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Originally Posted by Paul Markham
But back to the main theme of this thread. IMO Neither candidate is going to stop Americans spending money they have not really earned. You can only borrow for so long. Borrowing needs to slow down and production in the US of goods it can sell over seas needs to be improved. Today giving tax cuts sends too many people to shop for goods made outside the US. Money needs to be better invested than this.
As for the "What if" posts on porn. I would rather focus on what did happen. As for restrictions on porn. I would love them. The problem is we need a Government who will sit down with us and talk about how we keep more extreme porn off the Net and more porn out of the reach of children. But we would rather talk on a board.
We need more restrictions that are effective. None will be 100%, but I would go for 50%.
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Here is the problem with that. Once the ball starts to roll, it is very difficult to make is stop. So say somehow we come up with a group that will act as spokespersons for this industry and they negotiate a deal to get some extreme stuff taken off the net. You have now started the ball down the hill. First off much of the extreme stuff is put up by companies/people from outside the US so they wouldn't have to take it down and those within the US that are putting up that type of stuff and making some nice money from it may very well leave the country and set up shop outside. So realistically they are not going to get that much taken down. So that would mean they would have to put some kind of filtering system in place.
So where do we draw the line? Is double penetration too hardcore? For some maybe, but for others no. Is deepthroating too much? Who is going to decide this. Then what if they change their mind down the road and as part of a law that gets passed there is a provision to now add certain things to the filter list. So maybe at first group sex is okay, but then along comes a new law and they decide group sex is not okay so they start filtering for it. The ball is rolling, all they have to do is add something onto it with little trouble. Then someone would have to challenge the law and fight it. Don't think it could happen? Look at 2257. The law has been in place forever and there were few if any inspections until recently. That didn't stop them from altering the law . . . twice. They didn't even know if the existing law was working, instead they just changed it.
I think agreeing to let things be banned is a terrible idea. The government has a history of being given a inch then taking a foot.
It's not a bad idea to talk to the government about issues like 2257 and making filters available to those who want them. Hell I would even be for some kind of meta tag you could put in your site that allowed a filter to recognize and block it without issue so anyone who chose to use a filter would be guaranteed to not find your site. But to just sit down and decide what content is okay and what is not is a horrible idea. The government should have no say in what I look at in my own home and by agreeing to allow certain things to be blocked or criminalized it would mean a small group of people had just decided for everyone in the country what they can look at online and that is wrong.
On the non porn issues though I do agree that unless there are major spending cuts and more fiscal responsibility all the tax cuts and economic stimulus packages in the world will not help over the long term.