call 1-800-call-fbi. make sure you go to greta wire.com and let us know what you thought about the show. we will see you next time. tomorrow, thank you. >> 2,000 years ago, one super power, rome, dominated the world. it became famous for its military and for having rule of law and a stable currency people could rely on. they built beautiful buildings, roads, aqueducts, they created art and literature. rome flourished for 200 years in relative peace and prosperity. then it crumbled. why? political leaders grabbed power. that power turned many into tyrants who endulged in debauchery and corruption. they raised taxes to pay for war and increased regulation. when the masses complained they

tried to please them with handouts. sound familiar? is this what is happening to america? a thousand of us gathered here to debate that question. and that's our show tonight. (cheers and applause) >> and now, john stossel. (applause) >> tonight i am in las vegas, nevada for a special edition of our show. i would like to say that all of these people came here just for that, but they really came for freedom fest, the world's biggest gathering of free minds. this year's topic, are we becoming rome? now, free minds, that's the phrase we libertarians like to use to describe ourselves. this is basically a big conference of libertarians.

i think our minds are unusually free, right? (applause) we had to free our minds to get these concepts but a lot of people think we are crazy. unto tonight's topic, rome, is the united states about to fall as rome did? here's a depiction of bar-b bar-barians stacking the city. first we hear from conservative historian and libertarian. the conservative c. force from force media who has libertarian but conservative i would call you. karl bresh shard on roam and libertarian a group that fights against free government. matthew first are we becoming rome? >> the parallels are ominous the deaths the foreign policy arrogance of executive power taking over our country. but i think we have a chance to

stop it. >> karl? >> i think there are similarities with the fall of the empire which is most people talk about the fall of rome also the fall of the republic 500 years earlier. i see romans engage in uns contusionnal acts political leaders and so on. >> unconstitutional acts like stuffing ballot boxes, corruption? >> that did happen the under the table corruption and that's bad obviously, but it doesn't bother me as much as the overt things for instance marius who is elected council six years in a row even though under the roman constitution it was term limited to one year. and people just kept voting for him. they knew it was unconstitutional. that kind of stuff. >>ow we have congress passing laws they haven't read. >> right. and we have presidents of both parties legislating by executive order saying i am not going to enforce certain laws because i

don't like them. we have bureaucrats legislating through regulations. we have supreme courts saying it's constitutional for the government to take your property and sell it to someone else because he can give you more tax revenue there are a lot of examples. >> yes, you can always find parallels but the fact that we are meeting i think shows the antidote that is coming about. we the people have not gone the way and been totally corrupted the way romans were. we are not passive we spoke with tea parties despite the irs depression. you can see it in 2014 and 2016. and they may try to feed us to the lions, but we are going to own the lions because we believe in free enterprise. >> that's a happy thought. i wish he were as optimistic as

you. but i fear we will become rome. let me just poll the audience. are you as optimistic? how many of you think we are going down the tubes, we are in deep trouble? (applause) >> how many of you think we are going to turn it around? (applause) >> they can't both be true. but again, you are not a normal audience, because you are libertarians, right? whacko birds according to senator john mccain what he calls libertarian minded politicians. walking around here at the conference and seeing the tea party booths and people selling investments in gold and game show quizzes that test your knowledge of dead austrian economists you have to kind of understand why we get our

reputation as eccentric and wonkish and different. is this unfair? is this fair? isn't this group mostly men, mostly badly dressed men? (laughter) my going to libertarian events this is what i noticed. people who care about numbers, less about how they look. i think steve forbes is a perfect example of this. he is the epitome of the wonkish geek. is this unfair? >> you are sounding like my opponents. i didn't expect that from you. but let's face it, people who make things happen, you can describe our fore fathers our revolutionaries in the same way. go out become agitate tors when

you see something wrong be agitate tors and change the world. we have done it once and we are going to do it again. we are going to be the leaders. (applause) >> and you have all people should know, don't look at the superficial, look at the substance. we have got the substance. that's why we are going to ultimately win. >> i admire -- this is the optimism that makes america possible. >> matt, what about my libertarian slur? i look at your side burns, i think people would say this is not a normal guy. (laughter) >> definitely guilty as charged. >> you go to thousands of these meetings. are the people different? how? >> we are different because we have read books and we do care -- (applause) but ocean awkwardness is not a sin in the defense of liberty.

