Some people probably shouldn’t try to make charts. I mean, take a look at this fucked up Venn diagram here:
There’s so much wrong with this diagram it’s hard to even know where to start. The letters are too small. “Narwhal” should be plural. The Sirens of Greek Mythology did lure sailors to their death with their songs, but they weren’t sea creatures. They were, rather, bird women – you know, with wings and everything. Also, while Miles Davis was indeed a thing (specifically a man) with a horn, to the best of my knowledge he never stood in a pond, at least not while playing said horn. And even if he had, it wouldn’t have made him a sea creature.
I suppose I should acknowledge that I’m the person who made this Venn Diagram. I would like to apologize for its many failings and for any damage it may have caused.
But, look, I’m not the only one who can’t design a diagram for shit. Consider this unholy mess, put together by Susan Walsh, a retrograde dating “expert” who runs a blog called Hooking Up Smart. Walsh devotes considerable energy to bashing feminists and sluts, sometimes at the same time. In a recent post, she attempted to spell out the economic costs of sluttery. This diagram was the result.
Even Walsh seemed to realize that it was a bit of a turd, and she offered it to her readers with a sort of apology:
I’m not an economist; this is really more of an exercise in common sense, as well as a work in progress.
No, you’re not. No it isn’t. And that’s no excuse. Essentially, Walsh just made up some bullshit, drew lines between different parts of the bullshit, and pretended it all made sense. There are so many things wrong with her flow chart that, as was the case with that Venn diagram above, I don’t know where to start. Graphically, it’s obviously a disaster.
And when you look at the, er, content of the diagram, it’s equally befuddling. Apparently the only possible results of a pregnancy that results from a “casual sexual relationship” being carried to term are “dropping out of school,” “promiscuity,” “substance abuse,” “violence,” and “crime,” followed closely by “prison,” then “EVENTUAL ECONOMIC STAGNATION!!!!!!!!!!” (And yes, she did use ten exclamation points.)
But my favorite bit of the diagram is the question “was sex consensual?” If it’s not, watch out! Someone might have to go to court! (For some reason she forgets to draw the requisite line to “prison,” perhaps because it is so rare for rapists to actually serve time?)
Here’s the thing, Ms. Walsh: sex that isn’t consensual is no longer an example of a “casual sexual relationship.” Sex that is not consensual is rape. Just as boxing that is not consensual is battery.
Walsh knows all this, of course. It’s just odd that in this diagram she seems to consider the supposedly dire consequences of “promiscuity” as far worse – for individuals and for society – as the consequences of rape.
She might want to make a few adjustments before she puts forth her next version of that chart.A better solution would be to simply delete it from her computer and pretend it never happened. That’s what I’m doing with my Venn diagram.
@Elizabeth: The broken window fallacy as presented in the original example is pretty sound; because the owner of the window has to repair it, they can’t spend money on something else they would be buying otherwise. But of course that only works as an argument against why you shouldn’t break windows to stimulate the economy, not as an argument that having your window broken will never be good for the economy. Maybe you were going to shove that money into a safe somewhere and it was never going to get any action whatsoever until that kid broke your window.
And of course it doesn’t have any impact at all on Cash for Clunkers. Unless you’re somehow arguing that the federal government could have spent that money better, of course giving people free money will make them spend more money. Which was the point.
Or promiscuity; I’m not sure how it would work at all as an argument against promiscuity. It just seems like some weirdass non sequitor. The broken window fallacy doesn’t mean that anytime anybody spends money on anything it doesn’t stimulate the economy; only that destroying things to make people replace them doesn’t stimulate the economy. Breaking someone’s leg to make them pay medical bills = broken window fallacy, they could’ve done something else with that money and that time they were in the hospital. Buying condoms =/= broken window fallacy; condoms are the other thing you would’ve spent that money on.
Yes you could spend the money on something else, but that wouldn’t hurt the economy, because the broken window fallacy never hurts the economy. It’s economically neutral even when it’s true. The point is that breaking stuff does not stimulate the economy, not that breaking stuff hurts the economy.
