ControlsFreak
No bio...
User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
You skipped the best part: this is supposed to be what they mean by "safety". They gave away the game! Can it possibly be made more obvious that this political movement has co-opted the word "safety", which normally has the connotation of things like protection from physical violence, to mean "my political preferences about (non-)discrimination"? Is there any better way to point out the motte/bailey than to simply read people this section?
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Is there any method yet by which we can replicate RES's feature of being able to hide comments that we've read before? I really like TheMotte, but nearly every day I find myself thinking, "I'd like to go read TheMotte," then thinking, "Man, that would be such a time suck now that I can't have previously-read comments hidden." In particular, the main culture war thread is basically impossible without this feature.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Giving proper credit for genuine insight in science and tech is often completely broken. I wouldn't be surprised to see "secret issues" with nearly every name that is famous enough to be known to this forum.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Think threats and power differentials. Take a look at the history of why the 'secret ballot' is also called the 'Australian ballot'.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
So, when Australia was colonized by the Brits, they used it as a penal colony. Of course, they didn't go full Lord of the Flies with the convicts, but sent good, upstanding Brits to run the place and maintain good order. After serving out their sentences, many convicts did have the option of returning to Britain, but lots of them chose to stay. They were free citizens, but obviously, their jibs were cut a bit differently than the better class of good, upstanding Brits who were sent to run the place. The convicts were even free to run for elected office, and some even did. Yet somehow, confusingly, even as time went on and there were many more freed convicts than there were good, upstanding Brits, none of these convicts ever won any elections. Maybe everyone just realized that it was better if good, upstanding Brits continued running the place.
Other folks disagreed, and they managed to implement the 'Australian ballot', where each individual's vote would be totally, completely secret. Suddenly, magically, freed convicts began winning elections and were able to curtail some of the harshest abuses curious practices of the good, upstanding Brits.
There is a reason why people who are working on digital elections really care about a property known as "receipt freeness", that is, that there is no possible way that anyone possesses any information whatsoever which could be used as a receipt to prove how a person voted. The ideal would be for the government to be able to publicize an encrypted database which cannot in any way be used to demonstrate how any person voted, but that each individual can take with them a piece of information which can be combined with this database to verify that their vote was correctly counted (yet still not reveal how they voted).
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Different effects in different places. This is a vast country with lots of different local cultures. The example above shows how a local culture can produce very perverse results. We can eliminate any concern in any locale if we just take to heart the lessons of those who came before us and insist on a secret ballot.
If you had asked me 5-10 years ago how the history of freedom of the press (as in 'printing', not as in 'journalist') mattered at all in the internet era, I probably wouldn't have been able to predict what actually transpired in the following years. But I hope I would have thought that it was a hard-fought, good lesson that society learned in the past, so it shouldn't be trivially dismissed.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
This is a very common failure to think on the margin; it most typically shows up when people are discussing drug prohibition. Yes, we all agree that prohibiting drugs/CP/murder is not going to actually eliminate it. Some people are still going to find a way to get drugs/CP or to murder other people. These are known as "high-value users". There are some people who will go to extreme measures to get that next hit, get that next picture, or to kill that one bastard. They may do so even if we make the (potential) costs high. (Note that there are some differences in effect of increasing direct costs vs potential costs, though legal sanctions can affect both.)
You may personally be a high-value CP user. We have high-value drug users in these threads. I don't know that we've had high-value murderers in these threads, but they do exist. We may not be successful in dissuading you from pursuing what you value so highly. We may or may not catch you and actually impose the potential costs. The societal value of making such laws does not hinge on that. This has been known for centuries.
