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"It exists and proves that I'm right but I'm not going to show it to you because the fact that you don't already agree that it proves me right makes you an economics-denier." Sorry, but I have much better and smarter (including the girl who will be cooking my dinner) things to focus on this Thanksgiving. Feel free to talk to me in the future when you are willing to make an actual point.
That is, to be as charitable as possible, I will remind you that this is what you're supposed to be directly refuting, without reference to any of the other bizarre and irrelevant tangents you've become obsessed with over the course of our conversation:
This has been my essential argument since the beginning of my participation in this subthread, even before replying to you. If you can't refute it, then everything else you're saying is nothing but a mere three ring circus of avoiding the core of the discussion.
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.
This is, as I already explained, because information about other illegal products in and of itself generally doesn't run the risk of getting your house raided by a SWAT team. If I'm an economist, I can freely browse the dark web and look up anything I want directly on any dark market site about the drugs, guns, etc. available for purchase. It's only attempting to buy or sell that's gong to get me in trouble.
Meanwhile, from the moment I visit a URL of a CP forum in my browser, the immediate view presented to me of it is quite likely to display illegal content/CP directly itself (you wouldn't know because you're speaking out your ass about something you have zero knowledge of, but this is often integrated directly into the CSS, custom CAPTCHAs, or other front page/index elements of such sites), the viewing of which means I've already quite likely broken the law. (You could try using a browser extension that doesn't load and/or display images on your end (though then you couldn't get past the CAPTCHAs easily), but how are you going to prove that you had it active at the time to any police who come knocking? Are economists going to become experts in some sort of complicated verifiable computation cryptography schemes to prove they were visiting CP sites but couldn't be looking at the actual contents? I doubt it.)
And if the site has been compromised by a NIT (look that up), it is probably on that front page/index/etc. of that site ready to hijack the computer of anyone so much as visiting it. This is all before you've even loaded up a single subforum or thread: buyers and sellers, trades, requests, whatever you think is necessary for your economic analysis. (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?)
(None of this is even getting into the extra taboo/social dimensions of such research in comparison to research on other illegal good categories too. 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.)
That is, my criteria are not ignorant. You are simply ignorant of a subject you have no direct knowledge of but nevertheless feel very comfortable confidently bloviating about in response to someone who does have that knowledge.
Of course this is all mostly irrelevant because what economists will or won't or can or can't do is wholly irrelevant to my basic argument that I helpfully quoted for you, which thankfully for you does not require any direct knowledge of the subject to understand. That you refuse to acknowledge it at all proves that you have no meaningful response to it and are again apparently arguing just to argue.
In any case, I accept your admitted inability to refute my central point and consequent resignation from the conversation. Try again next time.
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...
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).
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.
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."
"This is not any 'immunity' to economic analysis"
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.
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?
I apologize if the structure of my communication is too complex for you. Like most people, I inevitably write in a manner that is best understood by people mostly as capable as myself in regards to parsing complexity.
Yes, naive basic econ reasoning from your high school classes does not automatically apply when government policy distorts the natural incentives applicable mostly only in simple hypothetical scenarios about competing lemonade stands or whatever. That's... kind of why governments make policy at all. I'm glad you've finally graduated to the absolute simplest understanding of the effect of policy on the economy.
Ok, so all of the academic economics work I've seen on other goods that have government policies which distort natural incentives... is wrong?
Probably not. But they also probably actually analyzed the effects of those policies instead of just trying to naively apply basic reasoning as if they weren't there.
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.
Fine, but if you feel so strongly that I'm wrong, then defend the antithesis. 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).
What do they do then? Lobby Congress to repeal the ban on their product? Oh wait, they'd get arrested. Does "ChildPornographer69" message Congressman Smith anonymously on Telegram then and donate to him with Monero in exchange for his promise to introduce a bill to abolish Title 18, Chapter 110 of the USC? Does Smith register it as a campaign contribution?
Do they launch satellites like Starlink to try to create their own childpornternet that anyone can easily access, airdropping untraceable quantum communication routers on to their doorsteps?
What's the plan approved by academic economists here? You must know since you insist so strongly that an inability to unilaterally reduce these costs cannot be economically so.
Keep in mind that this is an "industry" that was never even remotely big in the first place when legal (as it was already pretty controversial) and was basically completely destroyed by regulations against it (nearly 50 years ago, before most involved in it now were even born) amplifying the piracy that's also significantly impacted its parent industry into not just a convenience but also a crucial legal protection for its products' consumers, thereby making it nearly universal (to the point where at any given moment the whole of this "industry" is maybe 2-3 collections of guys in their basements, maybe a few independent teen girls, selling cell phone cam videos for Monero to maybe 12 customers a piece (everyone else will just pirate it once it's leaked) for almost certainly far less than minimum wage). They have essentially no money to use to do whatever you think it is they might do.
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? Tell me exactly what happens since you're the economics expert. Keep in mind though that there are two difficult constraints upon your answer:
Given that this situation has been in place for decades, anything that you claim that they would do in response should be stuff they've already been doing for years. There's decades of retroactive information so you can't just make a vague prediction and claim you'll be proven correct later.
You're talking to a rare person who actually has first hand knowledge of whether you're right about the above or not.
So go on. The "immunity to economics" has been rescinded. You obviously understand incentives, policy, and its effect on the former better than me, so let's go:
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" (otherwise that's economic denialism, whether those costs are imposed by policy or not), and you've said many times that my suggestion that this tendency would be essentially impossible to realize in this particular situation is also economic denialism, then you're of course ignoring my vastly economically ignorant stupidity and lowering costs.
What'll it be then? How do you get it done, since policy doesn't matter?
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