I'm happy to pay taxes for a public education system that works. Unfortunately, what we have today is a system encumbered by too many administrators, hampered by unfunded mandates, exploited by public unions, and micromanaged from every level from (superfluous) department heads to district administration to state legislators to the federal government.

From 2010-2019, the number of administrators in public schools nearly doubled, while the number of students and teachers only went up by ~8%. Those administrators generally cost a whole lot more than classroom teachers. To justify their salaries (and their staff), they are always chasing the latest fads in public education, whether it's "social emotional learning," Chromebooks, "student support time," AVID, teaching kids to "analyze texts", abandoning math facts and phonics, or "diversity/equity/inclusion" programs, each at tremendous expense both in dollars and disruption. The amount of inefficiency and waste is staggering.

And that's just on the local level. State and federal mandates, or "money with strings attached," adds tremendously to the cost, while burdening the actual teaching. What have we got in return for these enormous costs? Just about nothing. Part of the problem is that, since it's a government program, all the political incentives are front-loaded, and there's little incentive to review what has been done, and to weed out what isn't working. NCLB didn't move the needle. Neither did ESSA. Common Core was a disaster, and Race to the Top didn't help, either. More standardized tests, and linking funds to test scores, only provided perverse incentives. But we are still operating under the burdens they imposed.

There appears to be an implicit assumption in your post that public school is the only way for kids to develop a sense of civic engagement, social skills, new friendships, independence, meeting people from all social strata.

Certainly, a public school *can* be such an environment. However, over the past few decades, I've watched public schools (at least in the US) devolve into an environment where independence is quashed, left-leaning (or outright far-left) values are taught as doctrine, and students are given little time to actually socialize in meaningful ways, all while teachers' administrative burden (and our taxes to support it) continues to rise and core academic rigor is neglected.

I'd like to offer a counterpoint. The whole "socialization" argument is one of those urban myths that has long outlived any relationship with reality. In our local elementary school, the kids get a single recess per day. When they arrive for school in the morning, they are expected to sit silently in the hallway outside their classroom until the teacher lets them in. Their lunch period is so short that there's barely enough time to down their lunch, let alone talk with their peers.

My kids are homeschooled, but have one foot in the public school world for electives. As a result, we get to observe both sides, and what we see is a dramatic difference in social skills. For example, two weeks ago, at a birthday party, about half the attendees were homeschooled, and the other half were public schooled. The homeschooled kids were generally engaged, respectful, and having a great time. The public school kids? They could hardly utter a full sentence without someone blurting out "6-7!" and were actively trying to disrupt and ruin the party for everyone else, including the birthday kid. Individually, kids from either side can be great. In a group setting, however? I'll take the homeschoolers every time. They've escaped the herd mentality that a public school system engenders.

Because of the time efficiency of homeschooling, my kids have plenty of time for extracurriculars, free time, and part-time work. When it comes to "socialization," (however you define it), that part-time job, working around adults, provides tremendously greater value than being surrounded by 2,500 other hormonal, brains-not-yet-fully-developed teenagers who are trying to define themselves and understand how they fit in the world.

If I may offer a modification to your statement, it would be that car infotainment systems age poorly. Not the cars themselves. I currently own three examples that have aged quite well. All are near or over 20 years old. New enough to have OBD-2 and great reliability and repairability, old enough to be focused on real utility and avoid the invasion of useless (or worse) tech and complication. No $700 LED tail lights or $1500 mirrors with cameras, or everything-is-a-module-connected-to-the-canbus. Now get off my lawn! :)

Our company is one of those small businesses. Someone purchased several HP printers with the 'e' suffix before we (or really, *I*, since I'm the IT department) realized how awful HP's practices are. I know now that HP has multiple lines and that some of them don't require an internet connection, but it's too late. HP is now on our "do not buy from" list.

If your browser is using HTTPS (which is the default nowadays), your ISP can see that you've connected to a particular server, and may also know what domain you're visiting. However, the rest of the request, including everything after the https://domain/, is encrypted.

