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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.
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.
Lessening the cost of a (partial) substitute is essentially the inverse of/same as raising the (relative, which is always relative) cost of its competitor. 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.
I don't think this opioid analogy works at all. The widespread distribution of opioids is dangerous because a response to them is universally built into the human brain. They don't become dangerous because they're widespread and your brain doesn't get "propagandized" or incentivized via a mere exposure effect/bias into liking them; they simply are effective because they directly target basic human neurology. You can not know what an opioid is at all and still be affected by it. You can think it looks dumb, smells dumb, whatever, and still be affected by it. It's not like media exposure.
Let me ask you, 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 could also use (literally) eating shit, being castrated, and any other fully unpleasant phenomenon as an example to plug in to the same formula.)
I think the answer is obviously A. Media becomes/is widespread (in the absence of exogenous manipulation) fundamentally because it appeals to inherent preferences, not because it alters them via being more and more widespread itself in a cyclical effect. (I think it can do this especially in the immediate to some degree, but the effects are indirect and obviously limited based on the example. I wrote some other replies on this that might elaborate more.)
That is, nobody is ever worried that depictions of animal violence are going to suddenly explode in popularity and cause a wave of animal cruelty. Why is this? It seems pretty clear to me that it's because we all know there's not really any widespread desire in the general population to randomly do innocent animals harm that is just waiting to be unlocked. So why would we be worried about sexual depictions of minors if, like those who commit animal cruelty, those who are attracted to them are only a small, sick, and twisted minority...? The implication is obvious: they're not.
And given that, perhaps instead of trying to offload the issue into a matter of exposure (which is obviously an artificial excuse given the above puppy murder example), we should reckon with the clear, strong, and inherent preferences of the general population that are subtly revealed by our own fear of them. That is, we should stop living in fantasy land and address the underlying issue, which is why I think your whole point is really orthogonal to the truth because it is based in a fundamental self-deception.
Mostly how you works is that you sign up to a forum (with a username, password, maybe a fake e-mail address (if the admins are too lazy to find out how to disable this requirement in their forum software)) using standard forum software and there it all is in various categories/threads (uploaded to Javascript-free filehosters that tend to take it down, so it may not all actually be there, but the latest posted stuff usually is). It's pretty simple once you get on Tor and find the URLs (the hardest part, though you only need to find one directory URL that links everything else). You're not getting the absolute newest or rarest stuff this way usually but with a decades-long history of content there's plenty on offer.
It's not much of a risk (legally a bit more sure, but that only applies if you get caught) unless you're the one in it. If you're anonymizing your connection, then uploading is no different than downloading (that is, there's no technically reason to believe that one is more easily detectable).
Some sites do this, or have subsections accessible only for consistent uploaders and/or producers, and my explanation for this being more common in indictments is that those who regularly upload "fresh content" (that is, in many cases content potentially containing identifiable information about themselves) are far more likely to get caught.
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.)
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.
So if Wendy's halves its prices, then the relative cost of choosing McDonald's instead doesn't go up? If paper towel brand A halves its price, there is no increase in the cost, psychological, opportunity, however you want to frame it, of buying paper towel brand B at the same old price of both instead?
I'm not sure what "econ 101" you took (certainly not the same as mine) but it has zero relevance to how people actually behave in the real world. Or economics for that matter. Economics is all about resource allocation, which is all about behavior, which means relative comparisons always matter. Denying this is about the same as denying that the sky is blue.
I don't believe this, or at least I don't believe it will work equivalently. As I pointed out in another comment:
If both taboos are equally ripe for normalization in the same fashion, then how do you explain the disparity in their "natural" popularity?
"Relative" doesn't count. The cost of McDonald's stays the same or possibly goes down in response.
Did you literally just skip the part of the course on substitute goods?
"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.
Who claimed this? I didn't.
The relative cost (as in to the consumer)/price does not stay the same, as it is, well, relative and thus incapable of staying the same in relation to another changing quantity (that is, changes in relative comparisons here are not consensually initiated, same as in every other area). McDonald's does quite potentially have a natural incentive to lower their own prices as a result, but it is not a part of the hypothetical that it does. (Keep in mind that in the 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.)
Did you? I mean there are dozens of ways I could phrase what you're blatantly wrong about in econ 101 terms: that McDonald's and Wendy's share a cross-price elasticity which means that the price of one naturally affects the demand of the other, that Wendy's lowering its price means that the opportunity cost of eating at McDonald's has gone up and the marginal utility of each dollar spent at Wendy's has also gone up, etc., but there's not really any point to that, since, again, it's basic logic, and also basic economics, that a reduction in price increases the quantity demanded.
Relative cost/price is just one way of recognizing this effect in relation to competitors (which again is barely even economic in character as relative comparisons are, also again, basic matters of logical and quantitative analysis that even Fat Tony understands when he does his grocery shopping). (So if I have stated the case previously in less economic terms that seem to superficially contradict the previous, it is only because such a basic issue quite frankly does not require the application of economic reasoning to be resolved.)
