John Stossel is a Fox News host and former reporter who became a libertarian commentator in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In this special, John talks about how he got started in his career as a reporter, how he became a commentator, and why he thinks government should stay out of the bedroom. He also talks about why he doesn t like government regulations, and how he thinks you should be allowed to trade with people, and generally, that brings good things. This special is brought to you by Helix Sleep, a company that helps you get the best night's rest you can get anywhere. Helix is offering up to 125 bucks off all mattress orders, and they'll match you to a mattress that'll give you the best sleep of your life! Check it out right now. Go check it out at HelixSleep.com/BenGuest and use the promo code "Guest" at checkout to get 25% off your first purchase. Thanks to Helix for sponsoring this special. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and we'll send you a review! Thanks again, Ben Guest if you like the show and share it with a friend! Music: "Goodbye Outer Space" by Jeff Kaale - "Space Junk" by Fountains of Bakersfield, "Good Morning America" by Haley and Sons and "Outer Space Traveler" by The Good Morning America - "Coming Soon" by Suneaters, by Haley & Sons of the Valley - "Hey Hey Hey Hey, Hey! and Good Morning! by Seren by F&C? Thanks for listening to the Sunday Special! - Ben Guest - "Let's Talk About It? - - "The Best Podcasts" by & "The Good Morning Folks" by John Rocha, (feat. & -- Thank You, BenGuest ? "Podcasts by Ben Guest? -- "The Bad News Is This Week's Monday Morning Show?" -- "Noah" by Jonestrossel and . And , "Hey, Hey,Hey,Hey Hey, Thank You?" by John? -- "Thank You?" -- Thank You? , "A Good Morning, Good Day, Good Luck?
00:00:00.000Our basic freedom is important and we ought to be left alone.
00:00:04.000And part of that is freedom to trade with people.
00:00:06.000And 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.
00:00:25.000We'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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00:01:40.000For 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.
00:01:48.000How did you come to your political viewpoint, and how did your career progress in this direction?
00:01:54.000I 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.
00:02:03.000And 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.
00:04:08.000It just lets in the ones who are sophisticated enough to know how to get the license.
00:04:13.000The 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.
00:04:28.000I 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.
00:04:39.000And I discovered Reason Magazine, and that was an epiphany.
00:04:46.000Let's talk about your brand of libertarianism.
00:04:48.000So, 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.
00:05:00.000For example, what is your view on when regulation is important or necessary?
00:05:05.000Are there situations where you think regulation is something that needs to happen?
00:05:14.000The 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.
00:05:24.000So we need cops and a national defense, stuff that's in the Constitution.
00:05:30.000I'd go one further and say we need government for pollution control rules.
00:05:36.000Some 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.
00:05:44.000So thank God for the EPA, the air and the water have gotten cleaner.
00:05:50.000Okay, so let's talk about The taxation regime.
00:05:54.000So a lot of folks who are in libertarian circles are deeply concerned about the morality of taxes.
00:05:58.000I consider myself basically libertarian myself when it comes to the involvement of government.
00:06:03.000And 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.
00:06:31.000And how do you distinguish between what's theft and what's not?
00:06:35.000I don't think about it much, but I would say no.
00:06:38.000If 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.
00:06:53.000And one of the questions that often comes up in this context is, you know, so how far does that go?
00:06:58.000So 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.
00:07:54.000In government, everybody gets paid the same and it's almost impossible to fire somebody.
00:07:58.000So even if they're great at the beginning, say when the Peace Corps began, all eager people looking to help people.
00:08:05.000Ten years later, when nobody can be promoted or fired, that just eats away at your wish to do better.
00:08:12.000So 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.
00:08:20.000So 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.
00:08:31.000But what about the folks who are not capable of making those decisions?
00:08:33.000Children, people who are ill, people who are handicapped.
00:10:15.000Improvement stopped because the government teaches people to be dependent.
00:10:20.000If you've got a man in the house, your check goes down.
00:10:23.000And then, most interesting, look at the chart from before the war on poverty.
00:10:28.000The slope of the line was about the same.
