Recently I clicked on a link which I thought would lead me to an article about human sexuality, but when it opened my eyes were bombarded with very explicit pornographic images which I was not prepared for, was not desirous of seeing, and did not seek out intentionally; I got unwittingly exposed to graphic porn images when not looking for them. What do you see as a fair, ethical and legal way to stop this? I think an opt-in option for internet consumers who want to access porn is a good idea…for those of who do not opt-in, then those images will be nowhere on our screens. That is my idea. I’d like to hear yours.
The world is not a perfect place; it never has been, and it never will be. Scientists will point to entropy, and metaphysicians will tell you that there wouldn’t be much point in a perfect world because it would have to be wholly static, frozen in its perfection. Obviously everyone knows this, and yet perfectly reasonable people will waste incredible amounts of time and energy arguing about what the “feminist Utopia” or the “libertarian Utopia” or the “progressive Utopia” or whatever would be like. Now, if this were just one of those intellectual games like, “If we were all cheeses, what kind of cheese would you be?” that would be just fine and dandy, but I’m afraid it isn’t; for example, many women who should have more sense will go on and on about how women “shouldn’t” have to worry about being raped…yet they don’t say a word about how men “shouldn’t” have to worry about being robbed, or poor people “shouldn’t” have to worry about paying the bills, or people of any kind “shouldn’t” have to consider the possibility of being blown to Kingdom Come by some fanatic trying to draw attention to his cause. The fact of the matter is that there are bad people in the world, and desperate people, and unbalanced people, and any of them might potentially doom you (or at least hurt you very badly) every time you step outside of your house.
Now, the chances of being attacked on any given day aren’t all that high, and in fact they’re getting lower all the time; furthermore, there are measures one can take to protect oneself which are vastly more effective than whining “but I shouldn’t have to defend myself!” or delegating the task to some paternalistic government which will almost certainly fail to do its job because the police can’t be everywhere at once. Oh, it’s certainly possible to make the police more effective simply by increasing their number and powers; however, that automatically restricts freedom at the same time, as Americans are discovering to their chagrin. The only way to ensure you don’t get attacked when you step outside your house is, unsurprisingly, not to step outside of your house…but that makes for a pretty boring existence, a rough approximation of that static Utopia I mentioned above. An infant in a playpen guarded by parents and a nanny 24 hours a day is about as safe as any human can be, but he can’t explore much of the world. And an insect sealed in amber is so well-protected it can exist changelessly for tens of millions of years…dead, of course, but one can’t have everything.
The internet is like a world of its own, with a nearly-infinite number of places to explore. And just like the real world, some of the people there aren’t very nice and some of the things one might find are unpleasant. Every time I drive to town I risk seeing dead animals on the highway or bumping into folks with extremely poor hygiene; the internet has its equivalents of these things, too. And just as in real life, the only sure way to be safe from attack or offense is to stay indoors, i.e. off of the internet. Yes, it’s possible to delegate the task to some paternalistic government which will almost certainly fail to do its job because the censors can’t stop everything; it’s also possible to make the filters more effective simply by increasing their number and powers, but (as I explained at length in Friday’s column) that automatically restricts freedom at the same time. See, the problem is that computers, like police, are incredibly stupid and literal-minded: both of them will always fail to do a lot of what they are intended to do, while simultaneously doing a lot of bad things they were not supposed to. And there is absolutely no way to stop this (in either case) because, as I said at the beginning, the world is neither perfect nor perfectible.
The only “fair and ethical” solution is the same for both the virtual world and the real one: every individual has to choose the balance of safety and freedom which is right for him, and refrain from trying to impose his choice upon others. If some woman wants to live in a sanitized bubble where she’s protected from rape and everything else (except by the guards, of course), that’s her choice, but I prefer to interact with others freely without Big Brother watching. If some man wants to shut himself off from physical human contact and restrict all of his interaction to the internet (where he cannot be physically harmed), bully for him; I prefer to risk getting sunburnt, stung or scarred. And if you choose to install readily-available internet filtering software and allow it to make the decisions about what you’re allowed to see, be my guest; just don’t expect me to accept it on my computer, or to pay for your voluntary narrowing of your own experience.
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
Sir Thomas More’s Utopia is a Greek word-play which can be translated either as “good place” or “not-place”. So, Utopia is a place or state or condition which is simultaneously ideal and idealistic, but which cannot be achieved.