(laughter) >> and any psychological -- i am socially awkward, too. i over come it because i have to because i have a tv show. ask my friends or ask imus he will go i am socially awkward. but what is it about many -- people who like to analyze. bill clinton the opposite. he felt your pain and then spent more money. personality type? >> economists would argue everything we do when we fight for freedom when we show up at rallies when we care about the future of our country economists would say that's irrational. we think it's the best thing to do because we care not only about our country but our future and our kid's future. that's not normal in this country that's what we have to fix. >> but it is part of our culture entrepreneurs they are always out liars always trying to see things that others aren't seeing. steve jobs said you do marketing

surveys. he said no people don't know what they want until we show them. that's a typical entrepreneur. put it out there and see if they like it. often times we fail. that's what you try to learn. that's what freedom is about. take a chance, fail, learn, hope to do it better next time. if we accept conventional wisdom, heck, we would still be living in caves. >> do you have more historical perspective we should think about comparing america to rome? >> the debt, the high spending, the late empire. >> they had high debt and high spending. >> evaluation of currency there's another one. the empire, so-called silver coin was only 2 percent silver. that's how they devalued it. it got to the point the roman government wouldn't accept their own currency in taxes. th you had to give goods. we are not there yet. >> thank you carl, matt kibbe,

steve forbes. gladiator currency growing welfare state, other ways america is just too much like rome. (applause) [ male announcer ] centrum has been a leader in multivitamins for over 30 years. and it's now the most doctor recommended, the most preferred and the most studied. so when it comes to getting the most out of your multivitamin, the choice is clear. centrum.

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>> welcome back to "freedom fest." now the welfare state. america didn't invent the welfare state. europe had one and even rome had one. i didn't know that until i came to this conference. two people who have educated me are charles murray author of "losing ground" the book that woke america up to the destructiveness of welfare and larry reed of foundation for economic foundation. welfare state began about halfway through the roman empire. >> that's right. it took the form first of payments to recipients in it the form of subsidized grain, the government gave it away at half price. but the problem was that they couldn't stop there. later there was a man named clodius who ran for the office of tribe bun on platform of free

meat for the masses. he won. it was downhill from there. >> they gradually raised taxes and gave stuff away to cities increases. >> free salt, free olive oil other staples of the roman diet. >> people who show up personally and pick up their stash. >> there would be long lines. in fact they had a means test at one time and did away with it so anybody could show up and get the free stuff. >> and they decided that everybody had to be educated by the state. >> well -- >> not everybody but they started public school. >> that was late -- much later. in fact rome grew to greatness with largely home schooling. the first public schools didn't appear until around 250 b.c. and they were not funded by the government until very late. >> the greeks actually mocked

rome for being backwards about that. >> they didn't last anywhere near as long as the romans did. >> so charles, you have educated us about welfare about the handouts. you see parallels with rome? >> yes. i mean if you take a look at roman society at the start of the decay it looks a whole lot like we do now. not just because of the welfare state and the people on the bottom it's also because the people on the top who are increasingly living isolated lives from the rest. i find the parallels between rome and united states right now to be very scary. >> so clierl the welfare state poisons much of life as horrible unintended consequences. do we just get rid of it. let me ask you libertarians. you are pretty hard-core i assume. should america get rid of all

handouts? (applause) but what would happen first time somebody starves? >> they say clarity. you wrote losing ground. what's your answer? >> in fact, i think if we got rid of the entire welfare state that the ability of this very wealthy society to deal with the problems would work. all right. but i also would say, i am about to be whipy on you. don't applaud. i don't think it's within the realm of possibility for an industrialized society with as much wealth as we have to ever do that politically. i think that libertarians are going to have to strike a grand compromise with the left. in effect saying all right we will give you a big spending if

