don't want to see the truth. john: oliver stone called him a great hero. >> no. it's true that he was democratically elected the first time, but he rigged the system. they had total control over the media, they had total control of the electoral process. if you put your political opponents in prison, how democratic is that? john: but don king, the boxing promoter, he goes to venezuela and says to see what is happening here makes me feel good all over. you, he says to chavez, you are the one concerned about the poor. danny glover, a true man of the people. >> where are people going to? are they going to live in lovely venezuela, or are they coming here, right? are the cubans hanging out there or getting on ships or little boats trying to get here? the venezuelan economy, the people in control of it, are on some insane quest to repeat the cuban multidecade failure. john: but people in venezuela love these dictators. i mean, reuters reports a venezuela politician rolled out

a variation of the lord's prayer. our chavez who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. may your legacy come to us so we can spread it to the people. give us your light to guide out every day. lead us not into the temptation of capitalism. >> yeah, that -- john: and people applauded. >> this is the cult of hugo chavez. and that is not the people of venezuela, that's the socialist party who are loyal to him. they're part of the crony system. they're part of the problem. they don't want to have open, fair elections, and so that's why they're afraid of it. john: thank you, fehr gus hodgeson. i should say you don't sound latino, but you're from -- >> new zealand. john: open media in -- >> all across america. john: because you felt it was -- >> there's a lack of free speech, and we really have to address these topics. we go where the free speech is least, so venezuela is one of those places. cuba is even worse. john: thank you. next, why markets make people

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when banks compete, you win. okay! ...awkward. ♪ ♪ john: if you want to be taught about the need for social justice, you should become a sociology major at brooklyn college. then you can learn about things like labor and global solidarity and resisting walmart. those are two of many papers presented by the chair of the department,carely that munoz. she says america urgently needs more social justice, meaning what? >> well, people's basic needs are not being met in this country. we have, you know, persistent poverty, unemployment, the wealth gap, 50 million americans are uninsured or underinsured. we're in a crisis. john: we would be in less of a crisis if government gave those people more things? >> absolutely.

if you look at our country historically, at the height of industrialization we saw the worst sweat shop conditions that have ever existed, terrible conditions, terrible wages, worst pollution in history -- john: the industrial revolution. >> absolutely. by the 1930s, people had had enough, and because of unions and government policies, we rad candidated sweat shops -- we eradicated sweat shops, and working conditions improved. in the last 0 years -- 30 years -- john: i thought they improved because people got rich enough to care about clean air, and they could afford the ability to clean these things up. >> absolutely not. john: not? really? >> no. it's because of new deal policies like social security, minimum wage standards that forced employers to improve their conditions. john: so how come communist countries weren't good for their people? >> well, i think that we have a very few examples of, you know,

communist countries, first of all, and very -- and fewer examples of them being allowed to succeed. for example -- john: russia wasn't allowed. >> [inaudible] chile, which is where i'm from. john: ah. and that would have been a good communist country -- >> socialist. john: socialist, they would have prospered? >> yes. john: how come hong kong did so well and singapore, these basically almost free market, almost no rules countries? people went from horrible poverty to great wealth. let's go to some of your points about how terrible things are. people are working more than ever -- >> people are working longer hours, american workers are 40% more productive than they've ever been since 1979 -- john: good. >> which is great. and yet wages have stagnated. john: wait a second. we have a chart of hours worked

per year. can we put that up? this is from the oecd. we are more leisure time than ever, we're working less. i can't believe you teach your students this. i can't believe i'm taxed to pay you at city college to teach your students this. this is just wrong. >> it's not wrong. we have plenty of evidence, the economic policy institute has dozens of papers on how americans are more productive and working more than ever before. and wages have not kept up with that. john: wages. we have a chart of becames. the average household -- of wages. the average household income has grown by 40% for the middle 49% for the bottom fifth over the past 30 years, wages plus benefits. >> real wages. john: this is adjusted for inflation. >> real wages have not gone up. john: but they have -- [laughter] >> you don't have, you don't have the purchasing power that you had 30 years ago. john: we have more purchasing power and things are cheaper. this used to cost $1,000. >> absolutely.

