Has the market spoken on the question of pornography?
OK, that was a quip but I am alluding to a serious set of questions.
Can you guess?
Hint:
Role of a central government.
Freedom, individualism etc.
Do top porn stars and producers deserve to be rich? (Yes I know some are poor).
What does free market ideology tell us about the relative worth of successful producers of legal porn on the one hand and professors of history on the other?
Are those that oppose "adult media" hoping for government regulation that would deprive those in this industry of their freedoms and impose a certain set of values in a way analogous to the way socialists (and supposedly democrats) hope to impose their values of economic equality by a policy of central control and redistribution of wealth?
How much meddling should the government do?
Let's try to avoid special pleading shall we?
Finally, let me point out that even if stricter and presumably more prudish laws are enacted, there will still be an evelope to be pushed and one can pretty well imagine that there will be a market for whatever comes right up against that line between legal and illegal. What does this tell us? We are still left with the question of the voice of the market in anycase.
Has the market spoken?
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_Tarski
- _Emeritus
- Posts: 3059
- Joined: Thu Oct 26, 2006 7:57 pm
Has the market spoken?
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie
yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo
yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo
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_emilysmith
- _Emeritus
- Posts: 178
- Joined: Fri May 28, 2010 10:16 am
Re: Has the market spoken?
Prohibition has never worked in the history of mankind. I just heard someone from LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) speak and he had a really interesting point of view that applies even to pornography. Really, these are very relevant questions in yesterday's, today's and tomorrow's society since the balance between protection by the community and the liberty of the individual is always precarious.
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom." - Bill Hicks
Consider that the beer industry spent millions to prevent marijuana from being legalized. Their interest is to make money, so they set out to limit personal freedom and everyone is affected. Should someone else's ability to make money impinge on your personal freedom? I don't think so.
If we sincerely wanted to protect people, then it would be easy enough to gauge how dangerous something was and ban it according to the amount of people it kills. First to go would be cigarettes, alcohol, fast food and automobiles. Aspirin would come before heroin. Pornography would be at the bottom of the list of things to ban.
The market has spoken in regards to pornography and black market drugs. Just as it spoke for alcohol during prohibition. Imagine the real impact of banning things. You put money and power directly into the hands of criminals who benefit from the high price of tax-free, black market goods. The cartels have been the #1 threat to national security since they became a trillion dollar super power. They can and do influence governments, at will.
The price would be grim to ban pornography, since these same exact people who have no qualms about lopping off heads and leaving them at elementary schools in Mexico would be running the sex trade. How well do you think they would treat their "stars."
The government, in the interest of fighting corruption and extending personal freedom would do well to lift all kinds of prohibition and step into to make it as safe as possible.
The Constitution was originally designed to create a balance of power for these same reasons. The balance has been destroyed with creations of Federal entities that give more power to the Federal Government than the States. Medical marijuana highlights this problem repeatedly. The people of California want a, virtually, harmless substance to be legal. The Federal government says no. The Federal government raids farms at will, and does not have to answer to anyone over it. They even go so far as handing over thousands of guns to the cartels with no repercussions. Essentially, the Constitution has been destroyed.
We now invade countries with no need for authorization. The Federal Reserve, a private entity, now has more power than any state. The Federal Government can lock up and kill US citizens without due process, while a state cannot. The scariest part is that we are the government. As a whole, everyone could change things for the better, but no one does anything because they are worried about stupid **** like gay marriage and abortions while the whole country falls apart. Everyone is deceived into believing you need to be right or left, when they are both the same thing, wanting war and the ability to silence any opposition... legitimate or otherwise.
The stealing of personal liberty by organizations is a slippery slope. We now afford more rights and special treatment to corporations because so many people mistakenly believe that we need to continue to grow the economy. If someone opposes a large corporation, money is all that is needed to suppress them. With the growing gap between the rich and the poor, the balance of power is also lost. Individuals cannot win against conglomerates even in the interest of fairness and equality.
By restoring freedom, we restore the balance of power. That means the federal side of things must be scaled way back.
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom." - Bill Hicks
Consider that the beer industry spent millions to prevent marijuana from being legalized. Their interest is to make money, so they set out to limit personal freedom and everyone is affected. Should someone else's ability to make money impinge on your personal freedom? I don't think so.
If we sincerely wanted to protect people, then it would be easy enough to gauge how dangerous something was and ban it according to the amount of people it kills. First to go would be cigarettes, alcohol, fast food and automobiles. Aspirin would come before heroin. Pornography would be at the bottom of the list of things to ban.
The market has spoken in regards to pornography and black market drugs. Just as it spoke for alcohol during prohibition. Imagine the real impact of banning things. You put money and power directly into the hands of criminals who benefit from the high price of tax-free, black market goods. The cartels have been the #1 threat to national security since they became a trillion dollar super power. They can and do influence governments, at will.
The price would be grim to ban pornography, since these same exact people who have no qualms about lopping off heads and leaving them at elementary schools in Mexico would be running the sex trade. How well do you think they would treat their "stars."
The government, in the interest of fighting corruption and extending personal freedom would do well to lift all kinds of prohibition and step into to make it as safe as possible.
The Constitution was originally designed to create a balance of power for these same reasons. The balance has been destroyed with creations of Federal entities that give more power to the Federal Government than the States. Medical marijuana highlights this problem repeatedly. The people of California want a, virtually, harmless substance to be legal. The Federal government says no. The Federal government raids farms at will, and does not have to answer to anyone over it. They even go so far as handing over thousands of guns to the cartels with no repercussions. Essentially, the Constitution has been destroyed.
We now invade countries with no need for authorization. The Federal Reserve, a private entity, now has more power than any state. The Federal Government can lock up and kill US citizens without due process, while a state cannot. The scariest part is that we are the government. As a whole, everyone could change things for the better, but no one does anything because they are worried about stupid **** like gay marriage and abortions while the whole country falls apart. Everyone is deceived into believing you need to be right or left, when they are both the same thing, wanting war and the ability to silence any opposition... legitimate or otherwise.
The stealing of personal liberty by organizations is a slippery slope. We now afford more rights and special treatment to corporations because so many people mistakenly believe that we need to continue to grow the economy. If someone opposes a large corporation, money is all that is needed to suppress them. With the growing gap between the rich and the poor, the balance of power is also lost. Individuals cannot win against conglomerates even in the interest of fairness and equality.
By restoring freedom, we restore the balance of power. That means the federal side of things must be scaled way back.