you will give us freedom from government interference. i would say, look, i am with milton friedman, i say use a guaranteed basic income for everybody over 21 deposited monthly into electronically to a known bank account and let people take their lives back into their own hands. they will have the wherewithal that they can deal with the material necessities of life if they do not do it they are going to have to talk to friends, neighbors, churches, the community, they are going to have to make their case. i think that's the better way to go. >> you wrote a book about this. >> called "in our hands." yeah. >> i am going to push back. his better book is "in pursuit of happiness and good government" which really brought my mind around. but this book -- you are telling me you are going to give him the money and the track head is

going to spend it all in two months and the social worker is going to go on tv. the children are going to be -- the new york times reporter will go on and say, you are going to let this woman's children starve? it's not their fault. we will have a new program. >> here's what you are going to have. you are going to have somebody who smokes enough in the first week. he's got another two weeks before there will be a new deposit in the monthly account. see i don't have any money. he doesn't have the option of going to a social worker. you know where he has to go to? he has to go to the people he lives around and say i really need help. they are in a position of saying okay we are not going to let you die but it's time for you to get your act together. we will introduce wngs again the kinds of human connections that are the only way to change human behavior. >> and some who don't find those connections will die on the stre street>> united states will not let other people die on the

street. now we have bureaucrats who cannot make the distinction between somebody who needs a kick in the pants and someone who needs a pat on the back. we will put these kind of human needs back in the venue of human relationships where by you can apply the feedback loops and incentives and aggravation and disdain and stigma and all of the rest that will make these problems solveable. >> this audience is different than most in that they understand before the welfare state there were these mu tile aid societies every where which helped people. tell us about that. >> absolutely. there's nothing about being a politician that makes you more compassionate or caring than the people who sent you there. so i have every confidence. >> passionate with other people's money. >> i start with the premise it's not the business of the government to redistribute our stuff. it's the business of government is to protect our liberties. >> and in rome when they gave

out stuff it often went to the wealthier people? >> well, without a means test which was the case in most of roman history, anybody could line up to get these goods. which contributed to the ultimate bankruptcy of the roman state. >> one telling graph about the poverty rate is the advocate of the war on poverty, welfare could say lack how the poverty line dropped sharply for five years after the war on poverty began. >> you look at what happened before the war on poverty began the line was just as sharp. people were lifting themselves out of poverty government and kept improving and stopped. >> the great untold story of the poverty rate is there was a miracle happening from the end of world war ii to the 1960s. it was cut 40 percent of adults were beneath the poverty line to about 20 percent. the war on poverty starts the line continues to go down for a couple years and it flattens out

where it has been ever since. >> we taught people to independent. >> we changed the rules of the game that made it profitable for low income people and especially young low income people to do things that looked like gee this makes sense for the short term and are disastrous in the long-term. >> i think the dignitaries in the welfare staare the politici. somebody once said that the welfare state is so named because the politicians get well and the rest of us pay the fare. i think that is exactly what is happening. >> thank you larry reed and charles berry. you know one emperor had orgies and execute senator's wives who did not tand. the creepyness of rome when we return. [ male announcer ] making a dodge in 100 easy steps.

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>> welcome back to this special edition of the stossel show. we are in las vegas for freedom fest. most here are libertarians we want to shrink government but we don't like taxes. we need national defense and local police some pollution control rules, too. there are some things most of us say government must do. how are they going to get the money? taxes. got to have some. right? yes? it is a tough crowd here. i see why. our taxes are r all the tend to go up. that was part of rome's problem. two piem who tried to spread the word about the damage taxes do. glober norquist is head of the tax reform. he pledges politicians to never raise taxes. economist steve moore covers

these issues for the wall street journal. grover, rome had high tax rates? >> not always. at leafirst for 400 years they no direct internal taxes because they looted their neighbors. >> we are not advocating that, right? >> we got to talk to canadians but that may not work out. evenlyi enough. they had dramatically higher taxes the amount of money they spent on the armies cost more than they were able to extract. taxes that started with tariffs. >> they had ter rifs, these were augustus, constantine brought us the first income tax. all of this stuff we are now living with we were looking at the property taxes. so prouf that people were abandoning their property than just saying leave them alone. then you had to pass laws to not let you leave your property they

