Why? It paid the rent. – Marilyn Monroe (on posing nude)
Ten updates from the seventh week of 2012.
Whore Madonnas (August 29th, 2010)
“The classic Madonna/whore fallacy teaches that women can be one or the other, but as I’ve said many, many times before this is complete and utter hogwash. Any normal woman is capable of playing either role as required or even both simultaneously, and about half of the girls who worked for me had children. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that many women enter prostitution because of their children…” Case in point, from Offbeat Mama:
…I have the perfect suburban mommy resume [but] I keep a huge secret from my family, neighbors, and friends…I’m an escort…Scoop those jaws up off of the floor, moms and dads, because…it could happen to you. I don’t mean you’ll be trafficked into sex work by some skeevy creeper on the internet — I mean that you may some day be in a position you never dreamed you’d be in doing things you never saw yourself doing in order to make ends meet…And you know what? It’s not horrible. I don’t hate my life. In fact, sometimes I think I have it better than most American moms. I work on the evenings and weekends the kids are at their father’s place…They never even know I’m gone. Then when they are with me, I get to be a devoted single stay-at-home mom…
The piece is well worth reading in its entirety, and even the comments are overwhelmingly positive!
BDSM (Part One) (September 15th, 2010)
OK, I like abduction fantasies as much as the next healthy woman, but most of us have the sense not to act them out in public:
…Nikolas Harbar, 31, [of Portland, Oregon] was only “role-playing” when he…tied up his naked girlfriend, 26-year-old Stephanie Pelzner and threw her in the back of his Subaru [on Valentine’s Day]…but…a concerned witness [called the cops and when they arrived]… Pelzner confirmed that “she was voluntarily bound and nude”…[the couple was] arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, but released later that day.
Real People (February 6th, 2011)
Bethany St. James is a brothel prostitute who advocates extending the Nevada model to the whole United States. And while I disagree with her belief that women can’t be trusted to manage our own sex lives, her recent essay in Huffington Post is excellent:
…when I recently appeared on a daytime talk show to discuss an article…I wrote…I was shocked to find that it was nearly impossible for the…audience to…fathom that a woman who works in the sex industry could be educated, happy and goal driven. The stereotype that all prostitutes are drug addicted women with sad childhoods who’ve been reeled into a life of shame and disease…remains…prevalent. No matter how I attempted to explain that just as in all professions, there are a multitude of factors and variables, my words seemed to have fallen on deaf ears…Not all sex workers and adult entertainers are the same, just as not all people within the same ethnic background are the same. Although many women in the adult industry have problems, couldn’t the same be true of every profession?…there are college educated professionals with problems far worse that any prostitute I’ve known. Job description alone should not be the sole factor when forming an opinion of a person…
Interview: Jill Brenneman (Part Four) (February 24th, 2011)
One year ago today I published the final installment of my interview with activist and sex trafficking survivor Jill Brenneman; coincidentally, a Dutch website named Nederlandse Debatbond recently reposted her July 2010 article “Prohibitionists’ Comparing Sex Work and Straight Work: They are Dead Wrong”, which originally appeared in Bound, Not Gagged. If you’ve never read it, now’s your chance.
It’s Different Because It Involves Sex, Part Umpteen (June 16th, 2011)
Last year, judges in New York ruled that dancing isn’t dancing if it’s sexy. That bizarre belief appears to be shared by a California woman who claims porn can’t be copyrighted:
…Hard Drive Productions…demanded $3,400 to make their threatened lawsuit go away but [Liuxia Wong] not only says she’s innocent and harassed, but also that porn cannot be copyrighted…In a lawsuit filed at the end of January, Wong says that she did not download the work in question and goes on to attack Hard Drive on a number of fronts…the alleged infringement [took] place [on] March 28th, 2011, but…the movie…wasn’t officially registered until April 22nd…[and though]…Hard Drive insist[ed] that [she] would be liable…even if her router was unsecured and someone else [used it] without her knowledge…Wong’s suit dismisses that…as “erroneous”. But perhaps most interestingly, Wong is challenging the notion that Hard Drive can own the copyright to its own work – indeed, that porn can be copyrighted at all.
