For many parents, the desire for public education reform is growing—especially as socialism gains popularity among younger voters and federal funding fuels both debt and bureaucracy. The promises of “free” education often come at the cost of accountability, quality, and personal responsibility.
Leigh Bortins, founder of Classical Conversations, has spent decades helping families understand how government intervention in education not only fails to solve the problem—but actually makes it worse. In this article, she unpacks the relationship between public funding, student debt, and the rise of socialist ideologies—and how it all stems from removing education from its proper jurisdictions: family, church, and local communities.
If you’re confused by the complexity of government spending or wondering why things feel out of control, you’re in the right place. Let’s learn practical advice for families to make wise decisions for their educational journey.
The All-In Podcast on Education, Economics, and Politics
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 on June 28, 2025. If you are unfamiliar with All In’s cohosts, just know that they are friends and investors with Elon Musk.
The four famous co-hosts were discussing the natural growth of socialism that comes from unrestricted access to other people’s capital in any situation. When someone else’s 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. This develops customers with unrealistic expectations, the inability to delay gratification, and diminished integrity. They learn to want something for nothing.
The Rise of Zoran Mamdani and Urban Socialist Politics
The podcasters discussed, “How does a devoted socialist become the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City?” 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.
Viral Moments and Millennial Endorsements
Jason Calacanis, venture capitalist and host of the All-In Podcast, described Mamdani’s election at minute 39:58, with “Obviously, a bunch of viral moments. He’s 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.
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’t want a Democratic socialist, who’s got some really unique and colorful history, to become the mayor of one of the greatest cities in the world.
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.”
Economic Roots of Socialism and Student Debt
David Friedberg, his podcast co-host, venture capitalist, and scientist, provided a thoughtful analysis on why Mamdani’s election is the natural consequence of government intervention in the free market. Jason asked, “Friedberg, 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?”
Debt, Deficit, and the Cycle of Socialism
David Friedberg explains, “For me, it feels like actually a little bit of a beginning of a wave that’s going to continue to sweep over this country starting in cities. And I think that we’re at the very early stages. I think we’ll look back pretty soon and jokingly say that Kamala Harris looks like a conservative candidate.
I do think that this is a broad kind of reaction to the economic condition of the United States. And I’ve talked to a lot of people who don’t quite recognize how important the debt and the deficit is with respect to how it’s ultimately going to lead to socialism as it has every single time in history when you’ve had a free voting democracy, a representative democracy, that becomes encumbered with too much debt.”
Federal Funding for Education and the Ballooning of Student Loans
Friedberg continued to describe funding college as an example of what is going on in American economics and politics, 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.
How Student Loan Debt Reshapes Cities
David continued, “There 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’ve 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.
Where do these 32 million young people live? They live in cities. They don’t 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.
What we’re seeing in major cities is a massive political shift. People call it left, but it’s actually quite different than just being more traditionally left. It’s 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.
Broken Promises and Inflated Education Costs
And what we did is we increased the government’s 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.
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.”
The Welfare State: A Path Chosen in the Voting Booth
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.
Ignoring the Cost of Government Services
When a politician describes more free services, the average person doesn’t heed Rush Limbaugh and follow the money. It’s 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.
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. When the capital falls short, the Federal Reserve just prints more.
Debt and Decline: How Socialism Spirals from Education
Debt ultimately devours its own citizens’ 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.
How the Illusion of Free Government Programs Persists
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.
As Friedberg says, “And 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.”
Wages, Wealth Flight, and the Collapse of Public Education Reform
Calacanis added, “Increases 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.”
Or as Margaret Thatcher said,
The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.
The Institutional Failure of Higher Education
President Trump’s AI and crypto guru and All In Podcast co-host, David Sacks, joined in the conversation. He lamented, “Every generation needs to learn this lesson for themselves because they don’t study history. They don’t see that socialism always fails wherever it’s 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.
So it just seems like every generation has to learn this lesson. There’s no way to teach them. I do agree with Friedburg that a big underlying root cause here is the student debt. It’s 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.
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’re turning against capitalism. It’s 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.”
The Hidden Costs of Government-Funded Education
I disagree with Sacks that it is ironic. To me, it’s 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.
Instead of our K-12 students and their parents leaving with debt, the government hides the payments in our $37 trillion debt. Hiding the cost through debt doesn’t mean public school is free. It does mean your grandchildren will have to pay for the debt.
Government-Funded Education Has No Incentive to Improve
Like Friedberg said, “They 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.”
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.
People erroneously believe that K-12 and higher education will go away without other people paying their bills.
A Free Market Solution to the Education Crisis
According to Friedberg, “The federal student loan program needs to go away. People might say, ‘Oh, that’s awful. You’re taking away education.’ 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.