00:10:30.000Americans were lifting themselves out of poverty.
00:10:33.000The war on poverty, trillions of dollars, continued progress for five years and then stopped it.
00:10:39.000So what do you make of the new kind of left argument with regard to the countries they admire?
00:10:44.000So for a long time, for decades, the Soviet Union was a place where they were kind of interested in the experiment.
00:10:48.000And then for a little while, they were interested in Hugo Chavez and they were interested in Cuba for a while.
00:10:53.000But now the modern iteration of the of the socialist movement is in favor of social democracy.
00:10:58.000So they like Norway, they like Sweden, they like the Nordic countries.
00:11:01.000This is the one that Bernie Sanders likes to trot out all the time.
00:11:04.000What 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?
00:11:17.000Well, first of all, they're not really socialist.
00:11:20.000And the Denmark prime minister went on TV to say, look, we're a market economy.
00:11:31.000Scandinavian countries don't even have a government minimum wage.
00:11:35.000They 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.
00:11:45.000And the economic freedom indexes, they come out ahead of the United States.
00:11:58.000Is 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.? ?
00:12:13.000Yeah, 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.
00:12:24.000But 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.
00:12:30.000So 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.
00:12:38.000So what's the best system for providing health care if we're not going to have some sort of baseline government provided health care?
00:12:45.000It would be presumptuous for me to say what the best system is.
00:12:50.000But what I've learned is that the more market there is, the better.
00:12:54.000And poor people with a pre-existing condition are not going to have a market solution.
00:12:59.000But we have in America Medicaid for poor people, Medicare for us old people, and no hospital emergency room turns away any poor person.
00:13:11.000We 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.
00:13:18.000So what really works is when you go to the doctor and you say, she doctors really have to cost 200 bucks.
00:14:16.000But the National Health Service in England was created the year I was born.
00:14:21.000And in some cases, they still use that kind of technology because innovation stops in government.
00:14:27.000You don't get in trouble if you do what you did before.
00:14:30.000So I'm kind of going down the litany of things that folks think government is necessary for.
00:14:34.000One of the other aspects that folks say that government is necessary for is the public education system.
00:14:39.000They 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.
00:14:51.000What do you make of the argument in favor of public education?
00:14:54.000I certainly would have believed it when Horace Mann said, this is going to end crime.
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00:17:33.000So, why is libertarianism not more popular?
00:17:37.000It seems to me, again, I have heavy libertarian sympathies and leanings.
00:17:42.000What 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.
00:17:54.000Because 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?
00:18:08.000There'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.
00:18:19.000Why 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?
00:18:28.000Because most of the argument is economics.
00:19:36.000And 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.
00:19:45.000Because the reality is that human beings exist in terms of identity, both as individuals and also as members of community.
00:19:51.000Libertarians, seeing the government as an overarching threat, which it is, they say, well, you know, we are individuals primarily.
00:19:57.000But 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.
00:20:28.000What do you think the forward-facing pitch for libertarianism should be?
00:20:30.000Because 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.
00:20:47.000And 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.
00:20:55.000Now, 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.
00:21:04.000If you hit somebody, then you get sued, and that's just the way that it works.
00:21:07.000But the enthusiasm in the room for get rid of driver's licenses I agree.
00:21:17.000And I'm frankly okay with driver's licenses because you sue the person, the reckless person.
00:21:27.000He has no disincentive to learn how to drive.
00:21:30.000So 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.
00:21:45.000It'll be less solid waste pollution, but more air pollution.
00:22:36.000People assume that if the government doesn't protect us, we're unprotected.
00:22:41.000But if it weren't for that licensing, Consumer groups, underwriters' laboratories, Consumer Reports, somebody would set up a private testing operation.
00:22:52.000They would rate doctors and lawyers, and you wouldn't just pick one.
00:22:55.000You would go check the guide, and you'd know something.
00:22:59.000Maybe this guy gets a B, but he's cheaper, and that's my choice.
00:23:03.000But now you just assume the government is doing it.
00:23:06.000Usually they're sleeping, and they aren't, and we're less safe.
