I find the Steubenville rape story very depressing and I don’t want to think about it, much less talk about it. I have to admit, though, that I wondered who would be the first conservative to say something insane and offensive about it. Turns out it’s one of my colleagues, Steve Landsberg of the University of Rochester Econ department:
Let’s suppose that you, or I, or someone we love, or someone we care about from afar, is raped while unconscious in a way that causes no direct physical harm — no injury, no pregnancy, no disease transmission. (Note: The Steubenville rape victim, according to all the accounts I’ve read, was not even aware that she’d been sexually assaulted until she learned about it from the Internet some days later.) Despite the lack of physical damage, we are shocked, appalled and horrified at the thought of being treated in this way, and suffer deep trauma as a result. Ought the law discourage such acts of rape? Should they be illegal?
[…]As long as I’m safely unconsious and therefore shielded from the costs of an assault, why shouldn’t the rest of the world (or more specifically my attackers) be allowed to reap the benefits?
Heh. (h/t Reader M, via)
Update. From Landsberg’s comments:
We have jumped the shark. I will never understand why so many libertarians gravitate toward hypothetical examples involving rape. Note to libertarians everywhere: stop using hypothetical rape to argue a point. It only serves to turn people off of the entire discussion.
Gregory
So as long as he remains blissfully unaware of a spy cam in all his bathrooms, it’s hunky-dory for some creep to post pictures of this guy excreting? Though the result would be worth more than this disgusting contrarian codswallop.
pillsy
Some comments Don “Buttfucking” Young (R-AK) made were in the news today, so I thought I was safe in assuming that I couldn’t possibly read anything stupider than those. Apparently I was wrong.
Ben
I guess every university must have an embarrassing professor, whether it be my alma mater above with this clown, Northwestern w/Arthur Butz, Illinois w/Robert Weissberg…
Mnemosyne
Same question I was asking yesterday — what the hell is up with these creepy guys who think that if I don’t remember them sexually assaulting me, it’s A-OK?
And of course guys like this say they wouldn’t mind if it happened to them, because the odds of it happening to them are pretty much zero, so they never have to give it any serious thought.
penpen
Sheesh, this is even more sociopathic and insane than I had anticipated.
Hypatia's Momma
Because human beings are not fuck toys.
? Martin
Wow, roofies all around everyone! It’s not rape if the girl can’t remember it!
Oh, and feel free to have sex with his wife while he’s at work.
Maude
@penpen:
I’m with you and I don’t have any words.
Trabb's Boy
I do think there is a real lack of understanding of the harm rape can cause. There were a lot of lefty publications talking about the “humiliation” of the victim, which is so superficial. Victims respond very differently to rape depending on the assault itself and also their upbringing, inner resiliency, social supports. Some people can genuinely shrug it off, but for most, there are life-long consequences, including PTSD, anxiety, depression, permanent loss of sexual enjoyment, loss of trust in relationships, a deep, constant sense of shame. It genuinely is significantly worse than getting beaten up or being humiliated. And the fact that a particular victim isn’t strongly affected (at least as of the time of trial) doesn’t mean that the rapist is any less culpable, because he was willing to inflict the kinds of harm that might well have resulted.
Your colleague is an ignorant rape-apologist creep.
Rathskeller
My perverse side wants this guy to wake up with a carrot stuck in his ass, with a note attached saying “This sterilized carrot was inserted for our own amusement. We saw no reason not to reap the benefits of this unguarded orifice, as you were unconscious at the time. Cheers.”
His thoughts are otherwise unrecognizable as human, with their complete lack of empathy.
? Martin
@Rathskeller:
Ah, but you forget. He’s an economist. While the girl might be victimized, an entire football team benefitted. Macroeconomically, it was a good deal.
Mnemosyne
@Hypatia’s Momma:
Slightly fix’d. I think he’d be properly horrified if a straight, white man like himself was subjected to the same treatment that the Steubenville victim was, but as long as it’s one of those lowly woman creatures, he can’t understand what the fuss is.
Also, this is making me suspect that Timmy (aka Ted & Hellen) has a side job as an economics prof since he seems to have the same attitude that an unconscious victim isn’t really a victim.
penpen
Also from that guy’s comment, talking about Landsberg’s book, this seems to indicate this kind of dehumanized sociopathy is his schtick:
Rudi
From the link:
Neighbors photons are raping/violating us every day.
ellenbrenna
I know there are rational arguments to refute this but reading it just makes me see red. The speed with which some people turn sexuality into a commodity that is always presupposed to be defined by a male “buyer” makes me ill.
burnspbesq
Wow. Burn down the U of R. Better yet, nuke it from orbit. No place that harbors people who think like that should be allowed access to the minds of impressionable 18-22 year olds.
