Booed. America, dont boo. Private is better. Thats our show tonight. Privates better . That doesnt sound right to people. Private seems selfish, secretive. By contrast, public or governmentrun sounds like sharing. We are all in this together. I have this phone because it was invented without government. First they had to give the developers permission. Government was barely aware people were working on this thing. Permissionless innovation is a beautiful thing. To the author of this book, this permissionless innovation that brought us google, facebook, the phone, is threatened now . It is, john. There are a lot of efforts to impose permissionbased. John drones, they are inventing all kinds of things but the government says you cant do it news get an faa license. There are hypothetical worst cases that could occur, and they end up basing policies off the worst case scenarios. If you base it off worst case scenarios, you will never get the best case scenarios. John they weigh less than asea guls than sea gulls which planes hit all the time. John so drone makers are going overseas . A lot of them are basing their testing in canada and australia. A lot of Driverless Car Companies are going there as well. Think about 20 years ago if Mark Zuckerberg of facebook or 1250e6 jobs or anybody from google had to come to the federal Communications Commission and get their blessing to operate. You have to wonder how many of them would exist today. John how come all these things were invented in the United States rather than europe . America got it right with our Public Policy towards deck tall technology the first time around congress and the Clinton Administration put in place policies that per permissionless based. They gave them the green light. But that is already change. We have forgotten the lessons of the past where america went out and conquered the world. Our companies are household names. Conquered the globe. John at the beginning of the computer revolution, france said we are going to control this. They created a computer company. They gave people computers. Throw out your yellow pages and use these. They have them in five different colors. They were going to be the leader according to the media i read. France took an industrial policy approach to the internet. But thats not the way innovation happens. You have to create the right environment and let the innovators invite. John now europe threatening google. The right to be forgotten. This is a threat to history and journalism. They will scrub issue away with the socalled right to be forgotten. John there are some mistakes out there, my reputation can be smeared. Somebody googles me. Let me start with a clean slate. The courts in europe said right you deserve that. If we have a Global Internet censorship regime, that will be a disaster. The whole internet will look like china or soviet russia. There will always be a way to find information. But europe wants to impose its censorship regime on the rest of the world. Our fda, the food and drug administration, very heavy handed doesnt want to allow for that sort of thing and they are driving innovators offshore. We have three printers that can manufacture amazing thing. Including what you saw today. Prosthetic hand for children with limb deficiencies. Volunteers were making on the spot these prosthetic hand for kids. But technically what they are doing is illegal. Even though its being done free very cheap for parents who need these things for kids that usually cost thousands of dollars. John they probably got away with it because they were volunteering their effort. Basically everything changes when you charge even a penny for something. Whether its drones or virtual reality. You do it in the sharing sense. As soon as you want to charge a penny, you are going to be regulated. John think about the tsa. Americans assume Airport Security is something that must be run by government. Tsa screeners are slow, sometimes rude, and random tests show most of the type they fail to find forbidden items. I think tsa stand for thousands standing around. Now Airlines Warn security lines will get even worse this summer. So many airports want to switch from the tsa to private airport screeners. The tsa chief is in washington to meet with airport officials after wait lines got so bad they may replace the tsa with private screeners. Viewn a few big cities did get permission to try something different. The lines are short at france airport. They move quickly and passengers say the screeners are nice. People here are friendly and willing to help. They are a little more understanding. Ebb is a lot more friendly than dallas. Reporter dallas and the other big airports employ government screeners. San francisco was allowed to hire screeners from a private company. They were twice as good at finding contraband. Why would private screeners be nicer and better. Here is a reason. They practice. The fastest screen letter win 2,000. There is even dramatic music. The tsa trains its screeners, too, but not like this. In this competition screeners race to search bags and identify forbidden items. Here is a pipe bomb, and they rush to recheck the bag. They look at slide of people and try to remember details. How many buttons are on her sleeve. Watch it. Four. John the private Company Makes these screeners specialists. Usually its did you go . Yes. You tell a person your score, they will try to beat you and you want to be the winner. Its kind of like bragging rights. John they get better with these contests . Yes, they have to. Privatized seems so selfish. Ill better making money. Thats money coming out of my pocket. Its the american way. Profit make you try harder. We have to do well. If they dont do it well, they can get fired. But government rarely fires itself. Private screeners have proven themselves so much better, 2 airports have persuaded the