Contra Third Positionism: Prohibition
Dysgenesis is even worse than degeneracy.
Table of Contents
-Opening Remarks
-Gambling
-Homosexuality
-Prostitution
-Pornography
-Drugs
-General Problems
-The Slippery Slope
-Other Issues
-Concluding Remarks
-Footnotes
-Sources
Opening Remarks
Null positionists and third positionists both wish to minimize the harmful effects of degeneracy on the nation. We differ sharply on how to do this however. Null positionists regard civil society as the sphere with which primary policymaking against degeneracy should lie. Third positionists regard the state as that sphere. This article explains why the third positionist approach is comparatively counterproductive to the point of exacerbating degeneracy, and even causing dysgenesis.
I am a reactionary libertarian. I believe that legalization of all behavior that does not violate the property norm is most supportive of natural order. It is worth prefacing here however, that this book is not a case specifically for reactionary libertarianism, but against third positionism, which leaves non-libertarian null positionist ideologies such as paleoconservatism and neoreaction available as options too. These latter ideologies allow for a certain degree of property violation in fighting degeneracy, but still place strict limits on the government’s scope of activity in this regard to avoid imposing undue enforcement cost on healthy people. A paleoconservative may support universal prohibition of internet pornography, but would not sanction so much as the existence of an agency like the NSA, let alone allowing it to aid in enforcement. This is because the NSA is unconstitutional. A neoreactionary may support a sovereign corporation enforcing a similar policy in its realm, but would oppose that same corporation attempting to acquire another sovcorp to do the same. This is because acquisition would violate their corporate charter. Third positionists by contrast, do not regard such limits as essential. I make libertarian arguments concerning prohibition because I believe they are strongest, but even if I didn’t believe that, it would still strengthen the overall case to present them. This is because if it can be shown that libertarianism, the reactionary position that is farthest from the third position in terms of what is legally permissible is still plausibly superior in mitigating degeneracy, then the third position is likely to be very weak indeed by dint of that distance.
What is degeneracy? In defining it many third positionists commit the use/abuse fallacy: If something can be abused, any and all use of that thing is also abuse. Evidence for this error on their part lies in the existence of the distinct term “vice”, which refers to activities that are often used degenerately but are not in themselves degenerate. Examples are gambling and drinking. What differentiates addiction from indulgence is whether the manner in which the activity someone indulges in hinders their enjoyment of things they value more highly. Such values are subjective, but the value that degeneracy hinders, especially in light of its etymology, has a more objective quality. It is the value of life’s continuity itself. The root word is “gens” which is Latin for clan or tribe. In the broadest sense, therefore, degeneracy covers everything that undermines the flourishing of the tribe. Third positionists believe the best way to combat this is statist prohibition (hereafter termed prohibitionism), a national ban on degeneracy.
Gambling
We start our rebuttal to third positionist censorship with identifying instances where use is not only not abuse, but possibly beneficial. The vice we start with is gambling. Gambling has a certain swashbuckling quality to it, especially games such as poker that require skillful bluffing, a skill that translates well to statesmanship. The Anglo subtribes of America who were the good guys in the War Between the States, the Anglicans and the Borderlanders, were enthusiastic gamblers in contrast to the Puritans and Quakers who regarded games of chance as sinful. There’s also a quite white-coded quality to professional gamblers who engineer systems to beat what from the house’s perspective are supposed to be games of pure chance. The Puritans won the war, so we mostly have to go to beringean casinos to gamble now. While this is an improvement over mob administration, all else equal it’s probably better still for a nation to legally own its own casinos because higher trust reduces the propensity to cheat. A notable recent exception to outsourcing of American gambling is the legalization of sports betting in a number of states1. Many poople oppose legalized sports betting, citing things studies such as Arnesen and Matsuzawa 2024i that show domestic violence increases after lost home team NFL games where betting is legal. What they omit in citing this study is that it also shows domestic violence decreases in betting-legal states after home wins by even more. The study did not even factor in the effects of close wins, only upset wins, and the authors themselves caution that their results should not be grounds for reversing legalization. Other studies show negative financial impacts such as an increase in bankruptcies in legalizing states. These studies showed that lower income people were much more inclined to abuse, however these studies do not control for race, which is significant because significant disparities in violence and impulse control exist between races even when socioeconomic status is controlled for. According to Grok’s analysis of census data, 45% of bottom quintile households are black or latino. 50% of the bottom quintile is white, however only about 16.5% of the white population is in the bottom quintile. The financial results do buck the trend of legalization reducing abuse of vices. It may be partly to do with the fact that other forms of gambling are still heavily restricted, creating an artificial concentration in sports bets. Another factor is the new technological increase in availability of intra-event betting, an on-demand form of dopamine hit that exists in much greater abundance than for games like slots, lottery, and horserace.
We must all consider the entertainment benefit to the great majority who are not addicts, and the opportunity of a fun profession for a small minority. From a monetary perspective betting is zero sum, but of course price is not value. For many the entertainment value is not the expected return but the extreme risk involved. Sports betting makes sports better, not just from an entertainment standpoint in injecting interest into even the most hopeless mismatches, but also from an analytics standpoint that sabermetricians can use, subject to conflict of interest restriction. Regarding conflicts of interest, it should be noted that the transparency of legalized betting may have helped bring to light the NBA betting scandal involving Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker (D). Simon Laird has pointed out that many of the complaints about sports betting also apply to sports fandom itselfii, such as the addictiveness of gentlemen’s fantasy leagues, along with many other features. Sports have the advantage of incentivizing fitness, has been show to actually make people, especially men, more right-wing as it increases. They teach teamwork and personal accountability, and their zero-sum nature teaches valuable political lessons.
The sports betting issue also highlights the value of legalized information betting in general, which is currently labeled “prediction markets” due to restrictions. Prediction markets can help the public see through the lies of corrupt politicians’ and their toadying pollsters; this is a reason why politicians hate them. Legalization of gambling and other vices has the advantage of providing a source of tax revenue that can provide tax relief in other areas. This is a eugenic policy because it represents an average transfer of resources from the degenerate minority to the healthy majority.
It is also pointless to ban gambling as a business only, because casual gambling would be uninteresting for all but the most aggressive risk seekers if there was not at least the opportunity to profit from it consistently. Blanket prohibition of gambling, and especially sports betting, could also set a precedent for the banning of financial derivatives, which, though monetarily also zero-sum, are immensely useful instruments that actually often help reduce risk. There are now even derivative contracts for sports and other events. Altogether it is not at all clear that inhibiting the transfer of money from those who value risk more than expected return to those with the converse preference is a good thing. It may even be a good thing in that resources flow from those of higher time preference to those of low time preference. This would be likely in a scenario where abusive casino operators are boycotted, especially being kicked off of app stores. Property should only be sold or leased to casinos on condition that they vigilantly monitor and mitigate problematic behavior, including generous support for addiction treatment. They should not be required to put addiction treatment information in their advertising however because it comes off as paternalistic.
Homosexuality
Homosexuality, which in truth is almost an exclusively male phenomenon, is a kind of deviance that is mostly nurtured. This does not mean entirely inculcated however. Although there is a small degree of genetic predisposition, the primarly disposing factor appears to be uterine hormonal levels. A fetus undergoes several testosterone baths – The first induces the development of primary sex organs, the second influences sexual orientation, the third influences intensity of orientation. The lower testosterone level of the second bath that causes homosexual predisposition is influenced by cortisol, the hormone that elevates in response to stress. Third positionist regimes tend to be higher stress environments due to their greater militarism, surveillance, and economic constraints. The Dorner study claiming to show an increase in the number of homosexuals among Germans born during the Second World War seems to corroborate this, although the study has not been successfully replicated.iii
There may be some adaptive value to homosexuality. Gay shaman theory is an instance of this. Under conditions of group selection, it is not necessarily optimal for all members of a tribe to reproduce. In deep evolutionary history only about 60% of men reproduce anyway. Although higher status men have higher fertility on average, it may be better for some high status men in certain roles not to be burdened with the responsibilities of fatherhood so that they attend to spiritual leadership roles that are all-consuming. The priestly practice of celibacy may be an offshoot of shamanic selection – the key result is the absence of fatherhood, not the absence of sexuality.
Homosexuality is an instance where third positionists commit a reverse NAXALT fallacy, or what we could term the DOCTOR (determinism of central tendency or regression) fallacy – that because homosexuality is a net negative for most homosexuals in their individual lives, no homosexual can be a net contributor to society. This is falsified by the fact that a number of outlier contributors have been or have been strongly suspected of being homosexual:
1. Alan Turing, openly gay British mathematian and computer scientist. His Theory of Computable Numbers laid the groundwork for the invention of electronic computers, which occurred toward the end of his tragically short life. Persecution for his sexual behavior likely contributed to his suicide in 1954.
2. Leonardo Da Vinci, Italian artist and inventor. Best known as the painter of the Mona Lisa, he also conceived early designs for helicopters, tanks, and parachutes. Historical records strongly indicate he was gay.
3. Sir Francis Bacon, British philosopher and statesmen. Credited as a significant developer of the scientific method and contributor to empiricist philosophy.
4. Baron Friedrich von Steuben. A Prussian military officer who trained the Continental Army during the American War for Independence. He was instrumental to the American Victory at Valley Forge.
A counterargument against homosexual scientists and inventors is that their innovations would have eventually been discovered by someone else anyway. This ignores the value of time – there was likely no other trainer of von Steuben’s caliber at Valley Forge, for example and a loss there might have flipped the outcome of the war. The same is likely true of Alan Turing, whose work was instrumental in cracking the Germans’ Enigma Code.
There is speculation that Alexander the Great, Frederick the Great, and Sir Isaac Newton may have also been gay.
The speculation of homosexuality that is most intriguing to this article is the case of Enoch Powell. These claims center on his time as a student and young academic in the 1930s, drawing on personal letters, poems, and later accounts by colleagues. These claims have been strongly contested by Powell’s official biographer and others, who believe reflect social awkwardness instead.
During his time at King Edwards School and Trinity College, Cambridge, Powell had an intense intellectual focus, an ascetic lifestyle, and limited social interaction. He did not form romantic attachments to women. This continued through his stint as a professor of Greek at the University of Sydney from 1937-39 before he enlisted in the British army at the outbreak of World War II. The bulk of evidence given as indicative of homosexuality is his letters and statements about his personal life. One letter reportedly stated he “had no interest in women at all” and described feeling “repulsion” toward them. In contrast he wrote of an “instant and instinctive affection” for young men, which he believed needed to be “camouflaged” to conform to societal expectations. Powell published First Poems in 1937, which contains verses some have interpreted as homoerotic. The reportedly allude to romantic or emotional attachments to men. Biographer Michael Bloch cites these verses in Closet Queens: Some 20th Century British Politicians as part of a pattern of “intense” expressions from Powell’s 1930s and 40s. Bloch also believes however, that Powell was not only closeted but also for the most part celibate: a “virtual stranger to physical homosexuality.” According to John Evans, the Chaplain at Trinity College and Extra Preacher to the King, Powell left instructions with him to reveal “at least one of the romantic affairs of his life had been homosexual.”
Powell’s official biographer Simon Heffer contends that Powell’s letters and poems are not confessions of homosexuality. His lack of relationships with women were due to shyness. Heffer agrees with Bloch that Powell avoided acting on whatever same-sex impulses he may have had. Powell married Pamela Wilson at age 40, had two daughters, and maintained a stable family life until he died.