Setting aside the other possible justifications for punishing you, specifically, there is societal value in increasing the costs for others, who might have a somewhat lower-value on the behavior than you do, perhaps to the point that they simply choose not to engage in the behavior. This comes in the form of people thinking, "Yeah, I kinda like kids, but do I really want to go to all the trouble of figuring out these VPNs, cryptocurrencies, etc., and then still run the risk of getting caught? Probably not," or, "Yeah, I kinda like drugs, but do I really want to go to all the trouble to deal with the criminal culture, pay high prices, and still run the risk of getting caught or getting an adulterated product that may kill me? I guess I'll just drink some whisky," or, "Yeah, I super super hate this guy, and if anyone ought to get killed, it's him, but do I really want to go through the trouble of trying to plan out how to do it without getting trivially caught, yet still run the risk of something going wrong and ending up behind bars for the rest of my life? Probably not."
Some people will ask themselves those questions and answer, "Yes, absolutely," instead of, "Probably not." But in the meantime, we'll have a lot less CP, a lot less drug usage, and a lot less murder. For the few of you who go ahead and do it, we can figure out what mix of the other justifications for punishment will be most beneficial to you and society.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Isn't the availability of fictional sexualized content of children like lolicon one of the methods you speak of to increase costs of CP consumption (as it's less justifiable and thus more costly to pursue it at risk if there's a semi-decent substitute with far less risk attached)?
There's no economic argument for how it would increase the cost of CP consumption. It simply lessens the cost of something that some might consider a substitute.
In any event, another thing about drug prohibition is that science/society has basically no clue what actually causes the transition to being an addict (which usually comes with many harms, to oneself and others). Obviously, we know that if you never try a drug, you don't become an addict. Some portion of folks who try don't become addicted, but some portion does (this can happen via an intermediate, legal drug, too, like prescription opioids). Best as we can tell, it's pretty much a Poisson process. That means that it scales with the number of people who start using. Also, once a person transitions to being an addict, it seems that we have basically no clue how to rehabilitate them. (See Scott's old old old post about how abysmal rehab programs are.) There is a very reasonable end conclusion that we should simply reduce the number of initial users. It just seems implausible that we could flood the market with cheap, legal opioids and somehow not cause some folks to get addicted.
Similarly, lots of folks find it pretty implausible that we can flood the market with cheap fake child porn and not cause some number of people, who wouldn't have ever even started wanking down that path, to end up abusing kids.
IF we could just isolate people who were already going to consume CP and, in a targeted fashion, with no spillover effects, provide fake CP as a substitute, then sure, that'd be a plausible thing to try. That would be the like, "Give people methadone at rehab," kind of solution, not the, "Give out prescription opioids like candy to the masses," kind of solution.
Almost all CP is distributed freely so you would almost never have to figure this out unless you want really new/rare/etc. stuff.
I would be interested to know more about how this works. Seems like great risk to share, and so folks would want something in return. The indictments I have read support this, as most sites in those indictments make access contingent on regularly uploading fresh content.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
If competitor A lowers its price from $10 to $5, then competitor B still at $10 costs more (again relatively, but that's how people reason) even though it hasn't changed its price at all.
No. This is econ 101. In fact, in the most simplistic case of substitutes, the price of B actually goes down. There is literally no sense in which its price goes up. ("Relatively" doesn't count.)
if there were more widespread distribution of (fake or otherwise) positive/indulgent depictions of the brutal murder of puppies, do you think people would:
A. be horrified or at least strongly disapprove of it, no matter how long this campaign went on.
B. be slowly convinced via exposure that maybe murdering puppies might be fun.
You present this as if it would be an advertising campaign. That probably wouldn't work, but that's not how it would work, anyway. What would work is slowly normalizing it through the marginal people. The ones who are already a little off, a little predisposed to violence and weird, twisted shit. And if you forcibly make the people who want to shut that down desist (while simultaneously running a propaganda campaign in universities about how we should maybe be more sensitive to the reasonable needs of such people), then you're brewing a recipe for disaster.