Union, RPI, and Hobart will just have to find another patsy to dominate in football.
kindness
Well maybe all these ‘libertarians’ really just are hoping someone slips them a roofie next lunch trip and they wake up….no, just no. Sick bastards abound. Prior to the intertubes no one heard much from them but now you have to wonder if the whole world is nutz.
DH
There is a reason it’s called The Dismal Science.
beltane
@penpen: “it would be reasonable to kill one [wo]man in order to prevent the rest of the human population from getting a headache.”
What did Sarah Palin ever do to Steve Landsberg?
Ben
@burnspbesq:
Enjoy the pie filter, asshole.
ranchandsyrup
I know I’ve heard this sort of rationale before. I believe it was noted schoolyard bully Nelson Muntz: “Shoplifting is a victimless crime. Like punching someone in the dark”.
HA HA Mr. Muntz. HA HA indeed.
raven
@beltane: The Mexican Cartwheel?
Winston Smith
Back in 1989 (1990?), I was on an email list for alternative music enthusiasts. Since in was 1989, most of the people on the list were either university students, or worked at a company tied into the military-industrial complex.
One person outside any of these groups was Penn Jillette. Penn was very good friends with Rob Pike of Bell Labs who set him up with Internet access. Penn would chime in occasionally with useful observations like, “How dare you criticize Lydia Lunch. You don’t know shit. I’ve fucked Lydia Lunch.”
One day I was skimming the list digest when I noticed that Penn had started another flame war. The topic was this: babies like to suck things. They also don’t know what they are sucking, necessarily. So, if you get fellatio from a baby who is too young to understand what was going on, and generally enjoyed the sucking part, was it morally wrong?
I luuuuuurve a good flame war — in fact, I was a prominent poster in the days of net.flame, before the Great Renaming — but I couldn’t handle that. I unsubscribed.
DougJ, Friend of Hamas
@burnspbesq:
It’s worse than you think: He teaches big lecture classes and is quite popular with students.
TheWatcher
Jeez, The Onion is going to go out of business, ’cause there ain’t no way satire can keep up with reality at this pace of stupidity…
Crusty Dem
See, if everyone was like the esteemed Professor Landsberg, we’d all be toolin’ around in flying cars.
Obligatory link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsFfBB2W7IA
gnomedad
I think a commenter here recently used the phrase “rape Tourette’s”. These douchbags can’t help themselves.
Kay
I think it’s amusing that conservatives and libertarians are just tuning into the various rape/ sexual assault laws.
Everyone else in the world had a big debate about this for 100 years and they apparently missed the whole thing.
I mean, Jesus. Is it really our job to rehash this with them? Why don’t they read something? They have this idiotic notion that NO ONE has ever thought about this before, and we were all just flying blind. It’s incredibly arrogant.
SatanicPanic
It’s pretty creepy that this dude sees unconcious people as having that sort of benefit.
flounder
This guy is a prime candidate for someone to take his toothbrush, shove it up their ass, take a picture, replace it, and then put the picture on the internet sometime later.
I doubt he would say he was shielded from all the “costs”, especially when people starts calling him A2M and snickering.
McJulie
Yes, rightist libertarians, if you want your views to catch on, coming across as pro-rape is an excellent strategy which is sure to pay off handsomely on election day.
Most people don’t find rape at all upsetting. Especially not women. They’re not at all enraged when you trivialize it or use it to make a rhetorical point. We aren’t at all disturbed when you dehumanize the victim, make it sound as if her (usually her) body is an object, or treat the rapist as a somehow inevitable force of nature rather than a person who chose to commit criminal assault.
This type of talk is found very charming by all and sure to get you invited to the best parties.
Ben
@DougJ, Friend of Hamas:
Never had him, but I did have Landsberg Jr for Intro to Econ, who is worse (but without the higher profile that Landsberg got from Slate)
Soonergrunt
Seriously, that is the moral equivalent to what this shitstain is saying.
steve
@Ben:
Granville Sewell at UTEP…
Mister Harvest
Every university seems to have a few (1-4, depending on size) professors who get off on deliberately phrasing hypothetical ethics questions like this in the most offensive way possible (I took a history course from one who had Slave Tourettes; everything was “Well, why was US slavery so bad, anyway?” with him).
