John Stossel came to the University of Michigan today to rant about “socialized medicine,” but seemed to turn the event into a rant against everything. I was so lucky as to attend. The Michigan Review gives their take reports on the visit here. My take? Slightly different. Stossel did do a decent job of building up his straw man: he would rail against the war on drugs, harsh punishments for “mutually consenting”/”victimless” crimes, the gross overreaction over potentially harmful (but actually not at all harmful) preservatives in vaccines, and some other goodies. Interspersed between these rants were little asides like “and this is why socialized medicine stinks…socialized anything stinks” or “the market works in unexpected ways.”

*Image from user Mr. Wright of Flickr under a Creative Commons License.

So the basic premise of Stossel’s argument was as follows: the free market will always restore to an equilibrium. And this is true enough. He brings up this recent housing crisis that has lead to a destruction of consumer confidence, the falling of major sources of capital, and a loss of jobs and revenue everywhere. Eventually, when these fallacious practices are rooted out, the United States will hit it’s floor, investors will recognize it, and the economy will chug along again.

This is an awfully violent restoration to equilibrium. So instead of losing 63,000 jobs last month, instead of the freefalling dollar serving as a consumption tax for citizens, and instead of the people most in need of loans being unable to attain them, wouldn’t it be a better solution for a little bit of government regulation? I mean, if the Fed would have stepped in to control the flow of money, if the Republican Congress would’ve regulated the distribution of subprime loans and predatory tactics, if more attention was paid to regarding the reinsurance of these loans, we largely wouldn’t be in this mess that we’re having today. And because of this (gasp!) government regulation, more people would have jobs, more people would be investing in the economy, and we could be concentrating on other issues like getting universal healthcare instead of bailout and stimulus packages. Two scenarios: regulation and non-interference, same result. The only difference is that the means to which we arrive at this result are markedly different have drastically different effects.

So with less than 20 minutes left, Stossel gets into health care. He says insurance is a bad form of the free market. He brings up silly concepts like the need for grocery insurance. But what he fails to realize are that we have insurances in everyday life. He questions (and I am paraphrasing), “Are our employers responsible for making sure that we eat properly as well?” And the answer is of course, yes! The fact that we have a minimum wage is an insurance designed to make sure people can afford their basic needs. Wearing seat belts is a form of life insurance, and I don’t see people more likely to get into a crash as a result. Oh, and these methods have largely proven to be effective. He talks about issues of waste involved in having insurance. But the only thing insurance does is combine the pooled wealth of many to negotiate lower prices, a concept he probably practices regularly lest he’s never invested in a mutual fund or shopped at Costco. There are many methods of insurance out there; the proposed plan for universal health care by the Democrats is just one method.

He then gets into LASIK eye surgery. “Look! The free market!” he says. “Prices are coming down because of Competition!” But as anyone knows with new technologies that come into the market (damn you iPod Touch), the improvement in manufacturing techniques and the consumer confidence with technology are the ones that bring prices down. LASIK, being a new technology, is largely affected by this phenomenon. And from here you would assume that he would have more arguments, but he didn’t. He opened the floor to questions, and answered some generic libertarian talking points. When asked about the markedly reduced healthcare spending relative to the United States while having universal coverage and high quality, his answer was a weak “they are freeloading of the United States,” without asserting how. Even he admitted the answer was week weak, and served to support his assertion by flinging a pamphlet at the questioner without bothering to elaborate any more.

I’ve been tempted to end this post with a “Give me a break!” but I’ll spare you the cheap closer.

UPDATE: Of course, I failed to give props to the Students for a Free Economy, College Libertarians, and Young Americans for Freedom for putting on a well organized event. Sorry.