John Stossel at Western Michigan University

Last week on Wednesday, four of us from the GRCC College Republicans went down to Kalamazoo to see John Stossel speak on Capitalism. The speech was absolutely incredible. Mr. Stossel had a great wealth on information to share with us, and he had done his research on all of it. He made no end of good points, and I would like to repeat some of the topics here to encourage our Gentle Readers to look into these issues.

Mr. Stossel began my mentioning his original set of beliefs which included the belief that big business is bad. He thought that they were out to screw us and only serve themselves. As a result, he wanted to see more government regulation to keep the evil businesses in line. It did not take him long to notice that these rules come at a great cost. There’s the cost to taxpayers to enable the government to employ the people checking up on businesses, and there’s the enormous cost to businesses to comply with all the rules. Now here’s the ironic bit: It didn’t stop the crooks! Those few businesses that were evil minded, continued to be and simply found ways around the rules.

So what do these regulations do if not stop crooks? They strangle our economy. Businesses can’t grow because they’re spending all their money keeping themselves compliant with the rules. If they slip up and break a rule, they get huge fines which hinders them further. Whereas capitalism encourages economic growth, socialism and high regulations discourage it.

But what is to keep the evil businesses in line? Surely no one denies that there are some businesses out there who are less than honest. Mr. Stossel had an answer to this too: our freedom! That we are a free society, and that we have freedom of the press, means that there will be people to make a big deal out of any scams they find. Evil schemes always make the news. It’s simply good business thinking to not allow corrupt practices in your company because you will be found out eventually. Mr. Stossed also noted that there are almost never any nation-wide business scams. Scams almost always get found out long before the business is able to make it big.

It seems too perfect that we can just allow a capitalist market to run itself without government intervention. Do we really expect to just leave it alone and see it flourish? I’ve heard these arguments. I have to admit it is amazing that we can basically do this, but somehow it works. It only works in a free society, but it does work. Captialism isn’t perfect, and Mr. Stossel stressed that it’s not perfect, but it is by far the best system out there.

There is so much more from the speech that I want to share with you, so keep watching. Next post: “How the liberals respond to capitalists”