The case of Powell reminds us that homosexuality is a spectrum, not a distinct pathogen, one of often considerable ambiguity as well. Prohibitionism creates a culture where great men like Powell never get to realize their greatness because they weren’t given the benefit of the doubt when coming of age.
The DOCTOR fallacy against homosexuality ignores the Pareto Principle: even if homosexuality has no upside, the few homosexuals who are of outlier contributors may have such an outsized positive impact on society that they more than offset the negative impact of homosexuals as a group. It is in this light that we should consider the cost-benefit calculus of prohibition against homosexuality.
In terms of kinship continuity, it is ideal to pressure homosexuals into staying in the closet and raising families. This of course does conflict somewhat with the goal of minimizing exposure of children to homosexuals, who have a significantly elevated rate of pedophilia as a group. This conflict is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the kind of homosexuals who either submit to social pressure to closet or do so of their own accord are the kind who are also unlikely to be pedophiles. Familial pedophilia is extremely rare for closeted homosexuals due to the strength and universality of the incest taboo. The reason why the null positionists approach of free market prohibitionism against homosexuality is that unlike prohibitionism it is able to discriminate accordingly. It can account for the elevated pedophilia rate even among closeted homosexuals by prohibiting their interaction with children not their own. Such an approach helps ensure that such homosexuals remain positive contributors even in the event their behavior is accidentally discovered. Open homosexuals are squeezed out of civilized society through freedom of disassocation.
Prostitution
Prostitution provides ready fodder for right-wing men to indulge in adolescent white-knighting by seeking its prohibition. They ignore significant instances where has a definite utility. It provided an outlet for nobility forced into chilly marriages for the purpose of forging political alliances. This is a reason why the Church became involved not only with regulating brothels but also profiting from them in the Middle Ages, if not running them directly. Prostitution was regarded as sinful of course, not because of its transactional aspect (men pay for sex one way or another), but because it is a type of fornication. It was recognized as a lesser evil compared to seduction of respectable women and rape, and one that helped reduce instances of the latter. St Augustine declared “If you expel prostitution from society, you will unsettle everything on account of lusts.”iv St Thomas Aquinas argued that in some cases prostitution must be tolerated despite condemning it as a sin on several counts.v The mitigation that the Church offered was not lobbying the state to prohibit it (a number of municipal governments attempted to expel prostitutes to no avail) but to set up sanctuaries for those who wished to quit the profession and encouraged them to become nuns. The policy that municipal governments turned to in lieu of expulsion was ghettoization. Another, complementary policy was requiring prostitutes to wear distinguishing clothes. Officials did so out of a desire to avoid confusion with respectable women, but a downside to this approach is that it normalizes prostitution to a degree. It may be more expedient to prohibit dressing as a prostitute everywhere in a town while enforcing a bottom-up ghettoization through restrictive covenants instead of a top-down zoning of it. Worth noting is the fact that if blanket prohibition of prostitution fails even on the municipal level as it did in the Middle Ages, it seems much more implausible for the national prohibition of third positionism to be any more successful.
Today, prostitution is topical in the context of inceldom. It does not appear to be pinned down as to whether inceldom contains an exception for the soliciting of prostitutes. For some there may be none affordable in their area. For many the stigma is by itself a dealbreaker. Another hurdle is of course illegality. If prostitutes count as removing the status of incel, then legalizing prostitution would reduce inceldom. Because incels are those who are more likely to conform to current feminist social norms that inhibit approaching women, they are also more likely to comply with laws prohibiting the solicitation of prostitutes. Legalization therefore, would likely have a significant effect. As with any other vice, it is not as though it need be a crutch either. Even if prostitution does not count as relief from inceldom, it could still serve as a transitional measure helping incels become socially and physically comfortable with women. Legalization also has the effect of reducing inhibition of abused prostitutes to report their abusers to the authorities.
Prostitution also has the knock-on effect of stripping romantic relationships of excessive commercialism and sexual preoccuption. When men know that sex is guaranteed elsewhere according to their willingness to pay for it, they are less likely to behave caddishly in romantic settings, diverting more of their resources into the romantic journey toward sex rather than trying to bribe dates into it prematurely.
Web 2.0 has seen the natural evolution of prostitutive services like adult phone chatlines into video services like OnlyFans. A moral panic has arisen on the right regarding OnlyFans for its popularity, horseshoeing with sex-negative feminists. Key context concerning popularity that is often missed, however, is that OnlyFans creators are an international market. OnlyFans currently has about 4.5 million creator accounts. Grok estimates that women of childbearing age across the world who both are eligible and have the means to be a creator to be around a billion2. This yields a use percentage ceiling of less than 0.5 %. This is a ceiling because it says nothing of activity within the accounts. Grok estimates that only 10-30% of creator accounts are active, depending on the definition of activity. Creator activity is, in financial terms, extremely unrewarding for the overwhelming majority. The top 1% of accounts earn 33% of the revenue and the top 10% earn 75%. Between 50 and 70% of accounts earn nothing, a median of $0. This pulls the mean earnings down to only about $104 per month. Because of this, most OnlyFans creator accounts are mostly dormant. Between 70% and 80% of content is sexually explicit.3 Of this content about half is softcore and half is hardcore. It is interesting to note that in 2021 OnlyFans seriously considered prohibiting sexual content due to pressure from banking partners and payment processors concerned about reputational risk. Although this was ultimately rejected due to backlash from creators and their advocacy groups, it does go against the common third positionist notion of jewish collusion between bankers and pornographers.4
OnlyFans may have a silver lining. In addition to providing what could be a safer, if not entirely happy, medium between recorded pornography and prostitution for men short on sexual success, it may teach many women a valuable lesson. Many of those in the bottom half of earners came on to the platform overestimating their sexual market value. The economist who goes by Dr. Insensitive Jerk on Twitter explains the value in this:
Every woman needs a man she feels lucky to be with, but she can’t find one if she is a 5 who imagines she’s an 8.
Here is another win:
The bottom 80% of men are invisible to young women, even while she takes his burger order. So when an average man hits on a young woman, and forces her to see him, she thinks, “This is the ugliest man I have ever seen.”
He is not the ugliest man; he is mid-rank. However, he might be the ugliest man she has ever noticed.
OnlyFans will beat that bad habit out of her, because her followers will not be top-20% men. Far from it. Yet she will have to notice them, because if she doesn’t, they won’t pay her.
Perhaps for the first time, she will actually see a sample of below-average men, see them in detail, with her eyes pried open by cash.
Her below-average followers might even become the ruler by which she measures that average guy who hits on her.
This seems like a win for everyone, including her, because now she might have a realistic chance of finding a man she feels lucky to be with.
For both sexes, the secret of happiness is low standards, and you won’t find much lower than the average OnlyFans subscriber.
Even better, an OnlyFans model must do more than just notice her followers. She has to give them what men want, or she won’t get paid.
For many young girls raised on Sex in the City, the idea of giving men what they want will seem foreign, even alien. For her whole life until OnlyFans, she was taught that a woman should never do anything just to please a man. He should love her for being herself and doing what she wants to do.
Yet on OnlyFans, she will have to practice pleasing men, to hone her skill. That’s another win: She learns how to please a man. Since pleasing men will be paired with the Ding of arriving cash, she will be conditioned like Pavlov’s dog, and she might even learn to enjoy it.
Pleasing men could become a habit, like smoking.”
OnlyFans is more of a symptom than a pathogen. It was originally created not even to be sexual, more as way for women to earn from displaying sundry affairs of interest to others such as cooking. The massive demand for it comes from not from male sexual desire per se, which is constant and has been correspondingly marketed to long before the interenet, but from the epidemic of male loneliness, which is significantly attributable to the internet. The reason is because high-status men are now through the internet much better able to connect sexually with multiple women on a concurrent basis. Even if encounters are infrequent, such women will still consider themselves taken. This is why only 1/3 of Gen Z women report themselves single while 2/3 of Gen Z men do. OnlyFans profits by providing lower status men with fake girlfriends. This is sinister to be sure, but the problem is fundamentally the social surrogacy inherent to the internet.
Pornography
Pornography is the vice with the least reedeming features if any. Some have argued that it reduces sexual abuse in the way legalized prostitution does but there is also an argument that its perversion normalizes and possibly increases sexual abuse. We can look at some data that many third positionists overlook to buttress our case that they have not given the general issue of prohibition due consideration. Substacker Black Francis has helpfully compiled a review of the liturature1 across an array of contentions concerning the effects of pornography. What follows is a summary of key findings.
A commonly cited source in favor of prohibitionism is the Meese Report commissioned by the Reagan adminisistration. It purported to show an increase in aggression among men but did not control for factors such as the increase in violence in media generally (and violence in media causing increases in real-world violence is itself a dubious claim). It showed in increase in rape fantasies among women but not an increase in actual rape. This report was commissioned during the inner city crack epidemic, a largely black issue, as well as during a time when third world immigration was also on the rise.
More recently, the anti-pornography group Fight The New Drug has released a series of interviews of people about the destructive effects of pornography on their lives. This is a small and likely self-selected sample however. We would expect from a large random sample that there would be at least an odd few who would report some sort of benefit. Indeed, when we turn to such a sample such as that of Hald and Malamuth (2008), a size of 688, we see a different result. Both men and women reported more positive effects than negative. The correlation with positive effects did not diminish with increased consumption either, and was statistically significant, unlike the correlation with negative effects, whose size was also much smaller. Postive effects were significantly driven by perceived realism of the performers among others. In other studies by Hald, negative effects were driven significantly by number of sexual partners among others. A more critical study comes from the Wright 2017 meta-analysis of 50 studies on the relationship between pornography consumption and interpersonal/intrapersonal satisfaction. The analysis found a -0.10 correlation with interpersonal satisfaction (p < 0.001). The average effect size for intrapersonal satisfaction was -0.3. The effect sizes in this study were small and weak however, and it is unclear what the criteria for a negative outcome were. Stulhofer et al. 2021 found in a study of 4177 individuals in Germany, religiosity was a significant driver of reporting negative effects of personal pornography consumption.
The straightforward intuition that pornography consumption results in less sex may not be accurate either. Some studies, such as Albright 2008, support this intuition. It found an r of -0.362 for men and -0.104 for women. It was not limited to pornography but covered several different online sexual activities such as erotic chats. Pfause and Prause (2015a) however, found a positive association between pornography consumption and desire for a sexual partner. Desire of course, has little to do with success. People who are more satisfied with their sex lives will express less desire for other or additional partners. This leads to the question of what effect pornography has on existing relationships. Bennet et al. (2019) conducted a study on this. They found that consumption of pornography did not impact desire for one’s partner. The study also found that feelings of guilt over viewing pornography negatively influenced sexual desire for one’s partner. Studies on the association between pornography consumption and number of sexual partners is strongly positive. There is some circumstantial evidence that pornography does not suppress sexual activity in the case of South Korea. Of particular interest to nationalists, despite the country’s legal prohibition of live-action pornography, their fertility rates are the lowest in the First World. This assumes however, that prohibition meaningfully reduces pornography consumption, which seems logistically implausible to say the least. Zillman and Bryant in 1988 conducted a study where they had students watch either pornography or an R-rated film in each of six weeks. The students who had watched pornography had a lower view of marriage as an essential institution. They did not provide metrics such as standard deviation that could be used to calculate an effect size however. Malcom and Naufal conducted a study in 2014 that showed a negative correlation between pornograhy consumption and probability of being married. Issues with this study are that it does not separate heavy pornography consumers from light consumers and that it is cross-sectional, meaning no causal direction can be reliably inferred.