“…the Copyright Clause [of the US Constitution] empowers…Congress: ‘To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries,” the lawsuit details, adding: “Early Circuit law in California held that obscene works did not promote the progress of science and the useful arts, and thus cannot be protected by copyright”…Wong is asking the court to…[declare] that not only is she not liable…for infringement, but that the company’s movie is not copyrightable and is illegal due to Hard Drive engaging in “solicitation, conspiracy to commit prostitution, pimping and/or pandering,” during its production…
While I’m sympathetic to Wong’s right to defend herself against those who misuse the law, that defense doesn’t require actions which are just as immoral as Hard Drive’s and could potentially cause a great deal of trouble and expense for others who aren’t even involved in the dispute.
Déjà Vu (June 25th, 2011)
This column examined the strong resemblance between the Victorian and modern incarnations of anti-whore rhetoric, and its epigram was from a letter sent to The Times by an anonymous prostitute in 1858. Well, on February 11th Dr. Laura Agustín discussed the “fallen woman” metaphor and the persistent idea that whores need to be “rescued” from our “plight”; she also wrote of Charles Dickens’ involvement with a “rescue home” and mentioned that he once tried to “save” a woman who didn’t want “saving”…the very lady who wrote the letter from which my epigram came. If you’d like to read that letter in its entirety, take a look at Dr. Agustín’s February 14th column.
An Ounce of Prevention (October 15th, 2011)
More news about potential HIV vaccines:
The discovery of HIV-resistant sex workers in Africa could pave the way for a more effective AIDS vaccine, according to a new study by University of Montreal researchers. “Studying women who are naturally resistant…[may enable] researchers to…[develop] vaccinations or . . . gels that could prevent transmission of HIV,” said lead researcher, Dr. Michel Roger…”Our research shows that…we should turn to the entry points…to find a means for blocking the virus.” The year-and-a-half-long study involved 52 commercial sex workers who were uninfected with HIV, 44 sex workers who were HIV-positive and 71 uninfected [non-prostitutes]…in Benin…researchers found that the…uninfected sex workers had fewer inflammatory molecules in the vagina than [HIV-positive] women…working under similar conditions. “We have identified prostitutes, who of course, are highly exposed to the virus and some of them, they don’t get infected even though they practise in the same way as others, in the same building, with the same clients. They don’t get infected after four, five, seven years of prostitution,” Roger [said]…this group of HIV-resistant women [even] had fewer inflammatory molecules than [non-prostitutes]…”we need to understand better the mucosal response against HIV in order to design an efficient vaccine,” he said. This new kind of vaccine could be administered through the nose and would immunize all mucus membranes in the body…
Bad Fantasy, Good Reality (October 27th, 2011)
Another Western female academic studied Asian hostess bars and discovered that the women there are neither “degraded” nor “victimized”, but rather following a deliberate strategy:
…seven years of in-depth research into the hostess bar scene in Phnom Penh has revealed…that…aspirations and obligations drive the girls from the countryside to the cities in search of opportunity. For many…it was…a personal desire to earn money, after seeing friends…return to the provinces bedecked in gold, make-up and new clothes…Upon arrival in the capital, the easiest and most fruitful job for a newcomer is work in a hostess bar, where the monthly salaries range from $60-$100. On top of that, tips and ‘ladies drinks’ (a $1 surcharge added to drinks bought for them by customers, which is then given back in their wages) can increase their earnings to as much as $300 per month. In a country where the average monthly salary for a teacher or police officer is approximately $60-$80…bar work is incredibly lucrative…and is considered by many to be more ‘fun’ than other unskilled employment options, such as garment factory work or street trading…Most women arrive unable to speak English, but learn within months…they enjoyed the friends they made and the financial power it gave them. All people…need money to survive; they work because of economic…motivations. These young women are no different. This is not to glamorise the bars – there are plenty of downsides, such as structural inequalities, exploitative bosses, large fines and gropey customers who are sometimes racist and rude. However, [they] can also be viewed as places of opportunity, which the women exploit in order to empower themselves and improve their lives…
…these women are highly stigmatised by wider Cambodian society. And those who…supplement their incomes by trading in sex…are considered srey kouch or ‘broken whores’…traditionally strict moral and social rules…require ‘good women’ to stay at home and take care of their families, be indoors before dark, and remain virgins until marriage…[but] within their families, the ability to speak English, learn about life outside of Cambodia, socialise with foreigners, and use the internet to communicate are also all markers of prestige and status…On the one hand, they completely defy all the social rules of respectability, such as being submissive and ‘virtuous’. Yet the high status their families receive as a result of material goods provided by the women sometimes helps [them] improve their reputations. In the end, they are virtuous for the help they give to their families…bar workers and professional girlfriends…don’t want to be viewed as bad women or helpless victims of exploitation that are in need of rescuing…
The author, Dr Heidi Hoefinger of the University of London, is the author of the upcoming book Sex, Love and Money in Cambodia.
