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abcnews.go.com
Is America # One?
The Success and Failure of Societies
By John Stossel
ABCNEWS.com
America is hot. This is the place to be, these days. Americans live longer, and better, than most anyone else.
A survey that claims to measure people’s satisfaction with their life, and optimism about the future, found Americans ranked themselves ahead of every other country.
And why shouldn’t we? We have more stuff…
SOT CARS, TRAFFIC
JOHN STOSSEL: More cars, more planes, more television sets more choices of food, more advanced medical care.
SOT WALL STREET, Ding, Ding, Ding.
STOSSEL: The biggest economy…
SOT BATTLESHIP, Boom! Boom!
STOSSEL: The most power, and more entertainment
SOT MADONNA, Ciao Italia!
STOSSEL: American culture annoys parents all over the world.
SOT MADONNA, Singing.
STOSSEL: Our music tops the charts is most every country.
SOT STAR WARS, Music
STOSSEL: Our movies are the most seen everywhere.
SOT STAR WARS Japanese dialogue
STOSSEL: Some countries are so fearful of America influencing their culture they limit how often our movies can run.
SOT STAR WARS, Noises
STOSSEL: Even our way of serving food’s becoming dominant. And American business is everywhere. But does this make us number one? A lot of people will tell you we are clearly not.
MAN: You don’t provide health care for your people. You don’t give people an opportunity to get out of poverty.
MAN: You got racism, you got vandalism, drugs, alcoholics, sex everywhere.
MAN: Money is the only thing that counts in this country, people do not.
WOMAN: The U.S. sucks, if I thought they’d let me live in England, I’d be there in two seconds.
STOSSEL: Ouch. So which is it? Are we the best country, or a nation of money-grubbers who lucked out on a great piece of real estate? And how do you really measure best anyway?
Money and power isn’t everything. What about crime, drugs, poverty, moral decay. How can we be best when we have so much of these things, too? (Pause)
In the next hour we’ll challenge that conceit… that America’s number one.
If you look at what makes a country successful, the first question has to be, do its people have the basic necessities of life? Things like food, shelter, a chance to take care of your family. The sad truth is that most people on this planet, most, still live short, brutal lives… in miserable poverty.
SOT HAITIAN Merci, c’est ca.
STOSSEL: What did we do right in America… so that we’re not living like they are here in Haiti…
SOT BABY CRYING Whah!
STOSSEL: … or North Korea, or Mexico, or India? India is a good example of a place that seems to work badly for its people.
We start our look at what makes a country work well for its people by comparing three places — America, Hong Kong, and India.
SOT BIRD CROWING
STOSSEL: Here in India much of the population lives in what we call slums. This family’s home is this abandoned sewer pipe. Many survive by rummaging through garbage. 200 million people here have no running water, nothing clean to drink. Now there are some affluent Indians, but they’re the minority… you see much more of this: adults and children… without enough to eat.
SOT CROWD NOISES
STOSSEL: American visitors quickly learn that when you leave your hotel you’ll be met with heart-breaking pleas for money.
STOSSEL: (on camera) I gave you something yesterday.
STOSSEL: This woman follows every westerner who leaves the hotel. She says she needs food for these children. Two are hers, she says, the others just kids who need food. Where am I from, that I’m rich enough to stay at a hotel?
STOSSEL: (on camera) From America.
INDIAN WOMAN: Very nice, America.
STOSSEL: America is nice. So how could I not give? … but the giving is endless.
STOSSEL: (on camera) I gave you something yesterday… you ask for more?
INDIAN KID: No more, no more.
STOSSEL: Like most everyone, I eventually gave her some money, but…
INDIAN BEGGAR: Please?
STOSSEL: … then there are quickly more outstretched hands… and more… a constant reminder of how little they have compared to us Americans. It raises the question of why? Why do they have so little, when America is so rich?
STOSSEL: (stand-up) Course, we all know why India’s poor… too many people. When you have this kind of overpopulation, you can’t have a good standard of living. ‘Course as so often happens, what we all know isn’t necessarily so.