had to stay there and farm it so they could loot you. toward the end it got very, very rough and it is part of why things didn't work out. >> one penalty was being sold into slavery. >> or killed. >> modern day irs. that is what they do. when they would demand payment in gold and silver the only way to get it was to sell some cases children into slavery to get currency it was that bad. but one percent i read was the highest income tax. >> grover is absolutely right. one of the reasons rome fell is they kept collecting more and more and it all went into rome and you had a massive revolt among the people all over the country who weren't in rome. by the way that is happening in america today i think. people are sick and tired of seeing their tax dollars sent to

washington and now coming back to the states from wednesday it came. that is one of the great things about america. >> we are a federalist system. the states create the federal government the federal government did not create the states. reaction to the tax farmers they would go out and collect the taxes. >> they called them tax farmers? >> tax collectors. it was so bad in asia minor revolt they killed 80,000 of them in a day or two. >> we don't advocate killing tax c collectors on this show. >> it was a four-year war they waged to put down that revolt. it was a serious tax revolt. >> when you asked me about the one percent tax. i don't know what the tax rates were in rome but when we created our federal income tax around

1913, 1915 the top income tax rate when the income tax started was 7 percent. within 10 years the top income tax rates went from 7 percent to 70 percent. it remained high ever since. that's why i have always believed steve forbes had it right. we ought to go back to an 18 percent flat tax cut all of the reductions and loopholes make it as simple as possible collect the money you need but don't make all of the special interest groups. people most opposed to the flat tax are people in washington, d.c. because you take the power away from washington. >> when we went into revolt americans in the colonies were paying 2 percent. our oppress years the brits in london were paying 20 percent. it's expensive running an empire. we need to go back to 2 percent. i like 2 percent rather than 18. >> 2 percent -- to be clear we are at 40 percent that includes

state and local. >> yeah. putting it towards 2 percent we function fairly well beyond that and the reason the british were taxes themselves at 20 percent is they were running an empire. a oo thank you grover and steve. coming up when governments can't raise taxes any more they find other ways to please people like devaluing the currency. america is doing it right now. didn't work out well for rome. that's next. next ready to run your lines?

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>> welcome back to the freedom fest conference the world's biggest gathering of people like me people who care first about liberty. most of the audience hates taxes.

even many politicians don't like them. taxes people makes people mad. so forever politicians have found sneaky ways to fund their spending. roman emperors put less and less silver in coins they issue that cause inflation, a bush elf wheat that costs $8 cost 120,000 dollars. ben powell economist of texas and jeffery tucker of lez say fair book study this and say we better be careful the american dollar is already going down the tubes. what do you mean? i feared that and yes inflation is low. are you kidding me? i mean look over time. there is grandmothers rolling over in their drives right now. there are grandmothers rolling over in their audience's seats right now. every young person has heard someone say i remember when thinthat cost a nickel. what happens is the currency

lost its value. it takes $23 to buy today what $1 could back in 1913. >> you image going all of the way back to 1913. they will tell you inflation is 2 percent a year. historically that's pretty good. this isn't a big mystery. the banks are holding most of it back. it is not going into the price level. they are holding it as extra reserves because the feds start paying them interest in their extra reserves. if that gets lent out we will sigh higher prices. >> that is a form of robbery. >> how? >> explain that to people. it is a serious issue. you can't get a return on your money any more interefrom savin. you can't sustain prosperity without saving investment. that is what these policies are discouraging. >> go back to the rome parallel. free trade rule prospered then

they started doing what politicians do. >> their empire kept expanding and they were bringing in more people luke can bring money back to rome and they hit the maximum extent to their empire there was no one left to steel from. then they started resorting to other ways to raise money which was debating their currency and taking the solar out of their coins raising tax rates and over time thfdz the down fall of rome was the big government destroyed rome. it wasn't the barbarians. they came as the government was collapsing under its own weight. >> your reissued points 95 percent silver. then the next he can pir or this was 85 percent still. all of the way down to -- >> you have got a good one 85 percent solar. it ended up becoming one five thouts solar content of the original by about 300 or so ad. >> this is what governments do they start to debate the currency. what is going on in this country