Brian, I know-it has an application in one case and nothing else.
But I guess this means I cannot start throwing baseballs through my neighbors windows…drat. 😉
@Alex: I’m sorry; I should have be more specific. Ectopic pregnancy is still a low but measurable risk just based on the mechanics of IUDs.
Uterine perforation, on the other hand, is the main complication that previous-generation IUDs had a much higher risk of. That’s why they weren’t recommended for women who might not be done having kids: perforation = emergency hysterectomy. It’s really unfortunate that the idea has stuck around, though. Now, the justification for not recommending IUDs for childless women is “There’s a greater risk of expulsion. And insertion might hurt more.” Which is a bullshit reason for denying access to a relatively cheap, very-low-failure-rate-with-almost-no-possible-user-error form of birth control.
I’m planning on getting snipped sometime in the not-too-distant future. We have two boys, and we love them, but we don’t want anymore. I think my HMO requires that I take a class first, but that’s all.
I read the list of possible side effects and my hair turned white.
D!: But my sluthood isn’t a destruction of value. It produces orgasms and cuddles and happiness and discussion of Batman and sometimes twoo wuv. So all the money I’m spending on condoms and birth control is economically stimulating!
Yup… That’s why I was backpedaling a little bit from saying that promiscuity inherently destroys value like Cash for Clunkers (aka: the no airbags for poor people program) destroys engines (and value). In your mind, you are extracting some marginal value from spending.
What Walsh is pointing out is there may be externalities. That is to say, you do not have to pay the entire cost of your own promiscuity. Now, it’s quite a bit of a leap of faith to say the presence of any level of value sucking externalities will lead to “ECONOMIC STAGNATION!!!!!111one!”. That is the biggest problem I have with that flowchart, but that doesn’t mean that some of the points that Walsh makes do not have some basis in truth. Out here in the real world where people make mistakes and birth control or condoms fail, we do see increases in STIs and out of wedlock births. These have real costs associated with them, even if the sum total of those costs does not mean that we are all doomed.
And of course it doesn’t have any impact at all on Cash for Clunkers. Unless you’re somehow arguing that the federal government could have spent that money better, of course giving people free money will make them spend more money. Which was the point.
Or promiscuity; I’m not sure how it would work at all as an argument against promiscuity. It just seems like some weirdass non sequitor. The broken window fallacy doesn’t mean that anytime anybody spends money on anything it doesn’t stimulate the economy; only that destroying things to make people replace them doesn’t stimulate the economy. Breaking someone’s leg to make them pay medical bills = broken window fallacy, they could’ve done something else with that money and that time they were in the hospital. Buying condoms =/= broken window fallacy; condoms are the other thing you would’ve spent that money on.
Yup. Pretty much anything would be a better use of government money. Pretty much anything: More guns and ammo for the military, upgrading the federal vehicle pool, increasing eligibility for food-stamps, issuing scholarships to engineering students… Most government programs don’t involve rendering perfectly functional automobiles unusable, thereby denying their use to people who really want transportation. Cash for clunkers delayed my acquisition of an automobile for nearly three years.
Moreover, I never really claimed the broken window fallacy as an argument against promiscuity. I only claimed that spending money != benefiting the economy.
There are different types of tubular ligation, only one is reversible at all. Vasectemies are more reversible. However, IVF can still be done if someone has had a tubular ligation.
I have two conditions that cause high rates of infertility and high rates of miscarriage, so the odds of me carrying a pregnancy to term without intensive medical intervention is pretty slim. I don’t need to have an abortion, I can just defer weekly blood tests, or suddenly switch my levo dosage for a few days and it would handle itself.
Still, it is funny when someone like me, who in a different social system would want to have kids soon and would consider having lots of them, says that they probably won’t have kids at all because of the sheer amounts of legal and social obstacles. Because they don’t really want people to have kids, they want rich, white, cis, hetero, able bodied married people to have kids.
