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PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   32030 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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Let's assume that I am a woman, I depend on my beauty for my business, which is trading sex with men in exchange for their resources (either through an exclusive agreement usually called a "marriage", or more serially/casually).

When another woman distributes a naked picture of herself, or sells sex at a discount, it means I now receive less resources for the same amount of sex. Therefore, pornography and fornication are immediately and directly harmful to me, so they should be outlawed by the state.

It's never been remotely permissible as a theory of harm that "now I receive less resources for the same amount of X".

After Henry Ford, farriers received less for the same number of horseshoes. After Gutenberg, typesetters received far less for the same number of manuscripts copied.

The distinction between legitimate (and even laudatory) economic competition and unfair economic harm has never purely about raising or lower anyone's price or profit.

It's never been remotely permissible as a theory of harm that "now I receive less resources for the same amount of X".

Especially not in America where such people are typically deposited in the great unmarked grave of obsolescence historically.

Which is why we are collectively the richest nation in the history of nations.

It's never been remotely permissible as a theory of harm that "now I receive less resources for the same amount of X".

Unless you happen to come upon some political power. In fact, that is what it is for.

The distinction between legitimate (and even laudatory) economic competition and unfair economic harm has never purely about raising or lower anyone's price or profit.

Why? There is no fairness beyond a state of affairs which maximally advantages you and your immediate socioeconomic interests and believing in a concept of fairness outside of that is only useful insofar as it rewards you more than it does the other guy.

Parasitism is a valid evolutionary strategy.

Not sure if you're just not from a WEIRD country and this is foreign to your thinking, but it's in all our socioeconomic interests to impose rules of fair competition. And so we do so -- imperfectly as all human structures.

We all benefit from the automobile even if it puts the farrier out of business. Society doesn't let him block the car just because "it rewards the other guy more than him".

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