Yep. That’s why I chose it as the title for this piece. 🙂
But your exposition is much more accessible than More’s. Sadly, so many people don’t recognise the inherent contradictions; the ideal is an impossible dream.
Oh, I don’t know.
You can always keep yourself entertained with the majority of assaults and homicides that take place in the home.
If anyone dares question you on this one, just refer them to me.
I resent that.
I never, in my two decades of IT contracting, wrote a program as dumb as a cop.
I hope Culturephile is grateful for your very comprehensive answer.
You may not have written one, but they ARE out there.
Well …
Here’s my problem. A lot of the people who make the “This can’t be Utopia” argument ONLY use that argument when it’s against some complaint that doesn’t bother them personally. For instance … “Eh, we can’t clean pron off the innernets so quitcherbitchin! There ain’t no setch thing as Utopia boy!”
But then some of those same people will turn around and advocate for the destruction of a government or … indeed – an entire civilization … simply because it’s not “perfect”.
Now – I am a complete dullard … but I’ll blow my horn on this one … I WALK THE TALK. Every problem I consider I look at as a compromise between what I WANT to do … and what I practically CAN do. It’s a fuckin’ exercise in intellect only (something I don’t have a lot of to spare) to dwell on solutions that will NEVER be implemented.
For instance … do I like GITMO? Hell no. But I have no clue what else to do with these idiots (aside from GAS them) … every other solution I’ve ever heard was “utopianistic” and didn’t consider the resulting consequences. My UTOPIAN solution is to simply GAS the bastards – but then I know a lot of people would get angry about that and it would be counterproductive in the end. So if you hear me advocating that – it’s only me performing a mental “jerk off” … I know we can’t do it.
I’m using that one only as an example – I can think of a thousand others.
You’ll hear a lot of people who’ll say you can’t implement Utopia on the internet – and then those same people will turn around and support some kind of Utopian ideal of “gun control”.
You’ll hear people complain about government abuses and then those same people will turn around and advocate some kind of Utopian ideal of Nationalized Health Care.
And the thought by some Libertarians that you can simply unilaterally implement libertarianism throughout the planet … based on some kind of “golden rule” is Utopianistic. There are bad guys out there – and if you don’t get in their face they will find you and get in yours. That’s the entire story of human civilization since it first began. Name me one civilization that was peaceful and didn’t interfere with it’s neighbors that … THRIVED. And “thrived” is the key word. Any civilization that is thriving and has abundant resources – either became an empire … or it was quickly absorbed by some other that wanted those resources.
This will never change.
Aren’t many people detained in Guantanamo without a trial or any proof whatsoever?
While I can accept (but not agree) with wanting to execute people properly convicted of horrible crimes (like blowing people up), I cannot accept wanting to execute people who might be innocent (at least of horrible crimes). Just because terrorists would trample our rights is no reason to trample those of suspected terrorists.
I’m not going to give the government a blanket pass on how it has conducted the wars under both this President and the last, but the older I get the less I like the idea of holding trials of POWs. It all goes back to the Nuremberg Trials … and I think they were a serious mistake. The idea that there existed a meta-government with jurisdiction over governments that had not voluntarily joined it, that it had the moral high ground, and that it included representatives of Joseph Stalin, is simply FULL of fail.
We should have stuck to collaring and clobbering the individuals we thought needed killing, on the basis of “When you lose a war, bad things happen to you”. Not as lofty sounding as “You have committed Crimes Against Humanity!”, but on MUCH firmer ground.
Without trial – yes, who cares? They aren’t subject to the constitution. Without proof? No.
Let’s not get into this argument – I was only using GITMO as an example of people and their Utopianistic beliefs.
If I am ever accused of any crime (especially the most serious ones that could lead to prison or execution) in the US (a foreign country from my perspective), I most certainly hope I can claim the right to a fair trial, just like I would expect you to be afforded that same claim in my country.
No one in GITMO is accused of any crime. They are accused of participating in asymetrical warfare against the United States.
If you steal a loaf of bread from WalMart in Buzzard’s Roost, Mississippi – you will get a trial.
If you pick up a gun in Afghanistan to fight American troops – you could end up in Gitmo.
Despite the fact that people have an obvious right to defend themselves against an invading army. Shooting or blowing up foreign soldiers on your soil isn’t a crime.
The bill of rights in your constitution isn’t a list of protection for american citizens, but a list of things that a government must not be allowed to do. Gassing people without a trial is one of them. It’s not for the protection of those terrible terrists at gitmo – it’s for the protection of everyone.
