one knows the true cost of attending the institution.\u00a0 This develops customers with unrealistic expectations, the inability to delay gratification, and diminished integrity. They learn to want something for nothing.<\/p>\n

The Rise of Zoran Mamdani and Urban Socialist Politics<\/h2>\n

The podcasters discussed, \u201cHow does a devoted socialist become the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City?\u201d Little-known New York state assemblyman Zoran Mamdani took the Internet by storm and shocked the pundits by defeating Andrew Cuomo, a very famous liberal, for the Democratic nomination. Before the primary, the betting site, Polymarket, gave Cuomo a 93 percent chance of winning and Mamdani a 6 percent chance.<\/p>\n

Viral Moments and Millennial Endorsements<\/h3>\n

Jason Calacanis<\/strong>, venture capitalist and host of the All-In Podcast<\/a>, described Mamdani\u2019s election at minute 39:58, with \u201cObviously, a bunch of viral moments. He\u2019s a great speaker. Reminds me of Vivek (Ramaswamy) in that regard. Really good in debates and speaking publicly. Started rising in the polls. Got a ton of endorsements from millennials, and AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) endorsed him as well.<\/p>\n

Now (June 28, 2026), he is the 75 percent favorite to beat Eric Adams. It looks like Eric Adams is going to get a shocking amount of support because people don\u2019t want a Democratic socialist, who\u2019s got some really unique and colorful history, to become the mayor of one of the greatest cities in the world.<\/p>\n

Mamdani wants to have free buses. He wants to freeze rent and triple the development of affordable housing. He wants city-owned government grocery stores and a $30 minimum wage. He wants to defund the police and replace the cops with social workers in high-crime areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Economic Roots of Socialism and Student Debt<\/h2>\n

David Friedberg, his podcast co-host, venture capitalist, and scientist, provided a thoughtful analysis on why Mamdani\u2019s election is the natural consequence of government intervention in the free market. Jason asked<\/strong>, \u201cFriedberg, maybe you could talk a little bit about your prediction last year, where we are right now, and your reaction. Is this election result perplexing, shocking, or obvious to you?\u201d<\/p>\n

Debt, Deficit, and the Cycle of Socialism<\/h3>\n

David Friedberg explains<\/strong>, \u201cFor me, it feels like actually a little bit of a beginning of a wave that\u2019s going to continue to sweep over this country starting in cities. And I think that we\u2019re at the very early stages. I think we\u2019ll look back pretty soon and jokingly say that Kamala Harris looks like a conservative candidate.<\/p>\n

I do think that this is a broad kind of reaction to the economic condition of the United States. And I\u2019ve talked to a lot of people who don\u2019t quite recognize how important the debt and the deficit is with respect to how it\u2019s ultimately going to lead to socialism as it has every single time in history when you\u2019ve had a free voting democracy, a representative democracy, that becomes encumbered with too much debt.”<\/p>\n

Federal Funding for Education and the Ballooning of Student Loans<\/h2>\n

Friedberg continued to describe funding college as an example of what is going on in American economics and politics,<\/strong> specifically how it played out in New York and how it will continue to play out in major cities. In the last twenty years, the US student loan debt has ballooned from $500 billion to $2 trillion.<\/p>\n

How Student Loan Debt Reshapes Cities<\/h3>\n

David continued<\/strong>, \u201cThere are 4 million college graduates per year in the United States, and about 40 percent of them leave college with student loan debt. That means that in the last twenty years, 80 million young people have graduated from college, and they\u2019ve accrued $1.5 trillion of new debt. Based on the percentage and the distribution, that means the average debt for these individuals is sitting around $60,000.<\/p>\n

Where do these 32 million young people live? They live in cities. They don\u2019t go back to rural towns. Most of that population sits in cities. It sits in New York, sits in Los Angeles, sits in Seattle, sits in San Francisco, sits in Portland, and sits in Chicago.<\/p>\n

What we\u2019re seeing in major cities is a massive political shift. People call it left, but it\u2019s actually quite different than just being more traditionally left. It\u2019s really a revolution against the system that brought them to this moment. Because the promise that we gave in America, the American dream, was if you will go to college, you will graduate, you will have income, you will have stability, you will be able to buy a home.<\/p>\n

Broken Promises and Inflated Education Costs<\/h3>\n

And what we did is we increased the government\u2019s role in making that dream possible. And in doing so, we effectively created a system where we gave unrestricted access to (tax-funded) capital, which inflated the cost of education. People like Zoran Mamdani could go to school and major in African studies at Bowdoin College. They could get loans and graduate with $200 or $300 thousand dollars of debt and then never get a job.<\/p>\n

And this is the truth for 32 million young Americans. They find themselves living in places where they cannot afford to pay their bills every month and they will never get out of the debt cycle that they were thrust into. They believed that they were going to be able to graduate and excel in the world. Instead, they all have what is called negative capital. They have debt and they will never be able to get out of that cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Welfare State: A Path Chosen in the Voting Booth<\/h2>\n