Also, narwhals
@Ozy –
I actually like Holly’s response much better than mine!
Would zombie sex transfer the Virus?
That made me think that sex-zombies would make for a good movie, but I remembered that David Cronenberg already did that with Shivers.
Yay Brett! 😀 Come join the forum! 😀
@zombie rotten mcdonald
Nope, you don’t quite get it. Yes, the glass manufacturer gets some activity, but it comes at the cost of activity somewhere else.
Like all investors, hedge funds generate the value they earn in exchange for taking a risk. I think that counts as economic activity.
(You do have a point about credit default swaps exist. If you think a business isn’t going to be able to pay back a bond that you hold, just sell the damn bond. Offer a low enough price, I’m sure someone will buy it)
Nope, you don’t quite get it. Yes, the glass manufacturer gets some activity, but it comes at the cost of activity somewhere else.
No it doesn’t because you are presuming the money being spent on glass replacement would have been spent somewhere else.
You also presume that if that were the case, the multiplier effect through the course of the glass replacement wouldn’t more than offset it.
In reality, spending money on real trades and services, end up multiplying through the economy at a greater rate than just buying something. Hence, the Cash For Clunkers program, while PERHAPS being depressive when considered from a single point of view – yours- had a stimulative effect because it was beneficial to car manufacturers, who then retained and paid union workers, who paid their mortgages and bought Playstations and went out to eat and otherwise pumped that money right the hell back into the economy.
I find it endlessly amusing and irritating that idiots like Eric Cantor seem to think that once a dollar is spent, it somehow disappears, unless it is spent in the form of a tax cut. The actual numbers, over 40 years now, indicate the exact opposite.
(You do have a point about credit default swaps exist. If you think a business isn’t going to be able to pay back a bond that you hold, just sell the damn bond. Offer a low enough price, I’m sure someone will buy it)
You don’t fucking understand what credit default swaps are.
Like all investors, hedge funds generate the value they earn in exchange for taking a risk. I think that counts as economic activity.
You can count it as such, if you care to define it that way; However, I am more of a blue collar asshole, and I define economic activity as one that generates jobs that actually do work. You know, like America used to do when we were an industrial titan.
Hedge funds are not much more than rich assholes trading promises to pay each other more at some time in the future, if they can screw people like you and me over for a few extra percentage points, It is Scrooge McDuck jacking off on his pile of money.
Fuck you. I took a real risk. I started my own business, in the construction industry. it was doing OK too, until the Scrooge Mc Duck fuckshits crashed the construction industry, and through that, the world economy. The got bailed out; where the fuck do you think I am?
Don’t tell ME I don’t get it you tin-whistle.
@zombie rotten mcdonald
Investment gives businesses capital that they can use to hire people and purchase equipment. The fact that that some of this investment is managed by a hedge fund manager doesn’t mean that it doesn’t create jobs.
So, when did hedge fund managers get bailed out? I don’t ever seem to remember anything like that happening. Auto makers? Sure. People who either held failed mortgages or held credit default swaps? Sure. (credit Default Swaps are instruments that pay if your debt goes bad. I most certainly do know that a credit default swap is, even before checked wikipedia to be sure. Why does that instrument even exist? Just sell the darn debt.) Hedge funds… Not so much.
Of course, your efforts as an entrepreneur are worth far more to the overall economy than the efforts of a hedge fund manager. You have more at stake (after all, the hedge fund managers get to play with other people’s money…) and you have more control over the outcome. On this level, you do have a point. I will admit that hedge fund mangers are personally overpaid for the value they produce, but that doesn’t mean that they do not produce value. Not everyone on Wall St. is a bunch of speculative oxygen theives, despite their best efforts.
And you are assuming that money placed in savings and investment has no impact on the economy. Supply side isn’t everything, but it does exist.