department of Homeland Security to use the private screeners. What else might speed air travel. Privatizing air Traffic Control. So how would that work . And has it been tried . Its been tried in canada. There is navcanada which isnt more efficient and less expensive than the air Traffic Controllers here. John years ago they switched and everybody screamed the planes are going to crash and there will be lots of problems. No planes crashed and the number of flights are up 50 . It costs about 44 per less per Traffic Controller than it does now. Its liketronnic equipment we dont use. Why do they do it when your government cant or doesnt . Part of it is because this next Gen Technology requires fewer workers so there would have to be cutbacks. We have powerful unions here and they dont want any cuts in the w force. In the house bill that privatized the air Traffic Control, there is a bill in the house because the faa has to be reauthorized by the end of july. In the house there is a bill that includes privatization. John you call it socalled privatization. Its socalled because it doesnt get rid of the union and the union would have to approve any transfer of personnel and services between the faa and the socalled private air Traffic Control group. John the air Traffic Controllers union claims privatization would make air travel less safe. The problem is that the contractors in an effort to cut costs cut the number of controllers that are responsible for the safety of flights. John sound logical. Fewer people, more crashes. With the new technology, we dont need as many people as we used to. These driverless cars, for example. They communicate by text instead of voice commands. They think its funny that we communicate with voice command. John to show how cozy the politics are. Congressman bill shoeser has pro poised a partial privatization. The airlines for america, Vice President of global affairs, an got 118,000 in Campaign Contributions for unions. And there is a cozy relationship between them. John to join this argument please follow me on twitter. Use the hashtag stossel like my Facebook Page so you can post on my wall. Next, better private alternatives to government mass transit. A better way to go into space. Launching an successfully landing its falcon nine rocket. Its the first time its ever been done. Even better money. I cant afford a car right now, and i dont want one, so i make metro. Thats Public Transportation in los angeles. And taxpayers pay for the ad. People love the idea of Public Transportation. Get people out of cars. Reduce congestion. I figured out a way to make Public Transit part of my daily commute. Thats how you do l. A. John thats not how they do l. A. Despite politicians forcing taxpayers to spend more on Public Transit. Fewer people are taking it. Now the department of Public Transportation. Are you an extraordinary innovator . I try my best to be extraordinary every day. John what are you going to do . The basic idea what we are trying to do is bring private Sector Innovation to l. A. Metro by opening the door to private sector innovators to come to us with ideas about new technology and ways to accelerate the buildout of our infrastructure. John why cant lax just do it . Why do you need the private sector . They are very nimble so they can adjust to changing technology more rapidly than the Public Sector can. And they bring competition. They are able to compete against each other and say here is a way we would do it that creates more benefits for taxpayers. Why cant government be nimble . Government can be nimble, its just more challenging. I worked in large public and private bureaucracies. They have lots of policies in place and take longer to make decisions. The advantage of the private sector in this case. When they are able to work with the Public Sector on trying to come up with new technologies and innovations. You get a Public Policy thats oriented toward what people want. And you get innovations that are what the market demands. John los angeles has a long procurement process. Any organization has a long procurement process. A series of policies have been put in place over the years, most of which were wellintentioned and trying to prevent corruption. But over the years have built up into a very large set of policies that make it difficult to procure things swiftly. John if your county wanted to procure pencils, they couldnt just bow to the store and buy them . Buying anything is more complicated when you have got a public entity. We want to buy pencils we want to make sure we are buying the pencils that provide the taxpayers with the greatest pencil quality at the lowest cost and provide competition between the penc john that could take a year . We are hoping it will take a lot less time than that. John what would help commuters is if they had the option to take the bus. As people move, bus routes can move. But buses arent sexy. Expensive trains are sexy. So california has hit up taxpayers for a bullet train. Reporter once Governor Brown set his sights on highspeed rail. It was cool. John people found out what it would cost. 89 billion. My beef is the cost overrun for starters. Too expensive. We are taking on a huge debt load for an uncertain outcome. John florida is building a train, too. But a private company is building it. A smarter way, an alternative to our states crowded roads. Thats how miami is getting connected. John the private florida train will cost 3 billion. The first leg of californias bullet train will cost 30 billion. It gets a little further, but not much. Why is it so expensive. The florida route was already in existence. They are not building a new right of way. John isnt it bert they are not forcibly taking money from taxpayers . If they lose money, its their own money. Well, there are two sides to that coin. One, when you are talking about transportation being provided by a forprofit entity. What that means is it wont be accessible to everyone. One of the things we do as Public Transit providers is to make sure our system is accessible to everybody at all income levels. John the california bullet train is 89 a ticket. How is that accessible to everybody . 