Consider Hong Kong, talk about crowded. Hong Kong per square mile has 20 times as many people as India, yet Hong Kong is rich, amazingly rich.
STOSSEL: (VO) There are more Rolls Royces in Hong Kong than anywhere else in the world… the harbors are filled with yachts. And the real estate is glorious. This home recently sold… for a hundred million dollars.
STOSSEL: (stand-up) And it’s not just the very rich who are doing well. These apartment buildings are home to Hong Kong’s new middle class. They’re even called the midlevels. Economic freedom has allowed millions of poor people to become middle class. In fact the average income here now is almost equal to that in the United States, and it’s higher than that in many of the world’s richest countries.
STOSSEL: (VO) Not as high as America’s $27,000, but almost, and higher than Australia, Italy, Great Britain, and Canada.
STOSSEL: (stand-up) It’s amazing how quickly all this has happened. Twenty years ago, none of this was here. Fifty years ago this was just another desperately poor Asian community.
STOSSEL: (VO) Hong Kong should teach us all a lesson on how to make everyone’s life better, says Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman.
MILTON FRIEDMAN: I was in Hong Kong in the 1950’s. And you would never have wanted to live there. I saw the open shacks in which the refugees who were coming over were living. But they had the one key ingredient — freedom.
STOSSEL: (VO) Freedom. Now when people say freedom, I usually think of democracy, freedom to elect your representatives, but democracy alone doesn’t make a country prosper. India’s a democracy. It’s similar to ours,
SOT PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
STOSSEL: (VO) Well, maybe a little louder. But they vote for representatives, and a Prime Minister. They have freedom of religion,
SOT PROTESTING INDIANS
STOSSEL: … freedom of speech. Yet the poverty in India shows that democracy alone is not enough. The standard of living here is a hundredth of what it is in Hong Kong. Yet…
STOSSEL: (stand-up) Hong Kong’s never had democracy. First they had the Chinese Emperor, then the British rulers, now the Chinese Communists. But Hong Kong’s prospered because for years the British governor governed under a policy best described as benevolent neglect.
STOSSEL: (VO) By neglect… people mean… the government… didn’t do much. Well, it built roads, and schools and the police and courts enforced simple and understandable laws against murder and theft, people knew that if they created something it couldn’t just be taken from them, but that was about it. No federal trade commission, no OSHA, no labor laws or minimum wage for local workers. The British rulers basically sat around and drank tea.
DAVID TANG: The Chinese say, okay you make the rules and, uh, don’t interfere too much, and let us have time to go and make some money.
STOSSEL: (VO) David Tang’s made lots of money running this elegant club in Hong Kong… and selling clothing at a chain of stores called Shanghai Tang.
TANG: When you leave things alone people just get on with it. It’s very simple.
AMY SMILOVIC: If it can be done, it can be done here in Hong Kong.
STOSSEL: (VO) This group of entrepreneurs agrees that Hong Kong’s done something special.
SMILOVIC: I like the idea of the tassels.
STOSSEL: (VO) Amy Smilovic, of Georgia , likes to design clothing. Within days of arriving in Hong Kong, she had her own business.
SMILOVIC: It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done.
STOSSEL: And this has something to do with government doing less?
Y.P. CHAN: That, I think that that’s definitely what it is.
STOSSEL: Y.P. Chan now runs a high tech company.
CHAN: When I come from China, I have no money. I work in the garment factory during the day, earn 50-dollar U.S. a month.
STOSSEL: (VO) He saved enough, sleeping on this cot in a crowded Hong Kong apartment, to come to New York to get an education. But to work, he returned to Hong Kong.
CHAN: Because this place provide an opportunity which I could not get anyplace else in the world.
ANDY NEILSON: Hong Kong was a city that was built on people getting a start from nothing. From no family background, no money, zero.
NEILSON: Hi, I’m Andy Neilson. I’m the owner.
