Avi Aharon

The mission of the education-inspiring Israeli is threefold: forgetting everything he was taught in the government mandatory education system, pay for the tuition on top of the taxes paid for funding – among other things – a huge government system and put whatever left on the not too many private schools and universities available in Israel.
The common objection of the government mandated education system is that the government is not permitted to tell someone how to educate their kids, nor to take their money for this purpose (I apologize for putting ‘government’ and “purpose’ in the same sentence).
This objection is thorough and complete. It calls not for the privatization of the government education system, but for its abolition.
Privatization won’t benefit me. I don’t want to be handed with the school that I am currently paying for. I don’t want to be forced to make education my business, as I would like to put my efforts on my kid, not on yours.
Now, I know that not all Israeli schools are equally bad. One of the ways to ensure proper education for your kids is to move to a rural town that is already known for its good schools. Rural towns are relatively small, so the parents can easily get a hold on what is going on in schools. I have to say that I am very pleased with the kindergarten Amir attends to. Nevertheless, I was forced to send him there and I wish this was not the case.
The costs of education, we are told, are the same with private education as well as the government-owned (NIS800-1000 for half-day, NIS2000 and up for a full day). The budget of the ministry of education is NIS-Billion-25, which is divided onto 2.5 million kids, hence NIS10K per kid per years. This money is taken from my income tax, on top of the direct payment made to the kindergarten. Hence, I pay twice the cost for my kid’s tuition.
The objectivist abolition of government education system will reduce my costs by half. I don’t even mention the years that I did pay taxes but had no kids.
The main problem with government-mandated education is not the money I spend, though. The bigger problem is that the system itself is of a very low quality. It teaches very little and educate for brutality and violent behavior. The schools are too big, with too little personnel. The studies are dull and the kids, being kids, are turning the boredom into playful, however purposeless behavior. The school finds itself responding to insubordination and violence. In the past decades – at least ever since I went to school – the education system has monotonously deteriorated.
If you want your kid to be able to study computer science, you have to teach him all the math he needs by yourself. This is an easy task, though; as it is not that difficult to surpass the math level being taught at school.
So your kid might evade the violence and purposeless of school life. What about the others? What about the other kids that don’t have parents such as yourself?
The answer, I’m afraid, is that they are doomed. The are doomed to violent, purposeless life. These are the kids that took a rifle and shot at a school bus in Rosh Haayin earlier this year (and killed two kids). These are the thousands of kids that are growing to be adults that don’t make a living without the help of the state. They are doomed to live on welfare and breed the next generation of voters that favor big government. Ooops, maybe I am onto something here.
The government education system has to be abolished altogether. This system’s budget has to return to the taxpayer. Let us chose how to educate our kids and fund this education on our own.

The 21st century can be the Israeli century.
They say that Israel is going places.
Indeed, there are opportunities all over. It turns that the last failing wars Israel waged (Lebanon 2006, Gaza 2008) had done more harm to its enemies than to Israel itself; The global economic crisis lasts for over a year now; Europe is getting older and is expected to lose influence; Russia is virtually disappearing. All of these cases bring opportunities to the entire free world.
For Israel, it means an opportunity to get rid of the Palestinian Authority and fix a 17 years old problem; An opportunity to get rid of Hezbollah and fix a 28 years old problem; How about getting rid of Iran? This will bring the Middle East to where it was in 1916 (when France and Britain dissected the soon-to-fall Ottoman Empire and invented Muslim nationalism).
Israel has an opportunity to enjoy a chance of a life time and actually become a superpower. Not just military (although an Arab-less Middle East is a tempting option). Let’s take a look at a non-military example: the world is looking for a new stable currency. It’s hard to believe that there is a currency that can replace the Dollar. However, how about replacing the Euro? A decade from today, aging Europe will be run by Muslims. How long will this hold? How about providing the world with a solid currency that beats the Dollar for over a decade (for the Israeli reader: I purposely don’t take into account the 1990s and Commissioner Frankel).
An Arab-free Middle East; a currency that is second only to the Dollar.
It can’t be too bad.
But, who is this state of Israel that will soon be blessed with all that?
In the next articles I’m going to show that Israel has a very long way to walk before it deserve to pick such a prize. The problem of Israel is threefold:

• Compulsory military service that caused Israel to lose each and every war in the past four decades
• Enormous tax burden that drives Israeli talent and money out
• Compulsory educational system that generates and increasingly violent and dumb population

Now, freedom to the individual goes well with prosperity, purpose, happiness and success. It is not that the Israelis doesn’t know that. It’s that they chose otherwise and don’t know how to revert to the right values.
If Israel desires to make the 21st century the Israeli century, it has a long way to walk and it’s about time to make the first step.

In the next articles:

1. How to eliminate the military service?
2. How to eliminate government-owned education?
3. How to get rid of taxes?
4. Other Objectivist values to keep in mind

I’m using the decline of gloabal warming theories to kick-start the translation of my Metaphysics of Purpose into English. I know that it is “unobjectivist” to hold this metaphysics for four years. I have a bunch of excuses to share (I had four years to develop them

I’m starting in the middle. That’s foundational apporach to philosophy for you. I’ll fill in the gaps later on.

The theorem of collectivist science (link to my hebrew blog) says:

A science that calls for a collectivist conclutions is wrong.

As you can see on the image, Metaphysics of Purpose starts with axioms (to be discussed later on, here’s something to taste), from which I prove:

The theorem of foundation

Man has the capability to know all there is to know, to set his purpose in life and to achieve it, all by himself. Epistemology starts here and is not axiomatic but based on solid ground.
(this part is not proved, of course, in this post.)

The theorem of philosophy

All philosophical questions are of the form of “what so I want” and ‘how do I achieve it”. They are not in the form of “I don’t know what I want” or “I have no idea of how to get what I want”.

Next, A “no can do” approach is always wrong.

Scientific theories like “we need to revert to the middle ages in order to stop glabal warming”, or “we can win terror” are always wrong. We identify they’re by phrases like “we need to revert to the middle ages” as accurately as we prove they’re wrong by revieling the fact the they deliver fault temperature measurements. 

A ‘no can do’ argument contradicts the theorem that says that reality is ours to conquer. In addition to state something that is wrong (that reality is not for man to conquer), this argument insults man, as it takes the form of “in order to handle reality, you have to sacrifice”. In the case of the collectivist political science of ‘we can’t win terror” what needs to be sacrificed is your life. Ask the kids who live in Shderot; ask the US soldiers in Iraq.

The call for a collectivist action (”let’s pay more taxes” in the science of “we can’t eliminate misery”) is – in itself – a mark for a wrong science. We knew the global warming is wrong way before we discovered that fraudulent scientists cooked the numbers.

I planned to explain why this post is written differently than the hebrew source. Let’s just say the older post was a draft. Philosophy doesn’t change, but my ability to capture it clearly does

More to come.