They love to use rape as an example because it is a guaranteed emotional response (as well it should be). But it has no more intellectual heft than, “Well, you needed to have seen them back when they were playing small clubs” has critical heft.
Nancy
Ah, thought experiments, spun out by one who believes he will never have to actually deal with any of the grit. So he can imagine any possibility. Someone is raped and doesn’t know it. . . but this young woman woke up and didn’t know where she was or why she was there. Terrifying. And one doesn’t always immediately know the consequences of rape: pregnancy, disease, just how many so-called friends were aware of the assault, and are now laughing about it.
Professor Landsberg may be popular. His premise does sound somewhat adolescent, or structured for attention and shock value.
I know lots of admirable, ethical professors at the U of R, so I will not despair.
Thoughtcrime
@steve:
…John Yoo at Berkeley…
Kay
@Soonergrunt:
Oh, he’s not really interested. This rape thing just passed in front of his eyes and God forbid
he should resist opining on it, right?
They don’t have any filter anymore. Every random thought that pops into their head has to shared. It’s just so self-indulgent.
Hungry Joe
@? Martin:
Exactly. As long as he’s not around and is therefore shielded from the costs of infidelity, why shouldn’t the rest of the world be allowed to reap the benefits?
Amir Khalid
If I’m reading him right, Landsberg is arguing that just as porn is a victimless activity, there is no victim of a desecrated wilderness, if no one was going to visit the wilderness anyway; and that a woman unaware that she was raped is therefore not a victim of rape.
He seems to missing an obvious difference: Porn is not in itself bad, in that there is not necessarily anyone victimised in its making or distribution. Desecrating wilderness and raping people are both bad in themselves. Both unavoidably create real victims, whether they are aware of it or not.
penpen
@Soonergrunt: One of his commenters has beat you to it and is already raising these sorts of serious questions:
Baud
I wonder if Prof. Landsberg has the courage to apply the same thought problem to abortion rights.
Chris
@Kay:
Normal people are like that when they’re freshmen in college.
Conservatives are like that for the rest of their lives.
Chris
@Soonergrunt:
I’m pretty sure there are at least a few of them that would answer your question with “yes.”
Ben
Another fun fact about Landsberg: He has a daughter in her mid-20s. Would he feel the same way if something happened to her, god forbid?
Comrade Dread
Cripes, this is all sorts of stupid. I thought the foundational basis for Libertarianism was supposed to be self-ownership of one’s body, which lead to ownership of one’s labor, property, capital, etc.
It doesn’t matter if someone abuses and violates your body and you don’t remember it. It’s still a violation and still illegal and to argue otherwise means anything else you have to say about anything can be dismissed.
Baud
@Kay:
To be fair, Kay, rape didn’t exist until FDR imposed the New Deal on the U.S.
johnny aquitard
@Kay:
Reminds me of this from another thread, a quote by Ta-Nehsi Coates: “I think what we have here is a working definition of an asshole — a person who demands that all social interaction happen on their terms.”
Arrogant, selfish, egotistical to the point of narcissism, lacking empathy — sounds like more like symptoms of a mental disorder than an ideology of a political movement.
Comrade Dread
@Soonergrunt: I know of many conservative internet commentors on so-called mainstream blogs who would probably answer yes if said child had black or brown skin.
Kay
@Chris:
“I have some opinions on consent now that this ‘rape’ thing has come to my attention”
I mean, there isn’t enough time in the world. They have to put some effort in here.
Linnaeus
@Soonergrunt:
Well, we now know that Landsburg is not one of the ones who walk away from Omelas.