00:23:09.000So why do you think the Libertarian... What can be done?
00:23:11.000Are you a Libertarian Party voter, first of all?
00:23:27.000I mean, again, is it possible that it's just a lack of internal cohesion among Libertarians?
00:23:33.000I mean, it's always hard to group individuals.
00:23:36.000And any time you try to get people into one box, people tend to climb out, particularly if they're Libertarian.
00:23:41.000Let'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.
00:23:46.000I was looking at both of these candidates and going, you've got to be kidding me.
00:23:50.000And then I looked at the Libertarian Party and I've got Gary Johnson over there flubbing Aleppo.
00:23:57.000I 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?
00:24:16.000The people listening and watching now pay attention.
00:24:19.000It said 1% of the people make things happen.
00:24:23.0009% watch the Make Things Happen, and that's your audience and my audience.
00:24:28.000And 90% of the people wake up the next day and say, what happened?
00:24:32.000I 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.
00:24:42.000And they're not paying attention to politics.
00:24:44.000Suddenly, they're asked to vote, and half those people then do vote.
00:24:51.000They don't pay attention long enough to hear the libertarian argument.
00:24:54.000So 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?
00:25:02.000When I first woke up, I thought the Democrats would be more willing to embrace these ideas, because you religious conservatives, it's moral.
00:26:08.000And the anger was from the left, that I was a consumer reporter criticizing government protecting people.
00:26:14.000What I'm seeing is a big libertarian move, at least philosophically, if not politically openly, among young people.
00:26:22.000Because 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.
00:26:30.000And that has extended to drugs, which I'm going to ask you about in a second, drug legalization.
00:26:35.000Do you think that there's hope with young people?
00:26:37.000Because the Leave Me Alone theme seems to be picking up some ground.
00:26:40.000I 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.
00:26:50.000Just do what you want, basically, as long as it's not hitting anybody else in the face.
00:26:54.000I think that's a resonant message with a lot of young people, but...
00:26:58.000You know, getting bogged down in details is always a bit of a mistake.
00:27:00.000Do you see a moving, a kind of creeping libertarianism that's rising up a little bit?
00:28:28.000So here's the libertarian counter-argument, or quasi-libertarian counter-argument, with regard to things like heroin.
00:28:34.000This is an argument I first heard articulated by Jonah Goldberg.
00:28:38.000The fundamental basis of libertarianism is obviously the capacity of each human being to reason.
00:28:43.000I mean, you do stuff for Reason Magazine.
00:28:45.000It's the idea that we all have the ability to think, make rational decisions, and then live with those rational decisions.
00:28:51.000Drugs, at least hard drugs like heroin, rob you of that.
00:28:54.000Like, if you're on heroin, you're not thinking, you're not capable of fully rational thought, you're not capable of making choices.
00:29:00.000Addiction has basically taken over the rational centers of your brain.
00:29:04.000Where are you supposed to go from there?
00:29:06.000Do you think that there's a decent Well, if you've been robbed of your capacity for choice, yes.
00:29:09.000on 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?
00:29:18.000Well, if you've been robbed of your capacity for choice, yes.
00:29:23.000But no, because did prohibition work well?
00:29:28.000Alcohol can rob you of your ability to make good choices.
00:29:36.000I mean alcohol, you have to imbibe an awful lot of alcohol to be robbed of your choice.
00:29:41.000And apparently there are plenty of people who are heroin addicts in Europe who go to work.
00:29:50.000I mean, meth is probably the worst, but I would still say, in a free country...
00:29:57.000It ought to be your choice if you want to poison yourself.
00:30:00.000So let's talk a little bit about the American Constitution.
00:30:03.000So, in my view, the American Constitution is the single greatest piece of governmental literature ever written.
00:30:09.000It's a brilliant way of attempting to balance out some checks and balances.
00:30:13.000I know there's some libertarian skepticism, certain elements of the Constitution.
00:30:16.000How do you feel about the system that the founders put in place?
00:30:20.000Do you think that it was stringent enough in reducing the size and scope of government?
00:30:24.000Is 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?