STOSSEL: (VO) Andy Neilson, who makes and sells toy soldiers here, says he couldn’t have this business in his native Scotland because of all the high taxes and regulation. In Hong Kong the government simply says:
NEILSON: Let them get on with it, but don’t look for any safety nets.
STOSSEL: So that’s cruel. [NEILSON: It’s not… ] Government should protect people from that.
NEILSON: You protect people from that and no one takes risks. This is the problem that’s happening. It’s been happening in the States, it’s been happening in Europe, in Britain. We want to protect everyone from everything. You can’t protect everyone from everything.
BRETIGNE SCHAFFER: When you don’t have a crutch to support you, it changes your attitude.
STOSSEL: (VO) Bretigne Schaffer, who works here for the Asian Wall Street Journal, says without the government crutch people here are inspired to create things. And thanks to Hong Kong’s flat 15% tax they get to keep more of what they create.
SCHAFFER: It’s possible to save enough money that you can start your own business and become very rich.
STOSSEL: Well it’s possible in America.
SCHAFFER: It’s possible, but it’s a lot more difficult. With all the tax, all the different taxes, all the different, um, employee benefits you have to pay out, and all the regulations, it’s a lot more difficult.
STOSSEL: But how can the government have enough to take care of people with only 15 percent of the people’s money?
NEILSON: This government makes a profit. It’s the only government in the world that makes a surplus, a big surplus.
STOSSEL: But what a cruel way to run a place. You’re not taking care of the people who need help.
NEILSON: Enough to say that no one starves. You’ll see more abject poverty in New York City than you will find right here in Hong Kong.
STOSSEL: (VO) You do see poor people in Hong Kong, but it’s nothing like Europe or America. Some say you see less of this in Hong Kong because here it’s so easy for everyone to become an entrepreneur.
Even a clueless American can open a business… in a day. In my home town, New York City, it takes weeks, I’d have to go to the licensing department and get a state tax number, a federal tax number…
TAX OFFICIAL: So, do you have a federal ID number?
STOSSEL: (VO)… apply to the buildings department, the zoning board, and more. Here in Hong Kong, handing in one form…
SOT SOUND OF STAMP
STOSSEL: (VO)… was all I had to do.
HK OFFICIAL: Thank you, sir.
STOSSEL: (VO) The next day, I was in an indoor shopping center, running my own business, Stossel Enterprises, selling ABC stuff.
STOSSEL: Ten dollars, foon ying?
STOSSEL: (VO) Well, trying to sell it. Apparently, not that many people here want ABC Frisbees and yo-yos. Well, no one promises you a successful business. But this opportunity… to try…
STOSSEL: ABC yo-yos!
STOSSEL: (VO)… even dumb ideas… is what’s made Hong Kong thrive.
By contrast, what if I tried to do this in India? In Calcutta, to start a business, you first have to go to this big building to get government permission. Even New York City’s licensing rules are simple compared to this maze.
You fill out form, after form, after form, and then you wait, and wait, for days, or years, while the bureaucrats debate the merits of your application.
SOT BUREAUCRATS DEBATING
STOSSEL: (VO) It’s all well intended… rules to make sure the food’s clean… that the building is safe…
SOT BUREAUCRATS DEBATING
STOSSEL: …But the result is that so many good ideas die… die as forms bundled and stacked on shelves… already cluttered with bundles from other people… who are waiting.
STOSSEL: These are all regulations designed to make life safer and better.
FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. Absolutely. There is nothing that does so much harm as good intentions.
KALI DUTT: If you want any solution, uh, well, uh, you have to wait.
STOSSEL: (VO) The bureaucracy’s good intentions have been torturing clothing maker Kali Dutt.
Dutt got an order from Japan for a million shirts. So he built this new factory. He hired 400 new workers… But then, he couldn’t get electricity.
Electricity we take for granted is iffy in India. You have to get government approval to get it. At Dutt’s old factory it goes off and on. For 5 years he tried to get a steady supply of electricity for his new factory… he wrote letters, filled out forms, argued with countless bureaucrats… until he gave up.
