A fulcrum is the pivot point of a lever. When one side goes up, the other goes down. Social policy is all about finding the right mix of benefit versus cost, of placing the fulcrum at a point that will get you elected. Moving that fulcrum ahead of its time, or holding back when it wants to move, is no small task, but when properly placed, you can move the world.

Policy evolves from finding the balance between the costs and the benefits of a particular issue. As our culture changes, the values used to place the point of that balance shifts. For example, as the environmental impact of driving increases to unacceptable levels, we are willing to abandon some of the benefits, such as driving alone compared to car-pooling. But what are those unacceptable levels, and who makes that decision?

This is the essence of political debate: The Fulcrum.

How much benefit and how much cost?

Nations define themselves by where they place the pivot point on the issues that it faces. Socialism favors the reduction of indivudual freedoms and opportunities, and an increase in the stability that comes from standardization, centralization, and wealth redistribution.

Democratic nations move the fulcrum toward greater benefits and freedom for the individual along with an increased risk.

There is no absolute right which can define the placement of this policy fulcrum, either between different nations, different cultures, or even within a single nation. It is in a constant state of change.

Understanding the dynamics of the policy fulcrum finally has given me a mechanism to better understand opposition to Libertarian policies.

There is a perception that government-run schools offer a security that is necessary to the health of a nation. The costs of eliminating public schools rise immediately to mind:

• Children might be kept home by irresponsible parents and not educated at all.
• Children might be taught ideas that are different from the norm.
• Poor families might not be able to afford education.

For most people, the benefit of this security wins hands down against the negatives of public schools that arise from central planning, lack of funding, crowded classrooms, drugs, violence, and so on.

Sometimes we are quite willing to put up with even extremely high risks if our freedom is important enough to us. Thousands killed by car accidents is an abstract concept, whereas my car in my garage is immediate and important. When public schools provide a good enough education, the negatives tend to fall into the realm of the abstract. Sure, some schools have drugs and violence, but not my kid's school. What negatives do exist are more likely to be accepted because of the overwhelming benefit of the security that the system is perceived to provide.

For most people, giving up such an integral and positive component of our lives for a few conveniences is unthinkable, and someone (like me) who suggests that everything would be just fine without it must be perceived in that context to be irresponsible, selfish, and unspeakably arrogant.

As with any issue there are two sides. There are benefits to having public education, but there are also costs. There are benefits to having only private schools, but there are costs.

One's beliefs about the public versus private debate will be based on one's experiences with this cost/benefit analysis.

Many people believe that public schools have far more benefits than costs, and so giving that up makes no sense, especially when the see few benefits and high risk of a fully private system.

This will only change when people experience a change in their perception related to the risks and rewards.

The number of deaths by car does not cause people to suggest giving up the freedom of coming and going whenever we want. In other words, flexibility of our schedule is more important than all those deaths. This might seem monsterous to some, but it is quite understandable to most Americans. The reason for this, again, is that whereas our cars are immediate and apparent, highway death tolls are abstract and don't touch us. Even when a family member dies in a car crash, it's hard to imagine forcing everyone to ride the bus.

For whatever reason, the idea of a poor family unable to afford school, or parents unwilling to send their children to school, does affect us personally, even in the abstract.

This is because of two things. First, obviously, is that young children can't make decisions for themselves, and so we all feel a collective paternalism toward them. But there's another factor. We're not excited enough about the rewards of a fully private school system to push the failure of a minority of children into the abstract . In other words, the risks offered by a free market system are beyond what we are willing to bear, even if the risk is only to a small percentage of children we don't even know.

Libertarians are much more comfortable moving the policy fulcrum well toward higher freedom and higher risk because we believe that when people are given both responsibility and authority to decide the course of their lives, that they will join together with others in creative and effective ways to meet that responsibility in ways that will surpass what the government can provide in the form of some universal default.

Speaking for myself, I'm more comfortable with the fulcrum moved to a position of higher freedom and higher risk with respect to education because I believe:

• The number of children put at risk would not be nearly as large as others say it would be.
• The children who are put at risk are put at risk by parents who are supposed to be grown up and responsible for their lives and actions.
• When examples of this irresponsible behavior does arise, it can be better handled on a case by case basis, whether by government or by the community of friends, family, and charities.
• There would be educational opportunities available to poor families.
• A new school system based on parental choice would offer enough benefits to enough people to balance the remaining children of irresponsible people or parents in poverty for whom no other alternative is available.

Further, I believe:

• Public education, because it must attempt to be everything to everyone, and because it is a centrally managed bureaucracy, is not as effective as a system in which parents are paying customers.
• The type of jobs in the next century, and the level of technical capabilities needed for those jobs, will need new teaching technologies that will be difficult to put into place when it must be done institutionally across an entire city or state.
• Public schools have a great ability to abuse their special position and, unlike private sector services which must demonstrate measurable effectiveness, can become entrenched, out-dated, run-down, and and even dangerous with very little accountability.
• Public schools sometimes work against the interests of communities and children by bussing kids away from their neighborhood to achieve some social demographic, and by so often being forced to cut corners, close schools, overcrowd classrooms, and try to get by without proper equipment.
• Voting for school board members does not give parents enough input into the important decisions that affect their own children.

In other words, I see fewer risks and greater benefit from private schools than my non- libertarian friends, and I see less benefit and greater costs in the public schools. I see enough of a disparity between where we are now and were we could be, considering the overall risk and rewards, that I'm comfortable saying that we would be better off with a private system.

It is specifically because I understand the importance of education that I think it's time to start changing how it is done to get ready for whatever the next century is going to bring. Yet, within the perspective of the traditional placement of the policy fulcrum, my desire to provide the best we can for our children is labeled mean-spirited and selfish, while their insistence on forcing children to remain in a rigid and increasingly inadequate system is seen as compassionate and altruistic.

This is one of the hardest parts of these sorts of debates: my reward for attempting to encourage the best in us, our communities, our schools, is to be perceived as some mean, dirty bastard.

What is the price of freedom? Must we never change if changing means even a single child might fall through the cracks? Two children? Thirty? How many children fall through the cracks of public schools? How many graduate high school with a sixth grade reading level? As long as public schools are perceived as good enough, and their shortcomings as endurable, then any attempt to improve upon the situation will be met with intense, self-righteous resistance. Only when people begin to feel a real need in their own lives for a change will there be enough momentum to shift the fulcrum and change the balance.

Maybe Nyssa was right when she said to her father:

"You can't give people their freedom. They either discover that they have it or they don't... Maybe some men want to be controlled. For some, that's good enough because that's all they know or care to know. Maybe some people don't want to own their lives but you're going to force it down their throats... I don't know that's worse, forcing someone to be a slave or forcing him to be free. It's the same thing, really."

I'm pushing against the fulcrum, and maybe this is what makes me such a monster.