A victory for free markets! The Supreme Court has finally struck down a New Deal Era program that let the government try to manipulate raisin prices. Here’s an interview we did with Trevor Burrus of CATO Institute last month. He called the government-backed agricultural board a “raisin cartel."
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYgI62ajFg0
The FBI announced a big victory: They'd shut down the illegal online drug market "Silk Road".
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They said that would prevent drug sales and save lives. A judge sentenced Ross Ulbricht, a young libertarian who created the website, to double-life plus 40 years with no chance of parole. The judge called her sentence a "warning to others."
Bill O'Reilly agreed, "Life in prison without parole. Any other wise guys want to do it, that's what you are gonna get!"
But is it really fair to lock Ulbricht up for life? John Stossel interviews Lyn Ulbricht, Ross's mom, who says her son was just an overly-zealous libertarian who "believed in free markets and volunteerism. He's not a dangerous person."
Closing Silk Road and locking Ulbricht up did nothing to stop drug sales. Silk Road carried 12,000 drug listings when the FBI shut it down. Now there are several sites carrying more than 100,000 listings.
Stossel points out that as long as drugs are illegal, whatever the police do, only drives the price of drugs higher. The big profits then encourage sellers to take bigger risks. The same thing happened during alcohol prohibition. Police cracked down, but smugglers found a way. They also funded organized crime.
Now drug prohibition funds crime, and authoritarians pretend the solution is long jail sentences. Jails are filled with people like Silk Road's creator, a smart libertarian nerd who said he wanted to "use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion."
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABywCZ6PQDE
Some politicians, and the media express dictator envy!
******* YouTube age-restricted the original video I posted, which vastly reduces the number of people who will see it. I have decided to edit out the section that may have caused the restriction, about how the Chinese government killed pets during covid.*******
Leaders talk about their "admiration" for dictatorships.
It’s a “utopian dream,” says historian Johan Norberg.
They think: “if … someone at the top could … point us in a certain direction, everything would go well.”
That’s childish.
“If government is big enough to give you anything” Norberg explains, “it’s big enough to take everything away from you.”
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5OwxdIjDH0
Want to earn money showing someone around? It's not as simple as it sounds -- many cities require a license in order to do that.
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For Michelle Freenor, owner of "Savannah Belle Walking Tours" in Savannah, this meant a background check complete with blood and urine samples, a physical fitness test, plus months of studying for a college-level history exam. The city charges $100 every time the exam is taken. She passed on her first try, but many fail.
All of this, just to speak for a living.
Bill Durrence, Alderman of the 2nd District of Savannah, admits parts of the licensing requirements may have gone too far, but said: "the licensing and the testing, I thought was a good idea just to make sure people had the accurate information."
When Michelle was diagnosed with Lupus, she told the city she might not be able to pass the physical. A licensing bureaucrat told her "you'll have to find another occupation... if you don't like it then you can sue us."
So she did.
The Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm, took her case for free. The Savannah bureaucrats backed down, but it doesn't happen easily, says Dick Carpenter. "There's discovery, depositions are taken... [it can take] months, often years."
But Savannah isn't the only city to create bottlenecks for those who want to give tours: Charleston (SC), New York (NY), Williamsburg (VA), St. Augustine (FL), and New Orleans (LA) all have tests.
Washington DC used to, until the Institute for Justice fought them too. Watch John Stossel give his own segway tour in DC, and learn about yet another way that the government makes it harder for people to find jobs.
It is part 3 of our Bottleneckers series.
Produced by Naomi Brockwell. Edited by Joshua Swain.
Stossel on Reason
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTSM2HQk3JM
In this web only video, I ask Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul about his new book on faith. He says religion is what makes people virtuous. But I think I’m a good person, and I’m not religious. I’ll have more with Senator Paul this Friday, November 6th on STOSSEL.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHD1LfJWifw
Do you stream music? Artist manager Emily White says musicians still make plenty of money from “free” streaming. More from “Creative Destruction” Friday at 9PM on Fox Business.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq6lO4ewfKI
Socialism has become cool in America, under the nice name "democratic socialism".
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Gloria Álvarez knows better, because she's from Latin America and studied socialism there. She says: watch out! Socialism has a clear track record of wrecking every country that implements it.
Cuba tried socialism. Things got so bad that tens of thousands fled the island on dangerous, makeshift rafts. Others paid lots of money to be allowed to leave.
Álvarez interviews people who fled. One man told her that in Cuba: "You don’t see any future. Everything is stagnated ... health care, education, nowadays they’re in ruins."
Another said: "My father (a doctor) had to sell illegal meats out of his ambulance ... because Cuban doctors earn less than 1% of American doctors."
Because of his experience with socialism, that man is now running as a libertarian for a Florida State House seat.
He adds: "I tell my Venezuelan friends, we warned you guys!"
After Cuba, the next Latin American country to get totally immersed in socialism was Venezuela. For a while, things seemed to work okay thanks to the country's oil wealth; Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and used to be the richest country in Latin America.
Celebrities like Michael Moore and Sean Penn visited Hugo Chavez and praised his socialism.
Venezuelans were happy, too. A former mayor in Venezuela's capital city told Álvarez: "People were clapping so hard. They were like, 'Oh, finally there is somebody here making social justice.'"
But eventually socialism led to a mismanagement of the economy that was so bad that money started to run out. The government just printed more, so much more that it led to million-percent inflation.
Life savings were wiped out.
When businesses raised prices to try to keep up with inflation, Chavez and his successor President Maduro banned that.
When businesses did it anyway, they were seized by the government. This tragic video shows a shopkeeper pleading as his business is taken away. It wasn't a one-time thing; more than 30,000 businesses were confiscated.
Now, millions starve. The average Venezuelan has lost 24 pounds. More than 2 million people have fled the country.
"It's like the apocalypse. It's no food. No medicine," one Venezuelan told Álvarez.
But some still defend socialism, saying that what happened there "isn't real socialism." Bernie Sanders says: "when I talk about Socialism I am not looking at Venezuela, I’m not l
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmDBTHxYZ7Q