The Ben Shapiro Show - John Stossel | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 27

00:00:00.000 Our basic freedom is important and we ought to be left alone.

00:00:04.000 And part of that is freedom to trade with people.

00:00:06.000 And generally, that brings good things. - Hey, hey, and welcome to the Sunday special we have on as our guest this week, John Stossel, You know him from Fox News and Stossel TV and all of his investigative reporting.

00:00:25.000 We're going to get into libertarianism and small government and regulations and all the rest of it in just one second.

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00:01:36.000 All right, John, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:01:37.000 I really appreciate it.

00:01:38.000 Good to be here.

00:01:39.000 So let's start.

00:01:40.000 For people who may not know your background, you started off as a reporter, and now you're seen as both a reporter and sort of a libertarian commentator.

00:01:48.000 How did you come to your political viewpoint, and how did your career progress in this direction?

00:01:54.000 I graduated college, and like a lot of young people, I thought capitalism was okay, it brings us some stuff, but it's cruel and unfair.

00:02:03.000 And I went to every job interview I could, and the longest free trip was to Portland, Oregon, where I ended up in a TV newsroom.

00:02:11.000 I'd never watched TV news.

00:02:13.000 I got my worst grades in English.

00:02:15.000 I was just taking a year off before going to grad school in hospital management.

00:02:19.000 I thought if I worked, I would learn to appreciate school more.

00:02:23.000 The opposite happened.

00:02:24.000 I appreciated work more because you don't feel guilty about not having done all the reading and they pay you.

00:02:30.000 And so I kept working in the newsroom.

00:02:33.000 I never intended to go in the air.

00:02:35.000 I'm a stutterer.

00:02:36.000 But they pushed me, and I eventually overcame the stuttering.

00:02:40.000 And I became, to avoid competing with people like you, who talk fast, I just wanted to cover something that other people weren't covering.

00:02:49.000 So, at the time, all people did was politics, the weather, crime, disasters.

00:02:55.000 That was news.

00:02:57.000 I thought there's consumer issues out there, psychology, medicine, companies ripping people off, I'll do that.

00:03:06.000 And I did that and won 19 Emmy Awards bashing business.

00:03:11.000 But I gradually watched the regulation that I was calling for and often getting.

00:03:15.000 Sometimes politicians would say, that was great, we're going to pass a law and fix that in Oregon.

00:03:20.000 They created a Department of Consumer Affairs.

00:03:22.000 But then I'd go back and do the same story.

00:03:25.000 We'd send a TV set out to 20 repair shops.

00:03:29.000 Eighteen with a loose part.

00:03:31.000 Eighteen would say, oh, loose part, no charge.

00:03:33.000 Two would rip us off.

00:03:35.000 I'd go back and say, would you ever do this?

00:03:37.000 Oh, no.

00:03:38.000 Yeah, well, watch this.

00:03:39.000 Play the videotape.

00:03:41.000 And it was great television bashing business.

00:03:45.000 And then so we do it again.

00:03:46.000 Now there's the Department of Consumer Affairs.

00:03:48.000 The results are the same.

00:03:49.000 Most people are honest.

00:03:51.000 A few cheat.

00:03:52.000 So what's the Department of Consumer Affairs doing?

00:03:55.000 They have a big dreary room with a bunch of dreary people at desks filling out forms.

00:04:01.000 Now you have to get a license to be a team of your impairment.

00:04:04.000 And supposedly that will screen out the bad guys.

00:04:07.000 But it doesn't.

00:04:08.000 It just lets in the ones who are sophisticated enough to know how to get the license.

00:04:13.000 The immigrant maybe works under Beyond the law in the black market, everybody has to pay a few pennies more to pay for the lawyers and consumers no better off. 1.00

00:04:25.000 So I started reading more.

00:04:28.000 I didn't love the conservative press because it looked like your people wanted to police the bedroom and police the rest of the world and I didn't like that.

00:04:39.000 And I discovered Reason Magazine, and that was an epiphany.

00:04:42.000 Oh my God!

00:04:42.000 These people get it better than I do!

00:04:45.000 And I became a libertarian.

00:04:46.000 Let's talk about your brand of libertarianism.

00:04:48.000 So, there are a bunch of different subsets of libertarianism, ranging from Gary Johnson, who's not really a libertarian, to other folks who seem significantly more hands-off when it comes to regulations.

00:05:00.000 For example, what is your view on when regulation is important or necessary?

00:05:05.000 Are there situations where you think regulation is something that needs to happen?

00:05:08.000 Yes.

00:05:09.000 I think the Constitution had part of it right.

00:05:12.000 We need rule of law.

00:05:14.000 The worst places to live is the African country where there's no rule of law and you're afraid to build a factory because your neighbor may just steal what you make or the dictator may take the whole factory. 1.00

00:05:24.000 So we need cops and a national defense, stuff that's in the Constitution.

00:05:30.000 I'd go one further and say we need government for pollution control rules.

00:05:36.000 Some libertarians would say, well, I can sue you if your smoke pollutes my air, but our legal system is so cumbersome, that's not practical.

00:05:44.000 So thank God for the EPA, the air and the water have gotten cleaner.

00:05:48.000 And beyond that, just about nothing.

00:05:50.000 Okay, so let's talk about The taxation regime.

00:05:54.000 So a lot of folks who are in libertarian circles are deeply concerned about the morality of taxes.

00:05:58.000 I consider myself basically libertarian myself when it comes to the involvement of government.

00:06:03.000 And I'm very sympathetic to the argument that taxation is generally theft, that when somebody puts a gun in your face and then says you need to give me your money for a purpose that I see fit, that that is a form of theft.

00:06:13.000 But when is taxation not theft?

00:06:15.000 Is there a moral line that we can draw?

00:06:16.000 Because obviously the government does have to provide certain services that you talked about.

00:06:20.000 If you're talking about the government providing safety for your property, you need a police force.

00:06:25.000 If you're talking about the government providing safety from foreign invasion, you need defense department.

00:06:29.000 Is that sort of taxation theft?

00:06:31.000 And how do you distinguish between what's theft and what's not?

00:06:35.000 I don't think about it much, but I would say no.

00:06:38.000 If I am a member of this country and this country needs national defense, which it does, and a local police force, and pollution control rules, government has to raise that money somehow.

00:06:51.000 That's not theft.

00:06:52.000 That's just the deal.

00:06:53.000 And one of the questions that often comes up in this context is, you know, so how far does that go?

00:06:58.000 So very often what you hear from folks on the left is the, the, you didn't build that thing that you got from Barack Obama or Elizabeth Warren, that because the government provides roads, for example, and rule of law, that you didn't build that.

00:07:08.000 The government really built it.

00:07:09.000 The government contributed to your success.

00:07:12.000 How true is that?

00:07:12.000 And, you know, do we need things like government provided roads and post offices?

00:07:18.000 No, we certainly don't need government post offices in the age of UPS and FedEx.

00:07:23.000 It was interesting that the government could not get it there overnight, and then FedEx did, and now even UPS sometimes does.

00:07:31.000 If the private sector was building roads, they would have more roads, they'd be smoother, they would be better.

00:07:37.000 It's become a role for government.

00:07:40.000 It would be better if they contracted it out.

00:07:43.000 Not that people in government aren't necessarily just as bright, but the incentives are different.

00:07:48.000 You can fire the private road builder if you don't like what he did.

00:07:51.000 If he's great, he makes more money.

00:07:54.000 In government, everybody gets paid the same and it's almost impossible to fire somebody.

00:07:58.000 So even if they're great at the beginning, say when the Peace Corps began, all eager people looking to help people.

00:08:05.000 Ten years later, when nobody can be promoted or fired, that just eats away at your wish to do better.

00:08:12.000 So one of the questions folks have about libertarianism very often, this is usually the key question used to quote-unquote debunk it, is the what do you do about the folks who fall through the cracks argument.

00:08:20.000 So libertarianism is based on a certain notion that you have the capacity to reason and you have the capacity to make decisions about your own life and that you should bear the consequences of the decisions that you make in your own life.

00:08:31.000 But what about the folks who are not capable of making those decisions?

00:08:33.000 Children, people who are ill, people who are handicapped.

00:08:38.000 What do we do about those folks?

00:08:39.000 Does government have a role there or is there something else that should pick up the slack?

00:08:42.000 Something else should pick up the slack.

00:08:44.000 And it depends what you mean by what should we do.

00:08:47.000 Is we government or is we individuals?

00:08:50.000 I think we have a moral duty to help those people, both the ignorant and the mentally ill. 0.96

00:08:57.000 When government steps in, it crowds out the voluntary organizations that do that better.

00:09:03.000 Think about the Depression.

00:09:04.000 Think how much poorer America was then.

00:09:06.000 25% unemployment.

00:09:08.000 It was way back when we had less money anyway.

00:09:11.000 How many people starve?

00:09:13.000 Almost no one.

00:09:14.000 Why?

00:09:15.000 Because there were 20,000 mutual aid societies around the country, all voluntary, many of them racist.

00:09:22.000 It was Koreans helping Koreans or blacks helping blacks, whites helping whites. 1.00

00:09:26.000 But those groups knew better than government ever could who needed help and who needed a kick in the ass. 0.99

00:09:35.000 And it's just much more efficient charity. 0.98

00:09:38.000 Now, I realize it's not going to happen that we're going to get rid of all this welfare we have.

00:09:44.000 We've spent 71 trillion since it began.

00:09:48.000 And I, coming out of Princeton, I was going, oh yes, we know how to solve poverty.

00:09:52.000 My professor said, it's an outrage in this rich country that some people are poor.

00:09:56.000 But then I watched these programs fail.

00:09:59.000 They just teach people to be dependent.

00:10:02.000 And if you look at the graph, I have used this in my videos, of the war on poverty and the poverty line.

00:10:08.000 The war on poverty began and the poverty rate dropped for seven years.

00:10:12.000 And after that it's gone up and down.

00:10:15.000 Improvement stopped because the government teaches people to be dependent.

00:10:20.000 If you've got a man in the house, your check goes down.

00:10:23.000 And then, most interesting, look at the chart from before the war on poverty.

00:10:28.000 The slope of the line was about the same.

00:10:30.000 Americans were lifting themselves out of poverty.

00:10:33.000 The war on poverty, trillions of dollars, continued progress for five years and then stopped it.

00:10:39.000 So what do you make of the new kind of left argument with regard to the countries they admire?

00:10:44.000 So for a long time, for decades, the Soviet Union was a place where they were kind of interested in the experiment.

00:10:48.000 And then for a little while, they were interested in Hugo Chavez and they were interested in Cuba for a while.

00:10:53.000 But now the modern iteration of the of the socialist movement is in favor of social democracy.

00:10:58.000 So they like Norway, they like Sweden, they like the Nordic countries.

00:11:01.000 This is the one that Bernie Sanders likes to trot out all the time.

00:11:04.000 What do you make of the argument that those countries are cohesive, that they are functioning well, that they have high standards of living, and they also have massive governmental burdens that are driven by enormous regulations and tax rates?

00:11:17.000 Well, first of all, they're not really socialist.

00:11:20.000 And the Denmark prime minister went on TV to say, look, we're a market economy.

00:11:24.000 We're not socialist.

00:11:25.000 Government does not control the means of production.

00:11:29.000 And that's the most important thing.

00:11:31.000 Scandinavian countries don't even have a government minimum wage.

00:11:35.000 They do have a big welfare state, and they can afford that because they have a homogeneous culture and they have a fairly free private market to pay for it.

00:11:45.000 And the economic freedom indexes, they come out ahead of the United States.

00:11:50.000 I don't know how Bernie calls them.

00:11:52.000 Socialists.

00:11:55.000 Do they innovate?

00:11:56.000 Do they produce anything?

00:11:58.000 Is it an accident that Facebook, Google, and all these exciting wealth-creating companies, your podcasts, have come out of Silicon Valley and California, places far away from Washington, D.C.? ?

00:12:12.000 I don't think so.

00:12:13.000 Yeah, and that I think is always the big distinction that folks fail to make, that socialism freezes things in place and redistributes them, and capitalism generates new and innovative methods.

00:12:24.000 But when it comes to things like health care, where the left really is putting its heavy focus these days, what they say is, OK, well, fine.

00:12:30.000 So we sacrifice a little bit of innovation, but there's an entire group of people who have preexisting conditions and they don't have a capacity to pay for the health care that they need.

00:12:38.000 So what's the best system for providing health care if we're not going to have some sort of baseline government provided health care?

00:12:45.000 It would be presumptuous for me to say what the best system is.

00:12:50.000 But what I've learned is that the more market there is, the better.

00:12:54.000 And poor people with a pre-existing condition are not going to have a market solution.

00:12:59.000 But we have in America Medicaid for poor people, Medicare for us old people, and no hospital emergency room turns away any poor person.

00:13:11.000 We don't really have a free market system because the rest of it is paid for not by individuals, but by insurance companies or governments.

00:13:18.000 So what really works is when you go to the doctor and you say, she doctors really have to cost 200 bucks.

00:13:25.000 I'm paying for this myself.

00:13:27.000 And this is starting to happen with the health savings accounts.

00:13:32.000 Instead of just having the insurance company pay for it, they give you some money and you make some of those decisions.

00:13:38.000 And doctors often say, really?

00:13:40.000 You're paying yourself?