What of pornography’s effect on existing relationships? Evidence is mixed here as well. An oft-cited study by anti-pornography groups is Kenrick, Gutierres, and Goldberg (1998), where 65 people married or in relationships were selectively exposed to pornographic photos. The men who were exposed to pornograhy reported lower levels of love for their partner and rated their partner as less attractive after. Other similarly designed studies such as Dermer and Pyszczynski (1978) and Amelang and Pike (1992)have found no effect however. A replication of Kenrick and meta-analysis by Balzarini et al. (2017) including the original study with a total of 830 participants yielded no significant effects. There are other studies indicating a negative effect on relationships such as Shumway and Daines (2012), which attributed 10-25% of divorce increases in the 60s and 70s to pornography as measured by Playboy sales. This study specifically is countered by Wongsurawat (2006) which showed a negative correlation between Penthouse sales and divorce rates in the early 90s. A large study (n=8376) by Grov et al. (2011) found significant positive effects when couples consumed pornography together. Kohut et al. (2021) conducted multiple studies that also showed positive effects for both shared consumption and non-consumption but negative effects for unshared consumption. The phenomenon of moral opposition to pornography producing negative effects for individuals translates to relationships, as Maas et al. (2018) indicates. As for infidelity specifically, most studies suggest that the direction of causality is one of escapism – that people who are dissatisfied with a relationship to the point of cheating are also more likely to seek sexual refuge in pornography.
An interesting anecdote of pornography use seeming to be caused by, rather than causing, a bad relationship can be found in none other than that of anti-pornography crusader Gary Wilson, author Your Brain on Porn. Before becoming anti-porn crusaders, Wilson and his wife Marnia Robinson were sex gurus. Informing Wilson’s advice was his “healing from a long-term addiction and chronic depression” according to his wife. The addiction she is referring to was pornography. According to her book Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow, she and her husband had sexual problems long before he started watching porn. These problems are unsurprising in light Marnia’s attitude toward sex revealed in a 2008 interview:
One can view the orgasm cycle as similar to a drug or alcohol cycle because it emanates from the same mechanism in the brain, using the same neurochemical, dopamine. When anything -- whether a substance (cocaine, too much sugar) or an activity (gambling, orgasm) -- over-stimulates your reward circuitry, it produces a high, followed by a period of recovery.
That recovery is, in a sense, a withdrawal. The difference between sex and drugs is that the orgasm “hangover” is so much a part of us, so natural and programmed, that it is hard to recognize -- unless, of course, you escape the cycle [samsara] entirely. It can make you feel uncharacteristically needy, irritable, anxious, depleted, or desperate for another orgasm.vi
To fool Mother Nature, you obviously have to do something different in the bedroom. This is why the Taoists, and others, recommended learning to make love in a way that doesn’t trigger our subconscious mating program -- or rather, triggers only the attachment part of it, not the move on part of it. We can make use of this natural attachment program, which bonds us to our children and parents, in our romances, too, by emphasizing generous affection, playfulness, gentle intercourse, and, of course, by avoiding orgasm. Results include greater harmony and wellbeing, and, remarkably, less sexual frustration.
Marnia Robinson is a quack. The proper treatment for sex addiction is similar to treatments for other addictions: Have the addict find more activities outside of sex that provide happiness and meaning, so that sex is no longer a form of escapism and can be enjoyed for its own sake. Only someone who is sexually dysfunctional would advise avoidance of orgasm specifically. If anything such avoidance creates even more sexual frustration, and more desire to make of for the lack of quality sex by increasing its quantity. Gary and Marnia’s sexual problems spiraled into not only porn addiction but also infidelity.vii Rather than confront their own dysfunctional nature they chose to externalize the blame and declare war on Mother Nature herself. They do this while trying to rationalize their dysfunction as natural. Marnia again:
I think polyamory is a very logical solution to the fact that mammals are not monogamous. Hunter-gatherer societies are polyamorous…
[Sexual compulsions] decrease your freedom and cloud your judgment, so as a spiritual matter they slow your evolution. Unfortunately, anyone who decides to move beyond a sexual compulsion has to go through an uncomfortable withdrawal period.
Wilson claims that quitting porn heals the brain and increases strength and energy. His claims are undermined by survivorship bias however. People who are inherently strong and self-disciplined overall who indulge in porn in a moment of weakness will also be the ones much more likely to kick the habit. Those who don’t will tend to be inherently weak, low-energy people. Although Gary Wilson and his wife are secular peeople and crusade against porn in secular terms, what they have in common with they religious crusaders is a compulsion to externalize responsibility for a problem that is fundamentally internal by unscientifically demonizing it. Jesus rebukes them both:
“Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.”
-Matthew 15:11
Returning to the literature survey on pornography and dysfunction: Several studies: Foubert (2017), McDougal (2012: 63), Begovic (2019) Dickson (2017), and )appear to indicate that pornography causes impotence. When key controls are applied however, the true cause appears to be specifically pornography addiction. Addicts, according to the studies, are a small subset of pornography consumers. Further confirmation of what our intuition tells us is that there is a significant association between loneliness and pornography use is found in studies too numerous to list here. These studies also examine other mental health issues. Overall, when relevent controls are applied, longitudinal analysis shows a dissipation in issues such as depression and anxiety from an initially negative baseline Stulholfer, Tafro, and Kohut (2019). Longitudinal study, including of adolescents, suggests that mental illness tends to precede high pornography consumption. The mental health effects also appear to be mediated by moral incongruence and religiosity (Grubbs et al. (2019). Mental health studies have also been conducted on pornography performers. Gruzden et al (2011) studied a group of 174 performers and found lower levels of mental health compared to the control group. Griffith’s studies in 2012 and 2013 found no significant difference however.
There is some evidence that pornography increases sexual aggression (as distinct from rape). Gonsalves and Scalora 2015; Hughes, Brewer, and Khan 2019; Kernsmith and Kernsmith 2007; Stanley et al. 2016). Bogaert, Woodard, and Hafer (1999) found that low IQ males are more inclined by pornography toward sexual agression. This inclination is also heavily mediated by inclination toward aggression generally. As for rape itself, evidence is mixed. Court in 1984 found a positive relationship between legalization and rape rates in a number of Western countries. Japan’s rape rate however, declined from 1975-1995 as its pornography laws became much more permissive, but this is confounded by significant population aging. A country that became youger while pornography laws were relaxed is India. Math et al. (2014) and Math et al. (2014) found no relationship between this and sex crime rates. Kutchinsky found a decrease in rape allegations in Denmark after pornography was legalized, and a decrease in exhibitionism and voyeurism in Copenagen (1971, 1973, 1985).
There is also the question of whether pornography’s legalization exacerbates sex trafficking. Hughes (2010) observes via narrative interviews that there is a link between the porn industry and trafficking, but this evidence is limited and anecdotal. There does not appear to be any literature on legalization and sex trafficking. It is reasonable that pornography producers and distributors face penalties for content that they know to involve trafficking or underage participation. User age verification law however, is not reasonable because of the privacy compromises it represents. A brick and mortar adult content outlet can simply have a policy of turning away those who look too young, and those who are willing to compromise their privacy further to obtain smut can do so by producing an ID. Identity theft and blackmail in such a situation is highly traceable. This is not so on the internet.
The greatest concern over pornography is over addiction. To gauge the severity of the problem we need to properly define addiction. The accepted definition in the psychiatric profession is for what is termed “dependence”.
“Dependence, as defined by the DSM criteria, requires meeting at least three out of seven specific criteria. These criteria include tolerance (needing more of the behavior or stimulus to achieve the same effect), withdrawal effects when the behavior is ceased, engaging in the behavior for longer periods than intended, unsuccessful attempts to control or stop the addictive behavior, significant time spent preparing for and recovering from the addiction, sacrificing important activities due to addictive behaviors, and continuing to engage in the addictive behavior despite negative consequences.”
There have been studies of pornography use that address some of these criteria. For tolerance, Landripet, Busko, and Stulhofer (2019) found that among male adolescents preference for violent and coercive pornography slightly diminished over 24 months. For withdrawal, Dwulit and Rzymski conducted a survey among pornography quitters on frequency and severity of withdrawal symptoms. This survey did not have a baseline however so it is uncertain as to whether symptoms such as insomnia increased after cessation. Fernandez et al. (2023) conducted a study which tracked withdrawal symptoms, positive and negative affect, and cravings for a period of seven days after quitting. It found no differences between the abstinence and control group. For sacrificing important activities there is some evidence in the survery conducted by Villena and Actis (2019). 40% reported that their consumption interfered with family, work, social life, or academics.
There is the related but significantly distinct phenomenon of compulsion to consider. Compulsion refers to “repetitive behaviors or mental acts undertaken to alleviate anxiety or distress. It is not driven by seeking pleasure or gratification.” Most researchers consider compulsive pornography use to be a better-founded category than addiction. Egan and Parmar (2013) found that certain personalities correlate with compulsive behavior in general: neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and obsessional checking. Because agreeableness and conscientiousness correlate with religiosity, religiosity is also correlated with compulsive behavior. Rousseau, Bothe, and Stulhofer (2020) conducted a longitudinal study on religiosity directly as related to compulsive pornography use. They found that “religion, negative emotions, and impulsivity predicted higher levels of problematic pornography use, even when baseline pornography use was controlled for.” What is important to note is that problematic pornography use is almost always self-reported, and when this is accounted for, it appears that religiosity increases self-reported pornography addiction, not that religiosity causes increased problematic pornography use that can be objectively diagnosed.
Another angle from which to approach the question of pornography addiction is to what degree pornography is a drug, as the name Fight the New Drug implies. A study cited by those who favor its classification as such is Voon et al. (2014) where 19 subjects with compulsive sexual behavior were compared with 19 healthy subjects in terms of their brains’ activation when exposed to pornography. Certain areas of the brain that activate during drug use were found to also activate with pornography viewing. Voon’s qualification is sometimes omitted in her citation: “Despite her early findings, Voon says it’s probably too early to put compulsive porn users in a box with people who suffer from drug or alcohol problems. ‘We need more studies to clearly state that it’s an addiction,’ she says” (in Weir 2014).” This is due to the fact that while pornography’s activation overlaps with that of other vices, the activiated regions in their totality are distinct as shown in studies such as Arsalidou, Vijayarajah, and Sharaev (2020). Addiction cannot be defined in terms of some absolute threshold of activation either, because individual predispositions and tolerances vary significantly. A subset of the drug question is the “porn brain” hypothesis. This comes from a study by Kühn and Gallinat that showed higher pornography consumption to be associated with lower grey matter volume, lower left putaminal activity, and lower functional connectivity of the right caudate to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. A replication study has not been performed and if it were to be it is unlikely that the findings would replicate, given the low statistical power of brain imaging and neuroscience (21% and 8%) and of the low replication rate of 6% in neuroscience. The structural and functional MRI techniques used in the study have been criticized for having been, in critics’ opinions, over-extrapolated from by the authors. The technical reasons for this are too dense to delve into here. Although Kühn and Gallinat noted a significant correlation between pornography and alchohol consumption, it is strange that they did not control for this because alcohol consumption is known to lower gray and white matter volume. Television and video games do not affect brain structure or composition so it seems implausible that pornography would.