I normally simply link Wikipedia articles here to go "Remember this thing?" as opposed to actually recommending them for reading, but I think you might be genuinely served by reading this Wikipedia article as you seem to severely misunderstand the concept.
Or maybe this graph can explain:
Is that clear enough?
This would be a fine remark if what you were saying here wasn't actually what blatantly denied the "mathematics of economics". I will definitely await you finding an economist to endorse your quite frankly bizarre perspective that ratios (which I always considered a pretty well-accepted and established expressions of quantity, self-proving as they are) either don't exist or somehow magically aren't relevant to the consumer optimization that helps generate demand curves, but I have a feeling that I will be waiting a long time.
But yes, it surprises me too, especially on a forum like this, especially when there doesn't seem to be much of a rhetorical point other than... illogic? Innumeracy? I'm genuinely not trying to be uncharitable but I don't know how else to characterize your denial of basic a priori reality here. Seriously, what's going on big guy? How did you develop this odd misconception that prices cannot be compared relatively or that the comparison is behaviorally/economically meaningless and that this is all in fact somehow backed up by academic economics? Who managed to convince you that relative comparison is irrelevant to economics, and what was their reasoning? I'm genuinely curious. Perhaps I'm being trolled? Or you were? Those aren't rhetorical questions. I seriously don't know.
To me, you seemed to be claiming it. In any case I'm glad we agree then.
What happens to the actual cost?
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.
Making up a position that I never claimed and then seeing that I don't claim it does not imply that we agree.
What happens to the "actual" (that is, nominal/explicit) cost/price of something in the case of 5000000000% inflation? Nothing, in the case that it isn't explicitly changed. So inflation don't real either right? $10 is $10. After all, calculating inflation is just a relative comparison between the general price levels of two different time periods. And, as you've made it clear, relative doesn't count.
See how silly and very much so not like proper economic scholarship this all sounds?
The PROTECT Act of 2003 already makes fake content that would qualify as child pornography if it were real but is also "virtually indistinguishable" from real content just as illegal. (I think this is foolish and self-defeating as artificially generated child pornography that is indistinguishable from the real thing would almost certainly quickly out-compete and destroy almost all of the real thing, particularly new production of it, but oh well. Policymakers gonna make bad policy.)
Well I'm afraid you may have to restate your position then.
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.
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Only few hundred years ago, animal cruelty was universally popular pastime. Burning cats alive was public entertainment and clubbing small animals to death was wholesome family fun for royalty and aristocracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat-burning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_tossing
Maybe your idea of human nature needs updating?
You have a good point. It was not my intention to say that animal cruelty is completely outside of the realm of human nature.
And yet my point also holds true. Animal cruelty videos abound online, yet very few people seem to be worried that they're going to erase, alter, or blur the taboo about it or "unlock" something in people that makes them find it appealing again. (And I still stand by the notion that this common wisdom is correct. After all, animal cruelty videos are probably less popular online than sexualized content of minors despite more legal and accessible. If it is really in human nature to find cruel animal deaths family fun, then why aren't people having fun with the greatest compendium of them in existence?) Yet a lot of people seem very worried about that in regards to sexualization of minors. It seems to me like one taboo is "harder" than the other.
My theory to explain this is that the evolution of the taboo against animal cruelty came with the gradual acceptance of the reality that animals are equivalently sentient (but not sapient) to humans, can feel pain, etc. (if you recall, even thinkers as prominent as Descartes used to completely reject that notion not too distantly in the past) and that people pretty much actually fully believe that. I think it's also that people may have found it fun, but weren't particularly tempted to do it on a raw, biological level, making it a lot easier to give it up.
So basically while it was perfectly within the Average Joe's nature to sadistically (not that they thought it was) torture animals because it produced visually amusing reactions in them, it stopped being so once they realized that their reactions of pain were not simply mechanistic reflexes but actually the same kind of pain they themselves might experience (since your average person I don't think is much of an inherent sadist/sociopath). You can see this in how people pretty much still have no problem stomping insects vigorously because most people do not believe on an empirical basis that they are capable of feeling pain like humans and more complex animals.
(This is similarly to how medical professionals used to not provide anesthesia for babies because they thought they didn't feel pain. Do you imagine that parents sanctioning the torture of their own offspring is common in our nature or that they legitimately just believed that?)
With minor sexualization etc. it seems to me like it must be the opposite then. People must not really fully believe that much in the nebulous collection of beliefs that supposedly puts minors beyond sexual availability (even and especially since they themselves regularly ignore this and try to make themselves sexually available, including to adults), and they do have a biological urge for it which makes it harder to just give it up than casual animal cruelty.
So I do think your point in fact overall supports mine, given the divergent ways that the two taboos have developed.
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