So yeah, if we flood the market with cheap puppy murder, we're going to get more puppy murder. Some people will obviously be horrified, but so long as your propaganda campaign can at least prevent them from taking political action against the flood of cheap puppy murder, we're gonna get more puppy murder. I don't understand how else you can possibly think this would work.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
So if Wendy's halves its prices, then the relative cost of choosing McDonald's instead doesn't go up?
"Relative" doesn't count. The cost of McDonald's stays the same or possibly goes down in response.
I'm not sure what "econ 101" you took (certainly not the same as mine)
Did you literally just skip the part of the course on substitute goods?
it has zero relevance to how people actually behave in the real world.
"Igneous rocks are fucking bullshit." It always surprises me to see that people willingly choose to just deny the mathematics of economics when it conflicts with their political commitments. It probably shouldn't, but it still does.
If both taboos are equally ripe for normalization
Who claimed this? I didn't.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
The relative cost
What happens to the actual cost?
original point of the analogy "McDonald's" actually represents real child porn here, which is legally incapable of lowering its "cost/price" (in terms of risk etc.) on its own initiative
This is not true. There are a whole host of things that can be done. Not least of which is to frustrate legal sanctions through the difficulty of distinguishing real from fake.
Who claimed this? I didn't.
To me, you seemed to be claiming it. In any case I'm glad we agree then.
Making up a position that I never claimed and then seeing that I don't claim it does not imply that we agree.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
What happens to the "actual" (that is, nominal/explicit) cost/price of something in the case of 5000000000% inflation?
I mean, if you want to posit a completely different scenario than one where the cost of a substitute good is decreased, we could ask that question and try to find an answer. There may or may not be one, and it may be either direction or zero, but it's not going to be relevant for the question at hand. IN THIS DISCUSSION, we're talking about a scenario where the cost of a substitute good is decreased. What happens to the actual cost of the good?
There is a very basic, very clear economics answer to this question, squarely within the domain of proper economic scholarship. Why are you simply avoiding addressing the relevant question?
The PROTECT Act of 2003
Sure. You're proposing that we institute a new policy regime, which likely would have impacts to the viability of such things.
Well I'm afraid you may have to restate your position then.
You can reread my comments if you'd like. Right now, I'm just trying to get a simple economics answer to a simple economics question. You confused yourself by going off on some random tangent about some random claim that you made up and which I never made.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Why do you refuse to admit that the absolute is not as relevant as the relative?
Because I have a point about absolute that we can't get to, because you keep avoiding acknowledging basic economic facts.
I've already admitted the absolute value doesn't change many times
Have you acknowledged that it either doesn't change or goes down? In fact, it almost always goes down. Just admit this painfully obviously true tiny little fact about economics, and we can move on.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Whelp, if child porn is magically immune to economics, then we're probably not going to get very far. This is a very common failure mode for people; it happens a lot in drug prohibition discussions, too. (It does undercut your claim that we can analyze the outcome through first-order substitute goods/relative price analysis, though.)
In any event, I think we're pretty much done here. We've found the root of the disagreement. You think CP is immune to economics; I don't. There's probably not much more to say. I mean, I suppose I could say that I think I'm right. Lots of academic economists have very successfully applied traditional economic principles to a variety of black market goods, things that don't have a Black Market Goods Inc. engaging in free market competition. I find those works often persuasive.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
the real extra "cost" of child porn above eroticized content of fictional children like lolicon is actually its illegality/extra taboo/difficulty to access, which no creator of child porn can simply alter or abolish in order to try to "compete" with substitutes (like a producer of normal goods might simply lower actual prices).
Lots of academic economists have very successfully applied traditional economic principles to a variety of black market goods, things that don't have a Black Market Goods Inc. engaging in free market competition. I find those works often persuasive.
If it were simply a matter of actually lowering actual prices (which it's not because in reality both almost all lolicon and all real child porn are already distributed entirely for free)
Costs to consumers are not identical to a dollar figure charged.
there are many standard economic analyses of illegal goods like drugs, illegal guns, etc., but unfortunately those fall apart in the case of child porn as it's a purely non-physical good.
