1. My father was 5'3"

2. Insofar as there was a moral element to the NYT piece it was the idea that the company executives were stealing from the stockholders, using the stockholders' money to, at best, promote causes the executives favored, at worst buying status for themselves. Consider opera donations.

If the company maximized profits instead the extra money goes to the stockholders who can spend it on what they think are good causes. If the stockholders want someone else to spend their money for good causes they can donate it to a suitable nonprofit.

The economic argument is that the market does a better, although imperfect, job of maximizing welfare than a central planner, and the executive spending the stockholders' money on what he thinks is good is a small scale equivalent of the latter.

3. "They largely rely on statistics from Massachusetts."

Take a look at E.G. West: _Education and the Industrial Revolution_.

4. Private schools might be as propagandist as public schools but they are not all pushing the same ideas. Intellectual diversity is a virtue. A lot of the hostility to home schooling is fueled by the idea that it consists of fundamentalist parents who don't want their kids taught evolution.

If you want to correspond I am at ddfr@daviddfriedman.com