a big space where any one can come. no one person owns this. everyone shares it. >> sharing is caring. it can be fun! >> john: it feels good just like this children's song makes you feel good about sharing. >> sharing is caring, it can be fun. [ laughter ] >> john: and when i asked, what is better, public or private? >> most people said. >> well, public. >> if it were private they would probably charge you a fee for looking. >> public otherwise we wouldn't be here right now. right. >> supermarkets are private and so are churches but both are more accessible to the public

than, say, public schools. also, public sometimes isn't very nice. >> what comes to mind when you hear the words public toilets. >> oh, well, that is gross. >> that is gross. >> yes. this is the image i have of public toilets. and my town's public parks including this one used to look gross, too. garbage everywhere. buildings covered with graffiti. fields bare of grass. sharing is not necessarily caring. sharing can mean neglect. but then, why is this park now so nice? because it is under new management. private management. >> i didn't know that. that is interesting. >> that goes against what people expect. >> john: this is actually a privately managed park? >> really? i did notice last week when i was here, they did have awesome toilets. >> even the toilets are better. >> they clean them very nicely. >> john: because when you own something you take care of it. when no one owns it nobody takes care of it.

nobody washes a rental car. people destroy other common property like much of the world's rainforests. american settlers nearly killed all the buffalo. now, we are overfishing the ocean. when everyone owns a resource no one really cares about it. no one really takes care of it. it is called the tragedy of the commerce and that is our show tonight. and now, the man who shatters conventional wisdom, john stossel. >> john: we like the idea of sharing, communal property but it does lead to the tragedy of the commons. the tragedy because nasty things happen when everyone owns something. i first heard that phrase in a storery about some shepherds who lived around a grassy area they called a commons. since all the shepherds shared the free green grass they grabbed as much of it as

possible and kept breeding sheep and bringing many more sheep to graze but you son all the grass was gone, the sheep died and the shepherds had nothing. then they divided the commons into parcels and now each shepherd owned one. each had an incentive to limit the number of sheep that grazed on his grass. prosperity happened. and everyone lived happily ever after. not quite that simple usually but we should think about this today on thanksgiving. this week, school children were taught it is a day of sharing. the pilgrims and the indians shared the fruits of the harvest. but that misses the point. i assume most of their teachers don't even know that thanks to sharing the pilgrims almost starved. george mason university economist russ roberts knows the real thanksgiving story. russ, what is the real story? >> there is an important lesson we learned from the pilgrims which is when they first came to the country they thought it

would be nice to share. they had a big area that they farmed. >> john: the corporation ordered them to share. >> work on this together and divvy it up equally. the first winter was is pretty harsh and it was cold and a lot o of them got sick. they were in a new place but they also didn't grow much food. they didn't for two reasons. one was if everybody is working together there is a tendency to shirk and say let the other guy myit and i will still get nye share. when the harvest came some people poached. they picked the fruit, it was corn in this case typically. picked it early thinking i will get a whole ear of corn, otherwise i'm sharing it with somebody else. >> john: i want to grab my share before the other guy. >> and get a bigger share. the productivity in the first year was atrocious and governor bradford realized this immediately after he saw what happened that the incentives were wrong. >> john: he wrote in his diary what must they do so they might

not languish thus in misery. your turn, what did they do? >> what he did is imposed the right kind of incentives on the system which is to say if you produce it you get to keep it. essence of capitalism. if you you shirk and you are lazy you don't get much to keep. >> john: and in bradford's words they should set corn every man for his own particular. and so assign every family a parcel of land. and this simple change took them from near starvation to enough plenty to invite the indians and say let's share. >> i don't think they were celebrating thanksgiving because they realized that capitalism works and communal property is a failure. i think they were just happy to alive and i'm sure they shared about the indians because they were probably good people to get along with. nothing wrong with sharing. the real lesson is what is the role of incentives. in private property the incentives for hard work and stewardship to take care of the land and use it productively

are there but communal property is very weak. >> john: just owning your own stuff makes you work harder tore take care of it. not really a surprise. >> the incentives there are to protect it. >> john: it just sounds wrong to people. the instinct is to say that is selfish. we want equality. we want government to take care of the important things. >> well, this is a place for communal property works pretty well and that is my family and yours. in a family situation because we he all know each other it is much harder to shirk. harder to get away with it and usually not always but usually we like each other. i don't mind working for the other person if it is somebody i love and care about. my wife and i don't have a shirking problem. i have a problem with the garbage occasionally, she complains about it. in general, small group. people who interact with each other constantly. we will have social norms and conventions and all kinds of ways to make sure people do the right thing.