And apparently, all non-physical goods are now immune to economic analysis. Wow.
The part where the real thing changes its absolute cost/price ... in response to any of this doesn't happen ..., because that cost/price is imposed by policy...
Yeah, costs that are attempted to be imposed by policy are not magically immune from affecting the cost borne by different parties in different ways when markets shift. It's this type of reasoning that makes people think, "Just put a price cap/floor on it! That'll fix everything by... fixing the price... imposing it by policy. Supply and demand won't matter anymore, and there will be no adjustment in the market!" It doesn't work like this, here or with any other black market good.
the root of our disagreement is not that I believe that anything is immune from economic analysis
Then why have you again provided another attemped reason for why it's immune from economic analysis?
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
they also tend to incorporate a policy-oriented lens such as public choice theory....
When analyzing things like how policy is made, sure. We're asking questions about prices/quantities, given some results of those things. This is a commonly done thing for many black-market goods.
you can't apply the same economic analyses that you would apply to physical goods to non-physical goods, which is absolutely true. You wouldn't download an illegal silencer.
Correct-ish. You do actually apply the same economic analysis. There are just some quantities in there that are different (MC=0 is the main one). Economists didn't just quit and go home ("Guess we can't perform economic analysis anymore") after the digital revolution happened. They analyzed the new situations, using pretty much the same tools.
I don't actually think there are any good economic analyses of them (that I'm aware of) because in most cases just learning about them (by observing their circulation in action)
That would be econometric (which, frankly, doesn't even require physical possession, if you design your study well). We can still apply basic economic theory to make predictions without observing literal child porn. You were trying to do this at one point, too... before you decided that CP was immune to economics.
If you can find me the work of an economist, sociologist, or some other academic who has actually personally violated child porn law
Not needed; as above. I'm not going to go look for it now, because it's not worth it for an economics-denier (you'll find some reason to deny it), but on related scores, I'm 100% confident that I've seen economic analysis (and econometric analysis) of illegal drugs and guns, without any academic personally violating gun/drug laws. There is zero reason, in principle, why an academic could not for example partner up with NCMEC to get access to decent-quality data without personally violating any laws.
I simply pointed out which form of economic analysis is applicable
No, you just baldly asserted that one thing (that you like) is applicable, but literally the rest of economics is magically inapplicable. You have not reasoned for it.
Anyway you are back to being obtuse, intentionally ignoring the main thrusts of my argument while snarking at snippets taken out of context to imply they express something that they don't. You do realize that this behavior is just making it more and more transparent that you don't have much of a real point and just want to argue to argue, right?
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
That is a gross mischaracterization of what I said. I didn't claim that it exists. I said that I wasn't going to look, which implies that I don't actually know whether it exists. Then, I gave reasons why I wasn't going to look for your specific demand, one that involves an academic breaking the law, for two reasons. 1) I've 100% seen economic analysis done on other illegal products without breaking the law (which should be sufficient, but doesn't meet your stupid criteria), and 2) Your stupid criteria is stupid, because in principle, there is no reason why such work could be done without breaking the law. But you have this stupid criteria that they must break the law, so there would be no point in me wasting time finding something, anyway (because you would reject it, since they didn't break the law).
Feel free to come back in the future anytime you want to have non-stupid criteria and actually discuss economics of child porn rather than just baldly asserting that economics magically doesn't apply unless an academic broke the law.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
here's a quiz to help you choose a denomination
Man, I knew this was going to be funny, but we didn't even get past the first question.
The One True God is Triune.
(God is three people in one God)
.
Yes, God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
or
No, only God the Father is really God, Jesus is created.
No other options. Fantastic.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Your suggestion to just get information from the NCMEC is hopelessly naive too. Are you going to ask the National Center Against the Exploitation of Illegal and Harmful Drugs for objective data to analyze that market next too?