The building’s still there. And the equipment…
DUTT: But we have suspended operations.
STOSSEL: (VO) 400 workers lost their jobs. Yet not far from his failed factory is an American, Patrick Hart, who wants to provide electricity to Dutt and others.
STOSSEL: You could do it. You have the technology. It would be cheap; they could afford it.
PATRICK HART: Absolutely. Absolutely.
STOSSEL: (VO) Hart represents a New Jersey based firm that builds power plants. Building the plant itself takes under two years but getting permission to build, says Hart, takes longer.
STOSSEL: You can build a plant faster than you can get the permissions?
HART: Than you can get it approved, absolutely.
SOT TROLLEY CAR Ding! Ding!
STOSSEL: (VO) This government trolley is a good example. It’s rotting away here in Calcutta, yet when an American company offered to renovate the trolley cars, they couldn’t even get an answer.
In America the regulations are tough, but at least you can get answers.
And here in Hong Kong it’s never difficult. The same company got an okay and completed work on the city’s trolley car system in less than one year.
STOSSEL: And that’s a much nicer ride.
STOSSEL: (VO) Many world famous American names have struggled to sell things in India. Okay, Coke and Pepsi are not nutritious or essential food… but lots of people like them; and shouldn’t the Indian people get to decide if they want to drink what Americans drink?
SOT INDIAN POLITICIANS Isingti. Ayes havit.
STOSSEL: (VO) No, said some politicians here; the merits of Coke and Pepsi were debated endlessly in Parliament. Regulation is so thorough that it’s as if each bureaucrat has veto power over every idea.
STOSSEL: (stand-up) Coke and Pepsi finally got in, but it took years.
STOSSEL: (VO) And Kentucky Fried Chicken finally got permission, but only after months of heated political debate.
STOSSEL: (stand-up) In a country where people are starving a government minister said he was concerned that the chicken wasn’t healthy enough.
STOSSEL: (VO) While the politicians debate, the people… suffer.
DINESH D’SOUZA: The poverty in India has created that vacant look, uh in the eyes of the poor Indian; where he feels like this is the way it’s always been and this is the way it always will be.
STOSSEL: (VO) Dinesh D’Souza is an author and research scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
D’SOUZA: The government in a sense interferes in the ordinary rhythms of society. And by that I mean trying to decide for people how they should live their life.
STOSSEL: (VO) When Indians get free from their government and go to Hong Kong, they thrive. And they thrive in America. One generation after they come here Indians earn more than the average American.
KANWAL REKHI: India is full of smart people, but their brains are in the drains because, you know, the government doesn’t let you blossom them out.
STOSSEL: (VO) Kanwal Rekhi and these other immigrants started new computer companies when they came to California. They’ve created thousands of jobs for Americans.
STOSSEL: You couldn’t do what you did here in India?
REKHI: Oh, absolutely not. Yeah, yeah, in India you need license, permit, quota, from politicians to do anything.
MILTON FRIEDMAN: The problem is that Indians can do well everywhere, except in India. They do so badly because they’re not allowed to use their own abilities within India. The government tells ‘em what to do.
STOSSEL: (VO) But wait a second. Is it that simple? Maybe they, and others… succeed in America because of our great natural advantage…
SOT TREE FALLING
STOSSEL: (VO)… our fabulous resources. We do have a lot, maybe that’s why we’ve done so well.
STOSSEL: (stand-up) But again look at Hong Kong. The island is just a rock. It had no natural resources to speak of. No good farming land. No oil, not even enough drinking water. Yet still, millions of people came here to this rock and created all this.
FRIEDMAN: It’s a phenomenal thing. It’s hard to believe. Here’s a rock. Nothing. A great harbor and on this rock, people can produce for themselves a higher standard of living than they can produce in Britain with its centuries of history. Incredible.
STOSSEL: Because of freedom…
FRIEDMAN: Because of freedom. Absolutely. Because of freedom.