We don’t need to be protected from “terrorists”, any more than we need to be protected from lightning bolts; the chance of dying from the former is LOWER than that of dying from the latter. What we DO need is to be protected from those who claim they can “protect” us from terrorists by making 1984 a reality. The Constitution used top do that, until it was strangled while America ignored its cries.
So let’s reverse the trend using some common sense. But throwing the baby out with the bathwater is completely stupid. What’s the alternative? No one who’s for throwing the baby out the door wants to explain that part.
I beg to differ! The constitution never protected anyone but white rich people for the first hundred or so years of its existence.
I won’t pretend I know how the government should be run. I like things like patent laws and environmental protections (the functioning ones) and the FDA. I don’t like how most everything the government does is excessively waist-full and inefficient, sometimes even ineffectual, but I don’t want the government to have the power to be efficient because if it can be efficient at good thing like highway management and resource management, it can be efficient at bad things like extortion and oppression.
And in all fairness, that statistic is true in the united states, but definitely not in most other parts of the world. I don’t know if its because measures taken in the US are effective (which, in the wake of the Boston bombing this spring, I suspect is the case) but that’s a dangerous argument to make simply because just because something hasn’t happen, doesn’t mean it won’t. Besides, surge protectors and lightening rods are required by US building codes, which is pretty damn good protection from lightening.
I won’t say we shouldn’t scream and rave about the times when the government violates individual freedoms or makes colossal mistakes, but, its not actually bad at protecting people from things like rampart food poisoning and wide spread theft.
I would just like to point out here – that while Stalin’s government was inefficient at just about everything it did – it was crazy efficient in extortion and oppression. So was Castro’s … and … the Ayatollah Khomeini’s government.
And North Korea! They suck at everything but being super oppressive!
But, I would classify them as efficient governments because they are very efficient at governing their people into oppression and keeping them there.
In theory, though, efficient governments can use their efficiency for good or evil, and I don’t know how to make sure they only use their efficient powers for good when every efficient government in history (as far as I know, which admittedly very well could be wrong) has used its powers of efficiency for evil because power corrupts and stuff.
Generally, though, I think that inefficient government had its perks, especially in a two party system. When you have to opposites trying to do stuff, if they need to compromise to get stuff done, the only things that will get done are things that actually need to get done, which is fine with me.
Did I mention I’m bad at the whole politics thing?
krulac, Castro’s government is different from the US, isn’t it — extortion and oppression? Surely, the US doesn’t do that? Go and have a look, find out their view of the US. And don’t weasel out by saying that you’ll get your passport stamped — you won’t; or that you can’t get there — go via Mexico or Jamaica; it may be illegal for you, but think of that as a minor technical difficulty, nothing more. And, don’t say that there are no girls…!
Wut?!
I don’t understand.
I’m not allowed in Cuba! 🙁
Literally – I’m not. And not just because of the travel restriction. I’m not allowed in Russia, China (outside Hong Kong), Cuba, Venuzeula, or any Communist nation – and a few others who aren’t – like Pakistan, unless I’m there on official duty.
Plus I have a GPS chip embedded in my neck – and if I go to any of these places it will automatically detonate C4 pill explosive attached to the inside of one of my jugglars.
So I can’t speak for the Cuban “view” of America. Although … I COULD ask some Cuban refugees living in Florida what they think about America. But that’s the best I could do.
The guys who came from Cuba to Florida are probably the most motivated to leave the island, and they certainly believed they’d be better off. It would be interested how much reality differs from their expectation (though, like all humans, they’re likely to be biased in favor of confirming their decision).
Actually, lightening bolts with serious protection are still a _lot_ more dangerous than terrorists without any protection. Any sanely built house has a lightning conductor. Very rarely, lightening still does damage, but that is not news-worthy, as it is still too frequent for the news. The only thing that makes terrorism news-worthy, it that it is so extremely rare.
The ancient Andes civilization, by all accounts, thrived(definitely thrived) for hundreds of years in virtual isolation (they were isolated by their environment, mostly) before the Spanish massacred them. I think that counts, unless “quickly” is “less than a thousand years”. I’m sure there are other examples, but they would all be relatively small civilizations, because they would need isolation, and you would need to define thrive kinda loosely.
Okay … so you’re proving my point. The Andes dudes survived only because they were isolated. When they were discovered by others – they were wiped out and their resources taken.
Do you know of any major ISOLATED civilizations that exist today? I don’t either so it’s kind of an irrelevant point.