Legal Is As Legal Does (December 14th, 2011)
US law allows politicians and cops to tyrannize whores as they like, but in New Zealand even prohibiting streetwalkers from working in certain areas requires a new law:
…A bill that will allow Auckland Council to ban street prostitution in specific places is to be considered by the local government select committee. Other city councils including Christchurch are expected to show interest and may seek to have the same powers applied generally…Chairwoman Nicky Wagner, who is MP for Christchurch Central, said…street prostitution in the inner city had moved out to the residential areas…[Manurewa MP George] Hawkins said he would have preferred to have had a bill amending the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 to outlaw street prostitution nationally…[but] the committee believed [that] would negate the intentions of the…Act…
The story also illustrates that freedom can never be taken for granted, because there will always be those who want to criminalize anything that isn’t currently criminal.
Moloch (January 29th, 2012)
Here’s another story of American “authorities” sacrificing kids to their filthy devil-god; the February 10th episode of the public radio show This American Life tells of attractive young police women posing as students in Florida high schools in order to ruin the lives of teenage boys by using their sex appeal to trick the boys into getting marijuana for them. Once again, the sickness of American culture is revealed for the world to see: Independent whoring to support one’s kids = degraded criminality, but whoring for the State Pimp to destroy innocent teenagers = heroic and laudable.
Well I have a lot of experience with the Asian hostesses – of course, all of it was in the 1980’s …
As a young kid, I wasn’t worried about American hookers being “coerced” but I was very paranoid about Asian one’s being coerced. I would interview just about every one that I was thinking of taking out of the bars for the evenings. Only found ONE who claimed a “hard luck” story – and she said she didn’t like being a hostess and only did it to pay her Mom’s medical bills. I think she was bullshitting me however, as I felt bad enough for her that I paid her barfine that evening and we just went out dancing in town and nothing else.
They are capitalists alright. A few even asked me not to pay their barfine, simply give them my hotel room number and they’d come by to stay the night when they got off shift. I never had a single one stand me up. They all showed up at my door – sometimes really late but I had no problem with that. I’d pay them the regular barfine – but they would get to keep all of it and didn’t have to split any of it with the bar.
Most of the girls told me that they came from poor families, in the farming villages – and that they were dissatisfied with their lives there. They were all hoping to live urbanized lifestyles with a few luxuries – as depicted in the American movies that they watched. A few of them were looking for American husbands – and a lot of them found them. The Sailors I served with had no problems marrying a hostess. In the 80’s, when we had a ship’s party for my submarine crew – about 1/4 of the wives were from P.I. – and they had almost all been discovered by their husbands when they were “hostesses”. They gave up their old lives and started pumping out babies with their new hubby … and they made some damn good lumpia for every party we had. We always had good food at the parties thanks to these women – who were damn good cooks in addition to their harlotry skills! 😛
Being a Pac Fleet Sailor was more awesome than being one stationed in the boring … Atlantic! 🙂
In the 90s I saw an episode of a show set in a high school. Don’t remember if it was 21 Jump Street or not. A police woman disguised herself as a student and offered a kid (who had a name similar to the name of the student they were investigating) oral sex in exchange for drugs (I think it was cocaine). When this was found out, the police had to let the kid go, and the several other kids arrested in the sting, in order to avoid a public scandal. The kid never got his blow job.
I watched that ep because a cousin of mine had a bit part. He later was an extra in a scene filmed for the movie A.I., but his scene wound up on the cutting-room floor.
I’m hoping that the evil bitch in this real-life story didn’t get the idea from the show. The reality is worse than the fiction was. Even if “Naomi’s” version is true, how this isn’t entrapment is a mystery.