00:30:32.000I think it was pretty good, except for the lack of pollution rules and slavery.
00:30:39.000When I read what they wrote, they were vigilant about the growth of government.
00:31:14.000That's part of the thing that I found so fascinating about some of the Trumpian sentiments on the right.
00:31:19.000So, 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.
00:31:27.000But there are a lot of Trump fans who are, in some ways, almost indistinguishable philosophically from Bernie fans.
00:31:33.000We had on Tucker Carlson a couple of weeks ago, and Tucker was extraordinarily interventionist when it came to the economy.
00:31:40.000He 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.
00:31:48.000He's very much in favor of tariffs and all the rest of it.
00:31:55.000Yeah, and I wonder if it's just human nature that we're fighting against.
00:32:01.000In 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.
00:32:13.000And 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?
00:32:20.000What are the ideas they should engage with?
00:32:22.000So 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.
00:32:32.000What's the literature you start them on?
00:32:56.000I 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.
00:33:19.000And they pay vast amounts in taxes and their investors pay lots of money in taxes.
00:33:24.000He's good for America and he's being trashed.
00:33:26.000But 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.
00:33:42.000He'll find very good workers for that.
00:33:45.000But then he goes on and says, I'm going to lobby like another craven opportunist rather than a capitalist.
00:33:51.000I'm going to lobby government to force every company to pay $15 to get rid of the competitive advantage my competitors would have.
00:33:58.000And since I got lots of robots replacing workers, I'm going to really crush these guys if they have to pay $15 an hour.
00:34:06.000Capitalism's biggest enemies are often capitalists.
00:34:10.000Yeah, 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.
00:34:21.000But 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.
00:34:25.000This is why when folks say, well, big business is capitalist, like, have you been watching big business?
00:34:31.000Human 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.
00:34:56.000And when people say crony capitalism, that's not crony capitalism, that's economic fascism.
00:34:59.000It's exactly the same sort of state-sponsored monopolism that you were seeing in early, you know, post-Weimar Germany.
00:35:06.000So 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.
00:35:17.000And that's why, you know, the markets are great.
00:35:20.000But this is where I think Adam Smith differs from the Lord Mandeville bees metaphor.
00:35:27.000Adam 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.
00:35:38.000It was written by Mandeville and it was basically the... It's a piece of poetry.
00:35:42.000It's like 500 lines about the economy of the bees.
00:35:45.000And his basic idea is that economies develop because people have vices.
00:35:51.000In 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.
00:35:58.000And maybe it's coming from selfishness or greed, right?
00:36:02.000So my wanting it would be the vice in this particular scenario.
00:36:06.000But 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.
00:36:16.000And 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.
00:37:22.000So let's talk about foreign policy because this is an area where there's wide differentiation between Sort of conservatives and libertarian positions.
00:37:29.000Rand Paul made this most obvious in 2016 when he was seen as sort of an early frontrunner for the nomination in 2016.
00:37:36.000And then he started focusing in sort of his father's fashion on foreign policy more than he was focusing on domestic policy.
00:37:43.000Because when it comes to domestic stuff, Rand Paul and probably Ron Paul and I agree on 90% of things.
00:37:49.000And when it comes to foreign policy, then we have a parting of the ways.
00:37:54.000What 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.
00:38:19.000What 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
00:38:43.000Pretty 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?
00:38:54.000Take, 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.
00:39:03.000When I say swamps, I don't mean the Syrians are coming in and voting people out.
00:39:06.000I 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.
00:40:40.000Isn't it better if we don't make as many enemies?
00:40:43.000And 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.
00:41:00.000I mean, I still think the best answer to that is a lot of these folks want to kill us anyway.
00:41:07.000You 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.
00:41:13.000And again, I'm not an interventionist in a lot of these areas.
00:41:16.000I was against the war in Libya, for example.
00:41:18.000But by the same token... Interested enough to come here and do it?
00:41:43.000And that justified our going in there to take out bin Laden and the people who directly assaulted us.
00:41:49.000But I think they wanted to kill us because we have troops in the Middle East.
