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that will protest a movie without even seeing it, I watched this. This guy is an excellent propagandist. If I were an average member of the public, I would have found it very convincing. The thing he does very well, that all good propagandists do well, is that he mixes in truth with fiction brilliantly. Here is my in-depth review:
First segment started off by introducing the concept of spontaneous order, that systems function best when left alone and create their own order. Interfering with that system from the outside can be disastrous. Of course, he's describing many systems adequately. Fields as divergent as computer science and environmentalism have been studying systems and their order for decades. He then pointed out that much of life goes along without government involvement, it's just people relating to each other and doing things on their own. True enough, to a point. The villagers in mainland China centuries ago were just doing their thing, and found invading armies and pillagers coming from Japan and Mongolia. Would they have found a government useful in defending them? He used the example of a skating rink for spontaneous order. Poeple left by themselves just happily skated along, but when he got up on a chair and told them what to do (representing government), people didn't obey, and said the joy was taken out of it for them, thus proving government intervention in people's lives is always a bad thing. But wait, can't we apply this to an intersection? I don't want to wait for a red light, I want to go right now. Or how about letting airplanes fly wherever they want, who is anyone to tell someone where to land? Spontaneous order will emerge here, won't it? Well, it didn't when the automobile was first invented. There were no rules of the road, and there were tons of accidents. If spontaneous order was to emerge to solve those problems, it would have done so, and didn't.
Second segment was about the financial crisis. This segment pissed me off the most. He didn't come right out and say it, but strongly implied that it was primarily the Democrats that caused this mess. He showed Frank, Dodd, and Schumer, but what about the Republicans that were in charge for the previous six years? Well, according to him, "There was no real deregulation during the Bush administration." Yikes. He then posits the classic theme that the crisis was caused by too much regulation that forced or just made it profitable for banks to lend to bad candidates. He doesn't point out that safegaurds were present in the previous administration that were eradicated. On the upside, he railed against the bailout as being just something that at best will delay the inevitable and encourage bad behavior instead of stop it (I was against the bailout, as it was submitted).
Third segment was government and natural disasters. He showed sections in New Orleans that had still not been built, and compared them to renovated sections. The difference? You guessed it. Government. The main reason New Orleans hasn't been rebuilt, according to Stossel, is because of the overly complex permit system. People don't understand the permit requirements and say 'the hell with it'. He has a point here. Much of the complexity arose from the fact that it was being built in the historic district, and so extra care was taken. However, that was fine for before, after, the process should have been reviewed to reflect the new reality. He then showed a section that was built by the Jimmy Carter charity Habitat for Humanity. Because they have dealt with the redtape so many times, they knew what to do, and could start building right away. On the plus side, residents said that people like Brad Pitt, Harry Connick Jr., and Michael Moore(!) did more for New Orleans than did their government. Could it also be that the Federal response to the disaster was lacking because of incompetence and neglect? That was never brought up. Nor was an example of the government responding largely positively shown, like the response in California to the massive wildfires a year or so ago. And can private charity carry the burden alone? What about all those people that left? What if they decided to come back, who would be there?
Fourth segment was campaign finance. This is pretty much like what was set up in the OP, so I'll keep this short. Campaign finance is overly complicated (agree) and set up to keep out incumbents (agree). Therefore, leave the system alone and it will take care of itself (disagree).
Last topical segment was about farm subsidies. Here, I largely agree with the presentation. Farm subsidies are something politicians need to vote affirmatively on in those middle states for career survival, but not only is it completely unneeded, it's actually harmful. The subsidies were a holdover from the 30's and may have been relevant then, but they should have been phased out. They don't help the small farmer, but big agribusiness, the last people who need the money. While there is a monetary cap on who can get 'help', the giants just get accountants to find loopholes, or get lobbyists to create loopholes, so they get the money. On a sour note, Stossel picked up a variety of produce and said these foods do fine without subsidies. Bad move really- so many of the foods now come from other countries that that argument is not forceful.
The ending was syrupy music playing over how 'you the people are what does everything', let government get out of the way. The experts that wound up looking good, all followed a typical pattern. In this closer, it was David Boaz of the Cato Institute (Libertarian think tank). He said it was the people, not the government, that invented things like the telephone and the computer and that's what makes America great. Strange that he chose those examples. The government set up telephone lines that made the telephone industry a reality. The government was heavily involved in all aspects of the creation of the computer, side by side with private industry. The internet was originally for the purposes of national defense. His other two recurring experts were also Libertarians. Economist Russ Roberts of George Mason University is a disciple of the Austrain School (subset of libertarians, a fav of Ron Paul). The other guy, a Black economist also at Mason, Walter Williams, is even more interesting. Of course, he's a libertarian. But he is also someone who said that slavery has been used as an excuse for Black people, that affirmative action was the wrong way to go and thinks racism is overemphasized. This is definitely the kind of Black guy white conservatives love. He is also a secessionist, and thinks states have the right to secede. He himself advocated for the Free State Project where a bunch of libertarians would all decide to move to a particular state to influence local laws into a libertarian paradise. I don't actually mind that idea. I think it would be an excellent experiment. The burden of proof is on them, if they want to radically change the course of this country, they need to show it works. But the real world seems to be challenging for libertarians even here, as they wanted 20,000 to move to New Hampshire by 2006, but they only got a little over 300 to actually move.
In summary, it was a great peice of propaganda. Full of strawmen and inapt analogies and selective examples. While we rail about the nitwits like Hannity and O'Reilly and Savage, it's people like this, seemingly reasonable, seemingly independent, that really lay the groundwork.
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