by Mike Gray

Recently, Glenn Beck interviewed John Stossel on his radio program and showed once more how libertarian thinking is a mixed blessing—sometimes brilliant, sometimes defective. Some highlights:

“I’ll give a thousand dollars to anybody who shows me something government does more efficiently than the private sector. I still haven’t found it.”

“That’s what they all say to us libertarians, You’re crazy. You want to get rid of stoplights and stop signs? But, in fact, there is a spontaneous order that emerges and in Europe they’re getting rid of lots of stoplights at intersections and they find there are fewer accidents and traffic moves a little faster because people take care of themselves instead of government saying come to a full stop. People look around and work it out.”

“I always assumed that fighting wars was a job for government, you didn’t want to trust that to a profit seeking enterprise, but … maybe they would fight wars better and if we didn’t like what they were doing, we could fire them.”

“People think the food doesn’t poison us because there are agriculture department inspectors out there, but the truth is, because Purdue or Oscar Mayer know their reputation depends on not poisoning people, they’re much more careful than the government inspectors.”

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Resources:

Glenn Beck’s book Arguing with Idiots.

John Stossel’s book Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity.