'20/20' STAR SOUNDS OFF ON GOVERNMENT

"20/20" co-anchor John Stossel spoke to University of Wisconsin
students Monday evening at the Memorial Union Theatre encouraging
individual liberty and capitalism in a lecture presented by
Collegians For a Constructive Tomorrow.

Stossel graduated from Princeton University in 1969 and joined the
ABC news program in 1981. He became an anchor in 2003 and has
received 19 Emmy Awards.

Stossel focused his lecture on the dangers of government and the
importance of protecting individual rights.

"Individual liberty is the most important thing," Stossel said in an
interview with The Badger Herald before the event. "Central planning
of all kinds takes people's freedom and their money and makes life worse."

Stossel began his lecture by discussing the lessons he has learned
through his experiences in journalism.

"I used to believe that you need smart people to set rules to protect
us from greedy capitalists," Stossel said.

After he spent years doing consumer reporting, however, he said he
realized that "competition between companies protects consumers
better than the government."

Stossel said no matter how many regulations the government has made
in the past, there have always been those who break the rules.

"More regulations and rules were being made, but they still weren't
being followed," Stossel said. "The cheaters are still going to cheat."

Stossel said after watching government organizations such as the Food
and Drug Administration and Occupation Safety and Health
Administration work, he has come to realize they often make work less
safe by their unintended consequences.

Stossel used the example of illegal drugs to show how regulation
doesn't always accomplish what it intends to.

"Because the drugs are illegal, the buyers have to steal, and this
causes crime," Stossel said.

Illegal drugs also encourage police bribing and rich criminal gangs,
according to Stossel.

He said government regulation also hurts legal drugs. In the time it
takes for new drugs to be put out on the market, lives could have
been saved, Stossel said.

"The government protects us from good things, which is worse than
protecting us from bad things," Stossel said.

Stossel suggested the FDA be voluntary and people should decide for
themselves what they want to put in their own bodies.

"Isn't leaving absolute choice up to the consumer what America is all
about?" Stossel asked the audience.

UW junior Sol Grosskopf, who attended the lecture, said he agreed
with most of Stossel's points about small government but added the
host may have gone a bit beyond his own views in some areas.

"On a few things he may have gone a little bit overboard but we may
differ more on societal values and how they are portrayed," Grosskopf said.

Overall, though, Stossel said Americans are voluntarily giving back
their freedom to the government.

"I encourage you to fight for the liberty that made America great and
all things possible," Stossel said.