Guest Post by John Stossel
I rarely watch cable news anymore. It’s all hysteria, all the time.
CNN: “We are destroying the planet.”
MSNBC: “The middle class is disappearing!”
President Donald Trump says drug trafficking “is worse than ever!”
I’m glad my favorite magazine, Reason, cuts through the gloom and tells us the truth:
There is less war and more food. We live healthier and longer lives. HIV will soon be history. We are increasingly free to be whoever we are and love whom we want. Even work has become more pleasant.
It’s a surprising message, since most journalists tell us everything’s terrible.
“They’re wrong,” says Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason’s editor-in-chief, in my new video.
Why is the media so negative?
Mangu-Ward says evolution wired us to see a world in which things are bad. “If you are a caveman who hears a little rustling in the weeds and you say, ‘Oh, it’s probably fine’ and the other guy says, ‘It’s probably a tiger!’ that’s the guy who lives. That guy was our ancestor.”
So today, as life gets better, my profession wins clicks and ratings points by hyping whatever makes us afraid. Reporters ignore gradual improvement and, sometimes, miracles.
“We live in a world of reliable miracles,” says Mangu-Ward. “When I’m having a bad day, I trawl the internet for videos of happy cyborgs … hearing-impaired people getting cochlear implants turned on for the first time … paraplegics walking with the help of adaptive prosthetics, infants getting their first pair of coke-bottle glasses … things that, in another era, would have caused the founding of an entire religion!”
Even food is better. Meatless meat tastes as good as meat from an animal because “people want to make money by selling you a burger that didn’t hurt a cow,” says Mangu-Ward.
OK, so science moves forward, but how will we pay for it? News anchors tell us “the middle class is shrinking.”
That’s true, says Mangu-Ward, “because people are getting richer!” A chart in Reason shows that Americans moving out of the middle class mostly moved up. There are more high-income people than ever before and fewer low-income households.
Another Reason article points out that “pestilence, war, famine and death are all on the decline.” You wouldn’t know it from other news sources, but it’s true. Deaths from war have declined dramatically.
I pushed back, pointing out that American life expectancy dropped recently. Suicide among white men is up about 40%.
“Still, overall, that is the tiniest blip,” said Mangu-Ward. “People are living longer, healthier lives.”
Even work got better.
“If you watch the news, you would think absolutely everyone is America is laboring in an Amazon factory, crying while they fill boxes. That’s just not, on average, what work looks like,” says Mangu-Ward.
“A couple hundred years ago, work was dangerous. It was very easy to die at work,” she reminds us. “Work was extremely boring, even for people that had good jobs. Jobs are pretty interesting now, and they mostly don’t kill you, and we should be grateful for that.”
Reason’s writers aren’t dumb. They don’t pretend everything is rosy.
The magazine includes reporting on “the terrifying rise of authoritarian populism,” threats to a free internet and worries that “Americans aren’t saving nearly enough.” But Reason is the rare publication that also points out good news.
When looking at that, Mangu-Ward sees a pattern.
“Everything that’s bad is politics; everything that’s good is the market.”
Markets allow every individual a choice. Products and services must improve, or you won’t buy them. That’s why market competition brings us gradual improvements.
Politics, by contrast, gives us just two choices. Then it forces everyone to obey whatever the majority chose.
“At Reason (we) describe why everyone should have less power over each other … because people are going to make mistakes and hurt each other. Better that they shouldn’t do it with the force of the state behind them,” concludes Mangu-Ward.
She suspects life will continue to get better “if we can just manage to keep politicians from screwing it up.”
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Good News
Translation:
Take blue pill and go back to sleep.
Government is not the solution to our problems. Government IS the problem… Chip
Don’t forget to wear your pussy hat, John. https://mobile.twitter.com/kmanguward/status/1034870835172003840
oh, an optimist has written a thinly veiled advertisement for a magazine publication.
most “news” stories these days are exactly that, nothing more than advertising:
“there is a new local bakery specializing in cookies that are black AND white, the owner wants to support harmony between the races, the store hours are 12-6 so rush on over and support the LGBT community and have fun while doing it – ps there is a white cream filling inside each cookie filled with a secret recipe that has been passed down to the owner by his loving uncle”
If everything is coming at you, your probably in the wrong lane. The light at the end of the tunnel is a train.
——————————————
The dangers of over-optimism are well-documented, not least by the story of Yale professor Irving Fisher, who permanently destroyed a reputation as the nation’s leading economist by declaring on Oct. 16, 1929, that stocks had reached “what looks like a permanently high plateau.”
Reason magazine is nothing but a bunch of open borders leftist shills…..
John Stossel and Ron Paul live in that magical libertarian la la land where everyone is moral and ethical.
la la land was once a state of mind akin to being in puppy love, then it morphed into another name for LA, Los Angeles.
My buddy Mike was surprised when I showed him that justin bieber was copying Donny’s old look.
True about John but not Ron Paul.
Why did I waste my time reading this drivel, this inestimable taradiddle ?
I was gracious about the tremendous loss of Cuckoo the Roberts in her new adventures of the great beyond; and thus, withheld my estimates.
Now, I am, once again intellectually insulted/assaulted by this gray-green haired Mz. Katz Mandu Magoo?
Another cuck, this time of the Reason-able botch.
Peradventure what was my crime?
I’d have sooner checked “Spot-iffy” for new additions by Funky Fella with great intent and listening…
Or, failing to mitigate the migraine with a greater but more bearable pain, seek solace in an ‘impossible burger’.
My gorge rises at it.
I believe HF already shot that down. Just as oil has the biggest energy bang for the buck, beef has the most energy of all food. Veggie-beef is a veiled attempt at turning all of us into vegans and eventually spineless octupusses.
“Reason’s writers aren’t dumb.”.
OK, John, if you say so, but past experience hasn’t shown me the truth of that statement. More like “Reason’s writers are paid to propagandize,” but that comes as no surprise. Nevertheless, I’ll take another look. Good enough? I’m not optimistic, mind, but as no fan of gov save on the level of Subsidiarity, and as a former Lew Rockwell writer, I’ll check y’all out again. Propaganda points awarded to Mr. S.
John Stossel, you take the cake for stupidity.
Cancer is Now the Leading Cause of Death
bad day for john