a larger seting that is where community property struggles. the great economist hyack understood we have the urge to expand the family and take it out to the se society. we aren't built that way. we we tend to spread it wider we take advantage of each other. it leads to tyranny actually. >> john: let's think of the rainforest. i don't thing of it as tyranny. >> the rainforest is public property. if you let a tree grow lamber to the height it should be you capture that benefit yourself in the form of more wood. if you are in a public land or can't control who is going to come after you, you you can't fence it in, it is not yours to claim and take care of, the next person cuts down the tree that you decided to bypass and they capture it. everybody has an incentive and as a result the rainforest gets

butchered. >> john: if it were in america people own sections of forest and the government owns forest and there are more forest fires on the government owned forests. the privately owned forests people have more incentive to take care of their wood. >> plant more and not cut it down early. that is the biggest problem with common property. we see it with the pilgrims. they picked the corn early. we see it with fishing. keep a small fish rather than threing to back if it is not your bond. if it is an ocean if you throw it back someone else is delegate to get it. if it is your pond let it grow to the size it should grow. if it is publicly owned you worry about the other poacher coming in and taking it. >> i can understand how fish farming would work in some inland air aria but i can't see how you do it with the ocean. >> with migrating fish you can't really own the property. you could own the fish. you could have a certain tagged fish potentially with electronic surveillance and

other technologies. the way they are solving the problem is with tuna they are building enormous pens. a fish farm in the ocean. saltwater briny fish and they are some what free. not free range tuna. kind of waged in but it is kind of a big cage. they get the natural exercise that makes the fish healthier and tastier and that is one way that technology is helping convert a public area into something private with the appropriate incentives. >> john: you you say traffic would go fast ferraro we had public roads. >> there is no incentive for the owner of the road, the owner of the road has no incentive to maximize its productivity and as a result we all get stuck in traffic and complain a lot. >> john: finally endangered animals. what should we do on that. we are on thanksgiving, there was no turkey shortage. >> amazing thing. some animals are scarce and some are plentiful.

we worry about animals going extinct. if you wanted to save an animal would you encourage people to eat it or not eat it? you would think, don't eat it. eating makes one less. but if you can make a profit from eating it that creates the incentive and if you can privatize the ownership this thy sin sentive to grow them. there is plenty of turkeys and chickens and other animals are scarce because there is no incentives to take care of them. >> john: humans and hawks eat chickens. the more humans the more chick. >> that was the insight of henry george early economist and a he understood that this nature red and tooth and claw that went moor hawks they will deplete the population. more chicken. >> john: we protect and breed chickens and make sure we have plenty of them. >> and there is a profit to be

made from growing them and taking care of them and making them healthier. >> if we made it illegal to breed chickens we would be in trouble. >> john: coming up, these animals are endangered, too. what is the best way to save them? kill them. that's right. let's kill them. i didn't want to admit i had a serious disease.

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>> john: look be at those buffalo roam. bison are a great example of tragedy to come. 30 million of them he once roamed in america. with you because no one owned them or rather everyone owned them, indians and the white settlers kept hunting them until they were nearly extinct. the herd went from 30 million to 1,000. they made a comeback all because now people own them. brie season here to help explain what happened. what happened? >> property rights were established over the few remaining bison that were left. when the bison got down to about 1,000. there were cattle ranchers entrepreneurial enough to figure out they were worth more alive than dead that the point so they went out to the great plains and gathered the few remnants of what was left, about 10 to 15 bison and grew