So, where do the citizens turn for help? They could turn to corporations, friends, family, the church, and non-profits. Instead, most people turn to the voting booth. They prefer the anonymity of a government welfare check, service, or tax credit rather than the accountability of extended family or the help of a charity.<\/p>\n

Ignoring the Cost of Government Services<\/h3>\n

When a politician describes more free services, the average person doesn\u2019t heed Rush Limbaugh and follow the money. It\u2019s too complicated to understand the consequences of increasing government mandates, increased taxes on the rich, and increased sales tax on those with fixed incomes. Especially with fiat dollars and ever-changing interest rates adding to the confusion.<\/p>\n

Socialists promise to take that capital and redistribute it in the form of services and support for all of the people in the name of equity and fairness.\u00a0 When the capital falls short, the Federal Reserve just prints more.<\/p>\n

Debt and Decline: How Socialism Spirals from Education<\/h2>\n

Debt ultimately devours its own citizens\u2019 efforts, destroying their work ethic, and frustrating the achievements of the generation that pays the price for the delayed repayments. History repeats, and young citizens clamor for increased government intervention, embracing ever more failing socialist concepts.<\/p>\n

How the Illusion of Free Government Programs Persists<\/h3>\n

Thus, most voters spiral even deeper into socialism as their personal debt and percentage of national debt increase due to interest payments. The delayed payments and penalties convince everyone that somehow the government program is free.<\/p>\n

As Friedberg says<\/strong>, \u201cAnd that is the situation America finds itself in today. This happens every time countries embrace socialism to get out of the debt cycle. More government is not the answer. Less government is. If you look at the (primary) results, Mamdani won 61 percent of the vote. Young, college-educated, white people elected this guy. And that is the beginning of a wave that will sweep over American cities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wages, Wealth Flight, and the Collapse of Public Education Reform<\/h2>\n

Calacanis added<\/strong>, \u201cIncreases in the cost of college degrees have outpaced the wage growth of entry-level salaries by 10x over the last twenty years. Students can be expected to pay $300,000, $400,000 for those degrees in those major cities. And these people vote for a plan that will not work. Two-thirds of the tax base in New York is paid for by the top 10 percent and they are moving.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or as Margaret Thatcher said,<\/p>\n

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Institutional Failure of Higher Education<\/h2>\n

President Trump\u2019s AI and crypto guru and All In Podcast co-host, David Sacks<\/strong>, joined in the conversation. He lamented, \u201cEvery generation needs to learn this lesson for themselves because they don\u2019t study history. They don\u2019t see that socialism always fails wherever it\u2019s tried. San Francisco went through this. LA is in the midst of going through it. And New York is about to learn this for themselves.<\/p>\n

So it just seems like every generation has to learn this lesson. There\u2019s no way to teach them. I do agree with Friedburg that a big underlying root cause here is the student debt. It\u2019s the fact that these kids have negative capital. They graduate from college with worthless degrees and massive amounts of debt. That debt was not used to make their education better. Universities have been using the spiraling tuition to fund massive amounts of bureaucracy, for DEI and Woke, and all sorts of stuff like that.<\/p>\n

These kids have no prospect of getting out of debt or being able to buy a home. They just have no skin in the game. This is part of why they\u2019re turning against capitalism. It\u2019s ironic that a problem that the government is causing is going to lead to socialism, which is going to lead to maximum government. Which will then create the next spiral of problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hidden Costs of Government-Funded Education<\/h2>\n

I disagree with Sacks that it is ironic. To me, it\u2019s the natural consequence of government intervention. Public K-12 education is inherently Marxist. Teachers cannot espouse the free market when their salaries come from redistributed income. Students cannot learn consequences when schooling is mandated, and any hoodlum can disrupt the student body.<\/p>\n

Instead of our K-12 students and their parents leaving with debt, the government hides the payments in our $37 trillion debt.\u00a0 Hiding the cost through debt doesn\u2019t mean public school is free. It does mean your grandchildren will have to pay for the debt.<\/p>\n

Government-Funded Education Has No Incentive to Improve<\/h3>\n

Like Friedberg said<\/strong>, \u201cThey have no skin in the game. (Tax-funded institutions) have absolutely no incentive to keep prices down and create a competitive or economic incentive for making sure that their degrees work.\u201d<\/p>\n

History teaches us that before the 1970s, adults could be fully employed after high school. All the problems with college have already occurred in high school and have been ignored by politicians.<\/p>\n

People erroneously believe that K-12 and higher education will go away without other people paying their bills.<\/p>\n