The only two options are, "Believe everything said by one of the organizations," or, "Don't even bother trying." Brilliant. If only we had the ability to work to acquire a source of data and then not be stupid about how we analyze it...
If I'm an economist and tell people I'm researching the economics of heroin or something the response will probably be something like "Heh, cool. Drugs are fun." If I tell them I'm researching child pornography, that immediately shifts the whole mood in the room.
Sure, this would be relevant for whether someone actually has done econometrics. Not at all relevant for whether basic economic reasoning is applicable to the product. You had started off trying to apply basic economic reasoning to the product, before changing course and deciding that all economic reasoning is inapplicable (except the one you did).
That you refuse to acknowledge it at all
Try again, maybe? I mean, I've ignored a lot of the total garbage you've been spewing; maybe I missed a nice, defensible motte in your comments.
I accept your admitted inability to refute my central point
You're funny. Please, try to state your central point. It would be nice if your central point didn't include, "...and therefore, child porn is immune to economics."
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Ah yes, a parenthetical in the middle of a paragraph that is mostly parentheticals (some nested!) is your central point. Right then.
Let me see if I can summarize your four paragraph 'basic logic'.
-
Child porn is illegal. Fake child porn isn't.
-
Economic reasoning can be applied to child porn and fake child porn. They are both goods and are to some degree considered substitutes, so the economic reasoning of substitute goods applies.
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Restating that the economic reasoning of substitute goods applies.
-
Suddenly, economic reasoning of substitute goods doesn't apply, because... parentheticals. Um, I guess economic reasoning of substitute goods doesn't apply, because there is a public policy regarding these goods?
Is that about right?
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Ok, so all of the academic economics work I've seen on other goods that have government policies which distort natural incentives... is wrong?
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Let's imagine thus that we're now in a classic substitute goods situation and CP producers are in fact looking to lower "costs" (again, not monetary).
I did not make a claim/ask a question about producer costs. I asked about the price.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Let me try to get at your central point then: You assert that my claim that current policy prevents producers of actual CP from just lowering their "costs" (which again aren't in monetary terms but rather hassle, legal risk, etc.) like would happen in a normal substitute goods situation means that I'm claiming that economics doesn't apply to CP production.
.
Let's imagine thus that we're now in a classic substitute goods situation and CP producers are in fact looking to lower "costs" (again, not monetary).
.
Keep in mind that this is an "industry"...
.
If me saying that there is no way for them reasonably lower costs as would happen in a classical situation absent incentive-distorting policy is, according to you, economic denialism, then... how do they lower costs?
.
Imagine you're now a hypothetical CP producer. Since as we all know substitute goods situations inherently create at least an incentive/tendency for the more expensive product to lower its "cost"/"price" .... then you're of course ... lowering costs.
What'll it be then? How do you [a CP producer] get it [lowering your costs] done, since policy doesn't matter?
Where exactly is it "clearly explained that "costs" in that context refers to costs to the consumer"?
You need to take a reality pill about your own quality of communication. I'll come back and make another comment about the substance at my leisure (maybe faster if I see that you've taken a realistic reassessment of what's gone down here and changed your tone a bit).
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
How do you lower the ""price"/"cost" to the consumer of your product being illegal, heavily taboo, and difficult to access?
Depends on what the price structure actually looks like to consumers. There are different consumers here, of course. Some "pay" by producing their own fresh content. Others pay via literal cryptocurrency. Others pay by running the risk of downloading malware. Others pay in time by jumping through hoops, either in digital land or in physical land. Others pay by the level of risk involved of possible prosecution. Others pay by providing reputation.
There are likely others, but I am kinda busy today. in any event, each of these things can be reduced.
"Don't destroy the price signal in order to transfer incomes."
It's vastly more beneficial to simply directly subsidize the education of mentally and physically disabled children while letting choice make things better for everyone else than to hobble the system for everyone.
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