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Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media... – A Witty Take on Regulators, Politicians, Lawyers, and Free Markets
Working as a correspondent for 20/20 and Good Morning America , John Stossel confronted dozens of scam from hacks who worked out of their basements to some of America's most powerful executives and leading politicians. His efforts shut down countless crooks -- both famous and obscure. Then he realized what the real problem was. In Give Me a Break , Stossel takes on the regulators, lawyers, and politicians who thrive on our hysteria about risk and deceive the public in the name of safety. Drawing on his vast professional experience (as well as some personal ones), Stossel presents an engaging, witty, and thought-provoking argument about the beneficial powers of the free market and free speech.
294 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
About the author
John Stossel
18 books114 followersJohn Frank Stossel is an American consumer television personality, author, and libertarian pundit, known for his career on both ABC News and Fox Business Channel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 120 reviews
March 11, 2011
This is another situation where a "thinking" person starts out buying the standard line...the standard way of thinking and sets out to participate in it. Mr. Stossel was a consumer reporter for some time. he recounts here his intro into journalism, broadcast journalism, move to ABC and move to 20/20. (Since this book he has moved from ABC to Fox Network).
After some years of exposing conmen/conpeople, debunking false product claims etc. he found himself becoming more and more aware that in spite of all the "new safety regulations" and government regulators the only thing being accomplished was the tying of peoples hands. From the series of small businesses "put out of business" not because they were unsafe but because regulations were now being used by "established business" and services to end competition (a small company running "small bus" type vans that got people to work faster than the city bus line and without the long wait, put out of business when the bus driver's union complained...or the two old ladies in North Carolina who were knitting mittens in their home and selling them to "get by" who were out out of business, "because they couldn't legally run a business from their home) to the little old ladie who was so short she was endangered by the airbag in her car and could not legally have it removed or disconnected. She finally had to get the help of her congressman.
Good book that ought to scare us and ought to provoke us to scream that the regulators be shut down...but it won't. When Mr. Stossel (after a 3 year battle) finally got a program (or report) okayed (Scaring Ourselves) on the regulation mess and (as he says) he naively thought after he got an enormous positive response to the program that people would demand the return of their freedom. They/we didn't.
As I said good book, read it, think about it...just think.
After some years of exposing conmen/conpeople, debunking false product claims etc. he found himself becoming more and more aware that in spite of all the "new safety regulations" and government regulators the only thing being accomplished was the tying of peoples hands. From the series of small businesses "put out of business" not because they were unsafe but because regulations were now being used by "established business" and services to end competition (a small company running "small bus" type vans that got people to work faster than the city bus line and without the long wait, put out of business when the bus driver's union complained...or the two old ladies in North Carolina who were knitting mittens in their home and selling them to "get by" who were out out of business, "because they couldn't legally run a business from their home) to the little old ladie who was so short she was endangered by the airbag in her car and could not legally have it removed or disconnected. She finally had to get the help of her congressman.
Good book that ought to scare us and ought to provoke us to scream that the regulators be shut down...but it won't. When Mr. Stossel (after a 3 year battle) finally got a program (or report) okayed (Scaring Ourselves) on the regulation mess and (as he says) he naively thought after he got an enormous positive response to the program that people would demand the return of their freedom. They/we didn't.
As I said good book, read it, think about it...just think.
May 12, 2011
Oh these libertine Libertarians. Will they never stop chanting for individual rights and self-responsibility? What does Stossel think this is, a free country?
His book Give Me a Break : How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media... by John Stossel (Feb 1, 2005) seems to speculate that it could be, or at least should be, or maybe once was. This investigative reporter and former host of ABC's 20/20 TV program has spent decades delving into the skulduggery of government and private enterprise alike. Listen to him and you'd think both rich and poor want every handout they can get, and the federal government is more than willing to be just the one to give it to them.
Stossel covers a lot of bases in this book and weaves them in with many anecdotes about his personal reporting experiences. Over-regulation, nannie state, vulture lawyers, super rich, junk science, OSHA, the FDA, free markets, cut the waste, free speech, and on and on and on.
Each chapter starts with a quote from a famous person. One that says it all for me: "Liberty means responsibility. That's why most men dread it." George Bernard Shaw. And: "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain." Thomas Jefferson. (Doesn't that seem exactly where we're headed, if we haven't already arrived.)
This book is easy reading and highly informative. I recommend it. C'mon Americans! Take your country, your LIVES, and your MINDS back!!
Related links for John Stossel:
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/stosselvideo
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/
http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/index.html
His book Give Me a Break : How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media... by John Stossel (Feb 1, 2005) seems to speculate that it could be, or at least should be, or maybe once was. This investigative reporter and former host of ABC's 20/20 TV program has spent decades delving into the skulduggery of government and private enterprise alike. Listen to him and you'd think both rich and poor want every handout they can get, and the federal government is more than willing to be just the one to give it to them.
Stossel covers a lot of bases in this book and weaves them in with many anecdotes about his personal reporting experiences. Over-regulation, nannie state, vulture lawyers, super rich, junk science, OSHA, the FDA, free markets, cut the waste, free speech, and on and on and on.
Each chapter starts with a quote from a famous person. One that says it all for me: "Liberty means responsibility. That's why most men dread it." George Bernard Shaw. And: "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain." Thomas Jefferson. (Doesn't that seem exactly where we're headed, if we haven't already arrived.)
This book is easy reading and highly informative. I recommend it. C'mon Americans! Take your country, your LIVES, and your MINDS back!!
Related links for John Stossel:
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/stosselvideo
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/
http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/index.html
December 23, 2018
Very well written and an eye opener. Stats to support his claims as he uses his ability as a report to showcase the widen spread abuses of our governmwnt system.
August 29, 2018
John Stossel and I certainly do not agree on everything, but I wouldn't have known that had he not directly shared a couple things we differ on. That's okay; reasonable minds can disagree reasonably (or maybe not, given today's climate and what he went through by speaking some observations). What he and I agree on, though, would make for a nice evening chat or a running email.
Stossel tackles some holy grail issues for the American left and pulls no punches--too much government interference is stifling, it's okay that some people have more than others, and so on--and I can only imagine how those who oppose just seethe with anger. I was amused and was able to fly through this one pretty quickly. What surprised me, however, is that this book is already 14 years old. I would have thought it was written last year, so perhaps I was simply not as observant a decade ago, or certain folks are just much louder.
At any rate, Stossel uses data to prove his points--and even admits when he has been wrong, including a slight blunder on live TV--and I can already hear the left saying "don't confuse me with facts!" I would be interested in an updated version, too, though I'm not sure it's coming any time soon.
Stossel tackles some holy grail issues for the American left and pulls no punches--too much government interference is stifling, it's okay that some people have more than others, and so on--and I can only imagine how those who oppose just seethe with anger. I was amused and was able to fly through this one pretty quickly. What surprised me, however, is that this book is already 14 years old. I would have thought it was written last year, so perhaps I was simply not as observant a decade ago, or certain folks are just much louder.
At any rate, Stossel uses data to prove his points--and even admits when he has been wrong, including a slight blunder on live TV--and I can already hear the left saying "don't confuse me with facts!" I would be interested in an updated version, too, though I'm not sure it's coming any time soon.
July 17, 2009
I think I liked this book because 1)I could relate to his observations about the news business, and 2) I'm more of a libertarian in my beliefs than conservative. He had great things to say about the free markets, our litigious society, the war on drugs, etc. I found his changing beliefs amusing, since like most TV news employees, he was staunchly left, but found himself moving towards the right. The difference is, he admitted it, and then people decided to dislike him. If you're exposing big businesses as scammers and cheats, that's popular, but if you show that corporations actually benefit our country by employing people and making products that we want and need, then you're a tool of The Man.
December 12, 2011
"Gimme a BREAK, baby doll!"
I don't usually have time for tapping out reviews of the kinds of books I enjoy, but this one had to be mentioned with something a little more substantive than a hearty "like" or thumbs-up. So, behold, my review of John Stossel's "Give Me a Break":
This is a thoroughly enjoyable book, in the PJ O'Rourke tradition that humor is the best medicine (the only at the moment!?) for the hilarious horrors and pitfalls of being, well, "governed".
H L Mencken once said democracy is the worship of jackals by jackasses, and John Stossel has located a hell of a lot of both, it seems, looking to the marble walls of Washington for answers to life's not-so-funny questions.