SOT HONG KONG STOCK MARKET
STOSSEL: (VO) Economic freedom… was enough to unleash so much creativity, so much invention… that this tiny place could make a wonderful home for six million people whose ancestors, for generations, suffered in poverty…
STOSSEL: (studio) Now I’m not saying that because Hong Kong has the freest economy… that it’s number one. It’s not even a country, and anyway, there’s more to life than money.
America created not just prosperity, but a whole new way of thinking about things. We look at that when we come back.
(Commercial break)
STOSSEL: (studio) Even if you don’t think America’s the best country in the world, you can’t quarrel with America’s performance at creating … opportunity.
Look at California’s Silicon Valley, the high-tech capital of the world.
STOSSEL: (VO) In just a few years, people here have changed the way we live. They invented a whole new way to communicate.
AMERICA ONLINE: You’ve got mail!
STOSSEL: (VO) Developed microchips so when you get lost in your car, you can get directions from an orbiting satellite.
SOT TALKING CAR In a quarter mile make a right turn.
STOSSEL: (VO) Their ingenuity has helped create millions of new jobs.
Why did Silicon Valley happen in America? Because we’re an open society. With economic freedom, yes. But just as important, we’re open to new ideas, and open to immigrants from everywhere.
STOSSEL: (stand-up) One out of every five companies here in Silicon Valley was founded by an immigrant. One out of every three engineers, one out of every three scientists is an immigrant.
Why couldn’t they do it in their countries?
MARTINE KEMPF: You don’t have the opportunity to realize their dreams the way you can do it here.
STOSSEL: (VO) Martine Kempf came here from France.
KEMPF: I designed and built voice-recognition system to help disabled people control electric functions in cars
STOSSEL: It means with her voice, she can tell the car to start.
SOT CAR Engine starting
STOSSEL: (VO) She steers with her foot, and then tells the car to turn its headlights on.
KEMPF: Then I applied the same system to surgical microscopes.
SOUND UP: MARTINE KEMPF Go right.
KEMPF: So micro-surgeons can talk to the microscope.
SOUND UP: MARTINE KEMPF Zoom out.
KEMPF: Once I had this I knew I had the potential to start a business.
STOSSEL: (VO) So why didn’t she do this in France? Because, even with a great product, and lots of publicity, they called her a prophet in her village, there was so much red tape, she couldn’t get her product to consumers.
STOSSEL: You met with Congress, you met the President, but you couldn’t start the business?
KEMPF: Yeah, there was promising and a lot of politics but, there was nothing.
SOT BIRDS Bird noises.
STOSSEL: (VO) Yet just one year after she’d come to Silicon Valley, she was selling her voice-activated cars in nine countries.
KEMPF: This is what I call the land of opportunity. That’s absolutely fantastic, you cannot get this probably anywhere else in the world.
STOSSEL: (VO) Well, maybe in Hong Kong and a few other places, but you’d think she would have had an advantage in France, because her home country’s government was one of the first to embrace computer technology.
Fifteen years ago, France created the Minitel computer network. The government gave everyone free electronic phone books… that also let you do your banking at home.
But today Minitel’s considered a dinosaur. Because it was controlled by the government, its growth was stunted. Officials in charge couldn’t keep up with the hundreds of millions of experiments flying about in the United States — where the Internet… not controlled by the government or anyone, flowered.
SOT COMPUTER SOUNDS Explosion, then music.
STOSSEL: (VO) The French government now offers Minitel in six colors, but they’ve lost the race, and lost people like Martine.
KEMPF: Suddenly they decided in my hometown that they named a street after me so they named Rue Martine Kempf, and they’ve now they are very proud of me, but I still don’t want to go back.
SOT STEEL MILL Factory noises
STOSSEL: (VO) Another reason she won’t go back is that French bureaucrats, to try to protect workers, are so busy passing labor laws that stifle entrepreneurship. One seemingly worker-friendly law says employees may not work longer than 35 hours a week.
TOM PALMER: They actually come to businesses, and stop people from working.
