December 2, 2008

Stossel tells conference audience: "Crisis is a friend of the state"

 

John Stossel delivered a powerful keynote presentation at the Platte Institute’s Transparency in Government Conference on Nov. 18 at the University of Nebraska Student Union in Lincoln, saying that crisis is the friend of the state.


Stossel, a self-proclaimed Libertarian, is a co-anchor of ABC’s 20/20 and a best-selling author. During his one-hour presentation, Stossel gave his reasoning for why prosperity comes from limited government.


Having started his career as a consumer reporter, Stossel admits he initially thought government intervention was a good thing – he thought that it helped protect citizens.


“Then, the more I watched the regulators work the more I realized it didn’t work. It just added to the bureaucracy,” Stossel said. “The rules didn’t even work on the obvious crooks.


“The more I saw competition working, I realized this is what protects people. The way to get rich in America isn’t to cheat people, it’s to give us what we want.”


Stossel doesn’t blame people for feeling like they need government intervention, saying it is, “intuitive to think Capitalism is a dangerous thing and that we need government to protect us.” But, he added, the free-market system works even if it doesn’t seem like it will.


“Day after day, the free market solves problems on behalf of consumers in ways you intuitively wouldn’t think it would,” Stossel said. “We’ve become unwilling to deal with ups and downs … we take miracles performed by the free market for granted.”


To illustrate his point, Stossel used credit card transactions as an example. He said it amazes even him that he can travel to a foreign country, insert a piece of plastic into a machine and get money out of it. He can then take the same piece of plastic to another country and rent a car from someone who doesn’t speak English. And when he gets home, the credit card company has handled all of the accounting, put it neatly into a statement for him and everything works great. Yet, “the government can’t even count votes correctly,” he said.


Stossel also used his presentation to express his concern over how much government spending has increased through the years as a percentage of our GDP.


“I would say they spend money like drunken sailors, except that insults drunken sailors because they spend their own money,” Stossel said.


Stossel’s presentation drew a rousing applause from the audience and he concluded the luncheon with a book signing for those conference attendees.