Regarding the Offbeat Mom, for several years there was a young, very pretty divorced mother who lived right across the street who we knew was escorting to make ends meet. I almost thought the post was hers, but she had two kids. Not all the neighbors knew, but those of us who did really didn’t much care as she and most of her clients were discreet, parking on the nearby busy street rather than on our quiet street. In fact, her ex was the obnoxious one, refusing to go to the door to pick up or drop off the kids, just parking in the street and honking. Some friends of ours found out and asked why we weren’t upset, and I pointed out that she never caused me any trouble, but that the former Enron trader who lived down the street had, because his actions got the idiots in Congress to pass worthless laws that made my job harder, but wouldn’t have done a thing to stop the Enrons of the world. So should I ask the homeowners’ association to go after him? My daughter was several year’s older than Lilly’s, and she babysat for her quite a bit. I think my girl, as our youngest, liked having a sort of little sister to boss around. Lilly always dressed up to pass out candy on Halloween. Unfortunately, my kids were really past the trick or treating stage, ‘cause all the dads were willing to walk the kids up to her house, to get a loo… candy.
Well said KHorn. I’d much rather have a discreet whore in my neighborhood than one of the professional crooked class that are currently running the nation. Better someone who’s screwing paying customers than someone whos screwing the whole country!
Isn’t it curious as to why humans are like this?
We have REALLY HUGE problems in this nation … and we worry about shit like hookers. I mean, most of our houses have lost most of their value … we bailed out the banks and bought auto companies and handed them over to the unions … and we now owe over $15B in debt which we’ll never pay off … gas is about to hit $5 bucks a gallon …
But dammit … we gotta DO SOMETHING about this harlot living in the neighborhood!!!
For the record, the UAW took a pay cut. There were a lot of strings attached to the GM deal which were not attached to the Wall Street deal. I know, I hear liberals bitching about it all the time. I bitch about it.
None of the big bank CEOs went to jail, were fired, or had to resign; Rick Wagoner, the CEO and Chairman of GM, was forced to resign. The big banks weren’t broken up; GM was (a little; Pontiac, Hummer, Saturn and Saab are no longer part of GM).
I’m glad that the world wasn’t thrown into global economic depression, and I’m glad that multiple thousands of GM employees kept their jobs (though many GM jobs were indeed lost). But I do get tired of the two standards of justice, and I do wish that the big banks would be broken up. As long as “too big to fail” is allowed to continue, this is going to happen again. It must.
Just for the record, they still got all of this at public expense.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/apr/27/ed-whitacre/ceo-says-gm-has-repaid-government-loans-full/
Like the Chrysler bailout, what is not seen is important. Lee Iaccoca made a big deal about how they paid back the government loans. What he didn’t tell you was a large part of that came from the US Gov’t using K-Cars as their fleet automobiles and Dodge trucks for their fleet in USDA (Forest Service) and the BLM. The US Gov’t exclusively used Chrysler vehicles for their fleet vehicles except for the VIP fleet which used Lincoln Town Cars and Crown Victorias. So Chrysler paid back their gov’t loans with a large dollop of gov’t money.
Whether the gov’t offers its support as a loan or by “taking an equity stake” in the company, it is still taxpayer money that is supporting the lifestyle of the politically connected union. Just like it is taxpayer money supporting the lifestyle of Wall Street and Banking CEO’s.
Contrast the treatment of Enron’s and WorldCom’s CEO and executives with the treatment of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae’s CEOs and executives. The lengthy sentences for the former were justified because of accounting fraud the enormous economic damage their actions incurred but those damages pale next to the harm inflicted by the FM QUANGOs who also indulged in creative bookkeeping.
The money used to bail GM out had to come from somewhere. It came from the tax revenues of other businesses (or through gov’t borrowing which impacts the capital markets) who had to weather the economic downturn on their own resources minus what was taken by government. Which means that small businesses throughout the country laid off workers here and there because they lacked the financial resources to keep them. These are the unseen consequences of thousands of GM workers being able to keep their jobs – thousands of other workers throughout the country lost theirs.
And in great measure, the UAW were part of the problem that brought GM down. Here are two measures of the relative compensation between Big 3 autoworkers and their competition. (I say part of the problem because Ford stayed solvent with UAW workers.)
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/gmvstoyota/
http://bigthreeauto.procon.org/view.additional-resource.php?resourceID=2050
Frederic Bastiat, a French economist in the 19th century, wrote an essay titled, “What is Seen and What is Not Seen.”