but, you know what? more people are in debt. john: and china's doing better. >> on some things. john: so we could learn from china? a government-controlled economy? that does better? >> yes, we can. john: it wasn't the recognition of private property? >> no. john: well, let's look at -- here's china's gdp. look how it was stagnant for hundreds of years, and then they recognized private property, and suddenly it boomed. >> the government has still funded many, many, many projects that has allowed china to boom. john: should government run industry? oil companies? railroads? >> once again, it's not about government running things, it's about government regulating things. markets on their own are not the problem, it's unregulated markets that are the problem. and what we've seen is in the united states when we had the strongest unions and strongest federal government policy, we saw the strongest economic growth in history. john: well, you told meow don't

watch -- me you don't watch chris matthews, but he seems to believe government could run business better than business does. doesn't the president go in there, nationalize the industry and get the job done for the people? john: that was after an oil spill, he's talking about the oil industry. should government then step in after a spill and run things? >> well, i think that the key there is that government and the epa should have enough regulations that these kinds of errors don't happen. i mean, we were talking about climate change was on the front page of "time" magazine in 1970, and we're still debating about whether climate change is an issue in 2013. john: i think in the '70s, the climate change was global cooling we were worried about. does anybody give you any pushback at brooklyn college about what you teach? >> absolutely. and i welcome those debates, and i ask them to come to my class

prepared with their facts and check. john: i'm glad to hear that. i'm glad they debate. thank you for debating this hear, carolina. coming up, how despite all the complaints from social justice activists, those of us who live in relatively capitalist countries do get more social justice all the time. as the beatles said, the world keeps getting better. ♪ ♪ when heartburn hits, fight back fast with tums smoothies. it starts dissolving the instant it touches your tongue. and neutralizes stomach acid at the source. ♪ tum -tum -tum -tum smoothies! only from tums

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♪ ♪ john: when people talk about social justice, martin luther king is somebody they often mention. when i was in high school, king led thousands of people on a 50-mile march from selma to montgomery, alabama, to protest voting restrictions. during that march king said the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. that line inspired this book, "the moral arc: how science and reason lead humanity toward truth, justice and freedom." its author, mikal shermer, says now some people complain there's not must have social justice

when we're living in the most moral period ever in history. what do you mean? >> the expansion of civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, animal rights. more people are freer and have more rights than at any time in history. and yet people still complain that it's bad now, worse than it's ever been as if all the work that dr. king did counted for nothing. so we followed the trend lines, not the headlines -- that's the job of the media, of course, to report the bad news, but it's good to take those long-term trends over the course of centuries and look at the abolition of slavery, abolition of judicial torture, the granting of the franchise to all adults, and america didn't get the vote to women until 1920. so, i mean, look how far we have come. [laughter] john: and i was struck when you talk about gay rights how far we've come. jonathan rausch writes: when i was young, gay americans were forbidden to work for government, forbidden to serve in the military, arrested for making love even in their own homes, beaten and killed in the streets, arrested by police for

sport, fired from jobs, joked about, demeaned, bullied as a matter of course, condemned as sick by scientists, condemned by their own parents. >> indeed. john: almost entirely changed in 20, 30 years. >> it's the fastest, it's the fastest unraveling of a, you know, suppression of minorities ever. and just think about like alan turing who almost single-handedly saved the allies by cracking the code of the nazis. he was gay. and to reward him for saving western civilization, the british government had him chemically castrated, and he killed himself. that's just barely more than half a century ago. john: still watching the news, you'd think life is getting worse. >> isis is out of control. >> hundreds of homes have been swept away. >> more violence. >> rioters burning buildings and vehicles -- john: those things did happen. >> there'll always be enough incidents to fill the evening news with film clips like that.

but the kinds of inner city violence between the police and african-americans, for example, is far less today than it was, say, in the '50s. john: people don't know that. it's sharply down. >> there has never been a safer time to live than today, including in inner cities. think about donald sterling, the former owner of the clippers. this was a huge news story. saying in private to his mistress that he was unhappy about african-americans coming to his games, you know? he's just vilified and run out of town, has to sell his team and so on. most old guys back in the '50s thought like him, and they weren't private about it. now that -- you just can't say those sorts of things. i think earlier you played that song by paul mccartney, it's getting better all the time. the next stanza he says i used to be cruel to my woman, i would beat her and keep her apart from the things she looed. when i heard that -- loved, when i heard that recently, i thought, sir paul, you can't say that anymore. just little stuff that shifts that we just no longer do.

