John Stossel on Government, Free Enterprise, and Media

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/04/12/e... | John Stossel's skepticism of government and his storytelling approach about free-market economics have made him a rock star in conservative and libertarian circles.

He spoke at The Heritage Foundation on Wednesday about his new book, "No, They Can't: Why Government Fails—But Individuals Succeed." It is Stossel's latest attempt to debunk the myths that government can solve America's problems. He tackles everything from crony capitalism and federal regulations to teachers' unions and gun control.

• Category

  News & Politics

[thopkins22]

I applaud Heritage for getting a libertarian on!

[HeritageFoundation]

Thanks for watching!

[freesk8]

Stossel is a libertarian hero! Free minds and free markets!

And he is right, arguments about the practical effects of policies tend to work better than moral arguments for free markets. Why? The big govt/socialist/progressive types don't share our individualist moral foundations. They are collectivists. But if you can show them that their big govt programs don't make the poor better off, and that free markets do, you might get somewhere with some of them who may be sincere.

[ERICBOWE1]

stossel the man

[puppetsock]

Dear Fox News. Please pay John Stossel more. Give him more air time. Increase his department budget and let him decide how to spend the money. And, above all, give him more freedom in how he presents his shows and what he covers.

Please? He's saying stuff that enhances my life.

[bza069]

pretty kick ass interviewer ...clear questions and then lets him talk freely.

[SaulOhio]

Stossel explains very well why it is easy for the big government liberals to get their message across: "Shallow wins".

[halloranedward]

Ron paul is not a real candidate or a real capitalist. he is only there to divide the conservatives who want The republican party to go back to supporting capitalism. Read his "big flyer" right after he claims to want to abolish subsidies(something real capitalist have wanted for decades) he list all the subsidies he would propose. Why would anyone say the delusional things he said about orthodox Islam ? WE NEED A CAPITALIST PARTY .

[C Warren]

We do have an opportunity and his name is Ron Paul. How? Contact your state delegates and start pleading Ron Paul's cause. The reublican nomination starts  Aug 27th and Dr. Paul's name will be up for nomination along with Romney's!

-peace-

[halloranedward]

The problem we have is that we have no opportunity to vote for going back to being a free country again. All of the republicans give lip service to the free market, but than vote for more subsidies, tariffs, market orders,tax credits, etc. socialism is when the govt. determines the price and distribution of commodities, capitalism is when the govt. doesn't determine the price and distribution of commodities. A tax reduction is just socialism with temporarily lower taxes, it is not capitalism.

[Berelore]

neither type of argument is inherently better than the other it's all on the person presented with the argument. From my experience, speaking with several people on the left and right, moral arguments work well on some hard numbers with graphs on the others.  However, it's in the combination of both these arguments that you make real progress.

[AlexMoores]

This violates two universal moral principles: property rights and the non-aggression principle. Therefore we can prove that state welfare is immoral. Now we can also make a pragmatic argument - that welfare programmes do not eliminate poverty, in fact they often perpetuate it. We have both moral and pragmatic arguments to make on every issue. Both are important. Don't be so quick to disregard moral arguments because you think liberals have different values. Most of the time they don't.

[AlexMoores]

He didn't actually say that, he just said that he's personally better at making arguments from pragmatism. Also, very few liberals/progressives are Marxists or true collectivists. They're usually concerned about similar things to us. Caring about the poor is surely a moral stance that we share with progressives, however our moral argument is that government welfare programmes are immoral because they steal wealth from some individuals to give it to others.