Several remarks about this litany of studies: The first is that they must be approached with caution due to the severe leftist character of the psychological profession. What a leftist psychologist defines as a positive outcome may in fact be a negative one (e.g. they are liable to take weakness in men for gentleness). Even an objective researcher has to rely on subjects’ self-reporting in many cases, and this reporting is likely biased by the leftist character of the culture itself. I suspect this may be the case for the positive reported effects for shared pornography viewing by couples. A number of fellow rightists I know personally have reported crippling cases of pornography addiction among their associates. This anecdotal reporting is less of a contradiction to the research than it may appear at first glance however. This is because of a salient throughline to the research: The positive association between religiosity/moral incongruence and self-reported problematic pornography use. It is a simple phenomenon: Those who are more predisposed to view pornography as immoral and shameful will naturally have a more negative experience with it. The people in our space are self-selected for higher levels of religiosity and incongruent moral foundations such as sanctity and disgust sensitivity. The general population is lower and likely does in fact have a significantly less negative experience with pornography, even if not a positive one on average.
Third positionists in particular undervalue the differentiation of their own nation’s population in terms of predisposition. It is too simplistic to dismiss normies as “degenerate” and hold up the dissident right as “pure” (anecdotal experience in the latter sphere very much belies this conceit). While gender is a basic biological binary, normal human sexuality is still a spectrum. It is not as though normies lack religiosity or incongruent morality either; progressivism is literally a religion among normies, and religiously-tinged values such as purity are as strong among them such as in attitudes toward organic food compared to conservatives’ attitude toward sex. Another generality we find in the literature is that is not so much pornography that perverts people but more that perverts are the kind of people who consume pornography problematically. The same goes for more benign forms of mental illness or lifestyle problems, where pornography serves as a means of escapism, not a cause. It is not so clear on the right that hardline opposition to pornography makes one a chad either. Anti-pornography crusader Matt Fradd is on record as opposing mixed martial arts for non-martial purposes. His reasons for doing so are pure soy. It is also not clear that not opposing or even indulging in pornography habitually is automatically degenerate. White identitarian The Noble Traitor perceives an artistry to certain forms of pornography of which some can be connoisseurs.
We should also examine whether pornography use is truly of the pandemic proportions that the right alleges. According to the Survey Center on American Life, 43% of men 18-29 have not watched pornography in the last year. A higher percentage of men 18-29 view pornography as morally wrong (42%) compared to men 30-49 (37%). These percentages roughly correspond to the percentage of population who are conservative, and white conservatives have approximately replacement fertility. This is further evidence against the belief that pornography is a significant demographic threat. The proliferation of porn viewing today is to a significant degree a product of the internet’s relative newness. The generational difference in moral views of pornography indicate an inflection point where it becomes more broadly viewed as a vice, much in the way that the new technologies of cigarettes and hard alcohol were in the early twentieth century after an early proliferation of use. Cigarette smoking was banned in certain public areas and is heavily taxed but otherwise state prohibition has been minimal; its use has been stigmatized by large public awareness campaigns, only some of which are governmental. America famously attempted full prohibition of alcohol in the early twentieth century (more on that in next section) but otherwise has been fairly hands off. The way forward in marginalizing pornography is to culturally associate it with loserdom.
The downside of pornography prohibitionism is considerable. Driving it underground would obviously exacerbate the production of extreme depravity in pornography, as well as exacerbate the human trafficking issue due to reduced transparency. It also discourages submission of evidence of sex crimes. Pornography stands out among vices in convenience of accessability, therefore suppressing it to any substantial degree would require an unacceptable level of surveillance. The level of surveillance that governments and their corporate cronies conduct on us is already unacceptable. The recently-passed Online Safety Bill in the UK, ostensibly to protect children from pornography, is a Trojan Horse for censorship of disfavored political speech, or even mere news content that the government sees as inclining viewers against its agenda. Twitter, not even UK-based, recently restricted access to footage of migrant hotel protests to UK-based users until the platform could estimate the user’s ageviii. Third positionists may counter that their ideal government would not censor such footage, but even if we pretend that their government’s censorship policy were judicious, the problem remains that the very surveillance infrastructure can be coopted by subversives within the government, and ultimately by a replacement enemy government.
Commensurate with pornography’s ease in accessibility is the ease with which it may be planted by unscrupulous authorities where prohibited. Because of this accessibility, third positionists sometimes make the argument that because parents cannot themselves fully surveil their children’s media use, the state needs to stop toxic media at the source, or at least provide a sort of surveillance safety net. These are false alternatives. They are false for one thing because the state cannot practicably make any real dent in the volume of pornography available, especially in the internet era, and also because they ignore the role that civil society plays in keeping children safe. Other parents want their own children to have lots of friends to play with, which would not be the case if they were known to be negligent in protecting their children from toxic media. Churches and social organizations can facilitate collective bargaining on the part of communities to shield those communities from harmful influences. An instance of this was the lobbying to require pornography sites to use .xxx as a top-level domain. This would have allowed much more effective parental blocking. The effort failed but is useful because it shows a method of protecting children that does not require surveillance of households. The domain restriction was more of a convenience, not an essential, due to the ability to perform DNS blocking at the level of the home router itself. In this regard technological advance is a boon to private protection against pornography; in the printed pornography era there was effectively no practical way to prevent a household member sneaking naughty magazines in. While it is true flash drives are even more concealable, being forced to download the content in places less private than the home at least exposes users to higher likilhood of social shaming.
Pornography prohibitionist Jason Cannon presents a narrative case for prohibition in his article “The Plot Against Australia”. He chronicles the series of events where prohibition of obscene materials in Australia was repealed. He begins by noting the Customs Act and Post and Telegraph Act derived from the UK Obscene Publications Act of 1857. He notes the broad powers of these acts, which included the power to “search through the luggage of arriving travellers from overseas”. Given that this does not specify foreign travellers, it is odd that Cannon passes over such intrusiveness without comment. He also mentions that the prohibition included possession and not just import and distribution. He describes the Australian standard of obscenity as recognizing that “one cannot effectively protect children from pornography without also restricting it for adults” due to second-hand obtainment by children. This premise assumes that prohibition of pornography does meaningfully restrict adult access to it, which is highly questionable considering the relative ease of producing and smuggling it even before the internet era. Unsurprisingly in the internet era pornography prohibition is an exercise in futility: China has some of the strictest anti-pornography laws in the world yet 94% of men there report watching itix, even more than in the USx. For the pre-internet era it is reasonable to estimate the ease of obtaining pornography as being comparable to the ease with which alchohol was produced under Prohibition in America. This premise is also refuted by the significant role that civil society can play as mentioned above, both in protecting children and marginalizing perverted adults. Finally, a similar premise to Cannon’s can argue against prohibition, which is that to meaningfully restrict pornography usage would require surveillance of non-users; just because someone does not currently use does not mean they could not fall into temptation at anytime, especially if they are of risk factors like being a young male. Other risk factors include mental illness, and invasions of privacy is the last thing non-threateningly mentally ill people need.
Cannon also provides an account of censorship under the aegis of Australian obscenity law that was not strictly of pornography, but of the magazine Oz whose content, which included interviews with abortionists and aborting mothers as well a satirical piece about chastity belts. This case illustrates the problem of judgment calls in prohibitionism. If pornography should be banned because some deem it obscene, then so could potentially benign forms of expression. I should emphasizse at this point that this polemic is against third positionism specifically, not against traditionalism. Indeed, a significant objection that null positionists have to third positionim is that it is excessively modern in certain respects. Many, though probably not most third positionists are pro-abortion, and nearly all third positionists support censorship of art and ideas that they perceive as contrary to their values. This creates the potential for obscenity lawfare over abortion. Australia’s obscenity laws were so strict that The Trial of Lady Chatterlay, an account of court cases concerning Lady Chatterlay’s Lover breaking UK obscenity laws, was targeted. Cannon treats the entire matter as though it is self-evident that these laws were a good thing, and unlike for the case of age restriction vs blanket prohibition does not even acknowlege the other side’s position, which is that such laws criminalize forms of expression that are productively provocative. Cannon instead actually asserts that the controversy around Lady Chatterlay proved the need for such laws to be tightened! It is remarkable that Cannon does not consider that their heavy-handedness was a legitimate grievance that bad actors could use to push other schemes such as abolishing the White Australia policy by association with the justness of their anti-censorship crusade. It is often said that Australia is a nation descended not only from convicts, but also their wardens. This may account for the severity and longevity of its obscenity laws, as well as the particularly draconian measures imposed during COVID. It was basically the flu, which is certainly not nothing because flu pandemics have killed many millions of people. The error was treating a seemingly novel pathology as an existential threat. Third positionists make the same error regarding pornography.
Cannon’s narrative is one of post-hoc reasoning: Culture declined and pornography became more depraved following legalization, therefore legalization by itself was a net negative. He does not consider that culture was already in decline long before pornography was legalized. He could argue that legalization accelerated it but this is difficult to disentangle from technological shift. This post-hoc reasoning characterizes prohibitionist arguments for recriminalization generally, and thus we will revisit it in the section reviewing general errors in arguments for prohibitionism.
Drugs
Pornography addiction is obviously not the most destructive of addictions, however, we could concede for the sake of argument that such addiction is as destructive as addiction to hard drugs like heroin and methamphetamines. It would still far from follow that monopolistic prohibition thereof is anywhere close to an optimal policy. We cover several topical types of drugs.
We start with alcohol, the drug whose prohibitionism in 1920s America reminds us that prohibitionism can be a brief misguided experiment rather than an indefinite futile war on the human condition. Prohibition was primarily a Progressive movement, with heavy overlap with women’s suffrage in particular, yet some on the right have tried to revise the history of this experiment in an attempt to claim that Prohibition worked.
One claim is that certain indicators of alcoholism decreased. A source for this is Jack Blocker 2006. He reports a decline of ethanol consumption to 1.2 gallons per year by the early 1930s, which is less than half of pre-1910 levels, along with reductions in admissions for alcholic psychosis and lower rates of liver cirrhosisxi. Consumption levels according to his report did rise back to about 70% of pre-Prohibition levels by 1930, but did not return to pre-Prohibition levels until the 1970s. An issue with this data is that much of it is self-reported, and under prohibition lawbreaking respondents are significantly less likely to be truthful even when anonymous. We saw something similar during the 2016 election where the “shy Trump supporter” effect grossly depressed polling in favor of Clinton. Even seemingly more concrete data like psychosis admissions and cirrhosis are likely to suffer from this effect due to the desire to avoid stigmatizing an already-suffering patient. The cirrhosis rates specifically may not directly correlate with consumption levels, as they may be influenced by changes in drinking habits, improved quality of medical reporting and demographic changes such as immigrationxii. Furthermore, the death rate from alcoholism was lowest not during prohibition but during World War I. It was during prohibition that this rate returned to pre-war levels in the US, while in countries without such as the UK, Ireland, and Denmark, death from alcoholism continued to fall.
It is plausible that drinking may have actually increased under Prohibition. Drinking’s illegality to some degree made it more glamorous and intriguing to the young. The organized criminal bootleggers in particular had no moral hangups about trying to get teetotalers to break their abstinence and for moderate drinkers to drink to excess. Many moderate drinkers would drink more simply as an act of defiance. The sheer number of speakeasies that sprang up buttresses the case that Prohibition was completely counterproductive to its own aim of reducing drinking. Estimates of the number of speakeasies opened compared to the number of saloons and speakeasies closed supports this. Below is a table compiled by Grok for the cities in the US that were largest as of 1920:
Not only did speakeasies proliferate, due to the centralized structure of Prohibition, prohibitionists lost control over where drinking establishments could operate. Before Prohibition they had used local ordinances, taxes, licensing laws and regulations, and local-option laws to prevent or discourage the sale of alcohol in the center city, near churches and schools, on Sundays and election days, and in their neighborhoods. Under prohibition, speakeasies sprang up not just in the seedy areas but in middle-class neighborhoods, business districts, locations that had been dry or had the appearance of being dry.