Of course not! If I knew about them, they would not be isolated! 🙂 hehehe
Honestly … I have no clue about the Andes civilizations but if you look up “Andes” in the Wikipedia the Inca’s are mentioned …
“Imperialistic Militarism” – so here again we see that the Inca’s thrived for the precise reasons I stated – because they were proactive militarists.
Ah, but only within the borders of their own culture. And while they can be defined as “imperialistic” and “militant” that’s only because every citizen was required to be in the army and they had an emperor. They actually hardly ever went to war, or even revolutionary uprisings. Most of the people they “concurred” were already culturally part of the empire, and they surrendered peacefully.
I just pointed out that such places could exist. You didn’t initially specify they couldn’t be isolated 😉
Well … how could we expect the Incas to “imperialistic” toward the Europeans when they neither had knowledge of, or the ability to REACH the Europeans?
I think it’s pretty safe to say – that had the Incas had the knowledge of Europe and the technology to reach it – and the technology to actually wage a winning fight against the Europeans – then they would have done so.
Pff, yeah. That’s how all people are! But, you know, they might have done it the American way, by cultural bombardment (Listen to our mind numbing and literally addicting pop music! Yay Hollywood! Yay English!)
Well … that’s true enough! 😀
Gomen ne sunao janakute
Yume no naka nara ieru
Shikou kairo wa shooto sunzen
Ima sugu aitai yo
Even here in the States, we know that other people around the world can produce some mighty addicting songs. I’d’ve used “Yellow Submarine” as an even more powerful example, but hey, it IS in English, so…
Nakitaku naru you na moonlight
Denwa mo dekinai midnight
Datte junjou doushiyou
Haato wa mangekyou
Many women, especially those who have been brainwashed by neofeminism, think they live in precisely that sort of bubble. They fall for the “you can do anything you want to” line.They’re coddled and pampered and sheltered, and when they take their first steps into the real world and it isn’t unicorns and rainbows, the prim shrieks of outrage can be heard ’round the world.
Camille Paglia wrote and spoke at length about this, before she went all Ralph Nader.
Judgy Bitch had a great post on this subject comparing the common sense advice given to tourists to avoid being victimized by crime, which no one thinks of as controversial, and how basically the same advice given to women is “blaming the victim.” Just because I leave my Ipad on the front seat of my unlocked car does not give anyone permission to steal it, but who will be surprised when it is and who wouldn’t tell how stupid I was for leaving it like that. As she says, the right question to ask is not “Are you asking for it,” but “Are you going to get it?”
http://judgybitch.com/2013/01/16/dont-want-to-get-robbed-on-holidays-dont-dress-as-a-tourist-and-some-other-advice/
Yes, I linked to that when she published it. Camille Paglia wrote about it in 1991, and I referred to that essay in my own column on the subject.
Just so. I LOVE JudgyBitch 🙂
The problem with that bitch’s line of thinking is that sex workers “are asking for it” because “they dress like whores”. Well yeah, they dress like whores because they are in fact, whores, and they are advertising for business.
They are advertising their bodies. They are advertising sex.
They are in fact “asking for” business. But they are not “asking for” being raped.
Absolutely, Sasha! I may have been raised bourgeoisie but I was still living in the city and had to deal with the realities of life. Then I also had an older brother (two, if I count my cousin who lived with us for a spell), who wasn’t going to let me grow up to be one of those women who were stupid about the world.
I was born and raised in Manhattan, in what was then an “emerging” formerly-minority neighborhood but is now too posh for all but the richest to afford (the Upper West Side). My last four years in NYC before I moved hemispheres, I lived in the Kingsbridge Heights neighborhood of the Bronx.
You should have seen the reactions on white folks’ faces when I mentioned this. They would say “The BRONX?!?! Aren’t you SCARED?!? Isn’t it DANGEROUS?!?” And they’d pronounce “Bronx” like “Mogadishu” or “Damascus”. They’d freak out even more when reminded that I was in the theatre biz, which often meant I’d travel home on the subway at midnight or later.
I’d say no, I’m not scared, because I was raised to have a realistic and healthy protectiveness toward my body. Be alert, don’t get distracted, and be hyper-aware of your surroundings. I spent 30 years in New York without being mugged or robbed once.