00:13:42.000 Like now?

00:13:43.000 I don't have to wait two months for the insurance company?

00:13:46.000 Okay, well, $100.

00:13:48.000 And then they don't even know where to put it because they haven't had a cash box for so long.

00:13:52.000 But moving toward more consumer-driven, and that means high deductibles, which nobody wants to hear about.

00:13:58.000 Everybody hates that.

00:14:00.000 That's the only answer.

00:14:03.000 Single pay in Europe, you don't pay for anything.

00:14:06.000 That's true in England.

00:14:09.000 Forget about Norway.

00:14:10.000 England, Canada, Australia.

00:14:13.000 And it's true, you don't pay.

00:14:16.000 But the National Health Service in England was created the year I was born.

00:14:21.000 And in some cases, they still use that kind of technology because innovation stops in government.

00:14:27.000 You don't get in trouble if you do what you did before.

00:14:30.000 So I'm kind of going down the litany of things that folks think government is necessary for.

00:14:34.000 One of the other aspects that folks say that government is necessary for is the public education system.

00:14:39.000 They suggest that without a public school system that children will be illiterate, that parents will not put their kids in schools, Poor parents won't be able to put their kids in places where they can get educated.

00:14:51.000 What do you make of the argument in favor of public education?

00:14:54.000 I certainly would have believed it when Horace Mann said, this is going to end crime.

00:14:58.000 We just need, we have experts.

00:15:00.000 We need to have government run this. 0.59

00:15:02.000 But it's the same problem.

00:15:03.000 Innovation stopped.

00:15:04.000 We're still teaching kids the way we taught them 100 years ago.

00:15:08.000 Kids are, boys especially, are all itchy, sitting at the desks and miserable in school.

00:15:14.000 The girls do better. 1.00

00:15:16.000 And then you look at success academies in New York, these private charter schools where the minority kids are getting top grades.

00:15:23.000 There are better ways to do it.

00:15:25.000 And there, too, the only thing that works is competition.

00:15:28.000 Attach the money to... In New York, they're spending like 15,000 per kid.

00:15:34.000 Do the math.

00:15:34.000 That's 300, 400,000 per classroom.

00:15:37.000 Think what you could do with that money.

00:15:40.000 Hire three great teachers.

00:15:42.000 Where does the money go?

00:15:44.000 Nobody knows.

00:15:45.000 It's a government monopoly.

00:15:46.000 It just disappears.

00:15:48.000 But if you had vouchers or some system that attaches the money to the kids, schools would compete to get the kids.

00:15:54.000 To get the good kids, they would shun the slow learners.

00:15:58.000 The state can set up a system where if you are a special needs child, your voucher is larger.

00:16:05.000 But that kind of competition will always do better than one size fits all government.

00:16:10.000 So in a second, I want to ask you about why libertarianism hasn't really become more popular in the United States, at least politically.

00:16:17.000 But first, we have to talk about your impending death. 0.99

00:16:19.000 So, you're going to die. 0.99

00:16:20.000 I'm just sorry to break it to you.

00:16:21.000 That's why you need life insurance.

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00:17:26.000 Okay, so... Plots!

00:17:27.000 I've never heard plots.

00:17:28.000 Oh yeah, Yiddish.

00:17:29.000 Plots.

00:17:30.000 Yeah, you know, keel over. 0.99

00:17:31.000 I get it!

00:17:33.000 So, why is libertarianism not more popular?

00:17:37.000 It seems to me, again, I have heavy libertarian sympathies and leanings.

00:17:42.000 What I've always said is that I think that the future of the conservative movement is in a basic conservative-libertarian merger where conservatives acknowledge that libertarians are right about government and libertarians acknowledge that conservatives are right about the necessity of a social fabric.

00:17:54.000 Because it seems to me that one of the problems I see in talking to a lot of libertarians is there's so much focus on what the government shouldn't do that there's very little focus on what we should be as human beings Where virtue comes in, where are social institutions necessary?

00:18:08.000 There's a sort of negativism that's directed at sometimes religious institutions because so many libertarians feel that religious institutions are ignorant or promoting ignorance.

00:18:19.000 Why do you think there is a crossover between libertarianism and a certain sort of secular atheism, it seems like, in a lot of areas of the libertarian movement?

00:18:28.000 Because most of the argument is economics.

00:18:30.000 That's what it was for me.

00:18:31.000 It was my aha moment that I became a born-again free marketer.

00:18:37.000 Clearly, with life, I see how religion keeps families together and brings people together, and that that does wonderful things.

00:18:45.000 And religious people are happier.

00:18:47.000 I wish I was as religious as you are, because it brings people a lot of good stuff in life.

00:18:54.000 Why hasn't libertarianism become more popular?

00:18:58.000 Maybe because of that.

00:18:59.000 Or my basic answer is, I don't know!

00:19:01.000 It's killing me!

00:19:03.000 My wife is a leftist. 0.76

00:19:05.000 Well, it was when I married her.

00:19:06.000 Now she's moved, she would say, to the middle.

00:19:09.000 But she still wakes me up with, can you believe this?

00:19:13.000 Look at this, what the New York Times said.

00:19:15.000 What about these people?

00:19:16.000 Government has to take care of these people.

00:19:19.000 And I sort of convince her with my argument.

00:19:23.000 But the next day it happens again.

00:19:25.000 It's in certain people's women more often, in their gut, there's this feeling that government has to take care of people. 0.98

00:19:35.000 It's government's job.

00:19:36.000 And that's where I think that this is where, if the libertarian movement were to focus a little bit more on the creation of that social fabric, they would do better just in terms of the pitch.

00:19:45.000 Because the reality is that human beings exist in terms of identity, both as individuals and also as members of community.

00:19:51.000 Libertarians, seeing the government as an overarching threat, which it is, they say, well, you know, we are individuals primarily.

00:19:57.000 But that neglects the fact that we do have this gut instinct to try and help other people, and we want to get together and help other people, and so One of the things I've urged libertarians to do is reach out to religious communities and make a libertarian argument for why religious communities are necessary, why you do need those backstops, those charities, why you do need a social fabric built outside of government, because I think the picture folks get of libertarians is basically the Libertarian Party Convention, which is a bunch of people talking about legalizing pot, getting rid of seatbelt laws, and everything will be okay.

00:20:28.000 What do you think the forward-facing pitch for libertarianism should be?

00:20:30.000 Because that is, like, I saw just this morning, I saw a clip of the 2015-2016 primary debates among the Libertarian Party candidates, and Larry Elder was moderating it, and Larry was asking, you know, about seatbelt laws.

00:20:47.000 And everybody sort of solemnly proclaimed that there should be no seatbelt laws except for Gary Johnson, who said, well, maybe people should have to have a license before they drive.

