Some words about Censorship

You appear to recognize in the next paragraph that these are two different sets of people, so where is the contradiction? You mean people differ about social goals in a republican state? And how is said contradiction specific to America?

Is it possible that such a huge porportion of Americans live under the poverty line by choice?

What's your basis for this statement? Why don't you tell us what the "poverty line" is, how many Americans live under it, and how that percentage differs from that for comparable countries, while showing that you have adjusted for cost of living, consumption habits, morbidity and mortality, life expectancy, "quality of life", etc. To start, I'll note that in 1999 the percentage of Americans below the "poverty level" as defined by the US Bureau of the Census was 11.8% (although the number of children was higher and the numbers for blacks and hispanics around twice as high).

>Is it possible that such a huge porportion of Americans live under the poverty line by choice?

They even have a (stupid) name for it even, its called "downshifting", although usually people's incomes dont go quite as low as the poverty line, esp. if they are raising . I wouldn't know how many, but right now Americans work more hours than any other industrialized, even the Japanese. If too many people downshifted, the US economy as it is set up to work now would collapse.

Imagine a world where there is no censorship or content regulation. Let's take television, as an example. Broadcasters would be free to broadcast whatever they choose, whenever they choose - but they would be forced to practice self-censorship to actually get an audience.

Don't really need to imagine, do we? You are apparently referring to the free broadcast networks, but our capitalistic society gives people who choose it and can afford it the option of CABLE TELEVISION, in which the broadcasters actually are free to broadcast pretty much whatever they choose. Cable networks practice "self-censorship" to court whatever their target audience is, and if their target audience is families with children (a very profitable demographic), they do like you said and tailor their content to that audience.

A lot of the censorship that goes on here in America, it seems to me, has less to do with government and more to do with corporations who edit and parse their content based on what they think will please the largest audience and/or what will offend the least number of people.

As for people who cry "What about the children?" ... well, they're just exercising their freedom of speech ... which isn't a capitalistic notion, I guess, so much as a democratic one ... but what do they actually have to do with your anti-capitalism argument?

And they do overlap, quite a bit. But it's not as hypocritical as Andrew makes it out to be, necessarily. The ultimate laissez-faire position still allows that it's the state's job to maintain basic rules of conduct -- enforcing laws, keeping people from harming one another, and ensuring that all of the contracts and committments people make with one another are made fairly. All you have to do to reconcile this with censorship is to decide that some material and some actions have absolutely no place or purpose in society, even if people want them. This is the argument that's made with drugs, for instance: that they're dangerous, contribute nothing positive to society, and in fact present a great number of hazards, therefore they're off the laissez-faire playing field. You can apply similar arguments with two of the things mentioned -- pornographic and violent entertainment. The third thing mentioned -- guns -- is opposed in the U.S. by the left; your hardcore right libertarians wouldn't dream of keeping them out of anyone's hands.

Also: no, I wager more than 95% of Americans living under the poverty line are not there "by choice." Not by any stretch of the imagination.