them into the herds that today have left to the bison's comeback. >> they protected them for their own profit. >> they found a way to make the bison pay. the bison market for them was meat. they sold bison to circuses, to zoos and to public preserves. >> john: and before that when there were 30 million bison. at first there weren't enough indians who killed them they were doing okay. and the white settlers couldn't really get west to kill enough to endanger them. >> you had a commons without access to it. right after the civil war when the transcontinental railroad was build all of a sudden you could get hunters into the plains and get the bison back into the markets in the east and overseas. that is when the real tragedy occur. >> and some people shot them from the train for sport. >> it was wanton waste. they were just shooting them for fun. >> john: now, we saved the

bison. what about the elephants in africa? >> some of the same concepts have been used to save elephants in zimbabwe. they provided ownership interest to villagers in zimbabwe and that is helping to save them. prior to that you had communal lands in zimbabwe. >> and the government saying don't kill the elephants. >> the villagers were growing crops and put livestock on the lands and the elephants were destroying the crops and other wildlife was running off their livestock. live. >> john: they would look the other way. >> they would look the other way. then villagers were allowed to start getting proceeds from trophy hunts and safari tourism and all of a sudden the wildlife became an asset. wildlife habitat actually doubled because now the wildlife was a benefit to the villagers and as a result the elephant population doubled over a period of 13 years.

>> john: and why do you know about this? you are with perc. >> property and environment research center. >> based in bozman mandatory evacuation? >> we believe ownership provides the best method for conservation. >> there are buffalo in some state park and one has roundup. >> and they are treating like bison like private ranchers are treating the bison. once-a-year for 45 years they have this huge roundup where they bring in their 1500 bison and tourists come from all over the world, pay money to watch these bison get herded in sort of an old wild west fashion with cowboys and cow girls and the bison come sweeping down the plains and the earth shakes and move inside corrals and we all go eat bison burgers

afterwards. the point is the park is making money from the tourism of we son and then about a month later they auction off a portion of that bison to private ranchers and they are also making money that way. all that money goes back into custer state park to pay for operation of the park. the bison are paying their own way in the case of custer. >> john: more benefit from profit. thank you, brian yablonski. coming up, how government made the indians poor and how private property made america rich.

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>> john: have you you ever been to an indian reservation? if you you probably saw you serious poverty and alcoholism and drug abuse. is it because there is something about indians that makes them lazy or irresponsible? no. when indians owned their own land they do about as well as other americans. manny jewels wants to see more of that. he was chief of an indian band in canada for 16 years. manny, why are so many indians so poor? >> first of all, john, nobody

chooses poverty. one of the things that has happened is we have been legislated out of the economy by the federal governments both in the united states and canada. >> john: what do you mean? they have been taking care of you. that sounds like the best deal. >> well, by taking care of us that means providing social welfare programs. the only way to break the cycle of poverty i believe it is by the recognition that every other canadian and american takes for granted and that is real property rights. >> john: so in canada as in much of the u.s. the reserves are owned by the government. >> yes. >> john: so the indian has some piece of paper that says this is my lot. >> but underlieing that title is the fact that in canada the federal government owns the land. >> john: so you you can't borrow against it. >> can't borrow. can't get a mortgage. can't be bonded. there is nothing that you can have that will be allow you to be able to go to the bank on your own without the minister cosigning that loan. >> john: let's bring another

guest from perc, economist terry anderson. you find indians do much better when they own their own land? >> yes, john. i first got interested in in subject in 1976 when a visited a member of the flathead indian reservation and while visiting his house i noted just how well off he was. he was not in poverty and i asked how you do you explain this? i will never forget him leaning across the table resting his chin on his hand and elbow saying i own this place. and that was my first introduction to the fact that many responders expectation red states have fee simple land. privately owned land like you inbound own our houses and the indians that have privately owned land do much, much better. their land is way more productive than the land overseen by the federal government, held in trust and as manny said.