In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them.
US Gov’t bails out GM, Goldman-Sachs, Banks. Jobs are visibly “saved.”
There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.
Yet this difference is tremendous; for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous, and vice versa. Whence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good that will be followed by a great evil to come, while the good economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.
Small present good seen: Jobs visibly saved.
Subsequent larger evils not seen: Distributed job loss throughout US creating rising unemployment, enhanced regulatory regime making job creation less likely, enhancement of moral hazard – that connected companies will do stupid economic things now that bailouts are in the offing in the form of TARP II and various stimulus packages (Solyndra) adding to the economic confusion and making profitable job creation even less likely, volatile stock and capital markets where trading is based less on underlying company soundness than on the bureaucratic diktats
of the moment, etc.
The thing that is so exasperating about this is that Japan went down this road in the 1990’s and still hasn’t recovered. You would think that we could have learned from their experience. But politics trumps economics right up the point where the system collapses. Look at Greece for an example of where political brinksmanship – driven by the public sector unions – may still lead to the melt-down of the Greek system.
Recessions are caused by malinvestment; resources placed in uses that are not profitable and are, in fact, consuming capital resources. Bankruptcy allows those resources to be re-allocated to better uses so that the dislocation is immediate and minimized. By short-circuiting the GM bankruptcy, Obama has kept an institution in place that should have been drastically reformed. And that would have meant abrogation of Union contracts, a distribution of assets and those parts of GM that were actually being run correctly being put in a much better position. And Obama’s stiffing the bond-holders who, as a matter of legal usage, have first claim on bankruptcy assets, has already had a chilling effect on capital markets.
When 3rd world countries do what Obama did, you get capital flight. In the US, since our insanity is still less than what pervades the rest of the world, you get capital withdrawal. People sit on their money because they have no idea what kind of regulatory coup d’ etat is in the offing. As one investment banker put it, “If I invest my money and win, I get a 10% bonus. If I invest my money and lose, I lose 100% of it.” The bondholders in GM lost 100% and they are not likely to put what they have left out there anytime soon. This is why the “jobless” recovery is so sluggish. There are “unseen” consequences to the policies indulged in by G.W. Bush from 2006 on and by Obama since then.
There is no such thing as too big to fail. What that term really means is, “I have political connections and they are willing to steal from others to cover my backside so long as they get a percentage.”
“Just for the record, they still got all of this at public expense.”
That’s true, but since I never claimed otherwise I’m not sure why you spent several paragraphs and a link to refute a point I never tried to make.
It was a target of opportunity though not directed at you. It is just that most people are completely unaware of secondary and tertiary effects of these actions, and, admittedly, they are difficult to discern.
For instance back in 2003 IIRC, a republican representative attached an amendment to a trade bill that essentially banned the import of wire hangers into the US because a constituent in his area couldn’t compete. Cato did a study on it and found that jobs that were paying about 30K per year were being saved at the cost of 200K per year to US consumers. Or, to put in other terms, each job saved for this constituent cost an equivalent of 6+ jobs elsewhere although that outcome probably only occurred in businesses already at the margin.
The point is that these kind of actions don’t save jobs on a net basis. They are more likely to destroy more jobs than they save, but the saved jobs are concentrated and visible and the lost jobs are distributed and unseen.
That’s why, when George Bush floated his first clanker back in 2008, I opposed it. Nobody should get a bailout no matter what sector they are in or how politically connected they are.
To me Goldman-Sachs, GE, and the UAW are all in the same moral basket. They are all of them parasites supporting their lifestyles on the sweat of those making an honest living.
OK, so it wasn’t directed at me. I’ve done enough of that myself that I can understand it.
I agree that actions, especially actions of government, can have repercussions that were not expected, and that can be hard to figure out. And when governments take a lot of actions, it can be even harder to see which actions led to which repercussions, both good and bad.
“To me Goldman-Sachs, GE, and the UAW are all in the same moral basket. They are all of them parasites supporting their lifestyles on the sweat of those making an honest living.”
The UAW are those making an honest living through sweat. Productivity has been rising since at least the late 1800s, but wages started going flat in the 1980s. The government started taking the rules out of the game, because the priesthood declared that this was the will of the Great and Holy Market, whose will must never be denied. Then things go pear-shaped anyway, and we’re told that dagnabit, it’s because of those car-welders wanting a raise!