Not that we've never heard these accusations of the stupidity and vulgar complacency of modern "government" by other people than former ABC correspondent John Stossel. The Libertarians have warned for over 50 years that a day would come when, after treating liberal ideas about government being some kind of "fix all" as "just so" methods to help with every woe and misfortune in the world, the payday for all this largess would come back to haunt. Both for personal freedom, and our wallets. And as many before Stossel pointed out, like the much-derided (in the universities, not in real life) Classical Economists, the bills are high--more than was squeezed from Middle Age peasants and a lot less value to our industries, our safety, and self-respect at that. If paradise on Earth is not to be found at upwards of 40% (and growing) of the GNP gobbled by local, state and Federal taxes, Nirvana is simply not to be had. Stossel wonders aloud why hard heads in government at all levels don't get the message that our civilization might function better with LESS government grinding around in the wheels of our industry and lives rather than more.
Instinctively, we know that government is not to be some kind of giant piñata, ready to burst open from majoritarian pressures to supposedly yield answers on everything from Cosmic Justice among the sexes and the workplace, "free" health care and other fantasies--all the way to what happens when hot coffee hits the groin while driving. So it goes.
However, be that as it may, I enjoyed Stossel's book because he does a masterful job at organizing for our viewing pleasure (and humor) merely SOME of the most glaring trends in government interference and utter (deliberate!?) incompetence in government, in what my wife and I have always called "governance by deliberate skulduggery".
Whether the concern is $300K outhouses on the taxpayer dime, or telling you not to salt your turnips, Nanny government has an answer you won't always enjoy hearing about, but must accept. Or ELSE.
In other words, either out of malice, or incompetence, or just plain ideological skulduggery to some ancient fatuous (mostly liberal) notions about the malleability of human nature, government is still trying to win our hearts by picking our pockets. Ever promising, further, the good times are just around the corner without worrying about nuisances like jobs, personal responsibility, accountability, and not cradling hot java between your legs. Perhaps its not ether or, but all the above. Ideology and malice and incompetence are, after all, powerful antidotes to common sense. I wish Stossel had spent a little more time on WHY he thinks government behaves this way and why so many people are throwing verbal brick bats at him, demanding this and that along with his termination from ABC, etc. But one step at a time. Stossel does hint that it is mostly UNenlightened self-interest of a dirty type (speaking of "greed") that keeps many politicians and lawyers and their pundits busy making rules for the rest of us and making owning a business a personal journey into the Abyss.
Stossel fondly recounts the days when he was actually hailed as a hero in the old muckraking sense by men like Ralph Nader, only to later catch absolute hell for piddling errors like the episode with so-called "organic" veggies, etc, etc. No one thought of him as amateur then when at the same time he stuck his arms in lions' mouths and other gags to keep ratings flowing. What was of interest to me at the time I first read the book (twice by now) was not so much his arguments with the predictable loonies over the fate of mother earth, the indoctrination of schoolkids with hateful and bizarre rhetoric about greenhouse baloney, or even the maddening support the rich top hat lawyers give and GET from big government and all their tobacco tears along with corporate jets, etc. Rather, it was the sudden shift in attitude some big government and bureaucracy workers and their many supporters in the environmental and legal realms took (the Left especially) when he shifted his critical lenses from small time jewelry hucksters to the hallowed halls of big time government. Stossel's book also demonstrates, via his crucifixion among "mainstream" publications (and their calls for his utter torment for small mistakes and his attacks on the machinery of government), that it is after all NOT an urban legend that the major media are generally liberal. They most certainly ARE judging from their silence on the topics he brings up, and their responses to his attacks on their favorite governmental heroes. As well as their more droll notions about what it means to truly be a ..."progressive."
The major media hide behind thin veils of alleged 'objectivity', call themselves moderates, and label anything that favors open markets and freedom-preaching as being "right wing." Ditto the universities and liberal feminists whom he tried to get an audience with only to find them holding to laughable notions about gender, etc. Or course, then there are the Phunny Pharm Far Left organizations that sing paeans to objectivity and "Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting" that Stossel pointed out do nothing of the kind when the truth really needs to be tested on the grindstone of hard, thorough, and honest investigatory journalism.
Thus for example groups like FAIR, websites such as the avuncular Bill Moyers' TomPaine.com, left wing outlets like The Nation, and others, took pedantic cheap shots at Stossel over a minor error he made regarding a hippy-dippy organic food flap, and testing for bacteria and pesticides. Actually, not really so much over some minor errors on reporting that it was NOT true that "organic foods" contain "no" or "little" pesticides or dangerous bacteria (Stossel explained a slight methodological error he made between himself and the staff that was to do the testing on produce), but rather due to his uncovering of the TRUTH that "organic foods" are, overall, NOT healthier than ones raised on the large industrial farms (and they are not, as any real epidemiologist can tell you). Stossel was, on the whole, vindicated on this issue too--whether they liked it or not.
My, the magical powers of illumination cast upon politicians' and pundits blank or evasive responses, before the camera's unforgiving eye. Enjoy.
See also this same review in slightly different format--and many more turgid ponderings--at my personal blog at:
http://wakepedia.blogspot.com/2004/04...
I don't usually have time for tapping out reviews of the kinds of books I enjoy, but this one had to be mentioned with something a little more substantive than a hearty "like" or thumbs-up. So, behold, my review of John Stossel's "Give Me a Break":
This is a thoroughly enjoyable book, in the PJ O'Rourke tradition that humor is the best medicine (the only at the moment!?) for the hilarious horrors and pitfalls of being, well, "governed".
H L Mencken once said democracy is the worship of jackals by jackasses, and John Stossel has located a hell of a lot of both, it seems, looking to the marble walls of Washington for answers to life's not-so-funny questions.
Not that we've never heard these accusations of the stupidity and vulgar complacency of modern "government" by other people than former ABC correspondent John Stossel. The Libertarians have warned for over 50 years that a day would come when, after treating liberal ideas about government being some kind of "fix all" as "just so" methods to help with every woe and misfortune in the world, the payday for all this largess would come back to haunt. Both for personal freedom, and our wallets. And as many before Stossel pointed out, like the much-derided (in the universities, not in real life) Classical Economists, the bills are high--more than was squeezed from Middle Age peasants and a lot less value to our industries, our safety, and self-respect at that. If paradise on Earth is not to be found at upwards of 40% (and growing) of the GNP gobbled by local, state and Federal taxes, Nirvana is simply not to be had. Stossel wonders aloud why hard heads in government at all levels don't get the message that our civilization might function better with LESS government grinding around in the wheels of our industry and lives rather than more.
Instinctively, we know that government is not to be some kind of giant piñata, ready to burst open from majoritarian pressures to supposedly yield answers on everything from Cosmic Justice among the sexes and the workplace, "free" health care and other fantasies--all the way to what happens when hot coffee hits the groin while driving. So it goes.
However, be that as it may, I enjoyed Stossel's book because he does a masterful job at organizing for our viewing pleasure (and humor) merely SOME of the most glaring trends in government interference and utter (deliberate!?) incompetence in government, in what my wife and I have always called "governance by deliberate skulduggery".
Whether the concern is $300K outhouses on the taxpayer dime, or telling you not to salt your turnips, Nanny government has an answer you won't always enjoy hearing about, but must accept. Or ELSE.
In other words, either out of malice, or incompetence, or just plain ideological skulduggery to some ancient fatuous (mostly liberal) notions about the malleability of human nature, government is still trying to win our hearts by picking our pockets. Ever promising, further, the good times are just around the corner without worrying about nuisances like jobs, personal responsibility, accountability, and not cradling hot java between your legs. Perhaps its not ether or, but all the above. Ideology and malice and incompetence are, after all, powerful antidotes to common sense. I wish Stossel had spent a little more time on WHY he thinks government behaves this way and why so many people are throwing verbal brick bats at him, demanding this and that along with his termination from ABC, etc. But one step at a time. Stossel does hint that it is mostly UNenlightened self-interest of a dirty type (speaking of "greed") that keeps many politicians and lawyers and their pundits busy making rules for the rest of us and making owning a business a personal journey into the Abyss.
Stossel fondly recounts the days when he was actually hailed as a hero in the old muckraking sense by men like Ralph Nader, only to later catch absolute hell for piddling errors like the episode with so-called "organic" veggies, etc, etc. No one thought of him as amateur then when at the same time he stuck his arms in lions' mouths and other gags to keep ratings flowing. What was of interest to me at the time I first read the book (twice by now) was not so much his arguments with the predictable loonies over the fate of mother earth, the indoctrination of schoolkids with hateful and bizarre rhetoric about greenhouse baloney, or even the maddening support the rich top hat lawyers give and GET from big government and all their tobacco tears along with corporate jets, etc. Rather, it was the sudden shift in attitude some big government and bureaucracy workers and their many supporters in the environmental and legal realms took (the Left especially) when he shifted his critical lenses from small time jewelry hucksters to the hallowed halls of big time government. Stossel's book also demonstrates, via his crucifixion among "mainstream" publications (and their calls for his utter torment for small mistakes and his attacks on the machinery of government), that it is after all NOT an urban legend that the major media are generally liberal. They most certainly ARE judging from their silence on the topics he brings up, and their responses to his attacks on their favorite governmental heroes. As well as their more droll notions about what it means to truly be a ..."progressive."