Darkrose
I first met Steve Landsburg ten years ago, when he came to my apartment for a party. He made a point of not using the recycling bin. Apparently he’s moved on from contrarian asshole to sociopath. Glad I don’t come in contact with him anymore.
ruemara
uh. you know, I got a ticket for rolling through a stop sign (I didn’t) that I now have to weigh into food vs rent debate for next week. So I’m already angry at douchebags who abuse their authority. I think I’m just burnt from my head to my soul on this country. These are seriously horrible people and they’re in power. the opposition is too busy in-fighting and thinking doing nothing helps. I can only hope that Professor McUnconciousRapeisFine falls asleep one day with a particularly lonely, burly mountain family who thinks he has a purty mouth. And mysteriously, they all have great internet service.
aimai
@Trabb’s Boy:
And this gets to another issue which is that learning/discovering that your body has been made a fuck toy by people you thought were your friends is more than merely humiliating, it is as devastating to all future social interactions as learning that gravity no longer works or losing the ability to understand speech. You entered the evening thinking you understood the social situation (its a party, not a rape room; I’m among friends, not among rapists) and you leave it learning that you failed to know somethign that apparently everyone else did: you were at a rape event, you were drugged, you can never trust anyone again.
That whole thread and the easy way the commenters accept the stupidly organized/badly phrased questions is just gob smacking. I forgot how evil glibertarians and fake economic philosophers can be.
Baud
Doug needs to do a counter-post about whether the law should discourage the taking of people’s excess property that they’ll really never miss. You know, for the sake of academic discourse. I’m sure the ensuing discussion will be entirely rational.
aimai
@Winston Smith:
I think that’s a prime example of how debased a certain kind of moral reasoning has become. While its true that “harm to others” is one of the ways we can know something is immoral taking advantage of the innocence of others is also a well known way of determining whether an action is moral or immoral. Doing something that we feel is demeaning to ourselves or the autonomy of others can also be considered immoral. Moral/not moral isn’t a bipolar continuum. Lots of things can be immoral. And here’s another clue to the Penn Gillette/Landesburgh type thinkers–it can be immoral to do something wether or not the consequences can be known or felt by another person.
In the Torah we are specifically enjoined not to throw a stumbling block in the way of a blind man. This is extended to mean, by analogy, that you are forbidden (it is immoral) to do something to someone even though they are ignorant of the danger. For instance if you are a financial planner and your client is too dumb, or too ill informed, to see the financial risk in something you are doing with their money you are obligated to take the precaution for them. Now Landesburgh et al might say “you have to distinguish that case from my case because I specified “no harm” to the victim.” But actually at law it doesn’t make any difference whether my client suffers harm ultimately or not if my actions are illegal in the first place (for example if I borrow the money and return it each night I am still considered to have stolen it). The Torah example argues that I have a yet higher duty to prevent harm anyway–a duty brought on not by my relationship with the person (the blind man) but by his disability.
I think the Torah example would argue that the immorality in the rape example lies in the the fact that the act remains immoral for the rapist regardless of the status/consciousness of the victim and, if anything, his culpability is increased.
John Biles
I am utterly boggled that anyone capable of such madness should be employed by a university or anything else.
What an idiot.
Lurking Canadian
You don’t even need to come back with extreme examples. Just ask Professor Liberty if it’s Ok for us to break into his house when he’s not there and watch his big screen TV, as log as we clean up after ourselves and don’t tell him we did it.
Hypatia's Momma
@Lurking Canadian:
Because tv watching is clearly analogous to rape, right?
jl
Landsburg writes odd things. I looked through a book of his and saw where he said he congratulated his daughter for leaving trash on public grounds near a garbage can. The reasoning was that since the land didn’t belong to anyone, no one was harmed by the strewn trash and his daughter was wise to maximize her welfare by not incurring the cost of walking over to the can and dropping in the garbage.
I guess this is the next step in his thinking.
Dan
CONSENT. SATSQ.
mclaren
Rape is the American national pastime.
Darkrose
Seriously, I need a shower right now. Knowing that I slept with this guy once makes me feel really icky.
Baud
@Darkrose:
Wha….?
johnny aquitard
@Nancy:
Somewhat? Jeez.
And if it was intended to get attention or for shock value, that makes him even more than somewhat. If a grown man drops his pants, bends over and lights his farts on fire to attract attention, it doesn’t make him a goddam deep thinker engaged in some serious thought experiment. It makes him a fucking clown.
ranchandsyrup
@Darkrose: {hugs} It’s ok Darkrose. Best to take the lesson and not dwell on it.
Citizen_X
@Hypatia’s Momma:
No, but breaking into one’s house–thus violating what one assumed to be a safe space, along with one’s sense of trust and security–is, and an analogy that, because it involves the sacred private property, even this moron ought to be able to understand.
I’m thinking that Landsberg just gave us permission to steal anything of his that he probably won’t notice missing, right?
(PS: I’m still appalled by the “reap the benefits” phrasing. Reap this, Landsberg!)
