As I explained in the last video in this series, government can never be depended on to preserve the institution of marriage, and therefore private marriage is to be preferred. But what would it take to forge a successful private marriage agreement? What provisions should be included, how detailed need it be, and how does one avoid the snares that government has sought to use to undermine the family? Stay tuned to find out.
This video may contain copyrighted content. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for -fair use- for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
HARASSMENT NOTICE
It is not my intention to cause the original video creator(s) to receive any kind of harassment or abuse. It is my intention to provide a counter argument to the claims they have made. While I have no control over the feedback you choose to provide, I ask that you avoid any forms of harassment or abuse.
CHILDREN’S PRIVACY NOTICE
This video is NOT targeted to viewers under the age of 13. I do not collect, use, or disclose information from children on any platform where this video is hosted.
Porn may be an immoral and addictive behavior, but do politicians have such noble motives for banning it?
Over the past few weeks, a great debate has broken out regarding whether government should take action to ban pornography. The debate has primarily been between small government conservatives and libertarians.
The conservatives are arguing that pornography is both a moral evil and an addictive, unhealthy life choice. This leaves us no option but to use the power of government to ban it for the good of society. The libertarians are arguing that pornography, even if a moral evil and an unhealthy life choice, is a victimless crime and therefore none of the government’s business.
No matter who you are, you probably have strong feelings about this issue, but even if not, this debate has far reaching ramifications that the issue of porn doesn’t even crack the surface of.
Pornography’s Problems
For purposes of argument, I’m going to assume that every talking point that conservatives have put forward is true. Pornography is both a moral evil as well as an unhealthy and addictive behavior that will cause negative effects in the life and relationships of its users. To be sure, there are those who would dispute these points, but for purposes of argument, I’m going to assume that they are 100% true.
That being said, what follows? What should be done about the crisis of pornography consumption?
Government’s Role as Arbiter
The moment you accept that it is the government’s job to regulate negative behaviors for the overall good of society, you fall down a rabbit hole from which there is no escape.
As we speak, there exist politicians who have expressed their belief that traditional religious education is harmful to children and to society as a whole. The boldest of their ranks believe that government should be able to shut down churches and abduct children from homes where their parents seek to teach them from a traditional religious standpoint. If it is government’s job to curtail negative behaviors, and religious practice is a negative behavior, this makes perfect sense.
These political leftists are often even more fervent and extreme in their belief that religion is harmful than conservatives are in their positions against porn. If it is legitimate for government to prevent citizens from engaging in voluntary behaviors because those behaviors are in some sense “collectively harmful” to society, what prevents leftist politicians from banning traditional religious practices once they are voted into power?
Social conservatives will, of course, say that religion is not harmful to society, but that’s exactly what their opponents are saying about pornography. If you can justly invade someone else’s property and stop them from consuming pornography in the privacy of their own home, how can you consistently argue that they are unjustified in breaking down your door and burning your Bible?
You may genuinely believe that you know what’s better for everyone else than they do, but then again, they probably think so too.
The Sword Cuts Both Ways
The same government that can give you everything you want is a government that can take everything that you have. In this case, conservatives would be wise to consider that the same government that can ban pornography is the same government that can rip your children from your arms and then force them to watch pornography in state mandated sex education classes. Once you set the precedent that it is government’s job to protect you from negative behaviors, you also make government the arbiter of what behaviors are and are not negative.
Is this really what you want?
However, the broader point about whether it is the proper function of government to decide for individuals if their voluntary actions are positive or negative isn’t really what concerns me the most in this discussion. What I wish more people would think about is exactly what mechanisms would need to be put into place in order to enforce a government mandated ban on pornography.
The Tools for Enforcing a Pornography Ban
I don’t think anyone disputes that the advent of the internet made pornography far more accessible to the rank and file. However, whether you think this is good or bad, a government ban on pornography would entail a mechanism by which government could determine whether pornography was being manufactured and distributed through the internet, and whether offenders were watching it in the privacy of their homes. After all, if there isn’t even in principle a way to enforce a law, the law becomes pointless.
The government could shut down porn sites that are based inside the U.S. However, it wouldn’t have the capacity to do so to sites based outside the U.S. With the advent of virtual private networks (VPNs) and other such constantly evolving technology, governments worldwide have already discovered that attempting to ban materials on the internet regionally is a futile endeavor.
What then would it take to enforce the ban on porn?
Expansion of Government Monitoring Online
It seems to me that the only meaningful action government could take to enforce a ban on porn would be to go the route that countries like Kazakhstan have recently tried. Government would have to require computers to be constructed with hardware and/or software already built in that gives state actors the ability to monitor user activity, bypassing encryption and other security features.
Pornography can be distributed through Facebook, and other not explicitly pornographic sites. As such, government would need to be able to monitor all a person’s web traffic and know who is sitting behind the computer. Otherwise, enforcement of the porn ban would be impossible.
Is no one seriously concerned about government utilizing such capabilities for purposes other than observing their citizens’ porn habits?
Banning Porn Privately inside the Home
If you believe that pornography is immoral and harmful, don’t consume it.
If you’re a parent, you should already be actively monitoring what you’re children do on the internet. Set up a family computer and specify what times of day your children are allowed to be on the internet and what sites they are allowed to visit. Purchase accountability software that allows you to monitor your children’s internet enabled devices.
The tools you need to protect your kids on the internet are already within your grasp, so why would you need government to protect your children? Unless of course you believe that it is they who are responsible for your children and not you. This doesn’t strike me as a very conservative position.
Regardless of your feelings about pornography, the dangers of making government responsible for banning it far outweigh whatever short term benefits may be achieved in a porn free society. Everything from cigarettes to donuts can be classified as an unhealthy, and harmful behavior. Should government be deciding what’s best for you, or should you be?