The major media hide behind thin veils of alleged 'objectivity', call themselves moderates, and label anything that favors open markets and freedom-preaching as being "right wing." Ditto the universities and liberal feminists whom he tried to get an audience with only to find them holding to laughable notions about gender, etc. Or course, then there are the Phunny Pharm Far Left organizations that sing paeans to objectivity and "Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting" that Stossel pointed out do nothing of the kind when the truth really needs to be tested on the grindstone of hard, thorough, and honest investigatory journalism.
Thus for example groups like FAIR, websites such as the avuncular Bill Moyers' TomPaine.com, left wing outlets like The Nation, and others, took pedantic cheap shots at Stossel over a minor error he made regarding a hippy-dippy organic food flap, and testing for bacteria and pesticides. Actually, not really so much over some minor errors on reporting that it was NOT true that "organic foods" contain "no" or "little" pesticides or dangerous bacteria (Stossel explained a slight methodological error he made between himself and the staff that was to do the testing on produce), but rather due to his uncovering of the TRUTH that "organic foods" are, overall, NOT healthier than ones raised on the large industrial farms (and they are not, as any real epidemiologist can tell you). Stossel was, on the whole, vindicated on this issue too--whether they liked it or not.
My, the magical powers of illumination cast upon politicians' and pundits blank or evasive responses, before the camera's unforgiving eye. Enjoy.
See also this same review in slightly different format--and many more turgid ponderings--at my personal blog at:
http://wakepedia.blogspot.com/2004/04...
August 11, 2009
This book is just like his 20/20 specials. Stossel's message is well-illustrated with lots of stories. He skewers those on the political left (e.g. Ralph Nader and Democrats) and sometimes the right as well (Donald Trump and big corporations). It's very much a libertarian take in favor of free markets and limited government, and I'm inclined to agree with many of his points. But I'd love to hear an articulate response from another viewpoint. In any case, even if you disagree with his arguments, the material is thought provoking.
I've come to believe that American society is like a drunkard riding a horse. In some seasons, we fall off one side of the horse in favor of free markets and deregulation. Then there are abuses of the system (e.g., the 1929 stock market crash or the recent sub-prime mortgage debacle), and we fall off the other side in favor of more government intervention and regulation. May God grant us wisdom to find the golden mean between government regulation and free markets.
I fear that sometimes Stossel's measuring rod is based solely on costs, i.e., free markets are good because they keep the prices down. But cost isn't the only measuring rod. Sometimes the government, because it doesn't have to concern itself with making a profit, can promote social goods that don't make economic sense. Take for example NIH's desire to do research and develop treatments for diseases that are rare, such as progeria, or diseases that afflict populations outside the U.S. For-profit companies typically won't do that kind of work because there's not enough of a profit incentive.
Also, while Stossel points out many of the unintended bad consequences caused by government regulation, it's an interesting thought experiment to ponder all the disasters that were prevented because of government regulation. Because these are all hypothetical, there are no dramatic stories to air about government graft.
Another point to ponder is that limited government is needed because as Dan Ariely and behavioral economists have shown us, people are predictably irrational. We make all kinds of predictably irrational mistakes that call into question our ability to control our own decision making. For example, we predictably make irrational decisions, fall prey to "influence" techniques, make decisions based on how questions are worded, etc. Government regulation helps to police this area and protect us.
All of this leads me to conclude that we need to test our policies. We all have intuitions about how things work or should work, but our intuitions are often wrong. So the most sensible approach is to do a test run of different policies (perhaps in different regions), determine their measurable effects, and then evaluate the results in order to choose the policy with the most desirable outcomes. The book Supercrunchers by Ian Ayres makes a good case for this approach.
I've come to believe that American society is like a drunkard riding a horse. In some seasons, we fall off one side of the horse in favor of free markets and deregulation. Then there are abuses of the system (e.g., the 1929 stock market crash or the recent sub-prime mortgage debacle), and we fall off the other side in favor of more government intervention and regulation. May God grant us wisdom to find the golden mean between government regulation and free markets.
I fear that sometimes Stossel's measuring rod is based solely on costs, i.e., free markets are good because they keep the prices down. But cost isn't the only measuring rod. Sometimes the government, because it doesn't have to concern itself with making a profit, can promote social goods that don't make economic sense. Take for example NIH's desire to do research and develop treatments for diseases that are rare, such as progeria, or diseases that afflict populations outside the U.S. For-profit companies typically won't do that kind of work because there's not enough of a profit incentive.
Also, while Stossel points out many of the unintended bad consequences caused by government regulation, it's an interesting thought experiment to ponder all the disasters that were prevented because of government regulation. Because these are all hypothetical, there are no dramatic stories to air about government graft.
Another point to ponder is that limited government is needed because as Dan Ariely and behavioral economists have shown us, people are predictably irrational. We make all kinds of predictably irrational mistakes that call into question our ability to control our own decision making. For example, we predictably make irrational decisions, fall prey to "influence" techniques, make decisions based on how questions are worded, etc. Government regulation helps to police this area and protect us.
All of this leads me to conclude that we need to test our policies. We all have intuitions about how things work or should work, but our intuitions are often wrong. So the most sensible approach is to do a test run of different policies (perhaps in different regions), determine their measurable effects, and then evaluate the results in order to choose the policy with the most desirable outcomes. The book Supercrunchers by Ian Ayres makes a good case for this approach.
December 10, 2009
Catching this one on audio in the car right now, and, boy, I am really coming to appreciate John Stossel. I'm on the chapter about the Nanny State right now- over regulation by the government strangling our choices & freedoms in the name of "consumer safety." Yah, thanks Big Brother... Great read!
------
Excellent book. Actually has me rethinking my positions on drug legalization & voluntary prostitution. He makes some pretty convincing arguments for both, though an error on one comment that "No one robs stores for Marlboros." Or something close to that. Yes, John, convenience stores get robbed all the time for their cigarettes.
He even makes an interesting case against organics that made me prick up my ears. Considering I had to spend more time than I would have liked perusing the Organics Consumers (Communists) Assn. website for a recent green article and he used them in one section of the book, I found their less than forthcoming way of answering his questions interesting, to say the least. Though for my part, I could never tell the difference between the taste of a friggin' organic veggie & a conventional one. I just prefer less chemicals & more small farms. But now I think I'm coming around to the belief I'd rather buy from small, local farmers, whether they grow organically or not.
A must read!
------
Excellent book. Actually has me rethinking my positions on drug legalization & voluntary prostitution. He makes some pretty convincing arguments for both, though an error on one comment that "No one robs stores for Marlboros." Or something close to that. Yes, John, convenience stores get robbed all the time for their cigarettes.
He even makes an interesting case against organics that made me prick up my ears. Considering I had to spend more time than I would have liked perusing the Organics Consumers (Communists) Assn. website for a recent green article and he used them in one section of the book, I found their less than forthcoming way of answering his questions interesting, to say the least. Though for my part, I could never tell the difference between the taste of a friggin' organic veggie & a conventional one. I just prefer less chemicals & more small farms. But now I think I'm coming around to the belief I'd rather buy from small, local farmers, whether they grow organically or not.
A must read!
February 20, 2017
My father-in-law gave me this book to read, and I thought it was pretty interesting. I like Stossel as a TV reporter, and I think he's got some pretty good takes in his book. It's an easy read, but I think he kind of gets hung up on a lot of the same pitfalls that has kept Libertarianism out of the mainstream. He kind of contradicts himself in ways. At one point he asserts that FDA regulations have stifled innovation and held up medicines that could have saved the lives of "fat people." Then, 50 or so pages later, he laments that "fat people" should be allowed to choose to be fat and the government shouldn't intervene and levy higher taxes on unhealthy foods. Both arguments are valid and make lots of sense. But side by side, they make Stossel look like he's grasping at straws. He also comes off as kind of bitter. Like he sees himself as some martyr, who was lauded as a consumer reporter, and then cast down when he started reporting on government overreach. Honestly, I've never really seen much negative said about the guy. Overall, it's a easily digested book and Stossel has a lot of solid ideas. It's worth reading, but be prepared to kind of scratch your head at some of his logic.
January 1, 2024
Solid little read - he needed a way to explain himself
Read
August 12, 2026As a consumer reporter, I exposed con men and thieves, confronting them with hidden camera footage that unmasked their lies, put some out of business, and helped send the worst of them to jail.
