Originally Posted by nhcowboy

Did anyone see the John Stossel show this past week on the Fox Business Network (FBN)? The topic was "Questioning Authority." It started out with clips from past "Candid Camera" episodes in which apparent authority figures told people to do absurd things.

The first was an episode apparently produced in mid-2001 (pre-9/11), in which Peter Funt, claiming to be an airport security guard, told airline passengers his scanner for passengers was not working, so the passengers would need to lie down on a moving belt and pass through the baggage scanner instead. Eleven out of 12 people did it!

The second clip was a guy standing on a road at the Texas border (perhaps Texas-Okla.?) telling people Texas was "closed" for the day and they had to turn around. Although some people argued with him, not one person (out of a hundred or more who encountered the obstacle) attempted to drive past him. They all either backed up or turned around!

Peter Funt was on the show and talked about these and other episodes showing how willingly people simply deferred to any appearance of authority. He was quite disturbed by it. He was optimistic that people's submissive attitudes were finally starting to change, now that people were finally getting fed up with what was going on at airports. He mentioned shoes, though, and how absurd it is that people go along with all the nonsense about taking off shoes.

Anyway, interesting show. Included a short clip from the Milgram experiment.