And that is My 2 cents take it for what it’s worth.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thinks that government can make healthcare services appear with the flick of a pen.
In a fit of genius, economist Thomas Sowell (1994) once said, “The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”
Perhaps it should be called the Politician’s Economic Fallacy, but in this widely shared clip, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) demonstrates just how true this is, especially with regards to industries that concern the entire population such as medical care.
The Nature of Demand for Medical Care
To be fair, there is an element of truth to what AOC says. Every person values their own life more than they value most of the goods and services that they exchange on a daily basis. A new computer won’t do you any good if you aren’t alive to use it, and so if it came down to choosing whether to spend your money on a new computer, or to spend it on a surgery that will prevent an otherwise fatal ailment, all but the insane would choose to pay for the surgery.
But this is hardly a meaningful observation from an economic perspective. All this says is that under circumstances where a person’s life is at stake, they have a greater demand for life-saving medical treatment. Whether or not you want to call a person’s life a commodity doesn’t change the fact that medical services are a scarce resource.
Scarcity Applies to Medical Care
The real cost of any medical treatment is the amount of resources needed to provide it and what other things those resources could have been used to do. There are the chemical compounds that are used in the manufacture of medication, the knowledge and expertise of the doctors and nurses who administer it, the administrative work required to keep a hospital functioning, and so on and so forth.
Those same chemical compounds could have been used to manufacture a different medication or something else not medically related. The auto parts used to manufacture an ambulance could have been used to build a firetruck, police cruiser, or a pickup truck. A doctor could have chosen to go to school to be an engineer or a lawyer. Therefore, regardless of how urgent it may be to have specific amounts of specific medical treatments at specific locations, it does not change the fact that medical services are governed by the same laws of supply and demand that govern any other industry.
The “Need” for Medical Care
In addition, matters of life and death in the healthcare industry are not always so cut and dry. With many health conditions, there may be treatments available that could be “life-saving” but without any guarantee that they will be life-saving (dangerous surgeries, cancer treatments, etc.). Once expended, those resources are gone, but the patient may lose his life anyways. Beyond that, the same treatment that may extend the life of an elderly person by two years, could potentially extend the life of a young person by sixty years.
What then is the best way to distribute these scarce resources that have multiple uses?
Higher Prices Signal Higher Demand and Encourage Innovation
The answer is that if individuals are allowed to seek their own medical care based on what they are willing to pay for it, even lifesaving medical care will become increasingly affordable. To borrow AOC’s own example, the cellphone was once as thick as a brick, with low battery life, and costing nearly $4,000. Thanks to supply and demand and competition among providers, more than 96% of Americans now own cellphones, some 81% of which are smartphones. The same is true with the costs of elective healthcare procedures like lasik eye surgery and cosmetic surgery.
As author Julian Adorney (2017) has stated, “Putting patients in charge of their own healthcare encourages them to be price-conscious. When this happens, service providers have an incentive to compete on price, and competition produces downward price pressure.” In other words, when you pay for your healthcare as opposed to government or some insurance company, you decide what costs and risks are worthwhile. This ensures that scarce medical resources flow to their most valued uses overall. Meanwhile, prices seek equilibrium where the amount of a given healthcare service demanded matches the amount available.
Government Intervention Prevents Price Signals from Working
When government steps in and seeks to cover costs for all its citizens with stolen tax money, the costs and risks associated with healthcare cease to matter to consumers, and demand for healthcare services essentially becomes infinite. But this does not change the fact that there is still a limited supply of resources, and those resources have multiple uses. Now government must decide who gets to have what healthcare services and when, and government can never do this as efficiently as consumers.
This is why universal healthcare systems like Britain’s National Healthcare Service (NHS) are characterized by long wait times and poor service. Even if it is true that overall costs for particular treatments are cheaper in such a system, what good does that do if you can’t receive those treatments before it’s too late?
Politicians Know That Their Empty Promises Lead to Votes
Of course, as Thomas Sowell’s quote implies, the fact of the matter is that politicians like AOC don’t make a fuss about life saving medical care out of any genuine concern for the people. They do it to secure votes and further their own interests.
No matter how many times the government fails to deliver on its promises, and no matter how much an honest analysis shows that it can’t even in principle do so, people continue to trade in their freedom for these empty promises. Never having to concern oneself with healthcare needs again sounds good to voters but never actually occurs following elections.
When will we learn?
And that is My 2 Cents. Take it for what it’s worth.
Under the leadership of Melinda Gates, the organization Equality Can’t Wait has asserted that it will be 208 years before women achieve true equality in the United States. Vox Creative has created a series of videos arguing as such. In this video, I debunk the ridiculous assertions made in their video, “Why is gender equality 208 years away in the U.S.?”
Bettinger, E., Hægeland, T., & Rege, M. (2014). Home with Mom: The Effects of Stay-at-Home Parents on Children’s Long-Run Educational Outcomes. Journal of Labor Economics, 32(3), 443–467. doi: 10.1086/675070
Pudrovska, T., & Karraker, A. (2014). Gender, job authority, and depression. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 55(4), 424–441. doi: 10.1177/0022146514555223
Stevenson, B., & Wolfers, J. (2009). The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 1(2), 190–225. doi: 10.1257/pol.1.2.190
This video may contain copyrighted content. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for -fair use- for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
HARASSMENT NOTICE
It is not my intention to cause the original video creator(s) to receive any kind of harassment or abuse. It is my intention to provide a counter argument to the claims they have made. While I have no control over the feedback you choose to provide, I ask that you avoid any forms of harassment or abuse.
CHILDREN’S PRIVACY NOTICE
This video is NOT targeted to viewers under the age of 13. I do not collect, use, or disclose information from children on any platform where this video is hosted.
My 2 Cents 