Dirty Business: Should the Porn Industry Be Saved?
Zócalo panel discusses the economics of pornography
“The porn industry is just like any other industry,” was the central message of two porn industry panelists speaking at a Zócalo forum on the issue. ‡
“They are just providing a needed service to society. It’s supply and demand. If they didn’t so it, someone else would.” So goes the reasoning.
The pornographers made their case very convincingly. They were very smart and savvy. Funny, too.
Reexamining their claims, let’s take a look at another industry: energy.
Oil is unlike any other commodity: It is the lifeblood of the economy. Oil makes motor vehicle transportation and commercial aviation possible; it heats homes; it allows goods to be distributed across the country, and it is the base for countless petroleum-based products. One cannot say energy is “just like any other industry.”
By contrast, the porn industry is not the lifeblood of the economy, even in the San Fernando Valley – the porn capital of America. It is not essential.
But in a different way, the porn industry, like energy, is unique. It’s not “just like any other industry.” Pornography is the only business that puts on display for the “prurient interest” the most private and personal parts of the human body and human experience. The barrier between body and soul is thinnest at these points.
Other kinds of work involve grave bodily risk, the panelists pointed out. Offshore welders in the oil industry, for example, face disproportionate risk of injury and death. The porn industry, which regularly tests its “workers” for sexually transmitted diseases, is very safe by comparison.
Yes, underwater welding risks the body, but porn risks the soul.
During the Q&A portion of the program, a woman near the front of the auditorium began talking – shouting – out of order, disputing some statistic one of the panelists had quoted. She claimed to be “in the industry” and also a law student. It was hard to tell her age due to various botox and silicon enhancments, and her big, puffy peroxide hair. Rather than allowing the panelists address her issue, she continued yelling – each of her outbursts becoming more hysterical. She began swearing, and security guards moved to escort her out of the room.
“Thank you for not tasering me, you mutherf@#%ers!” she shouted.
I wanted to ask the panel if this is what the “adult” industry does to people – turns them into screaming hysterical children who don’t know how to behave in public.
Unlike “any other industry,” the porn business preys on lost souls and mentally fragile people – many of whom were abused as children.
The screaming woman continued screaming as she was escorted out the door. Maybe it was the silicon leaking into her system. Maybe it was peroxide sinking in. Or maybe it was just the L.A. air.
Zócalo press release for the event:
Los Angeles’ dirty little economic secret is its $12-billion-a-year pornography industry, located primarily in the San Fernando Valley. Competition from amateur porn on the Internet, piracy and other pressures are cutting into profits. The question is: Should we care? How much should the industry's health risks weigh against its economic value? And how important is the issue of morality when we're talking about jobs, sales receipts, and tax dollars? Zócalo brings together a panel of experts—porn producers and former actors Nina Hartley and Ira Levine, economist Jack Kyser, and Sharon Mitchell of the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundations – to discuss whether or not L.A.’s porn industry is a boon or a burden.
Moderated by Mariel Garza of the Los Angeles Daily News
News updates
Groups to file complaints against 16 porn companies
Two foundations will register their concerns with California's workplace safety agency. They allege that failure to require condom use endangers performers' health.
Smut under display
Vienna museum explores the history of pornography. See the Web Sage blog on the economics of porn.
Further reading
Bringing Joy into the ‘Dismal Science’
Harvard economist Joseph P. Kalt discusses supply and demand. “We move toward pleasure and away from pain,” Kalt said. “This doesn’t mean we’re all greedy and want pleasurable things. It means if the price goes up, it becomes more painful to buy, and thus people will move away from pain and buy less.”
The Economics of Oil
Mark Zupan, Dean of the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Rochester, New York, discusses why oil is a unique commodity.
“Oil serves as the lifeblood of the economy,” Zupan said. “Any constriction in the supply of such a commerce-lubricating good has a significant detrimental effect on the level of macroeconomic activity.”
The Axis of Energy
James L. Sweeney,
Professor, Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University and Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, discusses discusses the principles of energy and the economy.
"In physical science, energy is the ability to do work – lifting, accelerating, heating, producing electricity. In economic terminology, energy is embodied in the commodities – gasoline, natural gas, coal, etc. – that can be used to perform physical work. Because energy involves the ability to do work, it is a special commodity,” Sweeney said.