STOSSEL: (VO) Tom Palmer, of Washington’s Cato Institute.
STOSSEL: They’re protecting people from overwork.
PALMER: What they’re doing is turning the whole country into a big theme park. You go to Franceland. You have the cheese, you have the wine, you look at some castles, it’s a lovely place to visit.
But does much new come out of France anymore, is it dynamic? No.
STOSSEL: (VO) And so, in the past 10 years, 300,000 people, many of France’s best and brightest, have left.
And they’re leaving Germany, Sweden, Canada, leaving countries with lots of restrictions… for America.
ANDY BECHTOLSHEIM: I wanted to build better computers, and there was no way to build a better computer in Germany.
STOSSEL: (VO) Andy Bechtolsteim’s co-founder of America’s multi-billion dollar Sun Microsystems.
BECHTOLSHEIM’S EMPLOYEE: We could build…
BECHTOLSHEIM: The U.S. is really all about change faster. To innovate faster, to accelerate change. And what most of the rest of the world is all about is to preserve the status quo, to slow things down.
STOSSEL: And what you did here, why couldn’t you do that in Germany?
BECHTOLSHEIM: Well, it’s a beautiful place to go and drink some beer, enjoy the scenery but people are basically thinking about their retirement.
JOHAN VON HOLSTEIN: There’s no possibility of really living up to the potential of, of your dream, of what you want to do. Because of the system, and I think this is the problem for many European countries that the systems are wrong.
SOT DOOR Door opens
STOSSEL: (VO) Johan Von Holstein who founded Icon Medialab is from Sweden.
VON HOLSTEIN: We have something called yunt [PH] in Sweden, which is, um, it’s like the ten commandments but they go like, thou should not think that thy are anything, and you don’t even try to try. It’s not worth it.
STOSSEL: (VO) That’s not the attitude here.
SOT BAILIFF Sir are you becoming a citizen? Would you take a seat in the row please.
STOSSEL: (VO) And it’s one reason so many people are eager to become Americans.
MICHELLE SUNG: There’s a, a sense of freedom here that you don’t have anyplace else.
STOSSEL: (VO) Michele Sung, who was born in Jamaica, was here to watch her husband become a citizen. All these people were lining up for that because America’s founders gave us a gift, says Michelle.
SUNG: They made a country that said, if you want it, you can get it. We’re not gonna guarantee you it. And we’re not gonna go out of our way to make sure you get it but if you want it, you can get it.
STOSSEL: Don’t other countries do that?
SUNG: Tuh, no. Other countries say, it’s here. But it’s only for the elite. And in a lot of countries you have to be born into it in order to get it. And this is the only country where you can be born a peasant, and end up like royalty [LAUGHS]
DINESH D’SOUZA: If you are a rich guy, you can live well almost anywhere in the world. Uh, you can live well in Argentina, in Barbados, or in Bombay. If you are an ordinary guy, without connections, you’re best off coming to this country. It’s a very mobile society in which lots of people who start out at the bottom, uh, can find a place at least in the middle, and some will… rise to the top.
STOSSEL: (VO) Malik Amstead grew up poor, in a tough neighborhood. Now he owns this restaurant in Brooklyn.
MALIK AMSTEAD: You can be anybody you want to be. And you can have anything you want to have here. In other places the opportunities just don’t exist.
AMSTEAD: (on camera) We’re getting ready to expand it this summer to a full service sit down next door.
AMSTEAD: America today is just a great place to be.
STOSSEL: (studio) One reason for that say economists … is that America is open to new ideas from everywhere. This allows us to take the best the world has to offer, and make it even better.
SOT MUSIC Let’s go to the hop.
STOSSEL: (VO) Americans mixed music from Ireland and Africa … to invent something called rock and roll.
SOT Scraping pizza pan
NARRATION: (VO) The Italians invented pizza, but it didn’t become a worldwide hit until Americans added toppings like pepperoni, and started selling it by the slice.
SOT, Typing on computer
STOSSEL: (VO) Computers, the telephone, sewing machines,
SOT, Sewing machine and zipper.