00:20:55.000 Now, I'm actually sympathetic to the argument that, or it was a driver's license question, that driver's license laws are silly, and this is what tort law is for.

00:21:04.000 If you hit somebody, then you get sued, and that's just the way that it works.

00:21:07.000 But the enthusiasm in the room for get rid of driver's licenses I agree.

00:21:17.000 And I'm frankly okay with driver's licenses because you sue the person, the reckless person.

00:21:25.000 He doesn't have any money to pay.

00:21:27.000 He has no disincentive to learn how to drive.

00:21:30.000 So when you're potentially threatening a lot of other people, it's pretty amazing we allow I mean, they would never be allowed today if we were using horses still, and someone said, I have a new form of transport.

00:21:45.000 It'll be less solid waste pollution, but more air pollution.

00:21:48.000 Good trade-off.

00:21:49.000 Less stuff on the street that needs cleaning.

00:21:52.000 But people will drive them at 50 miles per hour, inches from pedestrians.

00:21:57.000 It would never be approved today.

00:22:00.000 The seatbelt laws, I think, are a more interesting case, because that's your own body.

00:22:06.000 And studies have shown that when people wear seatbelts, they drive faster.

00:22:10.000 These things have unintended consequences.

00:22:12.000 One economist made the point that the biggest car safety device would be a spike coming off the steering wheel.

00:22:20.000 It would cause you to drive more safely.

00:22:23.000 But it's my body, I should decide whether to wear a seatbelt.

00:22:27.000 It's interesting that you think that about driver's licenses.

00:22:28.000 Where do you draw the line on occupational licensing?

00:22:31.000 So you've talked about how... No, there should be none.

00:22:33.000 Even for doctors and lawyers.

00:22:36.000 People assume that if the government doesn't protect us, we're unprotected.

00:22:41.000 But if it weren't for that licensing, Consumer groups, underwriters' laboratories, Consumer Reports, somebody would set up a private testing operation.

00:22:52.000 They would rate doctors and lawyers, and you wouldn't just pick one.

00:22:55.000 You would go check the guide, and you'd know something.

00:22:59.000 Maybe this guy gets a B, but he's cheaper, and that's my choice.

00:23:03.000 But now you just assume the government is doing it.

00:23:06.000 Usually they're sleeping, and they aren't, and we're less safe.

00:23:09.000 So why do you think the Libertarian... What can be done?

00:23:11.000 Are you a Libertarian Party voter, first of all?

00:23:12.000 How do you vote?

00:23:14.000 I generally vote Libertarian Party.

00:23:17.000 I'll vote for Larry Sharp this year in New York.

00:23:19.000 He's an unusually sharp Libertarian.

00:23:22.000 And he'll lose! 1.00

00:23:23.000 Because voters are stupid or something! 1.00

00:23:26.000 I don't know why. 1.00

00:23:27.000 I mean, again, is it possible that it's just a lack of internal cohesion among Libertarians?

00:23:33.000 I mean, it's always hard to group individuals.

00:23:36.000 And any time you try to get people into one box, people tend to climb out, particularly if they're Libertarian.

00:23:41.000 Let's say you were running the Libertarian Party and you wanted to fix this because it was a source of great frustration to me during the last election cycle.

00:23:46.000 I was looking at both of these candidates and going, you've got to be kidding me.

00:23:50.000 And then I looked at the Libertarian Party and I've got Gary Johnson over there flubbing Aleppo.

00:23:57.000 I mean, can anything be done to save the Libertarian Party, or is it basically just a giant scam for the leadership to make a certain amount of money?

00:24:04.000 No, it's not a scam.

00:24:05.000 They are dedicated people who believe in this stuff and are trying.

00:24:09.000 But it's tough.

00:24:11.000 It's a two-party country.

00:24:13.000 People... We pay attention.

00:24:16.000 The people listening and watching now pay attention.

00:24:19.000 It said 1% of the people make things happen.

00:24:23.000 9% watch the Make Things Happen, and that's your audience and my audience.

00:24:28.000 And 90% of the people wake up the next day and say, what happened?

00:24:32.000 I think it's true, because people are thinking about their families, and their religion, and movies, and music, and making money, and their friends, and sports.

00:24:42.000 And they're not paying attention to politics.

00:24:44.000 Suddenly, they're asked to vote, and half those people then do vote.

00:24:48.000 They vote who?

00:24:49.000 It's Republican or Democrat.

00:24:51.000 They don't pay attention long enough to hear the libertarian argument.

00:24:54.000 So is it a better move to try and take over the Republican Party from within, as opposed to try and running a libertarian party from without, you think?

00:25:00.000 Maybe.

00:25:02.000 When I first woke up, I thought the Democrats would be more willing to embrace these ideas, because you religious conservatives, it's moral.

00:25:12.000 You can't argue with that.

00:25:15.000 And I went to a father of one of the kids at my kid's school had a radio show.

00:25:21.000 I said, he's a smart guy.

00:25:23.000 I went to Harvard.

00:25:24.000 I can convince him on this radio show about the folly of the welfare state.

00:25:28.000 I got the facts.

00:25:29.000 And that was Al Franken.

00:25:31.000 He ended up screaming at me.

00:25:34.000 And I could never make a dent with the left.

00:25:38.000 The anchorman in the hallway at ABC would turn away when he saw me.

00:25:42.000 Because after years of being a liberal basher of business, I was now defending capitalism and criticizing government.

00:25:50.000 Suddenly I was no longer objective.

00:25:52.000 And I never won another Emmy Award.

00:25:57.000 And they were angry.

00:25:59.000 People were Somebody came up to me in the street in New York and said, you John Stossel? 0.99

00:26:04.000 I hope you die soon. 0.99

00:26:06.000 Wow. 1.00

00:26:08.000 And the anger was from the left, that I was a consumer reporter criticizing government protecting people.

00:26:14.000 What I'm seeing is a big libertarian move, at least philosophically, if not politically openly, among young people.

00:26:22.000 Because there's basically a consensus that's been reached on social issues other than abortion, in which people basically say, go do what you want, nobody cares, leave us alone.

00:26:30.000 And that has extended to drugs, which I'm going to ask you about in a second, drug legalization.

00:26:35.000 Do you think that there's hope with young people? 1.00

00:26:37.000 Because the Leave Me Alone theme seems to be picking up some ground.

00:26:40.000 I mean, it's a theme that I spend an awful lot of time pushing myself whenever I go to college campuses, which is, stay out of my business, I'll stay out of yours, and, you know, you don't have to worry about my religious institution because I don't care about yours.

00:26:50.000 Just do what you want, basically, as long as it's not hitting anybody else in the face.

00:26:54.000 I think that's a resonant message with a lot of young people, but...

00:26:58.000 You know, getting bogged down in details is always a bit of a mistake.

