John Stossel says he spent his first 20 years in journalism as a consumer reporter showing capitalism was cruel and unfair and the last 20 years trying to correct that misperception.

During a presentation Monday night marking the 20^th anniversary of Wichita State University’s Elliott School of Communications the former ABC 20/20 co-anchor said most reporters still focus on government intervention as an appropriate short-term solution to protect consumers from evil businesses.

Stossel bought into that vision as a young reporter. “It’s exciting to have politicians paying attention to your work. Wow, I was going to help consumers. They created an entire department of consumer affairs in Oregon partly based on my work.”

Because he stayed on the consumer beat for so many years he saw that lawsuits and government intervention didn’t make the problems go away, they just made the lawyers richer and raised costs for consumers.

Stossel asked if we are safer with only five companies working on vaccines after fifteen got out of the business because of high liability costs. “It’s harder to see the unintended consequences. For every three people lawyers help, they hurt 1,000.”

He said the best protection for consumers is the competition of the free market. “Word gets out, if you cheat your customers they don’t come back.”

He’s not against all government activity. “We need government to give us the rule of law, to protect our personal property and our persons and to pass some environmental rules. That was the genius of the Founders, government but limited government.”

For emphasis Stossel held up bound pocket versions of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution for the near-capacity crowd of about 1,600 in the Lowe Auditorium of Wichita State University’s Hughes Metroplex. For contrast he showed charts of government spending holding relatively steady at about five percent  of U.S. gross domestic product until the 1960s when government spending soared. “I’d say they were spending like drunken sailors but that insults drunken sailors who were spending their own money.”

Stossel received 19 Emmy awards and has been honored five times by the National Press Club for consumer reporting. But when Stossel changed the focus of his reporting from consumer advocate to advocating free market principles and limited government the awards stopped.

Stossel left ABC’s 20/20 for a new job with Fox Business News (FBN) that starts later this month. Fewer people will see Stossel on Fox Business News than the five million ABC viewers but he said he hopes his one-hour weekly show will help FBN news audience grow. He will also appear occasionally on Fox News.

“In every newsroom I’ve been in people hate business,” Stossel said of the ongoing anti-business mood in most newsrooms. “It’s intuitive to think of business as a zero sum game. ‘If somebody makes a profit off me I must be losing something.‘”

“I see why politicians think that way, and lawyers, because their world works that way. If somebody wins, somebody else has to lose. But business doesn’t work that way because business is voluntary.”

Stossel said there are only two ways to do things in life, forced and voluntary. “Government is force, litigation is force. But business doesn’t happen unless both parties think they win because it’s voluntary, It’s why on every transaction you have the weird double thank you. You wanted the coffee more than you wanted the buck. She wanted the buck more than she wanted the coffee. You both win or the transaction doesn’t happen.”

According to Stossel entrepreneurship and business makes us all wealthier and being wealthier is healthier. “If you’re below the poverty line in the United States or in the lowest quintile of income in other countries your life is seven to ten years shorter. Poor people can’t afford some of the good stuff that keeps us alive.”