>> 40 to 90% more prohe ductive you found. >> the statistics are just astounding. i have done a lot of gathering of those data and they show that fee simple lands 40% to 90% more productive than the lands held in trust. as manny said, these indians who have their land under the trusteeship of the federal government can't borrow against them, they are really locked in to a poverty cycle as a result. >> john: it is amazing that no group has been more taken care of by big government than the indians and no group in america has done worse. >> fundamentally the root of the problem is the fact that we don't have the same property rights as others take for granted. and that has to fundamentally change. we have to be able to recognize the collective ownership by the tribe or the band and free the imagination of the individual entrepreneur. we have had economies that went back many, many m millenia and

were successful until 1492. >> and indians had a form of property rights before white settlers came here and messed that up. >> before contact with whites indians were very much aware of markets and trading and property rights. some indians actually owned the salmon streams. they managed those streams so that they let the larger salmon go up to spawn and the result is that even today those streams have larger salmon than the streams that were held in a commons owned by everyone and hence managed by no one. >> john: the clan, not an individual indian but a clan would even the stream and why today would they still have more salmon. >> that just goes back to what was superior management over a century ago. and at the same time i should note we are mismanaging our

salmon stocks by chasing them around the ocean, open ocean and overharvesting salmon and many other fish species. we could learn from what the native americans did to husband their resources. >> john: and you say you can see the private property difference just by driving through some indian land. >> oh, it fascinating to drive-thru a reservation in the west. recently, i drove through the crow indian reservation in south central montana and when you would come to a fence line and on one side see over grazing, a few johnny cattle, maybe a house and if so -- a few scrawna and not a very liveable house. right next door, cultivated fields, irarery gaition systems, beautiful barn, home and so on and you don't even need to look at the property records to know that the productive one is held in private and the other one is held in common in trust by the

federal government. >> john: indians on both sides of the road but private property and one and you can see it from the google maps the difference. >> it is fascinating to just google a reservation. the black feet reservation. the crow reservation. >> here is black feet. not much development. very few farms. is here is one where they have a private property rights. >> you can see the same thing on manny's reserves where they have managed to develop an industrial park. they are creating jobs. creating wealth and at least getting one foot up the ladder out of mov poverty. >> john: manny, i will give you the last word on this. >> what we have to do is reverse 500 years of colonization. put first nations, indian tribes in the driver's seat. we can be successful where the federal governments in both countries have failed and the only way that that ultimately can be resolved it by grant us the right to be able to own our

own lands. >> john: thank you you terry anderson and manny. coming up we return to our local park. why is it so nice when so many parks are mess? next, how clever ways to mark property helped make america rich. last throw, prce.

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>> john: i want to introduce you to one of the most impressive people i know. i first met him maybe 15 years ago at one of those lunches with some economists from south america had some ideas about solving poverty. i go to lunches like that because it bugs me that america is so rich while most of the world is poor and the world hasn't figured out a way to give them what it was it gave us, the poured concrete poured. guy to the lunch and there sits hernando desoto from a think

tank based in peru. he starts pulling pictures out of the brief case that shows slum dwellings belt on top of each other. i will let you explain it. what do the pictures show. >> roughly 4 billion people in the world build their homes and own their businesses outside the legal system so it is all happen hazard and disorganized but you because of the lack of rule of law the presix the definition of who owns what and because they don't have addresses, can't get the credit. >> what do you mean they don't have addresses? >> somebody has to recognize that that is where you live. that mean there's is legal recognition. that means property. when you have got property you know you have got mailing addresses and when you make a deal with someone you can be identified. that is the first characteristic. the second is your address. you go anywhere what is your name and second thing is where do you live. until property is defined by law they can't get into the

kind of deals or the division of labor which is cooperation with other people to special specialize and create wealth because that is what makes you wealthy is the fact that you don't have to milk a cow every day. you don't have to work your land every day. you don't have to build your own house. you can stick to doing a tv program or do this part of a blackberry and the whole market puts it together. these guys can't. they have to do the whole building and stake care of it and they can't specialize it and that is the reason of their poverty. the day that they get titled and the businesses in their home sewing machines, cotton gins, finally gets recognized they can start expanding. >> john: but they need to be recognized by a local authority who says this is yours. >> they need to work within the law. >> john: many of these places barely have law. >> that's right. >> john: they take a risk are and work a kee deal with the bn

