Site Meter Reflections on Playboy: Why can’t <i>Playboy</i> think about greed the way it thinks about lust?

January 28, 2009

Why can’t Playboy think about greed the way it thinks about lust?

“Greed” and “lust” are facetious terms, of course. I speak not of deadly sins but of the human acquisitive and sexual drives. Playboy is visually stunning nowadays, and not just because of the girls, but its politics are hypocritical and irrational for laying the kind of guilt trip on money that it never would on sex.

I smell a guilt trip in Tim Mohr’s one-page article for the February 2009 Forum, “Freedom Tax.” “Government’s role should be to focus on economic activities, not personal ones,” says Mohr, as if the choice were strictly between two visions of expansive, far-reaching government. A best-of-both-worlds approach to individual freedom (cough! libertarianism cough!) is unthinkable. It must be so, if Mohr is to rally the sort of man or woman who reads Playboy to his cause. He spends a whole paragraph reminding us of Hef’s bravery in fighting the forces of censorship to publish his magazine. This proves nothing at all about anybody’s tax policy. But it seems to require that “we” (Mohr’s pronoun) demonstrate our loyalty to Playboy by agreeing with Mohr about taxes.

Fatalists seldom make history. Resign yourself to the status quo, and the status quo wins. Hugh Hefner imagined something better than American sexual morality as of 1953. But on taxes, Mohr’s imagination is stunted. For him, Republican hypocrisy on the issue of small government puts the goal of small government forever out of reach:
Since government spending as a percentage of GDP is relatively stable (and has, in fact, increased under conservative administrations), guess who pays that bill if taxes on the rich and corporations are reduced. You. Us. The tax burden has simply been shifting down the income scale, and it’s happening under the rhetorical banner of lowering taxes.
In all this, Mohr never stops to consider the virtues of a smaller, cheaper government that would require less taxation to begin with. High taxes become a moral necessity only after the assumption that somebody’s financial ox must be gored.

Playboy’s traditional foes in the anti-porn movement have often treated sexual excitement as an inherent threat to the social order. They act as if the man who gets a hard-on at a strip club or adult bookstore would naturally proceed to rape a woman or molest a child. But change the subject from horniness to the desire for wealth, and Mohr is no more lucid than the anti-porn crowd:
Anti-tax advocates espouse a sort of blind utopianism. Greed and self-interest are presented as positives in that they make for an ostensibly rational market; the blindness is the assumption that greed and self-interest will stop at boundaries of law or morality. If we’ve learned anything from the history of financial bubbles, Enron accounting schemes, disappearing pension funds, S&L and bank failures, tax evasion and offshore wealth stashing, etc., it’s the unambiguous lesson that greed and self-interest have no limits—which is precisely why hoping for the best is not a tenable solution to governing.
If the very existence of rape proves that porn harms society, I suppose the Enron scandal proves the moral necessity of high taxes. But then again, Enron ceased to exist when the corruption and waste were exposed. Meanwhile, government agencies can live forever no matter how much corruption and waste are exposed. Occasional Playboy contributor Radley Balko could have told Mohr that the government is the one corrupt company you’re forced to invest in.

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 1:46 PM

  • Anonymous Chris M left this comment at February 7, 2009 2:41 PM  
    Mohr makes the mistake of looking to the government to try and "fix" the problem of greed, i.e. he wants laws passed that abolish what he considers excessive greed. This is the same as the conservative anti-smut crowd looking to the state to legislate and stamp out deviance and perversion. What Mohr and the conservatives have in common is they both find a particular aspect of our society unsavory (greed & sexual deviance), despite the fact that, in most cases, these human emotions do not cause one afflicted with them to violate the natural rights of their fellow man. If Mohr decries the efforts of the conservatives (which he does) then he is a hypocrite, plan and simple.

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at February 7, 2009 3:42 PM  
    I think you’re exactly right, Chris.

  • Blogger kyle left this comment at February 16, 2009 2:54 PM  
    you need to come out and say your for lowering taxes, you're not direct enough. i really can't figure out where you stand on the issue. in any case, i assume you hate taxes. you're selfish, you don't want us to work together as a community. you want to hoard all your wealth for your self. you don't want to reduce others suffering.

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at February 17, 2009 4:38 PM  
    If you think I’m not direct enough, you’re not paying attention. Before accusing me of lacking a sense of community, please remember the difference between community and government. If you don’t care about that distinction, you don’t understand the philosophy behind the United States constitution. For the good of the community, please don’t vote.

  • Blogger GhostintheToast left this comment at September 26, 2009 12:42 PM  
    I agree with Kyle. Your outlook is selfish and myopic. It is not a reality that 'community' will fund social programs.

    This does not mean that the government is not wasteful and bloated. It most certainly is. However that is a reality of a system that has no competition.

    You have missed the point of this article, not because you are stupid, but because you are greedy. Great disparity of wealth cannot be allowed to occur. The environment that our government creates allows you to accumulate wealth, regardless of the fact that you do hard work to make that a reality.

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at September 29, 2009 2:00 PM  
    You’re lucky to be able to ascribe evil motives such as greed to those who disagree with you. It assures you of your rectitude without your having to think carefully about unintended consequences of the policies you support. But I resent your assumption that I hate poor people just because I think free markets and private philanthropy work better than government schemes to redistribute wealth. It’s a low blow.

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