ETA: @Darkrose: Ouch. My condolences.
Lee Rudolph
@Darkrose:
That’s once that you know of.
Hypatia's Momma
@Citizen_X:
No. Nothing is like rape. Having inanimate property “violated” is nothing at all like YOU being violated.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
If they keep spewing this kind of crap, I would hope that the odds of it happening to them would increase.
RSA
@Gregory:
I guess. Further, if the watcher decided to sneak in while he was sleeping, inject him with a temporary sedative, and then have a little party, it would all be good, apparently, as long as he woke up on time to his alarm clock.
It’s also disturbing that Landsberg describes having rape videos of oneself being splashed across the Internet as mere psychic harm. And that wilderness areas are only of personal value to those who intend to visit them–polar bears and dolphins, I suppose we’ll always have photos.
I’ve come across a variation of this libertarian view of “no harm, no foul” in other contexts. Unsurprisingly, it breaks down quickly. I could ask Landsberg, for example, whether he’d be okay with an expert sniper deliberately shooting between people walking along a country path, as long as they weren’t aware of it and didn’t come to harm. Physical harm, that is. Psychic harm? Phht.
Lurking Canadian
@Hypatia’s Momma: Citizen_X already answered, but God no, that’s not what I meant. This douchebag is a libertarian, which probably means he thinks any violation of his “property rights”, even a trivial violation like watching his TV without permission, entitles him to use deadly force against the violator.
I was going for reduction to absurdity to illustrate how utterly igmfu this guy’s view of the world is.
johnny aquitard
@Kay:
Yeah, I can see him musing aloud “Hmm. If a rape fell in the forest and nobody heard… Hmm. That’s an interesting avenue of inquiry. I think I’ll explore it a bit more…”
You’d think people if they ever had such musings wouldn’t hit the ‘publish’ button. And I guess that’s that true — if they’re not conservatives or libertarians.
Jebediah
@Hypatia’s Momma:
I was assuming that Lurking Canadian’s point is that it is so many orders of magnitude less bad than rape, but Professor Psycho would most likely still object because it was happening to HIM.
As for Professor Psycho, i just can’t wrap my head around it. He has a daughter, FFS! I feel like I need a unicorn chaser or something.
ETA: And I see that while I was typing, LC has already clarified.
Interrobang
@jl: So public land doesn’t belong to anyone? News to me; I thought it belonged to the group of people who constituted the “public” in that particular case. My tax dollars pay for the parks near me, along with the tax dollars of the other 350 000 people here. So I own a 1/350 000 share of all of it.
By a reversal of that same logic, since I am the 1/350 000th owner of the property, I can kick litterers’ asses and toss them out on their ears for fucking up the place, I guess.
What a maroon.
YellowJournalism
The problem with comparing a rape victim’s body to property is that, like the “no harm no foul” argument, it encourages people to see each other as merely things. It’s important for us to see each other as human beings and teach our children empathy and compassion to discourage and prevent what occured in Stubenville (or worse) from happening in the first place.
YellowJournalism
@Jebediah:
Here ya go.
hitchhiker
Fabulous new world he’s positing. All anesthetized patients are f*ck dolls. People with traumatic brain injuries, too. Also, anybody with alzheimer’s. And there’s really nothing wrong with sharing photos and videos of whatever is done to them, because why should they care? If it didn’t bother them in the moment, no harm done.
Funkula
Wow, and to think I liked him when he was on Barney Miller.
El Cid
I’m sure he wouldn’t have any problem with someone doing the same to his Mom, wife, or daughter.
burnspbesq
@jl:
I had Hardin and Coase assigned to me in my Torts class as a first-year law student. It boggles my mind to think you can get a Ph.D. In Econ without demonstrating some understanding of their work (and that goes double for Calabresi).
burnspbesq
@Ben:
Can’t handle the truth about the pathetic state of your football program?
kc
What the fuck is WRONG with these people?
Ben
@burnspbesq:
We suck. However our coaches haven’t been complicit in the rape of children like your coaches were…
Thoughtcrime
They better put a poster of Landsberg up at all the morgues and funeral homes.
kc
@Darkrose:
He sounds like the kind of guy who would make a point of peeing in his host’s sink.
Loneoak
Libertarianism: it works great in thought experiments! Not so much if you don’t want to be raped IRL.
kc
@Darkrose:
Jesus, really? Well, do humanity a favor: Sleep with him again, get him drunk, and when he passes out stick a huge dildo in him and take pictures of him.
kc
@jl:
So his daughter is also a sociopath.