Yup. I am continually amazed by how many people don’t make simple yet brief eye contact as they walk down the street. I look everyone in the face. Not with intimidation but let’s face it, street crime isn’t nearly as “random” as the fluffy bunnies prefer to believe. Criminals go after people who never noticed them in the first place. I know I avoided a couple of instances where I could have been robbed or assaulted, simply because I turned around and looked someone in the face as I heard their footsteps rushing up behind me or noticed other shady movements. Once I made a show of stopping my walking, turning to the side, and saying, “Oh no, please, after you! You seem to be in a rush.” He crossed the street instead.
NICE! Well played, Aspasia. 😀
Even Superman can’t guarantee 100% protection, and he lives in a made up world.
And who in their right mind would want 100% protection. The only thing that can lead to is stagnation and terminal boredom.
Ok, she saw something she didn’t want to see… so turn it off. And what’s the harm? A momentary unpleasantness…
Big difference between that and rape.
You know, I’ve always argued that the problem with utopia is that people define it to narrowly. Honestly, if you open up the definition as “generally safe, generally happy, and generally improving for the better all the time”, living just about anywhere in the western world is damn close to a utopia, or perfect society. A fragile one, yeah, but…
Basically, I argue that a perfect society needs to be flawed in order to be perfect, and the flaws just need to be of the manageable “not [em]that[/em] bad” sort.
Thank you. Too often… nah, I’ll save that for a comment at the end.
But again, thank you.
Here’s a link that’s so appropriate I thought for a moment that I’d opened it from this page:
http://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-purp.html
It’s only marginally easier to block on the receiving end.
” I think an opt-in option for internet consumers who want to access porn is a good idea…for those of who do not opt-in, then those images will be nowhere on our screens. ”
Gotta say, I’m pretty suspicious of where this person was browsing. “I was looking for an article on human sexuality and it had explicit porn images,” hmm… this person wasn’t trying to illegally get a copy of a copyrighted article was he? Also, if you don’t want sexually explicit images, here’s an idea, don’t search for sex? Just spit-balling here…
It doesn’t matter though. A few years ago the Internet Troll brigade discovered the joys of shock porn. Essentially, this is porn that contains some unpleasant fetish that most people aren’t into, attached to a seemingly harmless link. Remembering that it’s about deliberately obscuring the fact that it’s a porn link, because the person wants to shock, disgust or offend the other person. So, they’d be working to fool the porn filter as well.
Also, significant amounts of porn on the Internet are in the form of illegal downloads, which deliberately try to hide because they are somebody else’s copyrighted content. Since they are hiding from people with a strong economic motivation to eliminate them already, I imagine they won’t have trouble fooling the opt-in filter.
The thing about porn is people don’t just not buy it because they are cheap. Sometimes they don’t want their possibly stigmatized sexual desires attached to a credit card record. so, are these people likely to opt-in? “I see you’ve opted in for porn, Mr. Wayland, well, we don’t want your sort working here!” On the other hand, downloading unlimited free porn from dodgy sites? “Mr. Wayland, you are just the sort of man we want working here.”
Opt-in is designed to harm the porn industry by neofeminists and their conservative allies who would prefer it not exist. Opt-out is already available (Google Safe-Search mode, for starters) but it won’t protect you from content really, if people want to push it on you.
Oh, ok, I read the comment now so I have a better idea of what was happening. That was a dodgy link:
“Here’s the thing no one tells you about sex: It changes. The same moves and tricks that brought you and your partner pleasure in your 20s and 30s aren’t necessarily going to work in your 50s and beyond (20 Aug 2013) […]”
Obvious scam, along the lines of “I made $27, 365.11 in one week working from home, let me teach you my secret” or “Four simple words that will turn any woman into a wanton, sex-crazed beast!” or “New York City bridges for sale, cheap!”
Now, I often complain that Websites I like will have, “You won’t believe these pictures of Miley Cyrus, if only her fans knew” type links. That’s not a porn problem, though, that’s an advertiser problem.
Re: the ‘Danger lurks around every corner!’ crowd, I read an interesting theory once (unfortunately, I cannot remember the source. I have a mind like a steel sieve):
Humans, especially human females, have a built-in ‘danger sense’ that dates back to our primate days, when we were all at risk of being eaten by the local tiger, bear, or rabid chipmunk. Some people had a stronger sense than others, and served a purpose as a sort of early warning system for the local group.
Unfortunately, evolution works at a much slower pace than human civilization, so we now have people whose ‘danger sense’ is way overactive given the actual risk. Therefore, they look for things to get worried about, be it child abductions, white slavery, liquor or drug consumption, or other moral panics. It’s a way of justifying the pulses still emanating from our little monkey brains.