Also, I wouldn’t mind the program if it hadn’t come with a provision demanding the destruction of all of those perfectly useful automobiles. As it was, it drove up the cost of transportation for those who could least afford it. By driving up the price of a used car, Cash for Clunkers mad the poorest Americans pay more for transportation to support a bailout of the middle class. Savings rate data, and general common sense (you can’t save if you don’t have any money) show that the poorest people will spend the highest prorogation of their income. This means that Cash for Clunkers effectively diverted money to people who were less likely to spend it.
Best. Insult. Ever.
Never heard of it. Is it painful?
A friend of mine just started the adoption process after trying for years to get pregnant. The answer is … yes, it’s pretty painful, but not in a physical way. (Classes, recommendation letters, paperwork, and buttloads of moolah.) When I read a book like Anne of Green Gables where orphaned kids are just sort of traded around from family to family and put to work on the farm or whatever, I think at the same time how awful it is for the kids at times, but how much simpler that must have been for people who legitimately wanted a kid to raise.
Hm.
I just realized that I post here less than the flouncy trolls, and I’ve been hanging around here since the site was just a little boobling. Wtf.
What kinda price is birth control over there? Here HBC is all free…is there a set prescription rate or do the drug company set the price? =/
I remember reading in the followup to the earthquake in Japan that actually, earthquakes of a reasonable size are good for the economy. They destroy buildings and promote a spurt of growth, of full utilization of capacity, that wouldn’t otherwise take place.
The problem with the current non-recession is ongoing unemployment. So no, window-makers are not reallocating productive capacity. Instead, they’d be tapping into the unused productive capacity of the unemployed, eventually. That’s the whole point. If the economy were whirring along so nicely that everyone was producing, we wouldn’t have this level of distress.
damn you LaPlace Demon. Now I’ve commented there.
re IUDs: I’ve been a partner to pretty much every form of BC there is on the market (including some no longer available.
A long “string” can be felt, sort of. It can also tangle, or get tangled with a pubic hair. When that happens it can become (or did for me) moderately noticeable.
All in all, it has been (for all the partners I’ve had who had one) a pretty good means of BC. It’s not recommended for people who are having non-condom sex with multiple partners, because it increases the risks from an STI. It can also be a real pain for insertion in nulliparrous women. My former fiancée was doubled over for hours, and cramping like nobody’s business for about three days.
After that, she’s had no problems (and that’s going on 6 years now). She likes it better than depo, diaphragm, the patch, nuva ring and condoms (all of which we tried).
on steralization if one is in possession of a uterus:
i’ve been trying since i was *18*. because i have a genetic disease whereby pregnancy = death. not “possible” death; almost CERTAIN death [97% chance AT BEST.]
i’m 34. i just a few months ago found an OB who’d give me ESSURE.
we tried TWICE. now she’s going to tie my tubes.
because – and this was SHOCKING – she actually KNEW what Porphyria *IS*. seriously, i’ve been to more OBs than i can count. i say “i’d like to be steralized” and they say “what?! WHY!” and i say “because i have porphyria and pregnancy will kill me” and they say “you might change your mind”
what? i “might change my mind” about a VERIFIED FACT?!
“no – you might decide you want to do it anyway”
often, i was told “come back at age X” and equally often “come back when you’ve had 3 kids”. and i say “did you miss that whole PREGNANCY KILLS ME thing?” and got told again “you might change your mind”.
the second the last doctor said “come back when you’ve had 3 kids and have your husband’s permission.” i said “I’m not MARRIED” and he said “Then you don’t NEED it, do you”.
and i said “fuck you, i’m not paying you” and left [sadly, there was no copay and my insurance paid it all]
HellKell – my new OB is *REALLY* cool. i actually think she’d have done the Essure whether or not i had porphyria. are you anywhere near Ohio? if you want Essure, and want her number – i’ll give you her number and put you up for however long you need to be here to get it done. i am NOT joking – i’m ALL about helping those who want steralized to GET steralized, it fucking pisses me off that 30, 40 years ago i’d have been steralized against my will, but today it was all but IMPOSSIBLE to find someone willing to do it! it’s MY body [and it’s YOUR body!]
