My own daycare story

(Note: The news of the mass murder at the daycare in Thailand came just after I typed out this story from my past. After I scheduled this to post, I went on Twitsite and saw the terrible news. Then I came back and changed the title of this post to avoid confusion. It was just one of those odd coincidences.)

Back when my son and older daughter were little, we put them in daycare so we could both work. It was barely worth the cost since my job paid only slightly more than we spent on daycare. But we thought it was the responsible thing to do-- what we should be doing so we could both have a job. (I did things differently this time around, which is why I depend on your subscriptions and donations.)

Then the daycare announced it had been purchased by the daycare that operated in the local college.

We got the official letter a few days later and saw that the price had doubled. We immediately pulled our kids out and decided they would go to work with me and I'd babysit them at the pet store-- there was space where this was doable-- if not wonderfully, at least workably.

It turns out that almost everyone else did the same. Or maybe it was unanimous. Suddenly the purchaser didn't want to buy a daycare without any customers and they backed out of the sale. (Not sure what they thought would happen when they doubled the price-- to me it seemed obvious.) 

The daycare owners called and begged us to reconsider and keep our kids in the daycare, but it just wasn't possible under the circumstances. We would have been losing money fast.

I guess a few parents were convinced to leave their kids in after the sale fell through, because a few weeks later...

A little kid left the daycare and walked several blocks to the elementary school to find his (or her) older sibling. The daycare hadn't noticed the kid was missing until someone at the school called. The daycare ended up just shutting down for good at the end of the day. They lost interest and just didn't seem to care anymore after the sale fell through.

Just imagine if that daycare had operated like government. We wouldn't have had the option of not doing business with them, no matter how harmful it was to us or our children. We would have been forced to pay whatever they demanded, even if we decided to take care of our kids ourselves (if that option was even allowed). If the service was poor or dangerous, it would have just been too bad. Deal with it or have your life destroyed. "That's the price of living in a civilized society", you know.

This is why-- no matter how bad a private business is-- it is still better than a coercive government "service".

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