Yesterday President Obama hosted the first ever online town hall, where questions were submitted online, and voted on, by citizens across the nation.  I commend the President for attempting to bring modern technology into his government.  Sadly, he faced none of my piercing questions.  But here they are for you:

1. “Why do you believe that you can allocate resources in a manner that is not prohibitively wasteful when no government in the history of the world has ever been able to successfully do so? What makes your technocrats better informed than free markets?”

2. “How does an energy tax not equal a tax on middle and lower income earners? Do you think we don’t use any energy? It’s money out of our pocket just the same as an income tax increase.”

3. “How do you justify prosecuting Madoff for running a pyramid scheme while the federal government continues to force us into one (Social Security) at the point of a gun? At least Madoff’s was voluntary!”

They were particularly hostile to my swipe at their beloved Social Security, voting question 3 down at a 2:1 ratio.  Question 1 did surprisingly well at almost a 1:1 ratio, garnering 19 positives for 23 negatives.

As for the substance of the event, it was as disappointing as one would expect from President Obama.  The first question Obama took was on education, and his answer was dreadful.  He identified two problems with education: lack of resources and a 19th century education model.

On the first problem, he says that there “aren’t enough teachers,” that they “aren’t getting enough of the training they need,” and that there’s a “shortage of supplies.”  He adds, “There are schools that I’ve seen that were built in the 1850 that are still being used but haven’t been upgraded the way they need to.”  He uses all this as evidence that there aren’t enough resources.  But this does not follow.  He refers to the second problem as “one that money alone cannot solve,” giving the impression that he thinks the first problem can be solved by money alone.  But if that were true, the problem would have been solved already.  Spending on education has continuously risen, while the problems described by the president have not gotten any better.

The problem is not lack of resources, but how those resources are allocated.  Specifically, the government run system lacks accountability and has little incentive to spend money improving education instead of padding administrative salaries.  The only way to solve this problem of allocation is to move to a market model, where competition will reduce inefficiencies and spur innovation.

On the second problem Obama similarly misses the mark.  Yes, our system is outdated.  Yes, we still have time off during the summer, despite the fact that most students aren’t going home to help with the harvest anymore.  But what is the reason?  The reason we have a 19th century model still operating in the 21st century is because a government run system is necessarily going to be unwieldy and unresponsive to changing circumstances.  Until we break the government monopoly on education, we will continue to toil in educational backwardness.

I noticed from the online voting that the most popular questions all had to do with marijuana legalization.  Obama did not ignore these questions.

THE PRESIDENT: Three point five million people voted. I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy — (laughter) — and job creation. And I don’t know what this says about the online audience — (laughter) — but I just want — I don’t want people to think that — this was a fairly popular question; we want to make sure that it was answered. The answer is, no, I don’t think that is a good strategy — (laughter) — to grow our economy. (Applause.)

So — all right.

He did, however, dismiss them without satisfactory answer.  Treating this issue as nothing more than a question of economic recovery, he ignored the larger dissatisfaction with the failed drug war and its consequences.

Most of the other questions were stupid, but you can read the rest of them here.