I won 18 Emmys
Then I did a terrible thing. Instead of just applying my skepticism to business, I applied it to government and “public interest” groups.
Seven thousand dollars per year wasn’t great money, even in 1970, but the work felt important. And being on TV was a great way to meet women. So I kept postponing grad school.
They had no reason to hurry because no one ever got fired. There was no reason to work harder because union rules demanded everyone be paid the same. Many union workers were masters not just at killing time but at killing innovation. “Can’t be done.” “Against the rules.” “Equipment won’t do that.”
our own union electrician, who had so little to do that he dozed off on the job.
three-week stuttering clinic. This clinic is called the Hollins Communications Research Institute, and it has a novel approach to stuttering
stutterers, even when we don’t block on words, articulate the sounds harder than necessary, and that often leads to word blocks. In Roanoke, they had us sit in little rooms, reading words into a microphone, concentrating on beginning each sound gently. Every time we hit a word too hard, a red light came on.
The lawyers were worried about what they called “product disparagement.”
We took a poll that found one-third of the fans in the audience believed “pro wrassling” was real.
ulterior motives
I taped people working on a bridge spanning from New York to Pennsylvania. Workers got $31 an hour on the New York side, $22 on the Pennsylvania side. we do quite well without government setting wages. Wages are best set by competition—by supply and demand.
Prices are valuable information. They tell workers where it might be better to work, and contractors where it might be better to hire.
chicken-processing plants. bird intestines strung all over the place, four kinds of bacteria—Yersinia, salmonella, Listeria, and campylobacter.
Microbes are invisible to inspectors. It would make much more sense to take samples off the line and put them in petri dishes to see what kind of bacteria grows. the USDA still pays inspectors to stare at the chickens.
I noticed groups of people who seemed to be waiting for a bus, but who instead were picked up by mini-vans. What was this, a company’s private transport service? No. It was a new venture, run by immigrants, the start of their American dream. It was a hit with customers, too. Without the vans, they’d have to take city buses, which followed rigid routes and charged $1.50. The vans were a better deal. They only cost a dollar, and got you there faster because they often went exactly where you wanted to go.
Did city politicians stand up and cheer—thank the van drivers for making the city a better place? No. They declared the vans illegal.
In 1962, the FDA protected American women from the tranquilizer thalidomide. while in Europe, women who took it sometimes gave birth to children with severe birth defects. The media put pictures of armless and legless thalidomide babies on the covers of magazines.
In a free market, customers spread the word about good things and warn people about the bad. But under FDA rule, consumers assume “government takes care of all that,” so we become less vigilant. The consumer is encouraged to fall asleep: Don’t ask questions; just take what Big Brother approves.
Some things can only be done by governments: waging war, guarding borders, policing cities, and enforcing pollution rules,
By contrast, government almost never polices itself. When government agencies lose money, or fail at their missions, they ask Congress for more money. They usually get it, citing their failure to achieve their goals as proof that they need more funds.
government was smothering the airline business with a thousand “consumer protection” rules.
In the 1970s, the government believed that the only way to prevent “overcharging” by shippers was to have something called the Interstate Commerce Commission tell them what routes they could take and how much they could charge. The rules became so byzantine that trucks that carried carrots from a farm made return trips empty—because it was too difficult to get permission to carry, say, furniture back to the farm in the same truck.
When abolishing the ICC was proposed, critics said shippers could charge anything they wanted—they’d rip us off. Prices would skyrocket. Yet when the ICC was abolished, the opposite happened. Left to make their own decisions, shippers found more efficient ways to do things and competition lowered prices. shipping things cost, on average, 2 percent less.
political ladder. Problems will become your successor’s problems.
JC DeCaux, installed toilets at three different sites. They were nicer than public rest rooms I’ve seen. They actually cleaned themselves—after you left the stall, the door closed, the floor was cleaned by jets of water that shot across it, and the seat withdrew into the wall, where it was steam-cleaned and disinfected.
New York City a penny—DeCaux would recover its investment by selling advertising.
But the Anointed said the European toilets were unacceptable. They did not comply with America’s new disabilities law. They had to be wheelchairaccessible. But DeCaux’s CEO, Jean François DeCaux, had experimented with big, wheelchair-accessible bathrooms in London. “It was a complete disaster,” he told us. “They were misused for sex and drugs, and the homeless were spending the night…. All the special fixtures were destroyed all the time.”
righteous indignation
at the time, I took the “safety” lawyers and environmentalists at their word. They were the good guys out to serve the public. They described themselves as “public interest” advocates
I found the accident data fascinating. Turns out hot tap water, stairs, bunk beds, and drowning in bathtubs kill more people than most risks we hysterically warn people about.
If we scare people about every ant, they won’t pay attention when the elephants come.
we accept natural gas, even though it kills not two but 400 Americans a year, because it was introduced before we got crazy about risk.
We accept coal, even though mining it is nasty and filthy and kills dozens of people every year. By contrast, we’re terrified of nuclear energy. Chernobyl, the worst nuclear power disaster ever, killed only 30 people. Some say the radiation may eventually kill others, but even if that’s true, natural gas kills more people every year.
I’m not one of those who believe markets would solve all our problems. Protecting the environment is a proper role of limited government.
Lead is a nasty poison. If kids eat enough of it, they suffer brain damage.
University of Pittsburgh physics professor Bernard Cohen and researchers at the Harvard School of Risk Analysis helped me prepare the chart.
Driving takes half a year off the average life. It’s 180 times worse than flying. Every month, car accidents kill 3,000 people.
add smoking to the list— 6.6 years off the average man’s life and 3.9 years off the average woman’s.
Consider government-funded medical research. You would think the bureaucrats would spend tax dollars on research that would save the most lives or relieve the most suffering. But they don’t. The lion’s share goes to the activists who make the most noise.
in 2001, AIDS research got $4,439 per patient from NIH, breast cancer $290. Diabetes, which killed more people than AIDS and breast cancer combined, got $41. Heart disease, the number one killer, got just $58 per patient.
While chemicals and BIC lighters may pose slight risks, by far the bigger risk is being poor. Studies show that if you are poor (below the poverty line in the United States, in the lowest quintile of income elsewhere), your life is seven to 10 years shorter.
The regulation headline should read, “New OSHA Rule to Save Six, Kill 10.” You won’t see that headline. Reporters don’t think that way.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts. —Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Newspaper reports said a survey found today’s teachers’ worries were (1) drug abuse, (2) alcohol abuse, (3) pregnancy, (4) suicide, (5) rape, (6) robbery. But in the ’40s, teachers worried about (1) talking, (2) chewing gum, (3) making noise, (4) running in the halls.
It appeared everywhere—newspapers, magazines, the Congressional Quarterly, Ann Landers’s column.
finally traced the story back to Texas oilman T. Cullen Davis, who said he made it up.
Journalists joke that some stories are “too good to check.” This was one of those.
When Linus Pauling said megadoses of vitamin C could ward off colds, the press reported his claim enthusiastically, and the public believed. After all, he was a Nobel Prize winner. No matter that Pauling’s Nobel was in chemistry, not biology; no matter that dozens of follow-up studies found no evidence that vitamin C prevents colds. The pills still fly out of stores.
Several years ago, two physicists in Utah, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, announced they’d solved the mystery of cold fusion. Pons and Fleischmann were so confident, they skipped peer review and just held a press conference. Then they went to Congress to ask for millions.
The media may be gullible, but other scientists are skeptical. They keep testing—questioning—so gradually we keep moving closer to the truth.
But now I realize lawyers are more concerned with winning than with truth.
Why didn’t they get sick? Because dioxin that kills animals doesn’t necessarily hurt us.
Several years ago, a study found oat bran lowers cholesterol. People rushed out to buy oat bran muffins, even though the fat in muffins surely outweighed any oat bran benefit to anyone’s heart. People started selling oat bran beer and oat bran toothpaste, but once reporters realized that the research was funded by the Quaker Oats Company
Did you know 150,000 women a year die of anorexia? The Washington Post and other media simply accepted the number, but think about it—150,000 is absurd. Triple the number killed in cars? Triple the number of Americans killed during the entire Vietnam War? The real anorexia death toll is somewhere between 50 and 1,750. The 150,000 number was touted in books by feminist heroes Gloria Steinem and Naomi Wolf. (Wolf corrected the number in later editions.) Who in the media wanted to second-guess them?
But government can’t even count the votes in Florida. So why do we think government would screen passengers well?
TSA stands for “thousands standing around.”
government always grows. Sadly
As of this writing, 488,327 new pages have been added to the Federal Register since Clinton’s speech.
The founders said government should have limited duties. They laid it out in Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution: Government should keep the peace, coin money, establish a post office, postal roads, and the courts, and secure time-limited copyrights and patents. For 150 years, that’s about all it did. The focus was on guaranteeing individual liberty.