89 a ticket is significantly cheaper than flying in many cases between those two cities. John though you work for government, you acknowledge there are advantages to privatizing some things. Many americans are mindlessly biased against privatization. East of here a long island official proposed privatizing bus lines. He got booed. Joshua, why do you think people are so hostile to this . There is this misconception this is taking tax dollars and giving them away to a forprofit entity. Thats not the case when you are talking about transportation. Even if the private sector gets involved, they are bringing greater cost certainty, they are bringing project delivery in a faster time, potentially cheaper and better because they are able to innovate in a way the Public Sector isnt. They are saving the taxpayers money because they finds a way to do it more ficialtdly. More efficiently. John next, private money. Bit coins. This woman will explain. Use bit coin whenever you pay dont give up your money, you bit coin whenever you pay use bit coin whenever you pay jacques bit coin, a digital currency, money not controlled by any government. And for many People Better than this paper money. So why . The woman who composed and sang that song will explain. Im a singer songwriter and the coin inspired me to write something. When i learned about bit coins at first i thought it was pretty boring. But then once i got it i got inspired. I think there is a lot of uses for bit coin. There are over 2 billion people in the world that dont have access to banking. Now because of bit coin they have a bank account on their sms phone. I have a friend with a charity called code to inspire. They teach the girls how to code and pay them with bit coin. These are girls in afghanistan. How that was different from before is they would have to pay them with afghani money and they would have to height under their mattress and hope nobody in their family would find it. Now they can have control and live their lives freely without worrying about somebody coming and taking their money. Thes enough to empower billions of people arounded the world. John your website says artist and crip to currency its mony cripping to a i bycryptograp. Each currency can offer different value propositions. John the reason i bought some is because i dont trust the people who print these things. With bit coin there is a limit to how many are out there. There is nobody in charge it that can print it whenever they like. John when i bought them for 112, people mocked me. But compared to these, it has gown four times that. It was the best performing currency and its gone up by 8 . John because the fed makes these out of thin air. They do. John there is criticism saying bit coin causes crime and terrorism. Guns, drugs. Its not good for illicit activity. If you want to launder money you dont want to use bit coins. Most people i know are using bit coins for legal services. You can use it to get discounts at amazon and starbucks. There are all sorts of ways to use bit coins legal are you. Next how private companies are more likely than government to fly us to mars. Private companies are picking up where the government left off in the race for space. John a satellite being launched into space by a private company, spacex. They found a better and cheaper way to smooth things into space. When government, nasa, sent their rockets up, them just taxed you and built new ones for every mission. The private Company Found a way to bring that same rocket back to earth. The private company did what government couldnt do, and did it with much less money. It happens all the time, though people at nasa wouldnt want to hear that. My next guest worked at nasa. But the number one guy doesnt agree with you. You think privatization is a good thing. Of course. The country was built on it, and the Space Program is a high technology, leading evening program, and it should be advancing our capability so the private sector can take over. John you say of course within i say of course, why dont they get it . They are a government bureaucracy, and their incentives are not to do things efficiently. If you are all about the job, you just like building new ones. John you are a democrat. You were an adviser to hillarys president ial campaign. The democrats dont want to privatize. President obama proposed privatizing much of this, and the bipartisan congressional response was extremely negative. When president obama came in and he was the head of his transition team. Our focus was on technology. And we got shut down on the hill the first year. They demanded we build this big rocket that will cost 50 million. John congress wanted to send money to their district. If you are competing you cant say what district it will be in. Elon is using his own money, and so is jeff bezos. John what congress is doing disgusting. Do people call them on it . I think our Space Program gets a pass. Nasa has a wonderful history and people just assume it will be on the cutting edge doing the right thing. They dont note journey to mars was built on old technology. When i went to jeff bezos facility they were building the same rocket for 30 million. John nasa did once do thing that were never done before. After russia launched a satellite our president said this. Our nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. We are carrying that infrastructure with us today. Nasa spend 18 billion of taxpayer money per year. Half of that goes for the infrastructure that was built for apollo. They only have a third of the buying power so they cant