Something to consider; I was exposed (at the tender age of 14 or so) to incredibly explicit pictures of human genetalia. (This was long before the Internet was more than a fevered dream.) Where did I encounter such disgusting (and I use the word advisedly; read on) images? Why, from old medical journals! My parents (who read anything and everything) were offered these journals from our family doctor, who had finished them and wanted them out of his office. So, I was reading about ‘diseases of the penis and vagina’ and being suitably horrified by the images provided to doctors for correctly diagnosing such ailments.
To properly protect Lois, we’d have to keep her in a completely enclosed and secured environment, and filter all sensory input. And this would have to be done by a third party, because since our innocent lacks knowledge and experience, they can’t properly judge what not to look out.
But in all fairy stories, eventually innocence is lost, and those who were trying to preserve it are usually presented as evil, or at least misguided. (Rapunzel, anyone?) Children grow up; people get to see things they’d rather have not.
Do not google “blue waffles”. I get the impression that it is a hoax, but don’t google it anyway.
You know that I’m a true daughter of Pandora, right? 🙁
It’s why the serpent chose to go with tempting Eve, rather than Adam.
And whatever you do, don’t go looking for information on the video game RapeLay. I’ll tell you whatever you need to know. Actually, I can’t tell you all that much, but that’s OK because I’ve decided on your behalf that you don’t need to know much. So there.
Your correspondent is EXACTLY the sort of person I dislike on censorship issues. They are so exercised by what they find on the Internet that they are willing to give up their right to access information to a censor, and if it stopped there, I wouldn’t really mind. But almost invariably, they want ME to give up MY right to access information to a censor as well. I guarantee you, as soon as any government agency has a list of those who’ve “opted in” for free access to information, they’ll also have a list of “the usual suspects.”
Indeed. I expect we are going to see that in th UK with if they implement the current “porn”-hysterics.
Also these people ignore all the other sources of disturbing news, like TV, papers, neighborhood gossip, etc. It is just “the Internet” that threatens them, and likely so because it is something new and they do not feel in control. Well, if so they should just stay in their cave.
“metaphysicians will tell you that there wouldn’t be much point in a perfect world because it would have to be wholly static, frozen in its perfection.”
Also a very fine argument against the existence of God, at least, one that wants things and does things.
I’ve always considered feminist/female complaints to be a form of projection.
Thanks for responding Maggie but this doesn’t address any of the points I made. As well the point about “utopia” is lost on me.
I come from a very long yogic and sankhya lineage and as with all the traditional Eastern (South Asian) wisdom traditions and schools of philosophies, we are well aware of the dualities of this phenomenal world, so there is not one iota utopia in my thinking.
I was veering more towards the practical. Such as charging porn clients for the products they seek.
Actually, it addresses all of them; you just don’t want to see it.
It doesn’t address my point about paying for a service at all. Nor the amusing suggestion of a particular commenter to pay for a service one does not want.
Nor about using the prospect of intellectual content as a means to get people to go to a hardcore porn site.
Rather than linking to faux content, better for the link to just say, “hardcore porn images here”.
I mean, I don’t get what that site would be afraid of. Those who are looking for hardcore porn images would immediately go there and those of us who were looking for genuine intellectual content would not.
Win/win for everybody.
🙂
So the rich can have porn but the poor cannot. Not because the poor can’t afford the pornography (the sort of thing which keeps the poor from owning large amounts of platinum), but because they can’t afford to buy off the censor (the sort of thing which keeps them from reading all those juicy banned books).
Also, see pww’s remarks above for why it won’t work. Not just why it’s wrong, but why it won’t do what you want it to do.
You’re right, Maggie, as you so often are. But unfortunately people often take this idea (we are unlikely to ever live in a perfect world, or even to decide what that would be) and run with it. Run all the way to “you can’t make things better.” I know you don’t think that way (there’d be little point in writing this blog if you did), but we have to watch out for those who do.
We can’t do anything about school shootings; there’s no Utopia you know!
Give up this silly idea of making things more fair! LIFE isn’t fair.* We don’t live in Utopia after all!!
And so on.
Please do keep up the good work; you are helping to make the world a better place. You won’t do it all by yourself, and you’re not making a perfect world, but a better one. And I like that.
* I’d really like to slap the next person who spits out that strawman. When is it EVER said to somebody who is trying to say that life IS fair? Never.
Opt-in is a terrible idea for freedoms.
A-frickin’-MEN!