STOSSEL: the zipper,
SOT, Trombone
STOSSEL: Jazz…
SOUND UP, Trombone
STOSSEL: (VO) The inventiveness that’s led us to win half the world’s Nobel prizes has helped make us number one…
SOT INVENTOR, This is the first rocket ship built in the United States.
STOSSEL: (VO) And it was made possible by our openness to ideas from others.
TOM PALMER: What is American culture? There wasn’t some American people, right? It was made up of all sorts of people.
And that has produced a really rich, interesting, open society where we’re free to pick from here, pick from there, borrow a little bit, and make a tremendously interesting stew.
SOT BLUE MEN DRUMMING
STOSSEL: (VO) This stew isn’t just high tech entrepreneurs and ambitious businessmen.
Theatre groups like The Blue Men, exemplify the freedom we have to… try things, all sorts of things, that sense that anything’s possible… They seal an audience member’s head in Jell-O,
SOT BLUE MEN MUSIC
STOSSEL: (VO)…cover the audience in toilet paper. The actors worried that people might not relate to this, but the show is now selling out in three cities.
CHRIS WINK: You can’t be a rebel in this country because they’ll — they’ll instantly like it.
STOSSEL: (VO) Chris Wink, one of the Blue Men’s founders.
WINK: When you think you’re going to someplace new everyone’s like, I’m going there too, take me with you, all of us.
SEXPO PERFORMER: Can you do that for me one more time if you like sex! Say hell yeah!
CROWD: Hell yeah!
WOMAN: Say sex is my friend.
CROWD: Sex is my friend.
STOSSEL: (VO) Now not all Americans want to be taken to some of the places an open society goes.
SOT WHIPPER Very good, very good…
STOSSEL: (VO) At the prestigious Javits convention center, In mid-Manhattan, the sex business recently held a trade show.
THE BARONESS: We’re really taking sex, S-M, fetish, erotica, out of those dark little scary places on what used to be 42nd Street and bringing it out to the mainstream, and I think that’s a delight.
PALMER: We need to have freedom for the odd ball, for the strange person, for someone who’s going to try something totally new and shock us.
THE BARONESS: I’m an expert with a bullwhip, that’s my toy, that’s my fetish.
SOT MUSIC
STOSSEL: (VO) I’m happy for her, but a lot of Americans would say, if this is what an open society brings we don’t want it.
PALMER: A free society isn’t always perfect, it isn’t always pretty, it isn’t always the way you’d like it to be. But it’s an awful lot better than the alternative.
STOSSEL: (VO) Which is stagnation, and often poverty. Consider China, now mired in 3rd world poverty, they were once the leader of the world.
PALMER: If you had landed on this planet in the year 1400, let's say you were a Martian, and you had to send back a report, what will be the society that dominates the world. It definitely would've been China.
SOT MAKING GUNPOWDER Crunch, crunch.
STOSSEL: (VO) Over a thousand years ago, they invented gunpowder…
SOUND UP EXPLOSION Boom!
STOSSEL: (VO) …the compass, the clock, real paper and printing. But then they sealed themselves off from the rest of the world to try to protect what they had.
PALMER: They burned all of the ships that had been traveling around the world. They wanted to make sure they weren’t contaminated by outsiders. They didn’t want all that change that an open, dynamic society brings about, because it would’ve threatened the emperor’s power. And China became stagnant.
STOSSEL: (VO) America's anything but that.
SOT AMERICA MONTAGE
DINESH D'SOUZA: An open society is one which includes the freedom to shape your own life in the manner that you see best. To be the artist of your own life.
SOT MALIK AMSTEAD Thank you very much.
STOSSEL: For better…
SOT MALIK AMSTEAD Have a good weekend.
STOSSEL: …Or for worse.
MAN: We’re the future of America. Careful. (LAUGHS)
MAN: You’re ready for us?
STOSSEL: (studio) No, not really. And we’ll look at that, and more of what you may think is not so good about America… When we return |