I really need someone to give me a reason right now why I shouldn’t leave a flaming bag of dogshit on his doorstep.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
What I’d really like to see is this guy asking these questions – and some student standing up and showing pictures of him sleeping in his bedroom at home, with a masked intruder standing over him holding a gun.
Why are you upset, Professor? You didn’t know we were doing it and nothing happened – this time.
kc
@Lee Rudolph:
Okay, that made me laugh. I needed that.
muddy
Yeah, I totally can see how consoling it is to realize something was done to you but you don’t even know what it was, and this guy is looking at you all knowing and you don’t even get to know what your own body was involved in. I’ve been sitting here a few minutes trying to decide whether it was better when I was raped when I was conscious or unconscious. Actually the worst is coming to in the middle of it, then you get both. In the end I think it’s better to know because I have a big imagination and I might be imagining worse things than I need to. Might be. That asshole can take his “cost” and shove it up his ass.
kc
I enjoyed this comment: Not very analytical or economic, but three doesn’t pass the My Daughter Test. Which would be shortly followed by the Shotgun Spray Pattern vs. Head Test.
fuckwit
That is so severely fucked up.
I was thinking about this recently, and really, what a massive failure of society that whole situation evidences.
I got santimonious about it, briefly. The boys should have been taught NOT to fucking rape anyone. Is that so hard? Is that not a basic human thing? Sheesh. Where were their dads?
And, where were the girl’s FRIENDS? Did she have any at that party, or was she the “outsider”– drinking way too much out of awkwardness and trying to prove she was cool– and the popular Mean Girl Heather cheerleaders just scoffed at her and left her to the wolves? Or was she among friends, and was everyone there so Stockholm Syndrome’ed, those boys so untouchable, that even the most powerful of the girls had no power to step in and stop it? And what about the other boys? Didn’t THEY know what was going on was wrong? Where were THEIR dads?
Or were parents cowed too; had they been covering this kind of shit up, for years? How could they have done that?
I don’t have any boys, but I asked my almost-teenage daughter all these questions, and, to my horror, she DEFENDED the rapists and the kids at the party who didn’t step in: “Nobody stands up, that’s dumb, nobody snitches, that’s the worst thing you can do, the other boys weren’t going to stop it, the girls were all busy partying, it wasn’t their problem if she couldn’t handle herself, etc”
Wow. I had to walk away from that conversation because I felt totally defeated as a parent. I thought I’d been teaching her better than that, and I was too stunned. And humbled. My own daughter has somehow been consumed by this thought monster? WTF? Maybe the parents DID say something, maybe they said a lot, and maybe there was no way for it to get through. Maybe something ELSE, something way more powerful, was telling these kids the opposite of what their parents were saying. Maybe that thing was simple peer pressure.
Then I went back, and told her: “I’ve been thinking about how you didn’t think it wasn’t anybody’s– not the other boys, not the other girls, not the parents– nobody’s job to stop that rape. Remember a while ago, you asked me what started World War II, and I gave you a long list of causes and contributing factors? Well, actually, there was a single, simple cause, and THAT attitude is exactly what started World War II”.
I don’t know if Arugmentum ad Godwin made my point, but sheesh. How could any rational person actually stand by and let Hitler or Mussolini take over their country? How, indeed. Ask those kids in Steubenville how they could stand around and let their football heroes rape someone. Those football heroes thought they could get away with it– because they could. Same human failure, a failure of courage, going along to get along, fear of ostracism, herd instinct, following the alpha male. Severely. Fucked. Up.
Jebediah
@YellowJournalism:
Thanks!
So, while I was out walking my dogs just now, this fucker has been fired/resigned in disgrace/spontaneously burst into flames, right?
I still can’t believe someone over the age of 14 would write that for public consumption.
YellowJournalism
@fuckwit: I’m sure someone else on here could point you to better resources than I at this time, but I would definitely not let that go.
sherparick
@Trabb’s Boy: No, It is that Landsberg is a DICKHEAD and has been for a long time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Landsburg#cite_note-16.
A Dead Parrott has more human soul than this DICK.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I told my wife what this idiot said and her response was:
“If I make some refried beans for him and take a shit in them without telling him, as long as he doesn’t notice it or get sick from eating them then no harm no foul, right?”