00:27:00.000 Do you see a moving, a kind of creeping libertarianism that's rising up a little bit?

00:27:06.000 Creeping?

00:27:07.000 Yeah, that's not good enough.

00:27:09.000 And far more are showing up at Bernie rallies with their fantasies about socialism.

00:27:15.000 I want to move into the drug area for a second.

00:27:17.000 So this is obviously one of the areas of serious contention, and it's weird because it's cross-cutting.

00:27:22.000 There are some people on the right, like me, who are in favor of marijuana decriminalization.

00:27:26.000 There are some people who are still drug warriors.

00:27:29.000 On the left, you see a lot of folks who are still drug warriors, and some people who are in favor of legalization.

00:27:33.000 When should drugs be decriminalized?

00:27:35.000 When should they remain criminal, if ever?

00:27:40.000 I think they should all be criminalized today.

00:27:43.000 And there can be rules.

00:27:45.000 States can pick what the age of majority is.

00:27:48.000 Is it 16, 18, 21?

00:27:51.000 But do we own our own?

00:27:53.000 Once you're an adult, don't we own our own bodies?

00:27:56.000 And you make the marijuana point, which is easier to digest.

00:28:00.000 But I've come to think that if you own your own body, it's your choice.

00:28:05.000 And the scares about the worst of them crack.

00:28:08.000 are not accurate.

00:28:10.000 There always are going to be surges of good and bad drugs, legal and illegal.

00:28:16.000 They'll go up, people will see the harm from the bad ones, they'll go down.

00:28:19.000 The laws only make it worse by driving it underground and creating a criminal network.

00:28:27.000 It's too powerful and too rich.

00:28:28.000 So here's the libertarian counter-argument, or quasi-libertarian counter-argument, with regard to things like heroin.

00:28:34.000 This is an argument I first heard articulated by Jonah Goldberg.

00:28:38.000 The fundamental basis of libertarianism is obviously the capacity of each human being to reason.

00:28:43.000 I mean, you do stuff for Reason Magazine.

00:28:45.000 It's the idea that we all have the ability to think, make rational decisions, and then live with those rational decisions.

00:28:51.000 Drugs, at least hard drugs like heroin, rob you of that.

00:28:54.000 Like, if you're on heroin, you're not thinking, you're not capable of fully rational thought, you're not capable of making choices.

00:29:00.000 Addiction has basically taken over the rational centers of your brain.

00:29:04.000 Where are you supposed to go from there?

00:29:06.000 Do you think that there's a decent Well, if you've been robbed of your capacity for choice, yes.

00:29:09.000 on this based on the idea that once people have been robbed of their individuality and capacity to function as human beings by these drugs, that we've now moved out of the realm of it's your body, your choice?

00:29:18.000 Well, if you've been robbed of your capacity for choice, yes.

00:29:23.000 But no, because did prohibition work well?

00:29:28.000 Alcohol can rob you of your ability to make good choices.

00:29:33.000 And banning it made things worse.

00:29:36.000 Are there gradations though?

00:29:36.000 I mean alcohol, you have to imbibe an awful lot of alcohol to be robbed of your choice.

00:29:41.000 And apparently there are plenty of people who are heroin addicts in Europe who go to work.

00:29:50.000 I mean, meth is probably the worst, but I would still say, in a free country...

00:29:57.000 It ought to be your choice if you want to poison yourself.

00:30:00.000 So let's talk a little bit about the American Constitution.

00:30:03.000 So, in my view, the American Constitution is the single greatest piece of governmental literature ever written.

00:30:09.000 It's a brilliant way of attempting to balance out some checks and balances.

00:30:13.000 I know there's some libertarian skepticism, certain elements of the Constitution.

00:30:16.000 How do you feel about the system that the founders put in place?

00:30:20.000 Do you think that it was stringent enough in reducing the size and scope of government?

00:30:24.000 Is it that we've strayed from the Constitution, or is it that the faults were built in that we now have this gigantic, massive, overarching government?

00:30:32.000 I think it was pretty good, except for the lack of pollution rules and slavery.

00:30:39.000 When I read what they wrote, they were vigilant about the growth of government.

00:30:44.000 We have to guard against this.

00:30:45.000 How can we guard against this?

00:30:47.000 Because it's the natural progress of things, said Jefferson, for government to grow and liberty to yield.

00:30:54.000 And they wrote it down, but a piece of paper isn't enough to stop this trend.

00:31:02.000 Because wherever there are rulers, wherever there are Donald Trumps, people will want to say, Yeah, let's do this.

00:31:09.000 I ought to be able to.

00:31:11.000 And let's make more happen.

00:31:13.000 And it's very hard to fight that.

00:31:14.000 That's part of the thing that I found so fascinating about some of the Trumpian sentiments on the right.

00:31:19.000 So, you know, I think that Trump has governed much more conservatively than I thought he would have, you know, based on his— Or his appointees have.

00:31:26.000 Yeah, correct.

00:31:27.000 But there are a lot of Trump fans who are, in some ways, almost indistinguishable philosophically from Bernie fans.

00:31:33.000 We had on Tucker Carlson a couple of weeks ago, and Tucker was extraordinarily interventionist when it came to the economy.

00:31:40.000 He was talking about how he wanted – he actually said outright that he would ban self-driving cars, for example, because it gets rid of trucking jobs.

00:31:48.000 He's very much in favor of tariffs and all the rest of it.

00:31:51.000 Tucker, what happened?

00:31:52.000 He used to be so good on this.

00:31:55.000 Yeah, and I wonder if it's just human nature that we're fighting against.

00:32:01.000 In essence, libertarians are basically fighting against the natural drive of human beings to look for man-made solutions to problems that cannot be alleviated by man-made solutions.

00:32:10.000 Is it possible to fight human nature?

00:32:13.000 And if so… What are the sort of, let's say you're constructing an educational system for a young person, and I get this a lot, which books should people read?

00:32:20.000 What are the ideas they should engage with?

00:32:22.000 So you're talking to a kid who's five years old, or their parents, and you're trying to educate them to become a free market, free-minded individual.

00:32:32.000 What's the literature you start them on?

00:32:34.000 What's that diet look like?

00:32:35.000 Economics and One Easy Lesson by Haslip.

00:32:39.000 Atlas Shrugged is a good guy.

00:32:41.000 Give Me a Break by me! 1.00

00:32:46.000 Milton Friedman's Free to Choose book.

00:32:49.000 But, you know, most young people won't read books.

00:32:52.000 That's why I'm making videos.

00:32:54.000 You mentioned Tucker.

00:32:56.000 I just released a video on Amazon and Jeff Bezos and it was I started it with a video defending Bezos against Bernie, saying, how dare Bernie attack this man who, yes, he's the richest man in the world, but he's made us all richer by lowering prices so much the Fed even lowered its inflation rate.