He pays personal property tax and sales tax on his truck. And when he buys gas there’s a county gas tax, a state gas tax, and a federal gas tax.
At work, Bill’s boss needs two employees just to calculate how much to withhold from paychecks. They make sure every employee pays local income tax, state income tax, federal income tax, FICA, and Medicare.
Because Bill’s wife works as a nurse, the Thurstons pay a marriage tax of $1,000 a year. Then there’s grocery tax, property tax, utility tax, FCC tax, a county tax on cable TV, five taxes on the phone (line tax, local tax, municipal tax, county tax, state tax), and finally, a sin tax on the beer they drink.
The legal doctrine of “eminent domain” (which means “superior ownership”) allows government officials to take possession of your property if they decide they need it for the greater good. Traditionally this meant building highways, bridges, and parks, and eminent domain was used only in unusual situations.
But today government officials use eminent domain to help private companies—Kmart, Home Depot, baseball teams, shopping malls. Hurst, Texas, condemned 127 homes that stood in the way of a developer’s plan to expand a mall.
The lawyers defend their fees and snail-like pace, saying, “We’ve got to make sure you get due process.”
prostitution should be permitted. (If quarterbacks and boxers make money with their bodies, why can’t a woman make money with hers?)
Limiting rent increases may sound good to tenants, but it hurts most renters because landlords have no incentive to renovate or to build new apartments. Also, since people would be fools to leave rentcontrolled apartments, the market’s natural turnover is asphyxiated. The elderly don’t move out to make room for young families. Families don’t move on when they outgrow their apartments. Virtually all professional economists agree that rent control causes housing shortages. Walter Williams said, “Short of aerial bombardment, the best way to destroy a city is through rent controls.”
economically illiterate
women are often better at reading feelings, men at reading maps.
June Reinisch, former director of the Kinsey Institute, told us, “When they look at babies in the first 72 hours of life, they find that males and females are not identical in the way they behave. Males startle more than females. If you give a little puff of air on their abdomen, they [are] much more likely to startle than females,” while “females rhythmically mouth, they suck on their tongues, they move their lips and so forth, more than males do.” Infant girls sit up without support earlier than boys, while boys crawl away from their caretaker earlier than girls. This happens before parents have much influence.
There is a reason the children fear the earth is dying: It’s because the environmental movement “has been hijacked by political activists who are using environmental rhetoric to cloak agendas like class warfare and anticorporatism that in fact have almost nothing to do with ecology,” said environmentalist Patrick Moore, a former director of Greenpeace who quit the organization.
99 percent of the pesticides we ingest are natural ones, produced by plants to fend off pests. These natural pesticides may be loved by devotees of organics, but they contain chemicals that are known to be endocrine disrupters, neurotoxins, and carcinogens. In 1999 the National Research Council concluded that “the total exposure to naturally occurring carcinogens exceeds the exposure to synthetic carcinogens.”
the important point is that organics’ big selling point—that the stuff is better for you—is bunk.
“If we’ve got no deaths from pesticides and 5,000 deaths from bacteria,
explain what the word “disability” means. What is an “impairment”? What’s a “substantial limitation”? Is being stupid a disability? Feeling compelled to fondle women? Being fat? Who knows?
Well-intended but complicated and unpredictable laws like the ADA eventually hurt the people they were meant to help.
the government labeled addiction a disease. Since disease isn’t your fault, the
lots of people who have bulging or herniated disks experience no pain.
perfect is the enemy of the good.
1 billion people try to survive on just a dollar a day.
Communist China now runs Hong Kong. So far the island’s stunning success has deterred the Communists from imposing their usual rules, but they may yet kill the goose that’s been laying golden eggs.
By contrast, I dare you to try to start a business in India. We didn’t even try to open one when I was in Calcutta, because the paperwork takes years. When Kentucky Fried Chicken wanted to open outlets in India, Parliament spent months debating whether the request should be allowed. A government minister worried the chicken wasn’t healthy enough.
Pg 222 list
Looking at the lists, you clearly see that places with the greatest economic freedom are also places where even the poor do pretty well.
You may be surprised to find countries like Denmark and Canada on the list, since they are often labeled as socialistic welfare states. While they are socialist in some ways, they also protect private property, regulate fairly lightly, and make it relatively easy to open a business.
At the bottom of the economic-freedom rankings are countries where government runs the economy. These are the worst places to live—for everyone, but especially for the poor.
complacent
Gordon Gecko says, “It’s a zero-sum game. Somebody wins. Somebody loses. Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred.”
As usual, Hollywood, like the AFL-CIO, got capitalism wrong—it’s not a zero-sum game. T. J. Rodgers making $10 million and Bill Gates acquiring $40 billion doesn’t mean the rest of us have $40,010,000,000 less. People like Gates and Rodgers get rich by making the pie bigger.
Governments don’t enlarge the pie. When government doles out $1 million to a favored group, the rest of us do have $1 million less.
In the Philippines, Imelda Marcos spent her loot on thousands of shoes. She needed them, she said, because she had to change clothes a lot. This kind of greed takes pie away from the poor. But only governments can do that, because only government can use force.
To get our money, they have to persuade us, entice us to buy— willingly. If the transaction doesn’t benefit both of us, it doesn’t happen.
free speech doesn’t mean you can say anything. You may not scream “Fire!” in a crowded theater if there’s no fire (though you should, if there is one) because your words could cause people to be trampled. “Fighting words” are illegal. If you tell rioters, “Beat that guy up,” and they do beat him up, you’re in trouble. Creating a “clear and present danger” used to be the Supreme Court standard.
The United States was first to split the atom because Einstein left Germany when the Nazis banned “Jewish physics.” In France, thousands once died of smallpox because authorities said inoculating people with small amounts of a disease was against God’s will,
I won 18 Emmys
Then I did a terrible thing. Instead of just applying my skepticism to business, I applied it to government and “public interest” groups.
Seven thousand dollars per year wasn’t great money, even in 1970, but the work felt important. And being on TV was a great way to meet women. So I kept postponing grad school.
They had no reason to hurry because no one ever got fired. There was no reason to work harder because union rules demanded everyone be paid the same. Many union workers were masters not just at killing time but at killing innovation. “Can’t be done.” “Against the rules.” “Equipment won’t do that.”
our own union electrician, who had so little to do that he dozed off on the job.
three-week stuttering clinic. This clinic is called the Hollins Communications Research Institute, and it has a novel approach to stuttering
stutterers, even when we don’t block on words, articulate the sounds harder than necessary, and that often leads to word blocks. In Roanoke, they had us sit in little rooms, reading words into a microphone, concentrating on beginning each sound gently. Every time we hit a word too hard, a red light came on.
The lawyers were worried about what they called “product disparagement.”
We took a poll that found one-third of the fans in the audience believed “pro wrassling” was real.
ulterior motives
I taped people working on a bridge spanning from New York to Pennsylvania. Workers got $31 an hour on the New York side, $22 on the Pennsylvania side. we do quite well without government setting wages. Wages are best set by competition—by supply and demand.
Prices are valuable information. They tell workers where it might be better to work, and contractors where it might be better to hire.
chicken-processing plants. bird intestines strung all over the place, four kinds of bacteria—Yersinia, salmonella, Listeria, and campylobacter.
Microbes are invisible to inspectors. It would make much more sense to take samples off the line and put them in petri dishes to see what kind of bacteria grows. the USDA still pays inspectors to stare at the chickens.
I noticed groups of people who seemed to be waiting for a bus, but who instead were picked up by mini-vans. What was this, a company’s private transport service? No. It was a new venture, run by immigrants, the start of their American dream. It was a hit with customers, too. Without the vans, they’d have to take city buses, which followed rigid routes and charged $1.50. The vans were a better deal. They only cost a dollar, and got you there faster because they often went exactly where you wanted to go.
Did city politicians stand up and cheer—thank the van drivers for making the city a better place? No. They declared the vans illegal.
In 1962, the FDA protected American women from the tranquilizer thalidomide. while in Europe, women who took it sometimes gave birth to children with severe birth defects. The media put pictures of armless and legless thalidomide babies on the covers of magazines.
In a free market, customers spread the word about good things and warn people about the bad. But under FDA rule, consumers assume “government takes care of all that,” so we become less vigilant. The consumer is encouraged to fall asleep: Don’t ask questions; just take what Big Brother approves.
Some things can only be done by governments: waging war, guarding borders, policing cities, and enforcing pollution rules,
By contrast, government almost never polices itself. When government agencies lose money, or fail at their missions, they ask Congress for more money. They usually get it, citing their failure to achieve their goals as proof that they need more funds.
government was smothering the airline business with a thousand “consumer protection” rules.