No, the UAW is a sort of pseudo-government deriving its sustenance from those who make an honest living through sweat. There’s a world of difference. And it isn’t the “car-welders wanting a raise” that was the problem; it was the almighty union demanding – and getting – absurdities like guaranteed employment levels unsupported by the falling demand for American cars.
Look, I’m all for a person getting as high a wage as he can reasonably get. But the unions have had a regulatory advantage with Wagner, Davis-Bacon, NLRB, etc. Hell, the NLRB shut down a Boeing plant in North Carolina because it wasn’t union. This isn’t making an honest living. This is leveraging your political clout at other citizens’ expense. And when they push their wage demands beyond the reasonable – which they can only do because of the favorable regulations on their behalf – and then the demand for their services drops accordingly, they then go to the gov’t and get a direct bailout at other citizens’ expense.
This is no different than GE going to the gov’t to ban incandescent lightbulbs because GE can’t make enough on them but they do make a plenty good margin on the CFL’s they are now forcing consumers to buy. And then when GE gets in financial trouble because of manufacturing issues and their stupid lending policies, they go to the gov’t and get a direct bailout at other citizens’ expense.
I find it ironic that GE is trying to sell the CFL’s to the consumers as a great energy saving deal. I have a pretty good touchstone for such behavior. If you are offering a good deal to a person, you usually don’t have to point a gov’t gun at their head to get them to take it.
Goldman-Sachs got over-extended in a number of their trading accounts, in great measure because previous gov’t actions had prompted them to act in morally hazardous ways. Then when things went sideways, they went to the gov’t to make good their losses at other citizens’ expense.
All of these actors are morally equivalent. I don’t cut the UAW any slack for indulging in the same immoral behavior as GE or Goldman-Sacks or Chase, etc.
I don’t think that it is a good thing that UAW jobs were saved at GM and Chrysler at the cost of thousands of jobs of other US workers who didn’t over-inflate their paychecks and help drive their respective companies into bankruptcy.
Unions really are not organized against companies. They are organized against non-union workers. As any trip across a picket line will demonstrate.
c andrew
Your posts on what I’ll summarize as crony capitalism are excellent. I head up the corporate law group of an engineering and construction company and we see first hand the devastating effects the last several years of government “help” have had on the capital markets. Established companies are looking to alternative strategies to raise money (in other words borrowing and getting credit support outside the U.S.) and the U.S. share of new IPOs is shrinking rapidly which adversely affects funding availability and expansion in the U.S. As for the UAW, how preposterous is the idea that a union should be able to organize across an entire industry. Unions should be limited to organizing workers of a single company (including its subsidiaries and affiliates), which then at least aligns the workers’ interests with their employers. How can the UAW be considered an honest negotiating party with Ford given its interests in GM and Chrysler? Ford survived by making some tough choices years ago. You think the UAW is going to allow that to continue come contract time?
Actually, I was with you up to light bulbs. I’m about sick of incandescent bulbs as the symbol of freedom and compact florescents as the evil glow of tyranny. My place has both, and the cops haven’t hauled my filament-burning ass off the big house yet. So I broke off, watched a few DDR videos on Youtube, and came back.
OK. I could probably be convinced that a union shouldn’t be able to organize across an entire industry. I’d want to hear from both sides of the argument, but I’m open. I am, however, in favor of unions to offset the power of the companies themselves.
I don’t know how many jobs the GM bailout lost, and frankly, neither do you. I hope it was as few as possible, and I’d like to see stuff like Goldman-Sachs and GM further broken up so that the loss of any one isn’t a disaster of national or global scale. It’s fine to shout “no more bailouts!” but until we get rid of the reasons bailouts happen, they will happen. We will continue to privatize profits while socializing risk, the worst of both worlds.
I’m not saying that incandescent bulbs are a symbol of freedom. I’m saying that GE lobbying congress to ban them in order to improve GE’s own bottom line is an abuse of government.
I’m with you on not socializing losses. That is what leads to moral hazard. A company should keep the profits they make. They should also keep the losses they make as well. Taxpayers shouldn’t be tapped to either enhance company profits nor mitigate their losses.