about 100 years ago we have nationalized the dollar put it under socialist style control under the cartel arrangement. we have seen the quality diminish over 100-years. >> it is hard to get people worked up about this because they look around and say by and large america is doing pretty well. >> there is a great deal of distortion. people thought the markets were doing pretty well in 2007. there are surprises around the corner especially with a government that refuses to fund itself honestly this is dishonest. the fact the existence makes it to fail. they don't have to worry about spending restraints as long as the government is there to always pay for everything. there's no default risk on u.s.

treasuries. we have unlimited spending. >> when inflation comes what will the government do? the romans issued wage and price control. >> the united states government has already done this. the dollar was divorced from gold in 1971 what came afterwards decade of high inflation in 1970s and universal wage and price controls under nixon. nixon was a softy compared to the roman emperors when he did it in 300 ad he made it fun n h punishable by death. shortages decreases in quality products not coming to market distortions through out the economy. >> distortions they wouldn't let you change jobs either to get around the controls. constantine said any one that violates requirements may be bound in chains and reduced to a ser val condition. you mentioned when he imposed

wage and price controls he blamed greed. some people are eager to turn a profit even on blessing from the gods our shared humanity urges us to set a limp. >> i hate it when people use greed to explain something. greed is constant. it's always there. it can't explain a price spike or price de crete. the greedy oil companies are driving up prices. hey look oil companies got less greedy, the price is down. greed doesn't explain it. >> one solution some people say to governments playing with the currency is the gold standard. he had one for a while. didn't really work. >> the gold standard would be a great thing. the problem is -- >> before you answer this. for this libertarian audience how many of you own gold either actual gold or investment? just about everybody. i image you watching out there it is not so high.

you are different why? because you don't rust trust the federal reserve? >> gold, a really great gold center wouldn't have the government involved at all. >> it gold has just fallen some of you people lost a lot of money. maybe this is bad advice. >> it is always two separate things. always speculation what you are buying into. just because you paid the gold doesn't mean you pay the recommended gold as an investment. >> seems like they would go together you would believe in gold. >> it entirely depends on expectations of the future are. that should be embodied in the price of gold now. people are too optimistic or piss mystic that should tell us whether it's a good investment not whether it's a good standard of money. >> what about coins? >> came about four years ago it was one in a long succession of

attempted digital currencies. >> it is an internet form of currency that is limited in protecting you in devaluing dollars. >> it is currency and payment. by comparison to the dollar it makes the dollar looks like a dinosaur like there's been no improvement in our money in a very long time. bit coin is a currency for the digital age. it is more like physical property. the best thing is the government is not involved in it at all. it's the most i am plausible sort of currency. if you were to ask me will the market create a digital currency allowing me to exchange to anybody in the world in africa all of the world even if you don't have a credit card you can still exchange money will that happen? no. but it did happen. >> on that note thank you jeffery tucker and glen powell.

coming up rngs roman emperors spent big bucks on stadiums like the coliseum used for things like fights between gladiators sometimes fighting animals. there are american parallels to that, too, that's next. to that as well. we will have that [ shapiro ] at legalzoom, you can take care of virtually all your imptant legal matters in just minutes. protect youramily... and launch your dreams. at legalzoom.com we put the law on your side. step 1 -- study the competition. step 2 -- get angry. they're boring. 3 -- make a car from scratch the dodge way.

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john: welcome back to "freedom fest." the question are we rome? ancient rome's rulers trying to keep the people happy despite the currency and despite the distractions and bribes. one woman called it red and certain. sometimes it was an actual circus for gladiators fighting to the death. america doesn't allow that yet. but sports economist jc bradbury says government still does fund circumstances cusses the day they took the form of sports stadiums. what do you make of that? >> it is a common thing in a community where a politician says boy we need something to pull our community together to keep us happy and a sport

setting what what we need communities will rally around it and we will all be richer. >> they say they pay for themselves but they don't. they would pay 200,000 in parking revenue. >> that is for guenet revenue. we are going to get naming rights revenue didn't happen. >> it will pay for itself from day one. >> these facilities never do. the thing that is frustrating is that it has been studied so much. >> economists like you have explained it and said geese a football team has 8 home games a year how is that going to be economic stimulus. >> let's go back to the bread and butter circus. that is not common about human species. that is saying they are being placated. rome was giving us some of the freedoms because politicians gave them things they wanted. citizens today they like sports. sports are popular.