A Free Market Solution to the Education Crisis<\/h2>\n

According to Friedberg<\/strong>, \u201cThe federal student loan program needs to go away. People might say, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s awful. You\u2019re taking away education.\u2019 What will happen is that the capital markets will flood to fill that hole. At the college level, private banks and lenders will show up and underwrite student loans.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll underwrite it by saying good colleges get the loans and bad colleges don\u2019t. Good degrees get the loans, bad degrees don\u2019t. And people who are expected to pay back the loans will now get loans. And all of the rest of the money that\u2019s caused everyone to end up in this debt spiral will stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same is true with K-12 education. Entrepreneurs, non-profit organizations, churches, neighbors, and families will flood the free market with options. And unlike the belief of those promoting vouchers, ESAs, and educational tax credits, we know the free market isn\u2019t where education is free. It\u2019s where people are free to make bad and good decisions and pay for the consequences of those decisions.<\/p>\n

Bipartisan Drift Toward Socialism in Education<\/h2>\n

Not just Democrats embrace the socialist agenda, which is clearly going to win the youth vote for them. The podcasters nodded in agreement as Friedberg said<\/strong>, \u201cAt a negative 70 rating, they have woken up to the fact that they can\u2019t have nothing that they stand for. They now have something to stand for, which is these principles of socialism, which they call justice, equity, fairness, redistribution of capital, and all these other features that were kind of wrung out at the Mamdani campaign and everyone embraced and ran to.<\/p>\n

The Democratic leadership perked up like a bunch of prairie dogs popping out of the ground. This is now going to be the way the Democrats are going to win. Great. Let\u2019s do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Has anyone noticed how Republican governors and red state legislators are bribing parents with universal basic income in the form of vouchers and private school funding?\u00a0 These payment schemes do the same damage to private schools and home schools that they have done to colleges.<\/p>\n

Parents need market pricing to know where to go for quality education. Anything else is deception.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Radical Self-Reliance and Educational Reform<\/h2>\n

Jason Calacanis suggests<\/strong> there is actually a path out of this mess, which is telling the truth to young people, saying, \u201cYour college degree is not going to get you an amazingly high-paying job. What will get you an amazingly high-paying job is excellence, learning skills, and having radical self-reliance.<\/p>\n

Being reliant on the state, being reliant on the government, is a path to nowhere. It\u2019s a path to pain and suffering. Does anybody have any sense of the arc of history? Mamdani wants to create bread lines and literally have the state provide you with food at promised discounts.\u201d<\/p>\n

He urges voters to turn to<\/p>\n

radical self-reliance and your ability to create your own opportunities and not get suckered into this debt spiral.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Government Schools: Breadlines for the Mind<\/h3>\n

I happen to value my children\u2019s brains as well as their stomachs. Government schools are a form of breadlines for the mind. In the 1920s, state legislators made some form of government indoctrination compulsory, introducing all of us to universal basic income.<\/p>\n

The Socialist Playbook: Not New, But Still Effective<\/h2>\n

The fourth All In co-host, Chamath Palihapitiya<\/strong>, reminded the listeners that there is nothing new under the sun.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what\u2019s happened is that Zoran Mamdani is very smart and is running a playbook to win, like all politicians do, based on a formula that has been winning in large cities for the past decade. And so I don\u2019t know if he really believes in this rhetoric or not, but it\u2019s worth noting that most of his platform is copied and pasted from London and Chicago.<\/p>\n

The things that Mamdani\u2019s talked about, universal basic free meals, affordable housing, freezing the cost of transportation, and public grocery stores, all three of you are reacting like these things were pulled out of thin air. They\u2019re not.<\/strong> These were the public platforms of the mayors who won in London, Vienna, Havana, and Chicago. And I think that the political men and the money people who want to be in control know how to run candidates on platforms that can win.<\/p>\n

This is a clear winning strategy in major left-leaning metropolitan centers. This platform is not new. I\u2019ve seen it for the last decade. I think you\u2019re going to see it for the next few decades. It doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

What Will It Take to Reverse Course?<\/h3>\n

Friedberg asked<\/strong>, \u201cWhat\u2019s the reversal? Do you think the reversal is that everyone has some experience with crime? Is the reversal that the city is bankrupt? Is the reversal that your house is burned down, and no one comes because unemployment hits the firefighter?\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll answer. We have schools full of crime and wokeism but empty of reading, writing, and arithmetic, yet parents still think it’s a good idea to send children to government institutions. And remember, if taxes are paid for your child\u2019s school, even if it has a private founder or a government charter, it is still a government institution.<\/p>\n

When something is perceived as free, people will ignore poor quality and consequences forever.\u00a0 Even though COVID has revealed how restricted and controlled we really are, financial incentives still hold the greater attraction.<\/p>\n

Nature, Jurisdiction, and the Family\u2019s Role<\/h2>\n

No government policy\u2014no matter how well-intended\u2014can succeed if it violates the laws of Nature and Nature\u2019s God.<\/p>\n

Effective solutions must respect:<\/p>\n