john: because of science and reason, you say, and you insult religion saying religion is not the source of moral progress. many people watching will say, yes, it is. >> during the enlightenment, there became a movement to try to apply science of reason to solving social problems. instead of treating behavior as a sin, let's treat it as something that's a problem to be solved. how can we get homicide to go down? get people to act nicer to each other, how can we improve the economy, get people wealthier. people think adam smith's book is called wealth of nations. that's not the title. the title is an inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. inspired by newton, the principle that the universe is governed by natural laws, we can apply that not just to the physical world, but the social and economic world. there must be a better way to govern people for all of us to live for more of us to have more prosperity, more freedom, more autonomy, and for three centuries we've been applying the methods of science and reason to solving more problems,

and the moral sphere keeps expanding, the arc keeps bending. more of us are better off than we've ever been. despite what you see in the news, don't forget to look at the long-term trends. john: a final example, murder rates. we think there's more murder now but, in fact, over time they've plummeted. in prehistoric times, a thousand per 100,000 people per year. in the middle ages, 100. in the 1700s, 10. today in america 5. >> and 1, less than 1 in europe. so the chances of you dying violently have gone down a thousandfold in the last thousand years. there's never been a safer time for you to walk out on the street and not die violently. john: well, we can be happy about that. >> we should be. john: thank you, michael shermer. coming up, why real social justice is driven not by government, but by free markets. >> the u.s. government may soon require brake override technologies on all new cars and trucks. and they think this is a good

idea. so we did it. six years ago. ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ john: a thousand years ago most everyone was horribly poor. few people had anything close to what we call social justice today except for a few kings and queens. a big reason most everyone else was poor then was because they had no property rights.

why work hard to build something if your neighbor, the king, could just steal it? so people didn't build or invent much, and everyone stayed poor. but then a few countries recognized private property. if you built something, police wouldn't take it from you. in fact, they might protect what you built. once people had property rights, progress took off. this chart shows how wealth per person grew since private property was recognized. as i showed before, this change was even more dramatic in china once the communists finally allowed private property, then the boom happened. along with the rise in wealth came a rise in health. we now live twice as long. that's what i'd call social justice. and almost all these gains came from the free market. look how driving deaths have dropped. much of this happened because cars are safer now and people think that's because government forced it. but that's rarely the case.

air bags appeared in cars long before bureaucrats even knew what they were. fifty years ago a mechanical engineer named alan breed inevented a $5 device that would sense a crash and allow an airbag to inflate. mercedes benz offered it as an option in 1980. ten years later ford made them standard equipment. then volvo offered side protection. and now others do. >> introducing an industry first front center airbag available in the reimagined 2013 chevrolet traverse. john: that's well beyond what government requires. government didn't require any airbags until 1998, 20 years after some car makers installed them voluntarily. likewise, the first backup camera is used in a 1956 buick concept car. nissan made them an option in the year 2000, and now most cars

have them. >> a technological marvel that would have gotten us burned at the stake 100 years ago. john: again, the private market's way ahead of government as it was with automatic braking. >> the u.s. government may soon require brake override technology on all new cars and trucks. at nissan we think this is a good idea, so we did it. six years ago. john: the free market protects us better than the state because it allows for choice and experiments. here's the latest improvement. >> we've road tested autonomous driving over 10,000 miles, on highways and in heavy city traffic. the future of the automobile. john: the driverless car will be a big lifesaver because most crashes are caused by people who make mistakes. companies develop that not because government told them to

do it, they did it voluntarily because they want to make money. now they say the biggest obstacle to saving lives since driverless cars isn't technology, it's government, and it's rules. we need some government to have social justice, to keep the peace, to to protect private property, to do a few other things. but most social justiceom the fe businesses have an incentive to voluntarily serve as many people as possible regardless of gender, sexual preference, status or ethnic group. government doesn't have to force it. sellers need to be nice to people because customers are more likely to trade with people who treat them fairly. those who don't will lose business. in a free market, which unlike government is voluntary, everyone gets to choose his own path. that's social justice. and that's our show. see you next week an hour earlier. fox has changed my show schedule

again. is our new time slot will be fridays on fbn at 8 p.m. see you then. ♪ ♪ you. ♪ >> from queens college, city university of new york. >> university of virginia. >> university of texas at austin. >> guatemala. >> unc charlotte. >> vanderbilt university. >> university of queensland, brisbane, australia. >> university of maryland. >> are you republican? >> no. >> are you democrats? no. john: what are you? [shouting] [applause] >> and now, john stossel. [applause] john: i'm