Ban Porn?
Libertarians are outraged that US lawmakers are considering banning porn
Apparently, there’s some debate now in the US about banning porn. A lot of people think this is fascistically dumb and old fashioned. But there are good arguments for banning it that they are not considering…
I’m sex-positive, I’m all about more people responsibly having more great sex. And people have A LOT LESS sex because of porn. I’ve known many men who were lonely porn addicts for years, when they quit porn they got girlfriends, they got married, they had children — they left behind their lives of quiet desperation. Being anti-porn is not being anti-sex, it’s being anti-internet addiction.
Porn is digital poison. I’ve studied neurobiology and mindset for 8 years now and the evidence is overwhelming that porn is self-destructive and addictive, particularly for men. In our society, we ban heroin because it’s dangerous and addictive. There’s evidence that special taxes and regulation decrease public usage of other destructive and addictive vices like smoking. If we lived in a truly free and #libertarian society, then we could simply let adults take responsibility for their own decisions, but we don’t. We don’t live in a society with true freedom of speech, freedom of association or health freedom. But libertarians turn red with misplaced righteous indignation when the government considers banning something totally unhealthy, useless and addictive.
The counter-argument is of course…
You can’t ban porn. It will still be out there on the internet.
My response to this is…
When was the last time you watched child porn?
Probably never right? It’s out there on the internet but it being banned makes it almost totally inaccessible to everyone.
The US government shutting down the industry and blocking major porn websites would do much to mitigate the usage of this extremely accessible drug. If every single store in your neighborhood sold cigarettes (or gave them out for free, to teenagers!) clearly you would make a dent in the scourge of smoking addiction by banning them from stores.
People would save porn stashes on their hard drives and venture into the dark web to get it but one of the primary drivers of porn addiction is novelty. With a few clicks, you go on these porn websites and can view a hundred brand new scenes. Bereft of this firehose of novelty men would grow bored of the same old scenes and scouring the seedy underbelly of the web for scenes and would wean themselves off porn or at least cut back a lot. It’s a dose-dependent destructive drug, if you’re watching it every day it will make you a lazy, lonely loser. If you’re watching it once a month, it probably won’t do that much harm.
Banning porn would NOT be like banning alcohol or weed because those vices serve a social function and people spend enough money on them to create a lucrative criminal black market.
When was the last time you spent money on porn? If porn was banned would you go buy an illicit CD of it for $50 from a guy in an alley? Or would you just do something else with your time? Would you maybe a text a girl inviting her out on a date instead? Would you instead maybe go workout so you were more attractive?