I've tried several times to make the hop to Linux, each time running into one showstopping issue or another. About a year ago, however, when I got a new-to-me laptop, I decided to give it another shot. I installed Ubuntu Mate, and when it booted to the desktop the first time, it just ....worked. No driver downloads needed, minimal-to-no bloat and spyware. Just a desktop ready to go.

It really took me aback. I kept expecting to run into some sort of wall, but never did.

So you might give it a shot.

That's the thing. For the most part, Windows 7 just gets out of your way and lets you do stuff. Windows 10 seems to go out of its way to make life harder for you. And what makes it worse, is that Win10 tries to make life easier for you, but in the process makes things worse.

For example: Printers. They worked fantastic in Windows 7. You could install drivers from Windows Update if you wanted. Or, you could manually install drivers, if WU didn't happen to have what you needed. Not so in Win10. Just two days ago, I spent a couple of hours trying to fix a printer driver issue in Win10. I even downloaded the drivers from the manufacturer, but Windows wouldn't let me install them, insisting that its own drivers (which were the ones causing the problem!) were the most up-to-date, and therefore the only acceptable ones.

What solution did I end up with? I replaced the machine with another, running Windows 7. It took me all of 5 minutes to get the proper drivers installed and working.

They're not stacking silicon wafers on top of each other. Rather, they're putting more layers of oxide, semiconductor, etc onto each wafer in order to produce the 3d stacking. Yes, it's more complex. But it's a pretty mature technology.

"noise during takeoffs and landings"? I've been on plenty of airplane flights, from a Cessna up to a 747, and on none of them have I ever noticed noise from flaps. I don't get the whole fuel-savings bit, either. That's kinda the point of flaps--increase lift at lower speeds, with a corresponding increase in drag. When you're landing, your engines are running at reduced power anyway, and when you're taking off, the flaps don't stay extended for very long--just the first few minutes of flight. Now, if you told me they were making wings that could alter the thickness of the airfoil or the length of the wing in-flight, I'd be interested.

Do you have any idea how much money you could be saving by doing your own maintenance? Your local auto parts store has frequent sales on oil and filters for $25 for a set. Changing the oil takes a whopping 10 minutes. And unless you're driving 20k miles per year, you certainly don't need to be changing the oil every 3 months. A brake fluid flush *might* take you a couple of hours but requires no special tools (a combination wrench set, a short piece of hose, a jar, and a jack and your lug wrench is all you need). The AC "service" was probably just a matter of topping off the coolant (another 10 minute job). A transmission fluid/filter change is slightly more expensive and time-consuming, but again, no more than an hour.

Um, 2 miles can NOT be leisurely walked in 15 minutes. That's a 7:30 mile pace, which is a pretty decent running pace, depending on what kind of shape you're in.

Make it 30 minutes, and you're about right.

Good point. There's also the issue of "how do I get credits in the first place?" or, "I don't own a car but still want to participate!" The obvious way would be for people to buy "miles", but that makes it even easier for the city governments to argue that it's still the same service.

I think there's a false assumption here--that separating students into different schools based on academic performance is a Bad Thing. On the contrary, such segregation would enable the schools to tailor their teaching to the needs of their respective students. So the higher-performing students aren't held back due to a lower-performing student, and the lower-performing students don't feel lost because the teacher has to trying to teach an arbitrary curriculum at an arbitrary speed.

There is one thing, however, which I don't know how we can fix, at least not from a legislative or policy standpoint, and that is the lack of parental participation.

While I agree with some of your points, I'll take issue with this statement. In my opinion, the lack of parental participation and school/legislative policy have degenerated in a vicious cycle. Schools try to do more to help kids, while discouraging/preventing parental influence on school policy. As a result, parents are less involved, which leads the school to do more, etc.

As for "day long day care" - so true. Look no further than the push for 4k and Head Start, which have repeatedly and consistently failed to produce lasting benefits, while costing taxpayers *billions*. There's no educational justification for it.