They’ll underwrite it by saying good colleges get the loans and bad colleges don’t. Good degrees get the loans, bad degrees don’t. And people who are expected to pay back the loans will now get loans. And all of the rest of the money that’s caused everyone to end up in this debt spiral will stop.”
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’t where education is free. It’s where people are free to make bad and good decisions and pay for the consequences of those decisions.
Bipartisan Drift Toward Socialism in Education
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, “At a negative 70 rating, they have woken up to the fact that they can’t 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.
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’s do it.”
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? These payment schemes do the same damage to private schools and home schools that they have done to colleges.
Parents need market pricing to know where to go for quality education. Anything else is deception.
Radical Self-Reliance and Educational Reform
Jason Calacanis suggests there is actually a path out of this mess, which is telling the truth to young people, saying, “Your 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.
Being reliant on the state, being reliant on the government, is a path to nowhere. It’s 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.”
He urges voters to turn to
radical self-reliance and your ability to create your own opportunities and not get suckered into this debt spiral.
Government Schools: Breadlines for the Mind
I happen to value my children’s 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.
The Socialist Playbook: Not New, But Still Effective
The fourth All In co-host, Chamath Palihapitiya, reminded the listeners that there is nothing new under the sun.
“I think what’s 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’t know if he really believes in this rhetoric or not, but it’s worth noting that most of his platform is copied and pasted from London and Chicago.
The things that Mamdani’s 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’re not. 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.
This is a clear winning strategy in major left-leaning metropolitan centers. This platform is not new. I’ve seen it for the last decade. I think you’re going to see it for the next few decades. It doesn’t work.
What Will It Take to Reverse Course?
Friedberg asked, “What’s 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?”
I’ll 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’s school, even if it has a private founder or a government charter, it is still a government institution.
When something is perceived as free, people will ignore poor quality and consequences forever. Even though COVID has revealed how restricted and controlled we really are, financial incentives still hold the greater attraction.
Nature, Jurisdiction, and the Family’s Role
No government policy—no matter how well-intended—can succeed if it violates the laws of Nature and Nature’s God.
Effective solutions must respect:
- Proper jurisdiction — The right authority must act.
- Precise tactics — Action must be targeted and appropriate.
- Human nature — Policies must account for the sinful inclinations of mankind.
A clear example of this was the June 2025 attack on Iran where the US Army, with authority from the Israeli Army (the proper jurisdiction), dropped a few bombs exactly where they needed to go (precise tactics) and immediately left with a plan for negotiations and expectations of potential retaliation (sinful nature). The right authority executed the mission well while preparing for any backlash.
Shifting from foreign policy to the personal realm, the consequences of misapplied authority are even more profound. No civil government institution can do the same job as the family. Nothing is as effective as a father who bears the entire responsibility of his family’s choices.
There’s nothing more damaging than an institution that takes away any of that responsibility. How can a father teach his son the privilege of hard work when the father is selling his children’s education to the lowest bidder?
The Solution: Pay Your Own Bills
We have seen the US Constitution and its glorious checks and balances neutered thanks to the wrong branch of government usurping the responsibilities of other branches. We have seen local jurisdictions, shackled to federal and state grants, ignore the very purpose of our sheriff and police departments. We have seen governors value federal Medicare dollars over the health of their state’s residents.
I agree with the All In Podcasters. As Jason Calacanis said, “Being reliant on the state, being reliant on the government is a path to nowhere. It’s a path to pain and suffering.”
The solution is simple: Pay your own bills. And when you have extra money, ask a neighbor if you can pay theirs.
Recap: Key Takeaways on Public Education Reform and Government Funding
1 Public Education Reform Must Address Market Distortions
- Masks the true cost of K–12 and higher education through taxation and federal subsidies
- Inflates tuition prices without improving quality or outcomes
- Eliminates economic accountability for institutions and families
2 Student Debt Fuels Dependency and Political Shift
- Over $2 trillion in national student loan debt has burdened millions
- Young Americans graduate with negative capital and limited job prospects
- Leads to growing support for socialism and government dependency in urban areas
3 Public Education Undermines Responsibility and Incentives
- Creates entitlement, delays gratification, and erodes work ethic
- Removes consequences from educational decisions, especially in K–12
- Encourages reliance on the state rather than family, church, or local community
4 The Path Forward Requires Radical Reform
- Real reform starts with local jurisdiction, precise action, and moral clarity
- Families and free markets offer better, more accountable solutions
Radical self-reliance, skill development, and personal integrity are essential to restoring education
The Future of Education Belongs to Families
The failures of government-funded education and the burden of student debt are not just political talking points—they’re daily realities for millions of families. True public education reform begins when we restore responsibility to parents, freedom to the marketplace, and integrity to the learning process.
If you’re ready to explore practical alternatives and reclaim your role in your child’s education, we invite you to check out the Education Independence Network. This growing movement advocates for parental autonomy and offers tools, community, and resources to help families thrive outside the government system.
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