Newsman extols free market at graduation ceremony

[PinkTiger]

http://www.joplinglobe.com/story.php?story_id=189626&c=87

snip:

"I finally figured out how greedy capitalists actually help people," Stossel said.

He used a Globe reporter's pen as an example of what he meant.

"Could you make that?" he asked. "Could I make that? How many people does it take to make that pen? I could try all my life, and I would not be able to make that pen."

But economic freedom and a market economy make such products possible and accessible to everyone, Stossel said. Americans tend to take such accomplishments for granted and fail to see how market capitalism "has lifted more people out of the mud and misery of poverty than anything," he said.

Unfortunately, Stossel said, as this year's high-school seniors enter the university system, they will be subjected to "a vilification" of market capitalism that equates economic opportunity and enterprise with greed.

My comment:

Blaming the University system for what? Opening people's minds to other ways of thinking other than the status quo of Joplin Missouri???
None of the students at TJ know poverty. It is a private school, and tuition is high. Their parents all voted for Bush.

[hatrack]

1. Stossel is a "newsman"?

I thought he was just a corpo-whore who never outgrew the Objectivist Society. Silly me! :eyes:

[roguevalley]

2. Stossel is an ass. Worse than a lot of really stupid people.

[Bullshot]

3. Idiots like John Stossel miss the whole point on the "free market" debate

People like Stossel always resort to their song and dance that we wouldn't survive without trade, and we'd live in a primitive society without trade, and so on.

The opposition to these so-called free trade agreements is not whether you support or oppose the concept of trade. The opposition understands that agreements such as NAFTA and WTO are not trade agreements as much as they are conduits for trans-national corporations to exploit differences in nations' wage scales, currencies, regulations, etc. If they were truly trade agreements they would recognize national sovereignty and be structured so that it isn't a race to the bottom in terms of wages, worker safety, etc.

Idiots like John Stossel are one of the reasons why I quit watching network news and have resorted to other media for my news and information.

[OhioBlue]

4. Stossel has lost his mind

I saw him on C-span before the elections. He's ultra-libertarian. Claiming that manufacturers should be free from ANY regulation and held harmless in any lawsuit - that the market would simply "show them the way". He used an analogy of a John Edwards trial in which a little girl was (I believe) paralyzed in swimming pool accident. John Stossel conceded that the product may have had unsafe parts, but that the market would remedy it by not buying those products. Extremely naive, simplistic and ludicrous.

BTW - I didn't realize that capitalistic societies are the only ones to enjoy writing utensils.

[GCP]

5. The little girl had her insides sucked out by the drain in a swimming pool

for the lack of a 25 cent part. I wonder how Stossel would feel if it were his own kid who now lives with a colostomy and severely reduced quality of life, and if the marketplace would have done anything at all about it without the lawsuit.
I had never heard of this case until the Edwards run for presidency. If there had been no lawsuit, nobody but the family and swimming pool owners would know about it, so how could the marketplace do its job??

HMMMM Stossel? Asshat.

Full story here: http://www.jregrassroots.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t4227.html