Legal exceptions such as medicinal whiskey, sacramental wine, and patent medicines were also exploited to keep up with demand. Economist Mark Thornton notes: The amount of alcoholic liquors sold by physicians and hospitals doubled between 1923 and 1931. The amount of medicinal alcohol (95 percent pure alcohol) sold increased by 400 percent during the same time. Those increases occurred despite rigorous new regulations.
Any health benefits of prohibition must be weighed against the the health damages. Thornton aids in accounting for these in “Alcohol Prohibition was a Failure”.xiii He cites economist Richard Cowan’s “Iron Law of Prohibition.” This is that when a substance is prohibited, the more strict the enforcement, the greater the potency of the substance becomesxiv. In addition, Thornton points out: “When drugs or alcoholic beverages are prohibited, they ... will have greater variability in potency, will be adulterated with unknown or dangerous substances, and will not be produced and consumed under normal market constraints.”xv Under any prohibition, the largest expense of producing contraband is avoidance of detection, which results in concentrated forms of contraband being heavily favored. Before Prohibition, Americans spent roughly equal amounts on beer and spirits. Under Prohibition however, nearly all production was of distilled spirits and fortified wines, whereas beer production, due to its bulkiness that made distribution riskier, became much more expense in comparison, its price increasing by more than 700% compared to 433% for brandies and 270% for spirits, resulting in an absolute increase in consumption of spirits. Being underground, production quality and transparency standards were next to non-existent, resulting in moonshine that was often of lethally unknown concentration. Even Prohibition’s leading academic proponent Irving Fisher acknowleged this:
“I am credibly informed that a very conservative reckoning would set the poisonous effects of bootleg beverages as compared with medicinal liquors at ten to one; that is, it requires only a tenth as much bootleg liquor as of pre-prohibition liquor to produce a given degree of drunkenness. The reason, of course, is that bootleg liquor is so concentrated and almost invariably contains other and more deadly poisons than mere ethyl alcohol.”xvi
In the same work Fisher observes people drinking less but getting drunker. Crime statististics bear out the latter part of his observation: Between 1920 and 1921, arrests for drunkenness and disorderly conduct increased 41 percent, and arrests of drunken drivers increased 81 percent.
The adulteration Fisher mentions was also a serious problem, but what he doesn’t mention is that it was not only the malfeasance of unscrupulous bootleggers but the government as well. Bootleggers would steal industrial alcohol to redistill, and as a deterrent the government mandated the denaturing of industrial alcohol with foul-tasting or toxic substances. In response to improving redistillation methods, under Prohibition the government escalated its approach in the mid-1920s, mandating the inclusion of deadlier poisons that were harder to remove, such as methanol (wood alcohol), benzene, gasoline, kerosene, and even more exotic toxins like pyridine bases and mercury salts. This caused an estimated 10,000 deaths minimum. There was also the scandal of “Ginger Jake,” a popular patent medicine laced with up to 80% alcohol that became contaminated with the neurotoxin tri-ortho-cresyl phosphate (TOCP), which caused “Jake Leg” paralysis in an estimated 50,000 to 100,000xvii.
In addition to the substitution of more concentrated, dangerous alcoholic products, Prohibition also saw the substitution of alternative and often dangerous other drugs for alcohol. In addition to patent medicines consumers switched to narcotics, hashish, tobacco, and marijuana. The purveyors of such products were of a similar dangerous criminal element to organized bootleggers.
Another revisionist claim is that the increase in crime was a continuation of a preexisting trend caused by southern and eastern european immigration. While it is true that crime rose significantly during the the Ellis Island period (as did state-level prohibitionist measures however, which likely contributed), what the prohibitionists’ rebuttal misses is that the rate of increase spiked immediately with the passage of the Volstead Act. Nor did the rate decrease when the Immigration Act of 1924 that curtailed such immigration went into effect that same year. It remained at its Volstead Act level until the 18th Amendment was repealed in 1933, at which point crime plunged dramatically to a level even lower then as of that amendment’s passage. Crime continued to fall, albeit at a much slower rate for the next 40 years, likely due to immigration restriction. It did not spike again until the War on Drugs began. In fairness, this later spike may have been due to the rise of soft-on-crime policy reforms that were introduced in the 60s. The subsequent decline may be attributable to the repeal of some of these reforms. It may also be because demand for the Drug War’s contraband is far lower than for alcohol.
Civilians also experienced a higher rate of violent crime victimization. Betwen 1920 and 1921, thefts and burglaries increased 9 percent, while homicides and incidents of assault and battery increased 13 percent. The crime rate rose steadily during Prohibtion, peaking at Prohibition’s repeal, at which point they immediately plummeted. It should also be noted that Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in 1934, the year following repeal.
Source: Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1975), part 1, p. 414.
These crimes increased in spite or because of increased expenditure on Prohibition’s enforcement. During the 1920s the annual budget of the Bureau of Prohibition went from $4.4 million to $13.4 milion. Coast Guard spending on Prohibition averaged over $13 million per year. Prison populations swelled as well. Total federal expenditures on penal institutions increased more than 1,000 percent between 1915 and 1932, but overcrowding persistent. Prohibition not only increased the burden on taxpayers but corrupted government officials as well. Commissioner of Prohibition Henry Anderson remarked: “the fruitless efforts at enforcement are creating public disregard not only for this law but for all laws. Public corruption through the purchase of official protection for this illegal traffic is widespread and notorious. The courts are cluttered with prohibition cases to an extent which seriously affects the entire administration of justice.“
Those on the right who concede that alcohol prohibition was a failure will still sometimes engage in special pleading to the effect of: “Prohibition of alcohol failed because alchohol is too great a part of American culture but prohibition can work against other drugs.” Alchohol is no greater part of American culture than European culture however. We now move on to other drugs, the next being marijuana.
Third positionists argue in terms of bringing back prohibitionist measures from the relatively recent past such as the Prohibition of alcohol from the 1920s. If we are to make arguments from antiquity however, we need to consider antiquity holistically. Marijuana is a mild hallucinogen, and hallucinogen use has been fairly common among european cultures dating back to antiquity. There is even speculation that ingestion of psilocybin advanced human cognitive evolution itself, though this is controversial. The earliest evidence, albeit indirect, is from the Neolithic period, which is archeological finds such as pottery residues and plant remainsxviii. More direct evidence is found in the Bronze Age, where analysis of human hair strands from a 3,000-year-old burial site in Menorca, Spain, revealed traces of atropine, scopolamine, and ephedrine—psychoactive alkaloids derived from plants like nightshade, mandrake, and joint pinexix. These were likely used ritualisitically by shamans to experience what they believed to be contact with spiritual realms. In ancient Greece, the Eleusinian Mysteries—a secretive religious rite held annually—involved a beverage called kykeon, which some scholars believe contained ergot alkaloids from barley infected with fungus, producing LSD-like effects to facilitate mystical visionsxx. Opium and cannabis were commonly used for pain relief and sleep induction, with evidence dating back to Neolithic influencesxxi. These substances were integrated into both daily medicine and ceremonial life, reflecting a cultural acceptance of altered states for healing or divine communionxxii. Among Iron Age Celts, druids—spiritual leaders—may have incorporated hallucinogenic mushrooms into religious ceremonies, with theories linking “magic mushrooms” (psilocybin-containing species) to visionary quests or immortality myths in legends involving apples, berries, and hazelnutsxxiii. In Norse societies, Viking berserkers—elite warriors known for frenzied battle states—are speculated to have used Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) mushrooms or henbane to induce rage, dissociation, and hallucinations, enhancing their fearsome reputation. Fly agaric, with its red-and-white cap, has deep roots in shamanic folklore across northern Europe, potentially dating back millennia for entheogenic purposes.xxiv
As for cannabis specifically, earliest documentary history begins with evidence that harvested cannabis was present as early as 11,700 years ago near the Altai mountains, and was spread by none other than the Indo-Europeans. A high-status Tocharian burial in Xinjiang contained 800 grams of THC-rich cannabis, likely for shamanic purposesxxv. Cannabis was adopted by Scythians, Thracians, and Dorians for both ritualistic and recreational use. Herodotus (circa 440 BC) described Scythians inhaling cannabis smoke in sealed tents during funerals to induce trance-like states and euphoriaxxvi. Homer’s Odyssey (8th century BC) may reference cannabis in the drug nēpenthés, used to alleviate pain and induce forgetfulnessxxvii. Romans were familiar with cannabis by the 1st century CE; Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79) noted its use for ropes and medicinal decoctions to treat arthritis and gout and Galen observed its warming, head-affecting effects in desserts.
In the Medieval period european cannabis usage was primarily industrial such as for textiles, ropes, sails, and paper.. The Anglo-Saxons introduced it to Britain in the 5th century AD, and Viking ship excavations from the mid-9th century have yielded cannabis seeds.xxviii Medicinal applications continued, with cannabis documented in European herbal texts for pain relief and reducing inflammation. The Islamic world by contrast, introduced restrictions in the 13th century, just before its so-called Golden Age came to an end. European cannabis usage continued aplenty in the Renaissance, with Henry VIII mandating hemp farming for rope production, primarily for use by the British Navy.xxix
Colonial Virginia would continue in this vein; their Assembly passing acts in the 1630s and 1760s that went so far as to imprison those who failed to grow sufficient quantities.xxx
At this point some clarifying definitions are in order. Cannabis is a catch-all term taking its name from the genus of the plant cannabis sativa L (and sometimes related species like C. indica or C. ruderalis). Just as there are many varieties of other cultivars, there are many varieties of the C. Sativa species. Varieties low in delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) used mainly for industrial purposes are called hemp. Varieties high in THC used mainly for psychoactive purposes are called marijuana. THC binds to the brain’s CB-1 receptors, which are part of the endocannabinoid system (ECS). The ECS not only regulates the brain, gut, and immune system as medicinal marijuana makes familiar, but also the skin’s wound healing, and the reproductive system’s embryo implantation. The ECS has three core components:
Endocannabinoids, which are small lipid molecules made on-demand in cell membranes from arachidonic acid.
Cannabinoid receptors, which are G-protein-coupled receptors on cell surfaces. G proteins are guanine nucleotide-binding proteins that transmit signals from external stimuli such as cannabinoids.
Metabolic enzymes, which rabidly break down endocannabinoids.
THC and cannabidiol (CBD) are plant-based endocannabinoids, or phytocannabinoids. THC mimics anandamide, the “bliss molecule” (ananda is Sanskrit for joy). Anandamide reduces pain signaling, helps extinguish traumatic memories, and stimulates hunger. The ECS regulates overall levels of chemicals like anandamide. THC replicates the effects of anandamide with greater potency and longevity. It should be noted that the labeling of this system in honor of cannabis may be intended to softpedal marijuana use as “natural.” Third positionists will selectively appeal to nature to justify acts of savagery, but this author will not.
