Notorious and to some, heroic, pornographer Larry Flynt:
After all is said and done, do he and his compatriots in
porn have a point, in seeking federal aid?
Jornal de Negocious, Portugal
Larry Flynt is Right: 'Adult Entertainment' Comes Before Autos
"When one thinks about it, Hefner
and company deserve much more than, for example, the automobile industry, which
is due to receive tens of billions of dollars. Indeed, the adult entertainment business
is more labor intensive and therefore more conducive to job creation. When 'Miss
July' is laid off, that's serious! … And the problems that the industry faces are
the fault of the state. … With the product available on the Internet, why buy
magazines or videos? Sales have fallen and the revenue from advertising along
with it, because the state is incapable of protecting intellectual property
(don't laugh, this is intellectual property!)"
I'm amongst those who deposited
(a little-used term these days) great hope in President Obama, and who believe
that there will be a major shift in policy in America and, one hopes, around
the world. It's about time, looking back at all the arbitrariness and mistakes
of the previous administration. In recent times, one arbitrariness that has revolted
me was that nothing was being done for an industry with deep roots in the U.S.,
and which exports in quantity and quality around the world: the adult
entertainment industry (allow me to call it this, for lack of another
translation, which would be worse).
That's right, my dear
readers, an important group of representatives from the sector, Mr. Hefner from
Playboy, Mr. Flynt from Hustler and Mr. Davis from Girls Gone
Wild, have appealed to the American government for extraordinary aid of $5
billion - a meager amount in terms of the total aid being dispensed - for a
sector that employs a portion of the American population that is not negligible
or insignificant, and that to the American population is indispensable. As
Flynt stresses, “Americans can live without cars, but they cannot live without
sex.”
And personally, it always
irritates me that subsidies and other benefits are always being dispensed on the
basis of positive discrimination, and that for those unfortunate ones whose
work is only given merit behind closed doors, negative discrimination is applied,
essentially saying “it goes to everyone except those people.” Even if one disagrees
with it, it must be recognized that hypocrisy has its limits: if they are good
enough to pay taxes, they have the same rights as anyone else.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
In fact, when one
thinks about it, Mr. Hefner and company deserve much more than, for example,
the automobile industry, which is due to receive tens of billions of dollars. Indeed,
the adult entertainment business is more labor intensive and therefore more
conducive to job creation. It is difficult to ship it offshore, since we aren't
talking about “call centers,” but “call girls,” for whom proximity is much more
important; the automobile is almost completely delocalized, and what isn’t is
only a matter of time. But more importantly - this is a public benefit: when Playboy
releases a video on television or the Internet, a person can watch it without in
any way interfering with what someone else watches - the video doesn't limit anyone
else's consumption. Secondly, when a video is sold, if someone puts it on a download
"site," everyone else has quick access to it, making it impossible to
exclude anyone from enjoying it - the impracticality of exclusion being another
characteristic of a public benefit. And from the point of view of economic
theory, it would be more natural for the state to assist an industry that is a public
benefit than the private automobile industry.
MSNBC COVERS THE FLYNT-PORN BAILOUT PLEA
And the sector desperately
needs help, because it's going through "hard times." In a document
sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission last October, Playboy undertook
the carrying out of a program that would reduce expenses and lay off some of its
employees. When "Miss July" is laid off, that's serious!
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
And the problems that the
industry has are also the fault of the state. As Jonathan Berr said, why buy a
cow when I can get milk for free? With the product available on the Internet,
why buy magazines or videos? Sales have fallen and the revenue from advertising
along with it, because the state is incapable of protecting intellectual
property (don't laugh, this is intellectual property!) and preventing pirated
copies from circulating everywhere. And if this weren't enough, says Chris
Dillow, the business has suffered even more with the advent of “amateurs” who
perform on the Net for free. Dillow asks, how can one
resist pirated copies, people who practice predatory pricing or "dumping?"
Under these conditions, he says, the government really must help the sector.
So then, why doesn’t the American
administration lend a hand? I can find only one reason: after the binge of
helping banks and the "rave" of support to the automotive sector, this
is all that is left before one would be forced to say that American economic
policy has been transformed into a real bordello.
*Frederico Bastião is a
Professor of Crisis Economic Theory in the PenhasDouradas School of Higher Education. When we asked
Frederico if he was a Playboy reader, Frederico responded: 'I'm thinking of
becoming one. Portuguese politics no longer excites me!'