In the 1970s, the government believed that the only way to prevent “overcharging” by shippers was to have something called the Interstate Commerce Commission tell them what routes they could take and how much they could charge. The rules became so byzantine that trucks that carried carrots from a farm made return trips empty—because it was too difficult to get permission to carry, say, furniture back to the farm in the same truck.
When abolishing the ICC was proposed, critics said shippers could charge anything they wanted—they’d rip us off. Prices would skyrocket. Yet when the ICC was abolished, the opposite happened. Left to make their own decisions, shippers found more efficient ways to do things and competition lowered prices. shipping things cost, on average, 2 percent less.
political ladder. Problems will become your successor’s problems.
JC DeCaux, installed toilets at three different sites. They were nicer than public rest rooms I’ve seen. They actually cleaned themselves—after you left the stall, the door closed, the floor was cleaned by jets of water that shot across it, and the seat withdrew into the wall, where it was steam-cleaned and disinfected.
New York City a penny—DeCaux would recover its investment by selling advertising.
But the Anointed said the European toilets were unacceptable. They did not comply with America’s new disabilities law. They had to be wheelchairaccessible. But DeCaux’s CEO, Jean François DeCaux, had experimented with big, wheelchair-accessible bathrooms in London. “It was a complete disaster,” he told us. “They were misused for sex and drugs, and the homeless were spending the night…. All the special fixtures were destroyed all the time.”
righteous indignation
at the time, I took the “safety” lawyers and environmentalists at their word. They were the good guys out to serve the public. They described themselves as “public interest” advocates
I found the accident data fascinating. Turns out hot tap water, stairs, bunk beds, and drowning in bathtubs kill more people than most risks we hysterically warn people about.
If we scare people about every ant, they won’t pay attention when the elephants come.
we accept natural gas, even though it kills not two but 400 Americans a year, because it was introduced before we got crazy about risk.
We accept coal, even though mining it is nasty and filthy and kills dozens of people every year. By contrast, we’re terrified of nuclear energy. Chernobyl, the worst nuclear power disaster ever, killed only 30 people. Some say the radiation may eventually kill others, but even if that’s true, natural gas kills more people every year.
I’m not one of those who believe markets would solve all our problems. Protecting the environment is a proper role of limited government.
Lead is a nasty poison. If kids eat enough of it, they suffer brain damage.
University of Pittsburgh physics professor Bernard Cohen and researchers at the Harvard School of Risk Analysis helped me prepare the chart.
Driving takes half a year off the average life. It’s 180 times worse than flying. Every month, car accidents kill 3,000 people.
add smoking to the list— 6.6 years off the average man’s life and 3.9 years off the average woman’s.
Consider government-funded medical research. You would think the bureaucrats would spend tax dollars on research that would save the most lives or relieve the most suffering. But they don’t. The lion’s share goes to the activists who make the most noise.
in 2001, AIDS research got $4,439 per patient from NIH, breast cancer $290. Diabetes, which killed more people than AIDS and breast cancer combined, got $41. Heart disease, the number one killer, got just $58 per patient.
While chemicals and BIC lighters may pose slight risks, by far the bigger risk is being poor. Studies show that if you are poor (below the poverty line in the United States, in the lowest quintile of income elsewhere), your life is seven to 10 years shorter.
The regulation headline should read, “New OSHA Rule to Save Six, Kill 10.” You won’t see that headline. Reporters don’t think that way.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts. —Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Newspaper reports said a survey found today’s teachers’ worries were (1) drug abuse, (2) alcohol abuse, (3) pregnancy, (4) suicide, (5) rape, (6) robbery. But in the ’40s, teachers worried about (1) talking, (2) chewing gum, (3) making noise, (4) running in the halls.
It appeared everywhere—newspapers, magazines, the Congressional Quarterly, Ann Landers’s column.
finally traced the story back to Texas oilman T. Cullen Davis, who said he made it up.
Journalists joke that some stories are “too good to check.” This was one of those.
When Linus Pauling said megadoses of vitamin C could ward off colds, the press reported his claim enthusiastically, and the public believed. After all, he was a Nobel Prize winner. No matter that Pauling’s Nobel was in chemistry, not biology; no matter that dozens of follow-up studies found no evidence that vitamin C prevents colds. The pills still fly out of stores.
Several years ago, two physicists in Utah, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, announced they’d solved the mystery of cold fusion. Pons and Fleischmann were so confident, they skipped peer review and just held a press conference. Then they went to Congress to ask for millions.
The media may be gullible, but other scientists are skeptical. They keep testing—questioning—so gradually we keep moving closer to the truth.
But now I realize lawyers are more concerned with winning than with truth.
Why didn’t they get sick? Because dioxin that kills animals doesn’t necessarily hurt us.
Several years ago, a study found oat bran lowers cholesterol. People rushed out to buy oat bran muffins, even though the fat in muffins surely outweighed any oat bran benefit to anyone’s heart. People started selling oat bran beer and oat bran toothpaste, but once reporters realized that the research was funded by the Quaker Oats Company
Did you know 150,000 women a year die of anorexia? The Washington Post and other media simply accepted the number, but think about it—150,000 is absurd. Triple the number killed in cars? Triple the number of Americans killed during the entire Vietnam War? The real anorexia death toll is somewhere between 50 and 1,750. The 150,000 number was touted in books by feminist heroes Gloria Steinem and Naomi Wolf. (Wolf corrected the number in later editions.) Who in the media wanted to second-guess them?
But government can’t even count the votes in Florida. So why do we think government would screen passengers well?
TSA stands for “thousands standing around.”
government always grows. Sadly
As of this writing, 488,327 new pages have been added to the Federal Register since Clinton’s speech.
The founders said government should have limited duties. They laid it out in Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution: Government should keep the peace, coin money, establish a post office, postal roads, and the courts, and secure time-limited copyrights and patents. For 150 years, that’s about all it did. The focus was on guaranteeing individual liberty.
He pays personal property tax and sales tax on his truck. And when he buys gas there’s a county gas tax, a state gas tax, and a federal gas tax.
At work, Bill’s boss needs two employees just to calculate how much to withhold from paychecks. They make sure every employee pays local income tax, state income tax, federal income tax, FICA, and Medicare.
Because Bill’s wife works as a nurse, the Thurstons pay a marriage tax of $1,000 a year. Then there’s grocery tax, property tax, utility tax, FCC tax, a county tax on cable TV, five taxes on the phone (line tax, local tax, municipal tax, county tax, state tax), and finally, a sin tax on the beer they drink.
The legal doctrine of “eminent domain” (which means “superior ownership”) allows government officials to take possession of your property if they decide they need it for the greater good. Traditionally this meant building highways, bridges, and parks, and eminent domain was used only in unusual situations.
But today government officials use eminent domain to help private companies—Kmart, Home Depot, baseball teams, shopping malls. Hurst, Texas, condemned 127 homes that stood in the way of a developer’s plan to expand a mall.
The lawyers defend their fees and snail-like pace, saying, “We’ve got to make sure you get due process.”
prostitution should be permitted. (If quarterbacks and boxers make money with their bodies, why can’t a woman make money with hers?)
Limiting rent increases may sound good to tenants, but it hurts most renters because landlords have no incentive to renovate or to build new apartments. Also, since people would be fools to leave rentcontrolled apartments, the market’s natural turnover is asphyxiated. The elderly don’t move out to make room for young families. Families don’t move on when they outgrow their apartments. Virtually all professional economists agree that rent control causes housing shortages. Walter Williams said, “Short of aerial bombardment, the best way to destroy a city is through rent controls.”
economically illiterate
women are often better at reading feelings, men at reading maps.
June Reinisch, former director of the Kinsey Institute, told us, “When they look at babies in the first 72 hours of life, they find that males and females are not identical in the way they behave. Males startle more than females. If you give a little puff of air on their abdomen, they [are] much more likely to startle than females,” while “females rhythmically mouth, they suck on their tongues, they move their lips and so forth, more than males do.” Infant girls sit up without support earlier than boys, while boys crawl away from their caretaker earlier than girls. This happens before parents have much influence.
There is a reason the children fear the earth is dying: It’s because the environmental movement “has been hijacked by political activists who are using environmental rhetoric to cloak agendas like class warfare and anticorporatism that in fact have almost nothing to do with ecology,” said environmentalist Patrick Moore, a former director of Greenpeace who quit the organization.
99 percent of the pesticides we ingest are natural ones, produced by plants to fend off pests. These natural pesticides may be loved by devotees of organics, but they contain chemicals that are known to be endocrine disrupters, neurotoxins, and carcinogens. In 1999 the National Research Council concluded that “the total exposure to naturally occurring carcinogens exceeds the exposure to synthetic carcinogens.”
the important point is that organics’ big selling point—that the stuff is better for you—is bunk.