The modern european world caught up with the Islamic one with prohibitionism of marijuana usage in the 20th century. The main rationale is the increased risk of psychosis associated with marijuana use. The association has been shown over decades of study and is robust to meta-analysis. A number of reviews and meta-analyses implicate marijauna as a significant causal driver. A 2022 meta-analysis found no significant psychosis risk from less-than-weekly use but markedly higher risk from frequent use, supporting a threshold effect.xxxi A 2024 Nature Molecular Psychiatry review of chronic adolescent exposure reported a three-fold risk for daily users.xxxii Longitudinal studies show earlier psychosis onset (by 2–6 years) in cannabis users.xxxiii Other similar studies suggest a potential reduction in schizophrenia by eliminating cannabis use disorber by 6-15%. While these numbers may seem impressive, we should keep in mind that schizophrenics are less than 0.5% of the population, so a small absolute increase in their number will produce a large relative one. A causal relation has biological plausibility in that THC acutely induces transient symptoms of psychosis in controlled studies.xxxiv CBD may counteract these effects, explaining why balanced strains or pure CBD show neutral or protective associations.xxxv Recent genetic studies indicate bi-directional causality; genetic liability to schizophrenia increases cannabis use, but cannabis initiation or CUD causally elevates schizophrenia risk.xxxvi
The dose-dependency finding is significant because it shows blanket prohibition’s crudity in subjecting responsible users to the same punishment as degenerates. Like alchohol, cannabis is minimally harmful and sometimes beneficial when used responsibly. Reasonable restriction of its usage would be something like a 21 or higher year age requirement to purchase products with high THC concentrations. Marijuana prohibition also parallels that of alcohol concerning medicinal usage. When recreational usage is specifically forbidden, medicinal marijauna becomes overprescribed. Prohibitionism obviously is not the answer to the opioid crisis either; what is reasonable is punishment of purveyors who try to cover up risks of dependency. Indeed, the crisis has been exacerbated by marijuana’s prohibition, as marijuana is an effective substitute for opioids in many cases of pain relief. 70% of cancer specialists support prescribing marjuana, and nearly half have advised patients to obtain it illegally.xxxvii The substitution effects seen under alcohol prohibition with marijuana also apply in reverse to marijuana prohibition: One of the biggest lobbyists for it is the alchohol industry, who as of the time of writing scored a win in sneaking into the shutdown-concluding bill a provision that limits THC content to 0.4 mg per container, effectively baning all hemp-derived consumer products.
Marijuana prohibition in european countries is a modern phenomenon. The first municipal ban in America was El Paso in 1914. Bans grew upward from municipal to state to national over the course of the 20th century, culminating in its being made a Schedule I Substance in Nixon’s declaration of war on drugs. The reasons for banning it were a combination of observational repulsion regarding its side effects as well as cultural aversion to its popularity among blacks and Mexicans. The latter is where the label “marijuna” for high-THC cannabis variants came from. The ethnic targeting behind prohibition is often invoked by progressivists as a mark against it. There is good reason that this is a demerit from a reactionary standpoint as well however, in that prohibitionism’s mass incarceration of savage races needlessly puts such races on the dole. Although many third positionists are racial separatists, many others believe in a “white man’s burden” to nanny the savage races, especially african Americans. Even if one believes that european and african Americans should share a polity, prohibitionism does not follow as a policy. As for Mexicans, the problem is obviously one of open borders, which has important implications we will discuss later.
The costs of marijuana prohibition are considerable. Because it is abundant and inexpensive compared to other drugs, it is a ready-made weapon that corrupt police officers can use to frame innocents. Here are several of real world examples:
1. In 2019 former Jackson County Sheriff’s Deputy Zachary Wester was arrested for systematically planting drugs, including marijuana, methamphetamine, and paraphernalia, on innocent motorists during traffic stops for minor violations like broken taillights. One victim, Teresa Odom, had meth planted in her truck in 2018, leading to her arrest. Another, Lora Penn, spent 12 days in jail after Wester allegedly placed meth and a needle in her purse. Victims described lives upended—lost jobs, family separations, and stigma from false drug charges. The scandal affected over 100 people, with at least 11 filing civil lawsuits. 119 cases were dismissed, and 10 people were released from prison.xxxviii
2. In 2017, Staten Island NYPD Officer Kyle Erickson was accused of planting marijuana in a car during a traffic stop, as captured on bodycam footage. The video shows him tossing a bag of weed into the back seat while searching, then “finding” it to justify an arrest. This was the first such incident; in 2018, another video emerged of Erickson seemingly planting marijuana in Ronald Shields’ car after a stop for tinted windows. Shields, a 61-year-old man, was charged with possession but the case was dropped after the footage surfaced. The NYPD initially cleared Erickson in the first case, claiming the weed was already there, but public outcry and a lawsuit followed. Federal probes into similar NYPD planting allegations involving Erickson and others began in 2022.xxxix
3. Former undercover officer Stephen Anderson testified in court that NYPD narcotics units routinely planted drugs—often cocaine or marijuana seized from evidence lockers—on innocent people to meet monthly arrest quotas. This “flaking” affected hundreds, particularly in Brooklyn and Queens, leading to wrongful convictions. Anderson described framing bystanders in bars or on streets to boost stats for overtime or promotions. The revelations prompted internal probes, but few officers faced charges; despite over 400 cases reviewed.xl
The stop for tinted windows in the second story illustrates the downward spiral of prohibitionism: The criminalization of one thing due to gross exaggeration of its negative externalities feeds into abuses relating to other similar criminalizations. Worth noting that under neoliberalism, even with its feminized antipathy toward police, a great deal of abuse on their part is still sanctioned. How much worse therefore is such abuse under fascism, where police are legally privileged over civilians? It’s quite plausible that a fascist regime would harshly criminalize window-tinting for the alleged threat it poses to police officers. This is despite the fact that it deters carjacking because it prevents prospective jackers from discerning whether a potential victim is a threat or not. Fascist cops and their bootlickers would try to claim that “only black thugs tint their windows” to justify such tyranny.
A related menace is the use of drug sniffing dogs, which are notoriously unreliable:
“In U.S. v. Bentley, we see just how damaging the Harris decision really was. Lex, the drug dog that searched Bentley’s car, had a 93 percent alert rate. That is, when Lex was called to search a car, he alerted 93 percent of the time. He was basically a probable cause generator. His success rate was much lower, at 59 percent. That is, the police actually found drugs just six of the 10 times Lex told them they would. That means that four of every 10 people Lex alerted to were subjected to a thorough roadside search that produced nothing illegal.”xli
In both of the above stories marijuana was put in contact with the victim’s car, but it is plausible that a police officer could frame someone merely by dropping contraband near their car and claiming that the victim threw it out as the officer approached.
The recent history of cannabis is consistent with the Iron Law of Prohibition: Prior to the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, cannabis was distributed and consumed mostly in low-THC (4% or less) forms. Since Tax Act and stricter prohibitions that came later, higher concentrate forms and hashish have proliferated. THC levels reached 17% in 2017xlii.
In recent decades marijuana has been legalized or decriminalized in many European countries, US states, and a number of municipalities. Prohibitionists claim these reforms have been a failure. Evidence they offer for this includes the increase in smoking in public. This not a failure of legalization of marijuana however, but of the continuted illegality of forcibly removing smokers from public places. Most public places remain socialized and controlled by leftists who are pro-marijuana. In the case of municipalities especially, when something is legalized in one area but remains illegal across a much larger surrounding area, the legalizing area becomes a magnet for that thing. This inflates the impression of increase in usage that legalization results in. So the real problem is not only socialism in commons and left-wing control thereof, but also the right-wing maintaining prohibition and socialized commons elsewhere. A case can be made however, that so long as US states are forced by the Federal government to leave their borders open, it is practical for red states to prohibit marijuana and other leftist vices at least on paper to keep leftists out. If enforcement were to focus on public usage, this would be a reasonable approximation of a realistically libertarian society.
Some prohibitionists accept non-criminalization of soft drugs like marijuana but maintain that hard drugs such as heroin should be universally prohibited. One thing this ignores is that the current hardness of drugs such as heroin is a consequence of the Iron Law of Prohibition described earlier. Heroin is an opium derivative, and opium has been used for centuries as a painkiller and recreational sedative. Laudanum, a tincture of raw opium, was a common form of pain relief throughout the 19th century. Morphine, a more potent form, was extracted in early 19th century and used during the War Between The States. Heroin was extracted from morphine in 1898 by Bayer and marketed as a non-addicted cough suppressant and painkiller. Doctors used it safely in low doses.
The Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 prohibited opiates like heroin for non-medical use and was followed by stricter bans beginning in 1920. This resulted in increased and more rapid transformation into more potent and concentrated forms. Opium gum was processed into morphine at the poppy fields, then turned into heroin at nearby labs for easier transport. The concentration of street heroin has increased over time, culminating in overdose epidemics like that of Washington DC in the 1970s. More recently we have seen the development of hyper-potent variants such as fentanyl-laced heroin.xliii Fentanyl itself can be used effectively as an offensive knockout gas and therefore ought to be protected under the 2nd Amendment.
Cocaine has a similar story. Isolated from coca leaves in 1859, it was used medicinally in the late 19th century in tonics, including in Coca-Cola until 1903. Like with heroin, doctors would often self-medicate but rarely overdosed due to low concentration. Chewing raw coca leaves is a mild stimulant, a practice common in South America during the same period. Recreational coca was banned along with heroin under the Act of 1914, and subsequently saw an increase in the prevalence of powder cocaine over milder forms. The potency increased sharply again with the invention of crack cocaine in the late 70s, which is even easier to transport and distribute than powder cocaine.
There are certain drugs that are hard even absent prohibition such as Ecstasy, which works by punching holes in the brain’s axons. A case against prohibitionism for these, in addition to standard issues of framing, asset forfeiture, and government corruption, is that given the substitutability between hard drugs and soft, it is better for parasitic degenerates to kill themselves quickly with the former than slowly with the latter.
Civil asset forfeiture is one of the worst instances of prohibitionism’s corruption of law enforcement, with serious externalities to the general public. Many innocent people have had their possessions, even their homes seized, merely for being suspected of association with drug trafficking. Being charged with a crime is not necessary. Three of the most egregious cases are these:
1. In Shelby County, Texas, local police systematically targeted out-of-state drivers, during traffic stops under the pretext of drug interdiction. Officers seized cash and valuables, threatening bogus drug charges or child custody loss to coerce forfeiture waivers. Millions were netted without arrests or evidence of drugs, with proceeds funding luxuries like a $500 popcorn machine and police bonuses. The scheme was exposed via lawsuit, leading to national scrutiny but no full restitution for victims.xliv
2. Michael Albin was a 65-year old Vietnam veteran, cancer patient, and restaurant owner, residing in an RV in the parking lot of his workplace.
In 2009 state law enforcement began an undercover gambling investigation of his restaurant and purchased a small amount of marijuana from a cook.
Based on that purchase and the presence of nine video poker machines at the restaurant, police searched Albin’s RV and recovered four ounces of marijuana. This was below the legal threshold of one pound permitting the seizure of a vehicle, but law enforcement argued the RV was actually a “container.” They seized the RV and sold it at auction.
Albin passed away in 2012, shortly after the state appeals court ruled the seizure invalid. His $30,000 in attorneys’ fees were not covered, and his estate received less than they believed the RV was worth.xlv
3. Jerry Johnson started his own trucking company in 2015, and currently has two trucks and two employees. Johnson had previously served time in prison for possession of cocaine and marijuana, most recently in 2012. His trucking company had helped him turn his life around and become a positive contributor to society.
Seeking to add a third truck, he flew from Charlotte to Phoenix to attend an auto action in August 2020. He was carrying $39,500 in cash, which is completely legal. It is common for bidders at such auctions to pay in cash.