the first floor and build on the second floor. >> probably the guy on the first floor who had the guts to squat and make a deal with somebody from government who decided to look the other way has got an invisible property right. not very different from when you americans started going west all the way to california like for example the california gold rush. the land didn't belong to them. the country didn't belong to them, it was mexico but you went in there and put 800 mining claims association. 3 million americans, big guns and after awhile you decided why keep on shooting at each other. between 1848 to 1856 you went out and created a private property system that brought in banks and you you created prosperity. >> john: but california really got rich and the rest of the world hasn't. what is the difference? >> because you americans at that time were absolutely conscious of what the rule of law was about and as people kept on moving from the east coast to the west coast, washington, george, washington,

your first president called them bandits. cow don'you don't have a right to be there and congress said oh, yes, you do and you started awarding property on the basis of improvements. >> we didn't always have deeds in america. before deeds and law they worked out their own generally accepted rights to property. so in certain areas, tomahawk rights. you shaved off part of a tree. probably somebody else shaved part of the same tree to indicate theyed a accepted it. in some cases where they grew corn for example. it grew from here to there and that established a right from here to there. so those were actually called corn rights. it was an improvement on the land that gave you the title because you had worked it. >> china is still developing such property right. in much of the countryside the past prevails and the land is owned collectively. >> the whole notion of property rights has been pretty alien to

formerly socialist countries because right from the beginning mark said it in -- marques said it in the 19th century, it is. >> the compare that to shanghai. >> i visited shanghai 30 years ago and none of these buildings existed at it. it is incredible what happens when you just change the rules of the game. >> john: but what should the rules of the game be? >> the rules of the game have to say and recognize who really owns what. because how you relate to the assets you have determines how you relate to your neighbor and the rest of the world. we work on paper and plastic and if you don't have what you own and paper and plastic you will not be recognized according to standard rules and you can't play the game. >> john: this idea of a deed protecting property seems simple but powerful and allows

all this commerce between total stranges that wouldn't happen otherwise. applies to more than just skyscrapers and factories. we at fox business covers stock markets. desoto taught me they only work because of deed like paper work that we trust because we have rule of law. >> what i'm trading today is roughly a thousand futures contracts. represents about 40,000 head of cattle. i never see that at. i actually have never been outside of chicago to the west to see where these and millions are. >> in the united states and western europe, your documents go to the market and practically work for you and think for you. in developing countries and most of the former soviet union the majority of people actually have to it bring their animals to market. people in the developing world have cattle, land and houses the same way they do in the western world. what is missing is the rule of law. >> john: and you say if they

just had rule of law they would be as rich as we? >> oh, yes, of course. but let me tell you bringing in the rule of law suspects no easy thing. you are trying it now in iraq and you ain't getting there. you are trying to afghanistan. you are not getting there. >> john: you started your work peru trying to establish property right there's and reformed permit laws to thence tent that other countries now invite you to go to, you have gone to russia and libya. you met with qaddafi. 23 countries. egypt. honduras. philippines. the leaders of these countries must get that they are doing something wrong. >> they get it easier than the north american. because you see, the people who brought in the rule of law and property rights into the united states were in the 18th and 19th century. you can't remember that. these guys see that they are poor relative to your wealth. it is ease jerry sandusky for them to say what is the

difference. what we didn't realize is the fact that you you could determine that a piece of land went from there to here and you could do it with a movie script and do it with an idea and with an invention. and once that there was certainty as to who owned what all of a sudden we started seeing that people trusted the paper more than the object itself because we found through law ways of standardizion and recognizing it and on top of that you built a stock market and built all that leverage which has got you to some kind of trouble now but without which you wouldn't have gotten where you are today. >> john: property rights gave us the power to prosper.

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all over america there are parks that are filthy, dangerous, badly maintained. the governments say what can we do? budget cuts took our money. key don't have enough or security. that is what they say. let the parks rot and become havens for prostitution and violent crime? this park was known for that and yet now it is nice. bryant park just a few block interests this studio. what changed it? >> this man changed it. dan biederman essentially privatized the park and wants to do the same thing to the