“If we’ve got no deaths from pesticides and 5,000 deaths from bacteria,
explain what the word “disability” means. What is an “impairment”? What’s a “substantial limitation”? Is being stupid a disability? Feeling compelled to fondle women? Being fat? Who knows?
Well-intended but complicated and unpredictable laws like the ADA eventually hurt the people they were meant to help.
the government labeled addiction a disease. Since disease isn’t your fault, the
lots of people who have bulging or herniated disks experience no pain.
perfect is the enemy of the good.
1 billion people try to survive on just a dollar a day.
Communist China now runs Hong Kong. So far the island’s stunning success has deterred the Communists from imposing their usual rules, but they may yet kill the goose that’s been laying golden eggs.
By contrast, I dare you to try to start a business in India. We didn’t even try to open one when I was in Calcutta, because the paperwork takes years. When Kentucky Fried Chicken wanted to open outlets in India, Parliament spent months debating whether the request should be allowed. A government minister worried the chicken wasn’t healthy enough.
Pg 222 list
Looking at the lists, you clearly see that places with the greatest economic freedom are also places where even the poor do pretty well.
You may be surprised to find countries like Denmark and Canada on the list, since they are often labeled as socialistic welfare states. While they are socialist in some ways, they also protect private property, regulate fairly lightly, and make it relatively easy to open a business.
At the bottom of the economic-freedom rankings are countries where government runs the economy. These are the worst places to live—for everyone, but especially for the poor.
complacent
Gordon Gecko says, “It’s a zero-sum game. Somebody wins. Somebody loses. Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred.”
As usual, Hollywood, like the AFL-CIO, got capitalism wrong—it’s not a zero-sum game. T. J. Rodgers making $10 million and Bill Gates acquiring $40 billion doesn’t mean the rest of us have $40,010,000,000 less. People like Gates and Rodgers get rich by making the pie bigger.
Governments don’t enlarge the pie. When government doles out $1 million to a favored group, the rest of us do have $1 million less.
In the Philippines, Imelda Marcos spent her loot on thousands of shoes. She needed them, she said, because she had to change clothes a lot. This kind of greed takes pie away from the poor. But only governments can do that, because only government can use force.
To get our money, they have to persuade us, entice us to buy— willingly. If the transaction doesn’t benefit both of us, it doesn’t happen.
free speech doesn’t mean you can say anything. You may not scream “Fire!” in a crowded theater if there’s no fire (though you should, if there is one) because your words could cause people to be trampled. “Fighting words” are illegal. If you tell rioters, “Beat that guy up,” and they do beat him up, you’re in trouble. Creating a “clear and present danger” used to be the Supreme Court standard.
The United States was first to split the atom because Einstein left Germany when the Nazis banned “Jewish physics.” In France, thousands once died of smallpox because authorities said inoculating people with small amounts of a disease was against God’s will,
June 19, 2015
This is a very interesting book. While I don't agree with everything Stossel says, he definitely puts your beliefs through a hard workout. He even turned me around on a few things. What I find most interesting about him is that unlike other news correspondents who write books, he actually calls himself out on the times he was wrong or made a mistake. He knows he is fallible, and he's willing to change his beliefs if he's provided with evidence. That's a sign of a true thinker. A true skeptic. This is required reading for anyone interested in the media.
The thing he excels at is breaking down popularly held "knowledge" and showing that they were myths all along. It doesn't matter if the news is wrong and they later correct themselves: what they say first is what people will go to their graves believing.
I'm with him when he says we need waaaaaaaaay less regulation. I agree that we need more self-sufficient people in this world. I'm not surprised when he says organic food is more wasteful than (and it's just as good as) than the processed stuff. We certainly have too much government in our lives, and he even suggests that our electoral system should be changed. (If I were a Democrat, for example, and the rest of the country elects Republicans to the White House and Congress, do I really have to live by their rules? Rules I don't believe in? Rules that would go against my rugged American individuality?)
I'm not too fond of his take on the good corporations do, though. I agree that they must have satisfied (ie. return) customers, but having worked at a corporation for quite some time, I've seen evidence that it's not true. My company, for example, focuses everything on getting new business, not fixing broken infrastructure. The way they figure it, it's too much of a hassle for customers to switch providers, so they won't do it. And they're right. The people who complain to me today and threaten to take their business elsewhere are usually still complaining days, weeks and years later. So I'm not sure about how much power I want to leave corporations with, but I do agree, at least, that we need to relax a lot of government involvement with them.
Agree or disagree, if you like a good mental workout, you should read this book. I feel I've been getting complacent in some of my reading, and this book challenged me. I'm a lot sharper for having read it.
The thing he excels at is breaking down popularly held "knowledge" and showing that they were myths all along. It doesn't matter if the news is wrong and they later correct themselves: what they say first is what people will go to their graves believing.
I'm with him when he says we need waaaaaaaaay less regulation. I agree that we need more self-sufficient people in this world. I'm not surprised when he says organic food is more wasteful than (and it's just as good as) than the processed stuff. We certainly have too much government in our lives, and he even suggests that our electoral system should be changed. (If I were a Democrat, for example, and the rest of the country elects Republicans to the White House and Congress, do I really have to live by their rules? Rules I don't believe in? Rules that would go against my rugged American individuality?)
I'm not too fond of his take on the good corporations do, though. I agree that they must have satisfied (ie. return) customers, but having worked at a corporation for quite some time, I've seen evidence that it's not true. My company, for example, focuses everything on getting new business, not fixing broken infrastructure. The way they figure it, it's too much of a hassle for customers to switch providers, so they won't do it. And they're right. The people who complain to me today and threaten to take their business elsewhere are usually still complaining days, weeks and years later. So I'm not sure about how much power I want to leave corporations with, but I do agree, at least, that we need to relax a lot of government involvement with them.
Agree or disagree, if you like a good mental workout, you should read this book. I feel I've been getting complacent in some of my reading, and this book challenged me. I'm a lot sharper for having read it.
October 7, 2008
The book starts like a memoir -- Stossel recounts his early career as a consumer advocate on television and his slide into what he later comes to know as a classic liberal philosophy. But he quickly drops the biographical angle and devotes most of the book to the subjects he covered as a libertarian television reporter working the defacto liberal new york media environment. Not having to battle the network producers and lawyers gives him the opportunity to be a little freer with his words.
Still, Stossel's book reads like a long television segment. He writes in short declarative sentences and he breaks his material down into easily digestable little pieces. For that reason, I'm halfway tempted to recommend this book for anyone looking to learn a little bit about classic liberal thought and the apparently odd notion that the government isn't necessarily suited to do all things. Then again, I was already familiar with most of the issues and thinkers he references. For me, the read was more like a pep-rally in a book. But hey, it worked. I'm all fired up.
Still, Stossel's book reads like a long television segment. He writes in short declarative sentences and he breaks his material down into easily digestable little pieces. For that reason, I'm halfway tempted to recommend this book for anyone looking to learn a little bit about classic liberal thought and the apparently odd notion that the government isn't necessarily suited to do all things. Then again, I was already familiar with most of the issues and thinkers he references. For me, the read was more like a pep-rally in a book. But hey, it worked. I'm all fired up.
January 12, 2013
I read this book about 6 years ago about a year after it first came out. I saw this in the library for sale section last week and picked it up for 50 cents remembering that it was a great book.
My parents were religious 20/20 watchers and my favorite part was always Stossel's "Give me a Break" section. This book chronicles how he went from a respected consumer reporter to a not well liked libertarian because he saw that government was wasting so much.
If you are jaded by today's liberal media or what our government is doing, then this is the book for you. Stossel discovered that after he would expose a company of cheating, the government would swoop down and add more regulations that would only make things more complicated and actually hurt consumers. Even though it was written almost a decade ago, the message still rings true.
I'm definitely going to try to get his latest book.
My parents were religious 20/20 watchers and my favorite part was always Stossel's "Give me a Break" section. This book chronicles how he went from a respected consumer reporter to a not well liked libertarian because he saw that government was wasting so much.
If you are jaded by today's liberal media or what our government is doing, then this is the book for you. Stossel discovered that after he would expose a company of cheating, the government would swoop down and add more regulations that would only make things more complicated and actually hurt consumers. Even though it was written almost a decade ago, the message still rings true.
I'm definitely going to try to get his latest book.
April 22, 2019
I fully respect John Stossel as the ABC 20/20 news correspondent who constantly did the consumer warnings breakdown on TV. Through this book, I understand how that is such a stressful job, especially for someone who, like me, has struggled with st-st-stammering.