When he landed in Phoenix, an undercover officer approached Johnson in baggage claim, asking if he had money or drugs on him.
When he revealed he was carrying the cash, the officer interrogated Johnson for an hour and gave him a choice of signing a forfeiture agreement or being arrested. Johnson signed.
He has not been charged with any crime, and the Transportation Security Administration has refused to return his money. A judge has ruled that Johnson failed to prove the money was legally his, and litigation is ongoing.xlvi
Case 1 is cited in a study examining the relationship between value of assets seized and drug related arrests by county. Although the overall effect size was small, it was actually negative. This reflects the perverse incentives inherent to prohibitionism: It is more profitable and lower risk for the authorities to loot innocent people than go after the traffickers themselves.
There are other egregious cases of forfeiture, such as those of Frank Ranelli and Phil Parhamovich that, although they do not directly involve drugs, are arguably products of the culture of surveillance and financial constriction attentive to prohibition. We have become a society where being cash-based, i.e. preferring not to trust our money with banksters, has effectively become a crime. Third positionists are fine with economic crime when government does it, so there is little reason to think their prohibitionism would amount to anything more than further illicit enrichment of the government and its cronies, including bankers.
Empirical evidence in favor of directional legalization even of hard drugs comes from Portugal. In the late 1990s, Portugal suffered one of Europe’s worst drug crises. Around 1% of the population (~100,000 people) were addicted to heroin alone. Needle-related HIV infections were soaring (nearly ,400 new cases in 2000) and overdose deaths (around 400 annually).
In 2000, Portugal’s minority Socialist government passed Law 30/2000, which came into effect in July 2001, decriminalizing the possession, acquisition, and use of all illicit drugs for personal consumption. This made Portugal the first country to decriminalize all drugs, including heroin, cocaine, cannabis, and others. Personal possession was limited to quantities not exceeding a 10-day average supply (e.g., 1 gram of heroin, 2 grams of cocaine, or 25 grams of cannabis). Exceeding these thresholds can lead to criminal charges for trafficking, which remains a serious offense punishable by imprisonment. Exceeding these thresholds can lead to criminal charges for trafficking, which remains a serious offense punishable by imprisonment. When police encountered someone with drugs, they confiscate the substances and issue a citation, they referred the individual to a local Commission for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction (CDT). These commissions, composed of legal, health, and social work professionals, assessed the person’s situation—considering dependency, substance type, and other factors—and decided on responses.
Outcomes from CDTs was non-punitive and health-focused: proceedings may be suspended for non-dependent users (especially first-timers), or users may agree to voluntary treatment to avoid sanctions like fines, community service, or license suspensions. No jail time was imposed for personal use. Portugal invested heavily in expanding treatment centers, harm reduction programs (e.g., needle exchanges, methadone maintenance), prevention education, and social reintegration efforts like job assistance for recovering users.xlvii
The results of Portugal’s reform are impressive: Overdose deaths plummeted from around 400 in 2000 to 290 in 2006, and further to just 20 in 2008. By 2012, Portugal’s drug-related death rate was 3 per million residents, compared to the EU average of 17.3 per million—one of the lowest in Europe. Overall, drug deaths dropped by about 80% from 2001 levels, and as of 2024 data, Portuguese residents are 45 times less likely to die from overdoses than Americans. HIV infections linked to injection drug use fell by 90%, from nearly 1,400 cases in 2000 to about 400 in 2006, with new diagnoses among users dropping 17% more broadly. Hepatitis B and C cases also halved. The one negative result of the reform was a massive relative increase in psychotic disorder hospitalizations, from 24 in 2001 to 588 in 2015, an increase of 2,350%. The percentage of these cases linked to cannabis increased significantly. Lifetime drug use did increase, from 7.8% in 2001 to 12% in 2012, however, this was in line with general European trend. The increasing general trend may be partially due to liberalization of drug laws, but may also be symptoms of increasing immiseration under globalism. To the extent the general trend is due to drug liberalization, this is hardly an indictment. Honest proponents of liberalization don’t pretend that liberalization doesn’t increase general experimentation with drugs; our contention is that the decrease in damage done to society despite this is well worth it.xlviii
A final word on the Drug War: The case of Mitchell C. Henderson, an absolute specimen of a law enforcement officer as well as a nationalist, successfully infiltrated Columbia’s Cali Cartel and brought down the organization. He was forced to start his life over again with a new identity to escape reprisal. One of his occupations during this latter phase of life was as a corrections officer, and it was his experience in this role that redpilled him on prohibitionism’s futility:
“It was an eye-opener. Inmates were thoroughly searched entering the jail and were subject to random searches without cause. Yet they got knives, guns, cocaine, heroin, and cellphones in through all that security. Think about how ineffective the TSA that we pay taxes for it? I have been through their screenings; they are like the Atropine Injectors in a Soldier’s Gas Mask Bag, it only gives false hope.
...This also opened my eyes to “Prohibition.” It does not work. Even if you jailed every single American and had cameras watching them 24/7, they could still get firearms or illegal drugs. Even a totalitarian police state could not prevent people from getting firearms and drugs. If there is a will there is a way.”xlix
General Problems
In tackling prohibitionism vice-by-vice we have seen certain commonalities in its problems emerge such as externalities to the healthy and enrichment of violent criminals. This is because prohibitionism has serious and fundamental problems regardless of specific application. We now make the comprehensive case against it by explaining its such problems.
Problem 1. Degenerates are mostly born, not made. A man can make himself stronger through weightlifting, but having the discipline to lift regularly is mostly a function of personality trait conscientiousness, a trait that is fifty percent heritable. Being a mesomorph, someone whose musculature hypertrophies well in response to lifting and thus makes exercise more visually rewarding, is almost entirely genetic. The same is true for strength of character as well, which is why children given up for adoption have significantly more problems than orphans. It is also the reason why problems like mental illness tend to precede degenerate behavior as shown in the pornography studies cited above. Third positionists emphasize evolutionary and genetic differences in character between races but pay insufficient attention to the same differences within their own race. Nature, especially in a society of abundance, creates many defective people who cannot be fixed. It is evil therefore, to try to guilt healthy people into spending time and energy trying to do so, let alone force them to using the state. On the other end of the spectrum, blanket prohibition reduces the quality of life for those who indulge in vice responsibly, who are disproportionately the natural aristocracy. If prohibition is selective for those who fail some genetic or class-based test, this creates an artificial divide in society that causes resentment of those who pass. Opposing legal standards between classes of people is something liberalism arose in reponse to. The aristocracy and the commoners are at their most harmonious when both are subject to natural law. This does not mean that in terms of punishment severity they should be treated as relative equals as liberalism would have it; if anything the nobility should be held to a higher standard. No one should be above the law itself however.
Problem 2. Because of the constancy of not only born degenerates but also many more people responsible enough to indulge in vice non-abusively, there is a steady and substantial demand for vices, a demand that does not exist for violent crimes. Demand is a vacuum that supply always rushes in to fill one way or another. This by itself argues against statist prohibition, because demand for means of censoring degeneracy represents a profit opportunity for doing so efficiently. We see this in voluntary content ratings boards for the video game and film industries, as well as universal availability of parental controls on devices. We see a cottage industry of content sanitized by Christian businesses such as Angel Vid.
The constancy of demand for vice means that statist prohibition does not substantially reduce vice; prohibitionism instead drives it underground, thereby enriching and empowering the dregs of society. The dregs are not only non-governmental criminals but also those in government. Likewise for hostile foreign powers. This is not to say that the state does not have a discernable effect on usage; prohibitionism does prevent many people on the margin from experimenting. To a small degree a legal barrier may also help people who want to quit do so. Most of these people are not degenerates however, whereas degenerates, who almost by definition have a compulsive need for vice that wholesome pursuits do not substitute for, are much less deterred by prohibition.
It is remarkable that right-wing statists do not see prohibition’s parallel to gun control, an issue where they are just as alacritous as libertarians in pointing out the fact that criminals are hardly deterred or hindered at all by laws prohibiting guns, meaning that such laws result in only criminals having them. It is no harder to obtain vices than guns. Similar to guns, a number of vices, as discussed earlier, are not inherently bad, but means of pursuing certain ends. Bad people will use them to pursue bad ends; good people will use them to pursue good ends. Similar to how it is wrong to brand an individual with any certain moral status based on race because some members of that race commit evil, it is wrong to brand a product or service with a negative moral status just because some people use it immorally.
Problem 3. Prohibitionism invades the privacy of the healthy and innocent. Anti-prohibitionist assertions such as “you can’t legislate morality” and “vice is a victimless crime” harken at this. Taken literally by themselves however, they are stupidman arguments vulnerable to third positionist criticism. The claim “you can’t legislate morality” is countered by third positionists by pointing out that violations of person and property that libertarians wish to limit legislation to, or concerns about social inequality that anti-prohibition leftists wish to limit legislation to, are also moral concerns. This however misses the common meaning of the claim, which is that there is a type of morality that is private in nature, which is to say, certain behaviors can threaten one’s own existence but no one elses, whereas the other type, sometimes distinguished as ethics, is behaviors that threaten both.
An important but less commonly intended meaning is that you can’t fix congenitally immoral people with legislation. This is true by itself but also does not by itself refute prohibitionism because prohibitionists can argue that the elevated likelihood of serious crime represented by degeneracy justifies the state unilaterally removing degenerates from society. While obviously the only purpose of punishment is to minimize the likelihood of future crime, this obviously also does not mean at any cost, because otherwise the optimal means of crime prevention would be to kill everyone. The prohibitionist premise of crime prevention amounts to pre-crime, not even of a certainty at the level of Minority Report, but rather a crude heuristic-based dragnet that grossly violates the principle of proportionality.
Even under prohibitionism, the overwhelming majority of vice enjoyers do not commit any serious crimes. Vice enjoyers as a whole do commit serious crimes at a significantly higher rate because this group includes the subset who are degenerates, which in turn contains a subset who are superpredators in terms of committing serious crimes. This disparity however, is to a significant extent a selection effect created by prohibitionism itself, because someone who is not deterred by the illegality of committing a minor transgression is less likely to be deterred by the illegality of a major one. It is also redundant because a sound justice system allows for discretionary sentencing for serious crimes based on evidence of character, including degenerate tendencies. This is necessary because the probablity of recidivism varies significantly from criminal to criminal for a given crime depending on character and circumstance. At one end of the spectrum there are addicts who will steal from innocent people to score one more hit. At the other end there are heros certain in lifeboat scenarios who have to steal to save an innocent life, in which case proportional punishmnent takes the form of nominal restitution if asked for. In this way, crime is consistently punished in a way that minimizes it at a reasonable cost, and requires no violation of the proportionality principle.
The more commonly intended meaning of “can’t legislate morality” implies that prohibitionism of private immorality is unacceptably invasive compared to alternative means of mitigating such immorality. The correctness of this view becomes apparent when we examine the argument “vice is a victimless crime”. Obviously this is not literally true. Abuse of vice damages relationships, especially with those closest to the abuser. Loved ones often try to rehabilitate abusers, but for those abusers who are too refractory, sensible loved ones will disassociate. Here we have discovered the steelman rather than stupidman version of the “victimless crime” argument. The “crime” (abuse of vice) only has a second party victim for as long as that victim chooses to put up with it. Because vice abuse is not coercive toward its second party victim, that victim has the time and autonomy to choose whether or not to continue associating with the abuser during the period of abuse.