I would like to see his response to this hypothetical situation.
:)
OmerosPeanut
The phrase is “reap the benefits,” not “rape the benefits.” What an asshole.
300baud
Wait, people like him definitely give me headaches. Can somebody ask him the number of people he has to cause pain to before we can eliminate him?
PIGL
This is just par for the course for libertarian “economists”.
The infamous douchbag, Tom Flanagan, agent-of-influence in chief at the so-called Calgary School of libertarian economists and political scientists at the University of Calgary, an at-best second-tied Canadian University awash in oil-money, recently fell from high posts after similar musing that stem from the same evil.
In Flanagan’s case, he was defending consumption of child pornography as a victimless crime.
As far I am concerned, someone who would offer the argument would, and probably has, committed the crime. Libertarians of this strip need a good sound strangling in their own intestines.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
@Soonergrunt:
I’d say his argument would justify any and all murders – after all, the victim wouldn’t be aware of it afterward.
Ted & Hellen
You people are so very dense.
This man is doing what all great teachers do: Asking students and others who read his blog to put into coherent language what it is they feel harmful or wrong about any given situation.
OK, fine, you believe X. Prepare to defend that belief.
You don’t get to just say “because it’s so!” anymore than the Catholic Church gets to say unbaptized babies float in Limbo “because it’s so!”
And you don’t get to say “how dare you ask that question, you rapey apologist! Shut up!”
And if you do, your belief can be presumed to be indefensible.
Relatedly, it’s fascinating how more and more atheist/humanist types seem to adopt a mirror image form of blind fundamentalism as time goes by. Many of them post here.
Mister Harvest
The problem with this entire approach is that it takes special pleading to an almost comical level. It requires that one accept (a) a set of preconditions that are as extreme as accepting alternative laws of physics, and (b) accept a timeframe that is limited to the proposer’s convenience. You can do that all you want, but it renders any discussion utterly irrelevant for any purpose except a rather perverted thought-experiment.
FlipYrWhig
Deliberately provocative doucheweasel says what? No, the other one.
Ted & Hellen
@FlipYrWhig:
Poor thing. Have you been provoked? However will you live?
PIGL
@Ted & Hellen: You know what? Fuck you. You are deliberately mis-representing the douchebag’s conduct. We know the difference between the Socratic method and gleefully following an evil self-serving premise to its logical rapey entitled frat-boy conclusions. We think that he really believes this stuff, because there are many who do, and he bears the marks of being one of them. If he was just being all Socratic, he would not, for instance, have congratulated his daughter *in a fracking book* for being a self-entitled litterbug because “the park did not belong to anyone”.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Ted & Hellen:
Wow. Now I get to add “stupid” to the way I already think of you, you vile, stupid pedophilic sociopath.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Hypatia’s Momma: Sounds like someone is OK with being handed over to those guys from the Pulp Fiction basement, so long as they knock him out with drugs first.
The Tragically Flip
Ah the classic troll defence “I was just asking questions.”.
The Tragically Flip
Actually, the just asking questions doesn’t even fit. He makes it clear he equates the harm here to busybodies offended by the behaviour of others, mere “psychic harm” which he even puts in scare quotes because it obviously isnt real harm to him.
I am not even sure he thinks being awake for rape is real harm if she doesn’t get pregnant or a disease.
Mister Harvest
@The Tragically Flip: Indeed. It’s as if he were asking, “If I put a shotgun to your head and fired off four slugs, but it was silent and you didn’t know and you weren’t physically injured, was it really a crime?” It requires such a Bizarro-world definition of the terms being used that it’s meaningless to any rational discourse.
Ted & Hellen
Lazy fuckers.
Snarla
“Psychic harm” is no more real than “health of the mother,” if you’re an old white man.
Fort Geek
Late in the thread, but:
1) Rufies at random intervals (days, weeks, whatever).
2) Humiliating full-body tattoo done piecemeal. And I do mean “full-body”, including the janglies. Every time Landsberg awakens he gets to wonder whether there’s new ink somewhere.
bargal
Now I know why they wanted to keep Terri Schiavo’s body hooked up .
Sondra
@Rathskeller:
Love this idea but it needs refining. You must not leave the note because then he will know about it right away and that doesn’t comport with the original story.
It must instead be recorded and posted on the internet where he will see it and be surprised. Then he will experience humiliation and come to a better understanding of the situation.