This book is a reflection upon this gentleman's career. As I have observed, another reviewer notes "He writes in short declarative sentences and he breaks his material down into easily digest[i]ble little pieces," and it is "like a pep-rally in a book," which must have made me impatient and upset as a reader used to analysing Greek and Chinese literature. (If you don't know the story, I hid in the restroom during my junior year pep rally when I could get away with it because pep rallies make me more anxious than eager.)
I ~roughly~ finished it, as I think I got all the interesting nuggets about public vs. private sector economics out of it for now...
This book is a reflection upon this gentleman's career. As I have observed, another reviewer notes "He writes in short declarative sentences and he breaks his material down into easily digest[i]ble little pieces," and it is "like a pep-rally in a book," which must have made me impatient and upset as a reader used to analysing Greek and Chinese literature. (If you don't know the story, I hid in the restroom during my junior year pep rally when I could get away with it because pep rallies make me more anxious than eager.)
I ~roughly~ finished it, as I think I got all the interesting nuggets about public vs. private sector economics out of it for now...
January 21, 2009
This is a quick read. I enjoyed Stossel's conversational tone and his no-nonsense way of addressing the issues. And in general I agree that government needs to shrink, lawsuits need to be reduced, and there's no virtue in being a victim. His anecdotes were a mixture of humorous and maddening, as most stories of government stupidity are. Unfortunately, I don't see this book as convincing anyone with firmer beliefs than the most tenuous of fence-sitters. As a reporter, Stossel knows how to break down complex issues into bite-sized chunks. Unfortunately, that means his evidence is a collection of soundbites from interviews rather than papers and studies you can go look up yourself. Interviews are a good source of information, but I am always wary of nonfiction books lacking a bibliography or at least a "further reading" section.
May 7, 2025
Being John Stossel's first book, this read is half autobiographical & half debunking myths/facts (& shaming fraudsters).
I didn't know that Stossel was a stutterer (ok, at the time of writing this I'm a 27 year old who has only known of the man for a year) but one would assume the trait would have shown itself by now. Stossel is blunt in his honesty about his stuttering, his boss who he 'hated' to let him fix it & his mistakes on ABC's 20/20.
Another interesting part of the book is Stossel's story of his change from being a left wing "big government" advocate to eventually a libertarian (& those he lost on the way).
The topics & conclusions in the book are well-researched (some for over a decade) & almost all were featured on Stossel's TV shows.
An interesting book that should change your opinion on at least some aspects of the public vs. private sector debate...
I didn't know that Stossel was a stutterer (ok, at the time of writing this I'm a 27 year old who has only known of the man for a year) but one would assume the trait would have shown itself by now. Stossel is blunt in his honesty about his stuttering, his boss who he 'hated' to let him fix it & his mistakes on ABC's 20/20.
Another interesting part of the book is Stossel's story of his change from being a left wing "big government" advocate to eventually a libertarian (& those he lost on the way).
The topics & conclusions in the book are well-researched (some for over a decade) & almost all were featured on Stossel's TV shows.
An interesting book that should change your opinion on at least some aspects of the public vs. private sector debate...
August 10, 2016
tossel is great and unique. Check out his website. He is from the opposite economic spectrum from Krugman, readily quoting Milton Friedman and Frederick Von Hayek. His book is about journalism, and so many of the myths we believe in because of bad journalism and good lawyers. Here are some of Stossel's "truths": Large amounts of vitamin C don't help fight off any diseases, silicone breast implants never were harmful, there's no such thing as a "crack baby," and cutting your salt intake won't help prevent heart disease. Those are all covered in just 10 pages in the book. This book is an eye-opening, mind-freeing must-read. You may not agree with him, but you'll have to know your facts well to disagree with Stossel. This book stirred long-dormant Libertarian feelings in my soul.
March 18, 2018
Good book. Interesting and easy to read, not too boring. A couple areas started to drag down but mainly a read that moves along nicely. I enjoyed the fresh perspective. Instead of the usual 'government is all-knowing and the best at everything' John says the opposite ... gov is usually the problem and therefore we need less ... of it (gov). He started off as a liberal journalist with the prevailing attitude that gov is a benevolent "mother" overlooking all her children (citizens) and only has your best interests in mind. BUt, after years of personally witnessing the opposite in real life situations, John came to the conclusion ... in most instances, gov is the problem.
July 23, 2018
If you've ever watched a John Stossel program, this book is just like that. And if you like his "Give Me a Break" approach to analysis and presentation style, you will like this book...I do, and I did! Some of what is in this book I've actually seen in one of his programs, but there was a lot that I hadn't seen or heard before. I guess his style turns off some people. In fact my wife likes his message but not the presentation so much. I happen to like both and I would read any other books he writes. Recommended for anyone who is fed up with scammers, dirty tricksters, and politicians on the take!
September 11, 2012
First published in 2004, Give Me A Break... now seems a little dated. What isn't dated is Stossel's logical, rational, fact-based methodology for exposing the lies, damned lies and statistics that politicians and government bureaucrats use to brainwash us. He cites example and after example of how our freedoms continue to erode at the hands of idiots and morons. If you sense something has gone utterly wrong in the United States of America and you're looking to understand the whats and the whys, this book is a great place to start.
March 16, 2015
Every politician should read the book. How so many people can have such a misconception on how government programs result in just the opposite of their intentions. How many people feel that rich people are always the bad guys, but who do you work for, a homeless person or a rich guy? Instead of blaming others maybe people should blame themselves. Why do people believe lies? Because it's what they want to hear. Maybe, just maybe, we should stop thinking like Liberals or Conservatives and start thinking like Americans.
I recommend the book.
I recommend the book.
July 17, 2017
I found myself agreeing with a lot of what he says because they are common sense. Much of it sounds good I'm heory but I'm not sure how it would turn out in practice. He makes me think in different ways at least. Nice thought experiments. I do not agree with all of his philosophy though. Saying that government loopholes are there and while he doesn't want to use them, but that he would be stupid not to, does not make him an inspirational person to me. I'm more of a "Be the change you want to see in the world" kinda guy.
January 24, 2008
I listened to this on my way home for the holidays. It was entertaining and interesting. He appealed to my old school conservatism without alienating the liberalism I've come to embrace in the last 7 years. Lots of little "ah ha" and "ohhh..." moments that I wanted to remember to mention to other people, but of course forgot most of them the minute I finished the last cd. Not as good as Andy Rooney, but not too bad.
January 7, 2009
My only complaint about this book is the title. Citing the "liberal" media in the title will only serve to alienate a number of people who might otherwise have read and enjoyed this book. This is not about liberal politics and/or media, but rather a discussion of the "flip side" of the stories we see on the news. Very enlightening, and written in a conversational manner that makes this a very quick read.
May 11, 2010
This book started as a history of how Stossel got his start and his early years as a consumer reporter and then how he saw the same fraud in public companies in the government. But when he exposed that he was then seen as a bad person. Funny actually.
I didn't really gain much political knowledge but do think that people who trust 'big government' to solve every problem should read this book to get an understanding where he comes from.
I didn't really gain much political knowledge but do think that people who trust 'big government' to solve every problem should read this book to get an understanding where he comes from.
June 21, 2010
Somewhat a story about how John Stossel became a libertarian (but not an anarchist! no, never that!), and how the liberals that fawned over his consumer product reporting turned on him when he went after the state and special interests such as unions. Some good libertarian principles in the book, such as ownership of one's own body, but someone needs to tell him that if violence is bad, then it makes no sense to preserve any part of a violent state.
June 12, 2012
I enjoyed this very much. He has an easy reading style, and is plainly passionate about his subject. He gave a lot of interesting examples from his work as a reporter. I can see why some love him and some hate him. I disagree with a couple points, but mostly he makes sense: corporations need to have light shone on what they're doing, but government is no cure and frequently makes things worse.
August 12, 2016
This book was passed to me by a friend who found it interesting.
I will admit a bias toward John Stossel and his libertarian ideas when I read this book. So of course I enjoyed it and agree with most of what he said. Some of the facts and figures are probably outdated, and obviously he doesn't still work for ABC (which this book mostly talks about his time with said network). However, his theories continue to make sense.
I will admit a bias toward John Stossel and his libertarian ideas when I read this book. So of course I enjoyed it and agree with most of what he said. Some of the facts and figures are probably outdated, and obviously he doesn't still work for ABC (which this book mostly talks about his time with said network). However, his theories continue to make sense.
February 22, 2016
Great contribution from Stossel on what's wrong with our culture. He's a libertarian and sees much of the intrusion of the federal government as silly, unnecessary and sometimes dangerous. I particularly liked the discussion of private charities, who are raising money for various causes effectively on their own, and how the fed just shuts them down or butts them out for one reason or another. Scary stuff. I think this brings up great points every American should read.
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