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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?
Sure. You're proposing that we institute a new policy regime, which likely would have impacts to the viability of such things.
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.
Why do you refuse to admit that the absolute is not as relevant as the relative? It's a basic principle of human behavior. (I've already admitted the absolute value doesn't change many times... but it doesn't really matter because that was never really related to my point.)
As charitably and nicely as possible, I'm afraid at this point I can only see you as being deliberately obtuse and will have to discontinue this conversation if you can't change course because I don't think we're getting anywhere.
I provided you with multiple economics resources to accomplish that for you. Enjoy.
Because I have a point about absolute that we can't get to, because you keep avoiding acknowledging basic economic facts.
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.
Yes, there is an incentive for it to be lowered, as I've also already acknowledged. Of course that applies to actual McDonald's in the hypothetical scenario, but not to child porn, as there is not some Real Child Porn Inc. engaging in free market competition where it isn't subject to its products being illegal.
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.
It's definitely not "magically immune to economics". You just seem to have become so obsessed with the inexact economic analogy being debated that you forgot that we weren't actually even talking primarily about economics here but rather policy and sociology (which you can apply economic reasoning to via public/social choice theory, something I'm a fan of per my flair, but it's still not pure economics and thus naive applications of economic theory won't produce correct results).
The only reason child porn is seemingly "immune" to "economics" here is because contrary to the analogy (which is purely economic only analogically) about 100% legal fast food, 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).
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), then you'd have a point here, but you don't because the "price" in this case is actually a legal risk that isn't subject to purely standard economic analysis. (Again, you can of course analyze the effects of policy on incentives/behavior using economic analysis, as public choice theorists do all the time, but you seem to want to ignore both the policy and the necessary academic lens here.)
And of course 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. (As far as I can tell based on the example of CP, conventional markets based entirely in the sale of intellectual property, especially when as much producer and consumer anonymity as possible is necessary, can't function healthily/really exist at all without government willingness to enforce claims of exclusivity like copyrights, etc. as data is just too easy to replicate and thus allow 99% of consumers to avoid paying for it (unless you have something like cryptocurrency which technologically enforces non-replication, but that obviously doesn't work (at least so far) with purely sensory data as opposed to cryptographically-authenticated claims).)
They also especially fall apart here because we're comparing policies, not products.
Yes, it all undercuts your claim of this (or if you think you're at the second-order, then it undercuts that).
Let's go back to basic logic here:
Fictional, eroticized depictions of minors and actual child porn are both taboo and difficult to access to some degree, but (in the US at least) only the latter is illegal and it's also far more taboo and far more difficult to access.
Because they both are to a degree substitutes for each other, and because the cost/price in terms of difficulty/risk/etc. of acquisition of the fictional stuff is much lower, many people who would otherwise turn to child porn thus turn to the fictional stuff instead.
The more difficult to access/taboo the fictional stuff becomes, the less of a difference of cost/price there becomes between it and the real thing, thus lowering the relative cost/price of the real thing (or, inversely as I've been stating, raising its relative cost/price should the fictional stuff be less taboo and inaccessible). This reduces the incentive to prefer the fictional stuff over the real thing (lower price = higher quantity demanded), which people who strongly care about lowering consumption of the real thing should be worried about. (All of this except maybe the last clause of the last sentence is indisputably true, again based on basic logic.)
The part where the real thing changes its absolute cost/price (as it might do if we were actually talking about standard substitute goods offered by standard economic competitors, black market or not, which we're not (as they're two different categories of product affected by different policies (which is what we're actually comparing), not producers)) in response to any of this doesn't happen (so ironically the central point you've been hammering on this whole time actually supports mine), because that cost/price is imposed by policy that is specifically intended to curtail it. (This is not any "immunity" to economic analysis, just recognizing that comparative analyses of policies (which are inherently enforced monopolistically within their jurisdiction) and comparative analyses of standard economic agents in a free market do not work in the same way.)
So no, the root of our disagreement is not that I believe that anything is immune from economic analysis. The root of our disagreement is that you pushed an irrelevant rhetorical point so hard that you got lost in an inexact analogy and forgot (or perhaps never properly understood, can't say which) what kind of economic analysis (the economic analysis of policy, that is again public/social choice theory or something like it) is necessary to apply. Hopefully this clears things up.
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.
Costs to consumers are not identical to a dollar figure charged.
And apparently, all non-physical goods are now immune to economic analysis. Wow.
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.
Then why have you again provided another attemped reason for why it's immune from economic analysis?
Already responded to this. (Protip: When "lots of academic economists" analyze policies in the realm of traditional black market goods such as drugs, illegal guns, etc., they also tend to incorporate a policy-oriented lens such as public choice theory, political economy, policy analysis, economic sociology, etc. and not simply apply some naive view where they are purely analyzing goods, black market or not,... because they're not.)
Yes, and that's why our argument involving any dollar figures such as the price of a McDonald's cheeseburger was purely based on an inexact analogy in the first place (as seems to have confused you), which I've mentioned many times.
Nothing in the lines quoted implies that. They do imply that 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.
As for illegal non-physical goods like child porn though, 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) tends to be illegal in itself (due to child pornography-related offenses being strict liability), and most academic economics aren't going to risk imprisonment just to analyze something that nobody wants an analysis more surface-level than the pure demonization of anyway. That is, you tend to not get good analysis when observation is illegal.
If you can find me the work of an economist, sociologist, or some other academic who has actually personally violated child porn law to visit child porn sites/chats/etc. and neutrally observe their workings though, I'd be interested in reading it, and we can readily incorporate it into this discussion. Until then you're just blowing smoke about "Lots of academic economists"... studying an entirely different subject.
...Yes? That's the whole point of my "Let's go back to basic logic here." analysis (which I noticed you must be incapable of refuting because you didn't actually respond to it at all).
I didn't. I simply pointed out which form of economic analysis is applicable, and unfortunately for your apparent maximum level of economic education it is not econ 101.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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