Pornography: the economic disease

* In 1905 the United States had become the richest industrial nation on earth. With only five percent of the earth’s continental land mass and six percent of the world’s population, the American people were producing over half of almost everything (clothes, food, houses, transportation, communication).

The government had a minor role during this time of economic prosperity. The Founding Fathers believed that government should not mettle with economic affairs of businesses and buyers. However, the Founding Fathers did believe that government had four areas in economics that they were to police:

Illegal Force – compelling purchases

Fraud – misrepresenting

Monopoly – eliminating of competition

Debauchery of the cultural standards and moral fiber of society by commercial exploration of vice – pornography, obscenity, drugs, liquor, prostitution, or commercial gambling.

What’s fascinating is that when government (and more importantly the people) failed in police debauchery you can find a direct correlation with the explosion of the pornography industry and the sinking of economic prosperity of the United States in the same 15 year span.

From 1969 to 1984, the Golden Age of Porn began with Andy Warhol’s film the Blue Movie. This 15 years stretch is where pornography was seen in mainstream media in a surprisingly positive light.

The first explosion in the US national debt was from 1940 to 1945 during World War II (42 billion to 258 billion). The national debt continued to gradually increase in very small increments until we see the second explosion of debt from 1970 to 1985. During this same 15 years of the Golden Age of Porn, the national debt grew from 389 billion to just shy of 2 trillion dollars!

Was pornography the tipping point for the explosion of the debt crisis we are in today? Probably too big of a question to answer in only a few hundred words. But looking at the two timelines together suggests that the moral values of the United States are tied to its economic prosperity. Interestingly, the Golden Age of Porn ended in 1984. The same year that Aids was discovered. Which might have been the wake-up call that a nation needed.

Pornography is an economic disease. Like any disease it will significantly infect all other aspects of our lives. It affects your work, your family, your friends, your spiritual well-being, and your home life. A person cannot actively participate in watching pornography without affecting the people around them. They infect and affect others.

The state of Utah has called pornography a public health crisis. And it is. The Founding Fathers would back this decision from a moral and economic standpoint.

If you are concerned with the US national debt then take a stand to rid this economic disease.

* Excerpts and US national debt numbers taken from W. Cleon Skousen in his book the 5000 year Leap.