boston common and that is a terrible idea says a boston journalist. how did you you save bryant park? >> it has to be great to attract private funding. security, sanitation, horticulture and a lot of programming to draw people into the park at off hours so that it is always safe. the best safety for a park is not a tough security force but a lot of people in it. >> john: private funding meant you got the businesses around the park to cough you up the money. there were four principle sources. the businesses around the park. real estate owners. concessions, events and sponsorships and since 1996 we have not asked the city government for a single dollar. >> sounds good to me and park looks great. what is wrong? >> it looks good but it could be better and it could be public? >> what is wrong with sucking the money from private businesses as dan does? >> because it goes into private

pockets. >> so what? >> because it is very good to use for dan to use the public land for running a private business. a rent a park where, you know, all year round there is commercial revenue from renting it out to businesses. he keeps all that money. people don't realize that. i was in the park yesterday and i walked around. i did a little survey. i asked 20 people if they thought this money was going to the city and they all think it is. so,. >> john: so what if they think it going to mars. the park is nice and tabs aren't being hit for it. >> it wouldn't h hit the taxes because we he have the money left over and the park could be just as good. >> john: it is true that the park is very commercial these days. we were just there. there is lots of buying and selling going on. the day i there was there must have been 100 booths selling food and holiday gifts. very commercial. on the other hand the public seemed fine with that. >> well,. >> they have done it up nicely. if it was just rag tag dolls

that didn't look very nice it would be a different store. >> i doing a lot of things they should be doing to make the city some money. >> make the city some money. you should do. >> john: making dan some money. do you feel bad about that? >> no. >> if everybody would feel just as good if they knew where the money was going. >> delightful that the public thinks this is a city owned park. nobody has viewed it as privatized and the final answer to the arguments is every dollar that is earned by concessions and sponsorships and events in bryant park goes right back into the park. all of the money is earned in the ways and the way we can afford to provite private skating, public skating for free which we do is from those booths and from a sponsorship from the city which has been very -- from citi which has been generous. citi. >> the boston common was once a common grazing field. a common in the 1600s that

suffered the tragedy of the commons. it was overgrazed. now, it is a park. managed by government for 400 years. badly managed and this is the result. so, dan, your plans? >> well, the last thing we want to do is privatize boston common. they are not new york. there it is not as commercial a district. there, john, we are in the position of coming up with ways to greatly augment the city's budget which everyone involved feels is inadequate. >> john: to get the people around the park to pay most of the money? >> no, private companies, the central park model is a little tougher to -- >> john: central park model just for clarity and i have a bias here i'm on the board of the charity that helps manage central park. i joined people because i saw what they did to central park. here are before and after pictures when government managed central park it was barren and dangerous and now it is wonderful and what the model is that i give money, people who live around there just give

money. it is not a business arrangement. you are doing some mixture of that in boston is your proposal. >> correct. would be a mixture. you did get a lot of money from private sector companies from sponsorships where they don't demand a billboard, they demand almost nothing. you give them a little small pack of attribution and they will put a lot of money into the park. >> what is wrong with that? >> we have the polluteacrats and now we get the corporations. the point isn't what the size of the billboard is. the problem is that we he don't need to do this and we don't need to -- >> john: what is the harm in doing this? >> to teach the next generation of children the only way to get a public realm is as the charity ward of rich people and corporation corporations. we can afford our public realm. we are entitled to it. we pay taxes and that is the government's job. this is not a model. >> john: it as good mod.

>> it is not a model. we have to hold our government accountable. >> john: i don't know what will happen in the rest of the country. it is working in central park and in this new york city park. why not try it in boston. >> working for your corporations and working for your billionaires. >> working for the public. >> it is not because these people the money bags get to decide how the park is used and who goes there and who are the. >> john: who do they keep up? >> a who the desirables and undesirables are? >> john: who are the undesirables kept ut? >> primarily homeless people which are always the first thing on the list to deal with the homeless people. >> want more homeless people in the parks. >> they have to be some where. if we don't make a system that accommodates people that don't have a place to live they have to be if the public realm unless you can suggest something better they have to be in the public released. >> we have an answer to that. we have the same number of homeless people in bryant park today that we had when it was

viewed by everyone including yourself as horrible in the early 1980s what we didn't have them and we have now is 4,000 other people. the ratio of nonhomeless to homeless is 4,000 to 13 instead of 250 to 13. any female now feels safe and says this doesn't look like a homeless hangout to me. they are welcomed into bryant park if they follow the rules. the same 13 people are there every day. >> nice that you have your pet homeless people. >> john: you are worried about protests. >> that is another major thing. when people get mad at their government very have to be able to take it to streets or the parks and this is one of the most since time in memorial the purposes of public space and a lot of this privatization and it is true of other parks in boston and i'm sure here also was to stop the rallies and all that messy stuff. >> john: 50,000 people wanted to protest bush in central park and were not allowed.