00:41:54.000So 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?
00:42:02.000Do you think that economics converts these countries to better ways of life?
00:42:24.000They still may want to crush us in some other way.
00:42:27.000But unilateral trade disarmament, and I think Trump is very wrong in his tariffs, would benefit them and us.
00:42:35.000Well, 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.
00:42:59.000And human beings are not necessarily driven purely by economic concerns.
00:43:02.000And 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.
00:43:16.000It's relying on a view of human nature that we are essentially materialists.
00:43:23.000Not 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.
00:43:38.000Actually, kind of fundamentally non-conservative in a certain way, right?
00:43:41.000Because the linkage between poverty and crime is, to my mind, less significant than the linkage between values and crime.
00:43:50.000And the same thing would hold true on foreign policy.
00:43:51.000You 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.
00:43:59.000You can't have poor countries pursuing tremendous good for their citizens.
00:44:03.000But you can have rich countries that pursue tremendous evil, obviously.
00:44:06.000Yeah, I don't claim that trade is going to solve, that making people richer will solve these problems.
00:44:12.000Revolutions, the poor are more likely to rise up when their incomes are going up than when they're suffering in misery.
00:44:20.000Libertarianism 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.
00:45:04.000He 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.
00:45:14.000Without a certain amount of job involvement or employment, material prosperity doesn't solve the problem.
00:45:20.000What he means by that is he suggests that there are two main models that are now being pursued by people who are not libertarian.
00:45:26.000Model 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.
00:45:37.000And that means those people are gonna get left behind.
00:45:47.000Theory 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.
00:45:54.000So, what's your view on what we do with folks if The singularity is coming.
00:45:59.000If 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?
00:46:08.000We've had more trade than ever, up to Trump, and unemployment is at a remarkably low number.
00:46:16.000People worried when 90% of the people worked on the farms.
00:46:20.000What are all those people going to do?
00:46:22.000What are all the secretaries going to do if they lose their jobs or their telephone switchboard operators?
00:46:27.000They all lost their jobs and more people got employed.
00:47:05.000There'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.
00:47:13.000That's why they're all over the media.
00:47:15.000About 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.
00:47:26.000What do you make of the argument in favor of regulation of companies like Google or Facebook and their manipulation of informational access?
00:47:33.000Bad idea, because whoever does the regulation will make things worse.
00:47:38.000And we voluntarily gave them that information.
00:47:48.000I 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.
00:48:02.000The idea that the government is going to make that better is terrifying.
00:48:07.000Also, 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.
00:48:17.000I 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.
00:48:29.000Government has no way to make it better.
00:48:31.000And if they get horrible, government does have the guns.
00:48:35.000And in the end, government could always step in.
00:48:38.000Okay, 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.
00:48:45.000So people are deeply concerned over the climate changing.
00:48:49.000It seems that the vast majority of scientists agree that the climate is growing warmer, to what extent we still don't know.
00:48:54.000And the vast majority also agree that whatever warming has occurred over the past century or so is at least majority attributable to human activity.
00:49:02.000How worried are you about global warming?
00:49:03.000What role does government have in regulating environmental emissions, for example, in this particular area?
00:49:09.000Because libertarians have basically been called skeptics and climate deniers because of their hands-off approach.
00:49:18.000Well, 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.
00:49:27.000I don't agree that it's so clear that man does most of it.
00:49:30.000Certainly man does some of it, but I don't think there's necessarily agreement on that.
00:49:36.000But the next two steps are the important ones.
00:50:40.000It'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.
00:50:49.000I 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.
00:50:57.000But if we don't bankrupt ourselves on stupid mandates for wind power and nonsense like that, in 10 years we'll be much richer.
00:51:08.000And then if we know more about the problem, then maybe we can do something about it.
00:51:12.000Okay, so, John, I do have one final question for you.
00:51:15.000I want to ask you why you don't just run for president on the Libertarian ticket.
00:51:18.000But if you actually like to hear the answer, you're going to have to subscribe.
00:51:21.000To 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.
00:51:26.000So, John Stossel, thanks so much for coming in.