00:33:19.000 And they pay vast amounts in taxes and their investors pay lots of money in taxes.

00:33:24.000 He's good for America and he's being trashed. 0.96

00:33:26.000 But I'm midway through writing this piece and Bezos caves in to the progressives and says, yeah, I'm going to raise all my workers to 15 bucks an hour, cutting off performance bonuses, stupidly perhaps. 0.83

00:33:40.000 Still, it's his company. 0.69

00:33:41.000 He can do that.

00:33:42.000 He'll find very good workers for that.

00:33:45.000 But then he goes on and says, I'm going to lobby like another craven opportunist rather than a capitalist.

00:33:51.000 I'm going to lobby government to force every company to pay $15 to get rid of the competitive advantage my competitors would have.

00:33:58.000 And since I got lots of robots replacing workers, I'm going to really crush these guys if they have to pay $15 an hour.

00:34:06.000 Capitalism's biggest enemies are often capitalists.

00:34:10.000 Yeah, and this is, I think, a great point that libertarians I wish would make more often, because the kind of pie-in-the-sky, rosy view of free markets is always that people are going to act morally within free markets.

00:34:21.000 But the truth is there are a bunch of people, as long as there's a big government capacity out there, who are going to take advantage of that.

00:34:25.000 This is why when folks say, well, big business is capitalist, like, have you been watching big business?

00:34:30.000 Have you been watching any business?

00:34:31.000 Human beings are willing to take advantage of each other, which is why you do need, and I always, I keep coming back to this, and I think that this is the, not to promote my own ideology, but I'm going to because it's my show, that you do need a tremendous focus on bringing up virtuous people in a free system if the free system is going to last, because otherwise people are just going to try and pervert The system for their own ends, which is exactly what you're talking about with Bezos.

00:34:56.000 And when people say crony capitalism, that's not crony capitalism, that's economic fascism.

00:34:59.000 It's exactly the same sort of state-sponsored monopolism that you were seeing in early, you know, post-Weimar Germany.

00:35:06.000 So it's really... I think it's necessary for libertarians, and I include myself in this number, to spend an awful lot of time teaching people that virtue is necessary.

00:35:17.000 And that's why, you know, the markets are great.

00:35:20.000 But this is where I think Adam Smith differs from the Lord Mandeville bees metaphor.

00:35:27.000 Adam Smith recognizes... I don't know the Lord... So there's a very famous... There's a tract that was written right before Adam Smith all about... I forget the name of the tract.

00:35:38.000 It was written by Mandeville and it was basically the... It's a piece of poetry.

00:35:42.000 It's like 500 lines about the economy of the bees.

00:35:45.000 And his basic idea is that economies develop because people have vices.

00:35:49.000 Private vices become public virtues.

00:35:51.000 In other words, you want to buy a nice piece of jewelry, and therefore this creates economic growth because you want something that you didn't have before.

00:35:58.000 And maybe it's coming from selfishness or greed, right?

00:36:00.000 It's sort of an objective position.

00:36:01.000 So my wanting it is a vice.

00:36:02.000 So my wanting it would be the vice in this particular scenario.

00:36:06.000 But what Adam Smith says, and he's correct, is that while that's true with regard to vices that are not inherently damaging to the system, they're vices that are inherently damaging to the system.

00:36:16.000 And so we have to teach people that freedom can only be preserved by people who actually spend an awful lot of time thinking about virtue.

00:36:24.000 Wow, that's bigger than I can digest.

00:36:28.000 Or put into one of my five-minute videos.

00:36:29.000 Yeah, well, let's talk about, for a second, the changes... It's hard for a Bezos to resist.

00:36:35.000 He's almost not doing duty to his shareholders.

00:36:38.000 When there's this monster government over here doling out... Put your headquarters here, I'll give you a tax break. 1.00

00:36:45.000 In some ways, he'd be a fool not to ask for it.

00:36:48.000 The only solution is to shrink the state. 0.90

00:36:51.000 And why did Japan and Germany do so well after World War II?

00:36:55.000 Because we bombed them to smithereens and they had to start over.

00:36:58.000 And they got rid of all the guilds and the special interests that were holding progress back.

00:37:02.000 And then they grew so fast.

00:37:04.000 It's a horribly depressing idea to say that's the only way to stop the growth of government, but Maybe it is.

00:37:13.000 I'm not advocating that.

00:37:17.000 You keep asking me, how do we convince people?

00:37:19.000 Can we teach virtue?

00:37:20.000 And I don't know that you can.

00:37:22.000 So let's talk about foreign policy because this is an area where there's wide differentiation between Sort of conservatives and libertarian positions.

00:37:29.000 Rand Paul made this most obvious in 2016 when he was seen as sort of an early frontrunner for the nomination in 2016.

00:37:36.000 And then he started focusing in sort of his father's fashion on foreign policy more than he was focusing on domestic policy.

00:37:43.000 Because when it comes to domestic stuff, Rand Paul and probably Ron Paul and I agree on 90% of things.

00:37:49.000 And when it comes to foreign policy, then we have a parting of the ways.

00:37:52.000 So where are you on foreign policy?

00:37:54.000 What do you think the role of the US government is Keep us safe and fight moral wars on rare occasions and get out as quickly as you can and don't nation-build and don't have troops in the 70 countries we have troops in now because we make more enemies than we kill.

00:38:19.000 What do you make of the argument that Basically, we are, whether we like it or not, this has been thrust upon us, that we are the most powerful country on the planet, that we have trade connections with states all over the world, that those foreign markets, in order for them to remain open, we actually do have to have a somewhat stable international system, and that the externalities of things around the world have

00:38:43.000 Pretty significant impact on America, more so than maybe we want to acknowledge, because there are just too many situations in which something bad happens and we say, OK, well, how is that possibly going to affect us?

00:38:52.000 The next thing you know, it is.

00:38:54.000 Take, for example, the situation in Syria, which really has no impact on us except for the massive migrant wave that has now swamped governments in Europe.

00:39:03.000 When I say swamps, I don't mean the Syrians are coming in and voting people out.

00:39:06.000 I mean the reaction to that has actually toppled governments in Europe and created all sorts of new issues, particularly with regard to trade, because a lot of the parties who are standing against immigration are also standing against free trade.

00:39:16.000 What do you make of that argument?

00:39:19.000 We don't have a choice, basically.

00:39:21.000 Well, we ought to decide what the mission is and make some choices.

00:39:26.000 And I don't presume to know what we should do about Syria in a lot of these hard cases, and it's not my area of specialty.

00:39:32.000 I try to stick to economics.

00:39:35.000 But policing the sea lanes.

00:39:37.000 China wants to keep them open, too, because if there isn't free flow of traffic, that hurts their people.