this is actually a generalized offer to ANY person in possession of a uterus and fallopian tubes who wants Essure and can come to Columbus, OH. [bcuz my OB? told me, bragging a bit i think 🙂 that she started doing Essure *specifically* for transmen who couldn’t get “bottom surgery” [note to Ami: is that the right terminology?] and NO ONE ELSE would steralize – these men were told the same thing i was told, over and over – “you might change your mind”. if they’ve gone thru the process to become transmen? i mean, i’m sure it DOES happen, like i used to know a woman with Porphyria who decided to try for a baby – but SHE’S DEAD. erm, not that i think transmen would die or anything – just that they’re probably generally NOT going to have children, or WANT to BEAR children. ok, i’m digging a hole here, sigh]
Sarah – IUDs are BADBADBADBAD JUJU if one has not had a child. [there are exceptions to every rule, but still…] OTOH – i currently have an Implanon. sadly, it *IS* hormonal, but i’ve had it 2 years and 2 months and haven’t had a SINGLE period [knock on wood]. also sadly, unlike the lost NorPlant [i LOVED my NorPlants!] it’s only 3 years. but it’s CHEAPER than an IUD. well… maybe not in the long run – over 10 years. over 9 years it’s cheaper, but getting the 4th ImPlanon to make 10 years makes it about $50 more than an IUD [erm – these are the Planned Parenthood rates for Columbus OH. the sliding scale ones. i don’t know how it would differ with insurance] NorPlants were cheaper than IUDs [grumble]
but if one wants non-hormonal and non-IUD, the new diaphrams are pretty spiffy [as are the sponges. not so much the cervical caps]. if you use them with a spermacide, they’re literally as effective vs. pregnancy as “perfect use” condoms w/ spermacide – i,e, 99.999%
[what? my mom went to nursing school when was 8 and 9, coinciding with those years i was bouncing in and out of the hospital. i was “homeschooled” those years, and went to EVERY SINGLE CLASS WITH HER. she’s now a OB Nurse Practicioner. and i went to most of THOSE classes with her, as well. i’m ALL OVER BC]
sadly, i don’t know much about vascectomies, except they have a slightly higher “fail” rate, and are actually EASIER to reverse [if done in the first 5 years]. i assume it’s a uriologist who does them? i don’t even know that 🙁 i should find out. TBH, i’m actually SHOCKED that anyone is having trouble getting a vascectomy – i’ve never heard of it before. i mean, i know guys who got them the very SECOND they turned 18 [ok, they very DAY…]
i don’t remember who was wanting a vascectomy – sorry about that! i looked but it’s 5am now – but i’ll offer you the same sort of thing i offered HellKell, if i can find a doc who’ll do one here in Columbus.
I’m from the UK. I imagine with a private doctor there’d be no problem getting the snip, but National Health Service doctors have always told me no. Anyway, now that I’m 40 I’ll try again, and maybe this time they’ll accept that I know my own mind.
“Yup. Pretty much anything would be a better use of government money. Pretty much anything: More guns and ammo for the military, upgrading the federal vehicle pool, increasing eligibility for food-stamps, issuing scholarships to engineering students… Most government programs don’t involve rendering perfectly functional automobiles unusable, thereby denying their use to people who really want transportation. Cash for clunkers delayed my acquisition of an automobile for nearly three years. ”
Uh, don’t care, seriously. Cash for Clunkers took vehicles off the market that were hideous gas consumers. We’re already late on this shit, we need to really get moving better for it. That you had a hard time buying a used car sucks for you, but even if we weren’t in a depression with the potential of this helping, my give-a-damn would be busted. We should run the program perenially.
“And you are assuming that money placed in savings and investment has no impact on the economy. Supply side isn’t everything, but it does exist. ”
The alternative was folks getting laid off. That really damages shit, sorry.