but they would have killed the grass. >> what is more important dem free speech or the grass. you can replace the grass. >> john: it would take two years. we tonight have enough democratic free speech they can't protest on the street? >> this is the place where they would get the proper publicity and legitimacy. >> john: it was government that said no to them, not corporations. >> the kind of government now giving the places over to corporations. is the real problem. we have to fix the government because we are ending up with a two-tiered public system. >> john: good luck with that. dan, the last word. >> the parks department writes the permits. >> john: the government writes them. >> parks department does and will always be the case. any time it is a politician who wants to demonstrate we had obnoxious people on both sides. we had a racest preacher and a gay pride demonstration where the language was horrible. we are the agent of the city

and we have to let it be. we do not abridge any speech in bryant park or any park i'm involved in. >> john: thank you dan and shirley. i wish i could say good luck to both of you but i can only say good luck to him. up next, how can i convince the public that private ownership and management is a good thing and shirley too. here is a guy who talked about how great the privately run bryant park is. >> you just said public is better. >> you got me there. ( phone ringing ) okay... uhh. the bad news, it's probably totaled. the good news is, you don't have to pay your deducble. with vanishing deductible from nationwide insurance, you got $100 off for every year of safe driving, so now your deductible is zero. the other good news ? i held on to your coffee. wow. ♪ nationwide is on your side ( laughing ) it's actually a pretty good day whenou consider. that's great.

sharing is caring. it can be fun. >> john: isn't that sweet? and it reminds me i would like to wish you happy starvation day. that is what thanksgiving would be called if the pilgrims had kept to the communal property rules they started with whenthy first settled at plymouth they were told share everything. share the work. share the harvest. the colony's contract said it was to be a common. settlers were to receive the necessaries out of the common stock. there was to be no individual property. the labor of the colony was to be organized according to the different capabilities of the settlers.

sounds like karl marx. from each according to his ability to each according to his need and that sounds fair. they nearly starved. it is the tragedy of the common. when people can get the same stuff by working less they will. plymouth settlers faked illness rather than work the common property. the harvest was meager and for two years there was famine. they dropped the commons idea. william grad ford they should set corn every man for h his own particular assign to every family a parcel of land. the results were are dramatic. this had very good success and made all hands very in dusttrious. much more corn was planted. instead of famine, plenty. thanks to private property they got food and we have food, happy thanksgiving. be thankful. if only more people realized it is private property that allows

to us have wealth tortion create wealth. some people in the privatized park understood that private ownership does good thing. >> private ownership or public. >> private. >> private. >> i think they run things better than the government does. >> the facilities upkeeps are better. >> private. >> others had to have it ex-be plained to them. >> you said private was not so good. >> you got me there. >> the private managers delivered when government didn't. what private property does as the pilgrims discovered is connect effort to reward and that creates an incentive for people to care much more and prohe text things. that is what has protected the elephants in zimbabwe, the buffalo in the west and these atlantic salmon. that is what saved the pilgrims and and made america the richest country in the history of the world. if you live in the slum in egypt and have no deed to your property you are stuck in exploratory. but when you know that your home or your store or are whatever you make is safe from

confiscation you can borrow and take risks and invest, that gives you the power to prosper. and that is the lost lesson of thanksgiving. thanksgiving. happy thanksgiving. go prosper. have a nice weekend and good captioned by closed captioning services, inc. i'm your gps. turn right up ahead. you never upda me. so, now i just have to wing it. i meant turn left up ahead. recalculating. turn right now! [ horn honks, tires scech ] [ laughs ] [ crash! ] and your fifteen-minute insurance might not p for all this. so get allstate. you could save money

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