You’re right that I don’t know how many jobs the GM bailout cost. The research required for that information would be gargantuan, based on the Cato study on the one wire hanger manufacturer. But as a rule of thumb, given the inefficiencies of the transfer process, it is a rare govt transfer that doesn’t cost more on the supply end than it delivers on the subsidy end.
I realize that you are making a bigger point than CFL=tyranny or incandescent=freedom. But so many people seem to make it that simple in their little minds that when I got to light bulbs, I had to go off and cool down, and remind myself that you probably weren’t doing the same thing. Once I’d done that, I can even agree that GE (or anybody else) shouldn’t get regulations put in to boost sales. They should boost sales by making a good product (which conforms to regulations put in for better reasons) and offering it for a better price than the other guy.
I do understand moral hazard, and it is a big deal. But it isn’t the only consideration, and there can come a time where other considerations may weigh more heavily. That’s why we need to bend every effort to make an environment where these other considerations don’t gain such weight.
You and I don’t agree on everything, but it’s good to see that we’re not in completely different universes (maybe not even different worlds).
Barsoom, perhaps? I have to say that I wouldn’t mind the occasional liaison with the Martian princess. Okay, actually I wouldn’t mind the entire matrimony thing in that context…
Somehow, I can’t see Tara or Llana being put on a sexual offenders registry for sending a nudie pic to Gahan or Pan Dee Chee, respectively.
I am in Thailand a lot and from personal experience, I can say that I have never met a bar girl who appeared to be working under duress.
How do I know this? Because the girls often talk about their future plans. The holidays they intend to take, the trips back to visit their families, whether to move to a different bar where business is better, or even working overseas for a while.
I have never met one who appeared to be using drugs, or had needle marks. Most don’t even drink alcohol except on special occasions. The “ladies’ drinks” are a local variety of Pepsi and non-alcoholic.
They are free to reject clients and often do.
This is not to say that all of them are happy with their life, or that none of them pop pills, but the same could be said for any other sample of working women (or men) anywhere.
This may interest you:
…from
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturecritics/rupertchristiansen/8888347/2012-Honours-List-time-to-upgrade-a-star-with-bucketloads-of-talent.html
That’s fantastic, Stephen! Thank you so much for calling my attention to it!
Thanks, KHorn,
I was fortunate enough to be exposed to the writings of Frederic Bastiat while I was still in high school. It gives one an entirely new set of tools for political and economic analysis.
For the political end, I think that Bastiat’s “The Law” is an essentialized exposition of the classical liberal take on what law should be and most frequently isn’t.
His “Economic Sophisms” does an excellent job of dissecting the economic fallacies that plague us to this day.
I’m less impressed with his “Economic Harmonies” but then he died 30 years before Menger and Bohm-Bawerk, so I think he did pretty well given his context.
Here is a page of selected essays starting with “What is Seen and what is Not Seen.”
http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html
And here is his classic (and funny) argument against protectionism and how it impoverishes everyone except the protected industry.
http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html
The only thing I’ve read by Bastiat is “The Parable of the Broken Window,” which I came across over the weekend. I’ve been reading up and watching stuff on post-scarcity, basic income, and so on, and so I’ve been reading and watching more on economics than I ever thought that I would. Recently I’ve been watching videos about fractional reserve banking and boom-bust cycles and the Federal Reserve (pick you jaw up off the floor, Laura).
So I’m not any sort of expert, but one thing has become clear to me: the experts are all over the map. Make up a position at random, and there’s some guy with more degree than Fahrenheit who will say you’re right, and others just as degreed who will say you’re wrong.
My father had a saying that you could line up all the economists in the world end to end and they would still point in all directions…
It’s wonderful you’re opening your mind to the Federal Reserve information!
Above was to Sailor B (re: Federal Reserve). I still need to do better with putting “Dear ____” on my posts.
We knew who you meant.
But yeah, I need to be more open-minded. Or at least that’s what Kissinger told me at the last meeting at the hotel. BTW, can you help me pick out something to wear on my text, um… camping trip?
Owl be seeing you, Baby.
I know it’s likely it was known who I was replying to, BUT to me saying “Dear ___” is a basic courtesy that I want to practice at ALL times (that’s my goal) on any website. Bohemian Grove jokes…GGGGGRRRRR!
And Bilderberg jokes. Double GGGGGRRRRR!
But yeah, a bit more basic courtesy wouldn’t hurt this world.