00:39:44.000 Europe wants to keep them open.

00:39:46.000 So does Brazil.

00:39:47.000 It doesn't need to be all up to the United States.

00:39:51.000 And how would you feel if you came home to your neighborhood drugstore and there are foreign troops speaking a foreign language?

00:40:00.000 Wearing foreign uniforms in your neighborhood, and they have some power over your cousins and uncles. 0.98

00:40:07.000 I'd be pissed off, and I would hate America for that. 0.67

00:40:11.000 And John Bolton, the fox, is a friend, and he, I assume, agrees with you, and I would argue with him on this.

00:40:19.000 The Ron Paul argument.

00:40:20.000 What about blowback? 0.97

00:40:21.000 Didn't we, when we drone And kill an alleged terrorist in Afghanistan.

00:40:28.000 Don't we make enemies of all of his cousins and little brothers?

00:40:32.000 And as technology gets better, soon they're going to put some atomic bomb in something this small. 0.98

00:40:38.000 It'll be easier to kill us with.

00:40:40.000 Isn't it better if we don't make as many enemies?

00:40:43.000 And Bolton brilliantly would answer with things like, well, when I was sitting with Nixon and when I was in the cave in this place, and I would just get lost in the fascinating story, in several shows and one long dinner, I don't think I ever got a good answer.

00:41:00.000 I mean, I still think the best answer to that is a lot of these folks want to kill us anyway.

00:41:04.000 I mean, that you drone a terrorist. 0.93

00:41:07.000 You know, there's a decent shot that that terrorist was interested in killing you and his friends were interested in killing you in the first place.

00:41:13.000 And again, I'm not an interventionist in a lot of these areas.

00:41:16.000 I was against the war in Libya, for example.

00:41:18.000 But by the same token... Interested enough to come here and do it?

00:41:23.000 I don't think so.

00:41:24.000 Well, I mean, but wasn't that what 9-11 was to a certain extent?

00:41:28.000 Because they— I mean, we weren't involved in Afghanistan before 9-11.

00:41:32.000 And they weren't from Afghanistan.

00:41:34.000 They were Saudis who were mad that American troops were all over the Middle East.

00:41:38.000 But it was directed from Afghanistan, obviously.

00:41:40.000 I mean, it was bin Laden in Afghanistan being housed by the Taliban.

00:41:43.000 Right.

00:41:43.000 And that justified our going in there to take out bin Laden and the people who directly assaulted us.

00:41:49.000 But I think they wanted to kill us because we have troops in the Middle East.

00:41:54.000 So do you think that the best approach with countries like China, for example, which is seen by a lot of folks as a real foreign policy threat, is open trade?

00:42:02.000 Do you think that economics converts these countries to better ways of life?

00:42:06.000 Or it's just, who cares?

00:42:08.000 We may as well trade with them.

00:42:10.000 I don't know.

00:42:10.000 I think it might open them up to a smarter way of life.

00:42:14.000 It said if goods cross borders, armies don't.

00:42:17.000 And you don't want to kill people who you trade with.

00:42:21.000 And in general, it improves things.

00:42:23.000 I don't think it'll work miracles.

00:42:24.000 They still may want to crush us in some other way.

00:42:27.000 But unilateral trade disarmament, and I think Trump is very wrong in his tariffs, would benefit them and us.

00:42:35.000 Well, I think that the, so the counter argument on there, on that would be that the kind of McDonald's theory of foreign policy, which is, you know, the Golden Arches theory, that countries that have McDonald's don't have wars with us, that in the lead up to World War I, there actually was significantly increased world trade, including with Germany and within Europe, and then World War I broke out, and ideology still has a tremendous role to play in human action.

00:42:59.000 And human beings are not necessarily driven purely by economic concerns.

00:43:02.000 And I think this links up with a broader critique of libertarianism that I've heard from folks in sort of mainstream conservative circles, which is libertarianism is relying on a view of human nature that is not inherently conservative.

00:43:16.000 It's relying on a view of human nature that we are essentially materialists.

00:43:20.000 Malleable.

00:43:20.000 Well, malleable and materialist.

00:43:23.000 Not only are we malleable in terms of our nature, that systems will make us better, but also we are materialist in that if we experience better economic times, then this makes us less likely to do bad things.

00:43:38.000 Actually, kind of fundamentally non-conservative in a certain way, right?

00:43:41.000 Because the linkage between poverty and crime is, to my mind, less significant than the linkage between values and crime.

00:43:50.000 And the same thing would hold true on foreign policy.

00:43:51.000 You can have rich countries that are pursuing tremendous evil against their own citizens, and you can have poor countries... Well, you can't have poor... Let's put it this way.

00:43:59.000 You can't have poor countries pursuing tremendous good for their citizens.

00:44:02.000 That doesn't really work.

00:44:03.000 But you can have rich countries that pursue tremendous evil, obviously.

00:44:06.000 Yeah, I don't claim that trade is going to solve, that making people richer will solve these problems.

00:44:12.000 Revolutions, the poor are more likely to rise up when their incomes are going up than when they're suffering in misery.

00:44:20.000 Libertarianism doesn't claim to have the answer to all these problems, but it does say our basic freedom is important, and we ought to be left alone, and part of that is freedom to trade with people, and generally that brings good things.

00:44:35.000 Okay, so...

00:44:36.000 Okay, so let's talk about trade for a second.

00:44:37.000 This has obviously become deeply controversial.

00:44:39.000 I'm a free trader.

00:44:40.000 The only time I ever think that trade should be curbed would be for actual national security reasons.

00:44:46.000 You're at war with somebody or something.

00:44:48.000 But there are a lot of folks who have been focusing in recently on the idea that the downsides of trades outweigh the upside of trade.

00:44:54.000 And they look at towns.

00:44:56.000 Orrin Cass has a new book out that is kind of along these lines.

00:45:03.000 And I was fascinated by it.

00:45:04.000 He has a chapter in his book where he basically says that we've missed the boat in the Western world in thinking that material prosperity is the goal of the economy.

00:45:14.000 Without a certain amount of job involvement or employment, material prosperity doesn't solve the problem.

00:45:20.000 What he means by that is he suggests that there are two main models that are now being pursued by people who are not libertarian.

00:45:26.000 Model number one is There are a bunch of rich people, there are a bunch of poor people who are being left behind because of advances in the economy as we move to an IQ-based economy as opposed to a back-breaking labor-based economy.

00:45:37.000 And that means those people are gonna get left behind.

00:45:39.000 What happens to all of those people?

00:45:41.000 Okay, well, we let the economy spring ahead, but we redistribute some wealth from here to there, and that sort of placates everybody.

00:45:46.000 That's theory number one.

00:45:47.000 Theory number two is that we actually put in place regulations to prevent the economy from springing ahead far enough so that those people are left behind.