if you say why don't i support this i am not going to blame a politician for supporting. >> they pail compared to what we did. the gladiators was entertainment to keep the people pacified because they were getting ticked off? >> knotted even they are ticked off but a form of entertainment to distract us from other things going on. if i know a politician put a football team on the field i am going to focus on that not the declining schools or roads falling apart. it is something individuals can focus on saying this is a positive thing for our community and that's why they are so popular. >> some of the things i learned from the conference most gladiators were slaved who were prisoners of war. 90 percent of them survived the fight because it would be expensive to the owner of the

slave if they were killed. >> right. i believe if the slave was killed you would have to pay the owner. you wouldn't want them to get killed. this is a type of entertainment at the time. seeing death on the streets wasn't something that was that uncommon. it was something people enjoyed and wanted to see. luckily we have more pacifistic sports. we don't have death. we are trying to make our sports safer. it is a difference in the way we view those competitions today than they were once. >> the arrogance of the emperors increased in 169 bc 63 african lions and leopards, 40 bears, elephants were hunted down in a single two-day show. tigers crocodiles hippopotamuses they would bring them in from all over the world to kill them and the emperor would sometimes kill them themselves. >> today we have sausage races

club seats luxury boxes. but it is definitely the same thing. it gets more and more extravagant. that is the same type of attitude they had in the roman empire we have today. >> at least problematic as our politicians are they are not that bad. >> thank you jc bradbury and when i said that bad, we barely touched the surface of how bad the roman rulers were. that is next. (applause) we wi the humble back seat. we believe it can be the most valuable real estate on earth. ♪ that's why we designed the subaru forester from the back seat forward. the intelligently designed, responsibly built, completely restyled subaru forester. love. it's what makes a subaru,

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>> is america rome? no. thank goodness. we are not as bad in 100 ways. our taxes are actually higher than rome. but we don't have slaves. we don't kill people for sport. when we go to war misguided or not we don't kong kwoer conquer plunder. when we win we usually leave. that's different. in america poor people now live better than the emperors did. we have air-conditioning. google, pain-killers, flush toilets, longer lives. thanks to george washington our presidents leave office voluntarily. although our current president

wastes money on extravagant travel like the recent $100 million trip to africa nero was much worse. he never wore the same clothes twice. when he travelled he traveled with a thousand carriages. the em peror set up a brothel i the palace. tiberius established an office of imperial pleasures which gathered beautiful boys and girls from all corridors of the world so the emperor could de file them. galigulous said to made his favorite horse a senator as depicted here. >> allow me to introduce a new senator of rome. you will treat him as your peer in every sense. >> even president obama wouldn't

do that. so arrogance as our politicians are, as repugnant as many of them are, they are at least not emperors who like some held orgies and executed the senator's wives who didn't show up. rome matters because empires do trumble. rome lasted the longest than all of them. roman empire next 600 years the spanish almost that long the british we have lasted less than 300 years. we are doing better than alexander the great his empire lasted 13 years. in our 250 years we have accomplished amazing things, amazing prosperity. we can't take it for granted free and prosperous is not the natural state of things. in human history it is rare.

we are looking a lot like rome and we ought to worry about that. that's our show. thank you for coming. see you next week. that is it for fox reports. huckabee starts now. tonight on huckabee, the president making the case for military action in syria. >> the assad regime brazen use of chemical weapons is a threat to global peace and secretary. >> is the rebel opposition a less of a threat. >> they are car peppeders and black smith and dentist. >> is the president sure about that? do we know what we are getting to into syria. >> back in kindergarten. >> i am okay with it. our culture dictates that you can't start early enough. >> the governors take on america's culture crisis.