00:45:54.000 So, what's your view on what we do with folks if The singularity is coming.

00:45:59.000 If we're moving toward a more service and intellect-based economy, what do we do with all the folks who could be out of a job in 10 years as automation takes over for them?

00:46:08.000 We've had more trade than ever, up to Trump, and unemployment is at a remarkably low number.

00:46:16.000 People worried when 90% of the people worked on the farms.

00:46:20.000 What are all those people going to do?

00:46:22.000 What are all the secretaries going to do if they lose their jobs or their telephone switchboard operators? 1.00

00:46:27.000 They all lost their jobs and more people got employed.

00:46:31.000 Human ingenuity is such.

00:46:33.000 The beauty of the human brain to find new things to serve people.

00:46:38.000 Now, a lot of smart Artificial intelligence people say, this time it's different.

00:46:45.000 And this time they're all, we need a guaranteed basic income, which I think would be a terrible thing because we get purpose and work.

00:46:52.000 But, I mean, until that happens, to try to manipulate the economy to prevent growth, I just think is cruel.

00:46:59.000 Okay, so let's talk for a second about the technology companies.

00:47:03.000 So you mentioned earlier Amazon.

00:47:05.000 There's been a lot of talk in right-wing circles recently, and left-wing circles always, because there's always talk in left-wing circles about regulation.

00:47:11.000 They talk more.

00:47:12.000 They write more.

00:47:13.000 That's why they're all over the media.

00:47:15.000 About regulating companies like Google and Facebook, these kind of massive companies that have all sorts of information on us that we've voluntarily given them, but now they have, you know, in the view of some sort of a monopoly on this.

00:47:26.000 What do you make of the argument in favor of regulation of companies like Google or Facebook and their manipulation of informational access?

00:47:33.000 Bad idea, because whoever does the regulation will make things worse. 0.82

00:47:38.000 And we voluntarily gave them that information.

00:47:40.000 They have it.

00:47:41.000 They sell it.

00:47:42.000 People steal it.

00:47:44.000 Except for identity theft.

00:47:47.000 So what?

00:47:47.000 I've lost my privacy.

00:47:48.000 I already have enough enemies in New York as a man from the left who's moved to Libertarian that I figure there's some 18-year-old kid in the apartment next door who's stealing my emails anyway.

00:48:02.000 The idea that the government is going to make that better is terrifying.

00:48:07.000 Also, if it gets really bad, if Google starts doing horrible stuff, and look, I tried when they fired James Damore for saying something reasonable about gender differences.

00:48:17.000 I said, screw them, I'm going to go to Bing and I'm not going to use, I'm going to be a consumer reacting.

00:48:23.000 I couldn't even do it. 0.98

00:48:26.000 So they're too big.

00:48:29.000 Government has no way to make it better.

00:48:31.000 And if they get horrible, government does have the guns.

00:48:35.000 And in the end, government could always step in.

00:48:38.000 Okay, so one of the other areas where folks talk about kind of global regulation, you mentioned it in the context of the environment, is in the area of global warming.

00:48:45.000 So people are deeply concerned over the climate changing.

00:48:49.000 It seems that the vast majority of scientists agree that the climate is growing warmer, to what extent we still don't know.

00:48:54.000 And the vast majority also agree that whatever warming has occurred over the past century or so is at least majority attributable to human activity.

00:49:02.000 How worried are you about global warming?

00:49:03.000 What role does government have in regulating environmental emissions, for example, in this particular area?

00:49:09.000 Because libertarians have basically been called skeptics and climate deniers because of their hands-off approach.

00:49:16.000 Where are you on this?

00:49:18.000 Well, I don't see how you can deny a climate because we have climate and climate changes and it is getting warmer, has been getting warmer.

00:49:27.000 I don't agree that it's so clear that man does most of it.

00:49:30.000 Certainly man does some of it, but I don't think there's necessarily agreement on that.

00:49:36.000 But the next two steps are the important ones.

00:49:39.000 Will it be a disaster?

00:49:41.000 And can we do anything about it?

00:49:44.000 So, the disaster part.

00:49:45.000 I mean, we have disasters.

00:49:46.000 We have a million people dying of malaria and dysentery in the world.

00:49:50.000 We have problems where economic growth would really help.

00:49:54.000 And stifling that in the name of this possible problem.

00:49:59.000 And there are smart people who say, it may be good.

00:50:03.000 You'll grow more stuff in Canada.

00:50:06.000 There are fewer deaths in heat waves than in cold waves.

00:50:10.000 We can adjust.

00:50:11.000 We can pull back from the oceans if it keeps warming.

00:50:14.000 There may be natural things.

00:50:16.000 More warm water means more evaporation, means more clouds.

00:50:21.000 Maybe this will stop naturally.

00:50:23.000 We don't really know how big a crisis it is.

00:50:27.000 But certainly, no crisis is big enough to waste money doing nothing.

00:50:33.000 And that's what the billions of dollars we're spending now is doing.

00:50:37.000 Nothing.

00:50:38.000 The earth won't notice.

00:50:40.000 It's arrogant for man to think that by buying a Prius, as they're driving all outside your studio here, that that's going to make any difference.

00:50:49.000 I mean, even if China and India weren't continuing to build coal plants, with the technology we have now, it's not going to help. 0.94

00:50:57.000 But if we don't bankrupt ourselves on stupid mandates for wind power and nonsense like that, in 10 years we'll be much richer. 0.89

00:51:08.000 And then if we know more about the problem, then maybe we can do something about it. 0.90

00:51:12.000 Okay, so, John, I do have one final question for you.

00:51:15.000 I want to ask you why you don't just run for president on the Libertarian ticket.

00:51:18.000 But if you actually like to hear the answer, you're going to have to subscribe.

00:51:21.000 To subscribe, all you have to do is head over to dailywire.com slash subscribe, and then you'll be able to hear the end of our conversation there.

00:51:26.000 So, John Stossel, thanks so much for coming in.

00:51:28.000 Really appreciate it.

00:51:28.000 Go check your stuff out at Stossel TV, where we have a new video coming out every week, correct?

00:51:32.000 Every week, yes.

00:51:33.000 Libertarian videos, short enough not to be boring.

00:51:37.000 Well, appreciate it.

00:51:37.000 Thanks so much for stopping by.

00:51:38.000 Thank you.

00:51:39.000 Thank you.

00:51:48.000 Executive producer Jeremy Boring.

00:51:50.000 Associate producer Mathis Glover.

00:51:52.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:51:53.000 Audio is mixed by Dylan Case.

00:51:55.000 Hair and makeup is by Jeswa Alvera.

00:51:57.000 And title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.

00:51:59.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - November 11, 2018

John Stossel | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 27

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