This is not the case in matters of violence however. By nature, acts of violence are coercive and cannot perforce be disassociated from as they occur. Even though in cases of non-homicidal violent crime the victim can disassociate after the fact, psychic trauma is often permanent. Non-violent abuse can also be traumatic however, so why should violence be legally actionable while vice should not? It is because there is a subtle but significant difference between what is objectively harmful and what is objectively actionable. Frequent non-violent verbal altercations caused or exacerbated by drunkenness are clearly in the former category in terms of their effect on a marriage, yet fail to be actionable. Law requires sound evidence, and a verbal altercation by itself comes down to “he said, she said.” The second prong is cost, and such an altercation is simply not worth the considerable time and expense that a criminal case entails. Although in retrospect a long accumulation of verbal abuse is often more damaging to a marriage then a one-off act of physical abuse, acts of abuse, if they are actionable, must be tried on an act-by-act (count-by-count) basis. A one-off act of physical abuse, however, cannot reliably be known to be a one-off event in advance. Compared to an act of verbal abuse, an act of physical abuse increases the probability of a future act of serious abuse exponentially more, which makes the considerable cost of prosecution worthwhile in many cases.
The entire purpose of criminal justice is to minimize future crime at a reasonable cost. This is why even many acts of physical abuse are not brought to trial, because the victim is privy to information that indicates it was a one-off, or because it is obvious to the prosecution at the outset that there simply isn’t enough evidence to convict. This is because it is crucial that convictions of innocents are kept to a minimum. This is hardly less the case in abuse situations involving drugs or other vices. It is perverse, therefore, to think that use or distribution by itself, in a manner that harms no one, not even the user, should be prosecutable. A final point to drive this home: If there is one class of people that we ought to pay a steep price to protect, it is children. It is possible for parents to badly abuse their children in non-physical ways. And yet, it is obvious that such children must remain with their parents in almost all cases, because the power to take children from their parents is one that has such immense potential for even greater abuse that the conditions under which it is exercised must be extremely limited.
We have used the term prohibitionism to refer to the type of prohibition that defines third positionism: monopolistic, one-size-fits-all legislation against vice by the state. What null positionists support is not the absence of prohibition but a free market therein, which unlike prohibitionism is efficient, eugenic, and humane. This can be shown from first principles. Under the such a market, property owners can be prohibitionists who are even more strict than the state because they are the ones who have on-the-ground knowledge of their property’s usage. Under a free market in probibition, the government only has to use its standard law enforcement apparatus to assist property owners in removing degenerates.
Under prohibitionism, there is an additional bureacracy that is tasked not only with the above, but also trying to eliminate or substantially reduce certain vices across the board. This is a much larger undertaking even before evaluating its feasibility and therefore makes such a bureacracy costly. Because the state cannot come close to eliminating vice, the goal of further reduction of vice stays perpetually on the horizon, thereby creating a perpetual pretext to increase funding. Prohibitionism’s exacerbation of organized crime creates further pretext for such an increase. What results is an endless “War on Vice”, as futile and dysgenic as all other Wars on Blemishes of the Human Condition like the War on Poverty. The cost of this bureacracy takes resources away either from enforcement of serious crimes, including serious crimes associated with degeneracy, or from other beneficial uses, or both. Although in theory this bureacracy could be funded voluntarily, third positionists are believers in taxation, which is an inherent disutility experienced by a large swathe of the population.
Third positionists may propose that an anti-vice bureacracy be funded through fines of vice, but all this amounts to is a sin tax with more haphazard collection practices, as well as one that creates a horrendous incentive for the bureaucrats to frame innocent people. It is bad enough that prohibitionism incentivizes invasion of privacy. Although a warrant application process can check this, third positionists tend to regard such due process as a liberal hindrance. Regarding framing generally, third positionists may counter that it is also possible to frame someone for serious crimes like murder. Framing for murder is exceedingly difficult however, whereas as we have seen in several places earlier in this article, framing someone for vice is much easier. A murder case almost always requires a body, usually not also the framer’s. If a murder is to be committed primarily for the purpose of framing, this represents massive personal risk to the framer even before the risk of being caught. Framing for other serious crimes carries similar risk. The requirement of a victim representing documentary evidence of the crime is the hurdle that does not exist, practically speaking, with framing for vice.
Most people, including even most degenerates in some respects, do not want to live around degeneracy; moreso among the landowning class. Landowners will allow little to none of it on their property. They do so to a larger degree today because they are bribed through programs like Section 8 to tolerate it, as well as coerced through laws like the Fair Housing Act which prohibits realtors from mentioning crime rates, a strong correlate of degeneracy. Because degeneracy negatively impacts property values, landowners are strongly incentivized to prohibit it when they are free to do so. This can take the form of formal agreements including covenants, as well as informal decisions such as not to renew leases with degenerates. A covenant is simple to scale; all it requires is the copying of a lease agreement. The economic incentive to protect property values is so strong however, that relatively little coordination is necessary. This is especially true under an equitably free market where property values are protected by default against public degeneracy. Through market incentives, degenerates are inexorably squeezed out of civilization and into the wastes. Because degenerates will always exist, the choice is whether the healthy can fully liberate themselves both economically and geographically through disassociation, or whether we are forced together with degenerates in some way under prohibitionism. As Mitchell C. Henderson put it: “I say Vice Control because you cannot stop it, you can only really control where it happens and when it happpens.l”
Another important aspect of prohibition is the difference between private and public degeneracy. Statist warping of language distorts understanding of the issue. This is due to how statists arrogate stewardship of commons such as roads and parks to the state in their referring to all socialized property as “public” and all non-socialized property as “private.” These terms in reality refer to default access: “Public” means “open to anyone not specifically excluded, while “private” means “closed to all unless specifically invited.” There are many instances of non state-owned commons such as thousands of miles of roads, while the state builds private goods such as residences in the form of housing projects. It is erroneous therefore, to assume as third positionists do that statism is necessary to control degeneracy in public areas.
In a free society, common areas are held primarily in a trust whose majority stakeholders are usually the community’s wealthiest members. This is already the case in certain special economic zones, as well for many conservation trusts. Just as the property price system and on-the-ground knowledge makes the free market superior for private residences, so too do these advantages apply to public areas. Another advantage is that community-by-community policy can accommodate the spectrum of preferences for tolerance of public vice. For example, some communities can permit smoking in common areas, others can issue vape-only ordinances, others for aesthetic or cultural reasons might prohibit vaping as well. Many third positionists believe that there is one objectively righteous vice prohibition policy that applies similarly to public and private spaces both. Maybe they’re right. In practical terms however, this is irrelevant because peoples’ attitudes toward vice are hardwired as a spectrum with significant variance. Because it is effectively impossible to change peoples’ minds, optimal policy is functionally subjective. One-size-fits-all policy handed down by a national government creates needless conflict between the nation’s communities over control of that apparatus to impose their preferred policy on everyone else.
The Slippery Slope
The Slippery Slope argument for prohibitionism is that if a less harmful type of degeneracy is legalized, this significantly increases the likelihood that an unacceptably harmful type is legalized. Some opponents of prohibition rebut with: “That’s a Slippery Slope argument, which is a fallacy.” Prohibitionists today riposte with: “Society has degenerated since certain vices were legalized, therefore the Slippery Slope is real.” Let’s analyze each of these arguments in turn. An issue with the Slippery Slope argument when made by third positionists specifically is that it affirms the significance of principle. The principle here is threat to family stability and by extension kin continuity. In other contexts however, third positionists deny the significance of principle itself, e.g. “principles don’t matter, power does.” Because all of nature operates by principles however, everyone lives by some sort of principle. The core principle of third positionists is that authoritarian collectivism is best for the nation. Their rhetoric against principles generally is really just bluster trying to intimidate their opponents into surrendering their principles.
Another issue is that “unacceptably harmful” is subjective in the context of prohibitionism’s harms. Some types of degeneracy are indeed very harmful, however prohibitionism may be more harmful still. As for “the Slippery Slope is a fallacy,” this is a midwitted trope. There is a fallacy called the false continuum, which is confusingly sometimes also called the “slippery slope fallacy.” The false continuum argument pretends that because two or more observations lie on the same continuum, there can be no meaningful difference between them. This is not the prohibitionists’ argument however. They aren’t claiming that legalizing degeneracy that is low in harm is the same as legalizing degeneracy high in harm; they’re claiming that the former leads to the latter. In citing society’s degeneration post legalization however, prohibitionists have not proven that legalization of low-harm degeneracy leads to legalization of high-harm degeneracy, they have merely proven that the former does not per se prevent the latter from occuring. To treat society’s degeneration as proof would would be a post hoc fallacy.
Why has society degenerated? Third positionists often blame libertarianism which is strange because they often at other times dismiss libertarianism as completely irrelevant. The latter is of course closer to the truth, not only because for many decades we have lived under one of the largest and most leftist states in history, but also because in the case of prohibition we have had very little in the way of libertarian reforms. Libertarianism in its modern form wasn’t even formalized until the 1960s, and society was already degenerating well before that. Gay rights is sometimes held up as an example, however, ever since the Lawrence v Texas Supreme Court decision (and for the most part long before that), gays have already enjoyed the same legal rights as everyone else. Extending marriage licenses to gays is expanding the state’s purview over marriage in an attempt to elevate the barren and the base to the status of the bountiful and beautiful. This is leftist to the core. The Obergefell v Hodges decision, which mandated gay marriage nationwide, expanded state control even further as well as centralized it in the Federal Government, which is contrary to both libertarianism and the principle of federalism. The very reason the US government invaded the domain of marriage in the first place was to enforce anti-miscegenation laws, a policy that third positionists support.5
Society has degenerated because leftists, not libertarians, have been in charge. Have they instituted some reforms such as marijuana legalization that are incidentally also somewhat libertarian? Yes, but bad people often do good things for the wrong reasons. One reason leftists want to legalize drugs is because it provides an additional source of tax revenue, but unlike the right they do not wish to use it lower other taxes. Another reason is because legalization helps expand state rehabilitation centers, which are institutions of direct social engineering. Under current federal law6 patients can forfeit the right to own a firearm when they are involuntarily committed for drug usage. The welfare state generally, which third positionists support, is is a massive amplifier of degeneracy. Because the left seeks to destroy everything that is healthy, they view healthful liberal reforms on social issues as mere steps to forcing the healthy to subsidize the degenerate. A significant reason the left was able to gain power was because such early reforms were reasonable and consistent with property rights. The right lost ground for being associated with prohibitionism’s puritanical pettiness. Had the right supported a libertarian approch that shifted prohibition to a free market therein, they would have gained ground and even fooled the left into believing such a catastrophic loss was a win. The slippery slope argument falsely implies a lack of agency on the part of the healthy versus the degenerate, especially the healthy in government. It contradicts third positionists’ belief in statism. To the third positionist, a sufficiently large and centralized state can impose whatever policy it deems best on the nation willy-nilly. What they don’t realize is that such policy could just as easily be a free market rather than a monopoly in prohibition.
A free market in prohibition is what fully empowers us against the degenerate because that is the only way we can fully disassociate from them. A null positionist government, while non-monopolistic, is also more absolutist than a third posititionist one, in that it does not have the pretense of selfless service to the nation to maintain. It is therefore better able to enforce a free market in prohibition absolutely, suppressing leftists who invertedly take the free market part as a step toward their parasitic schemes. The libertarian prohibition policy is a triangulation against the integrationism of both leftists and third posistionists that properly liberates the nation from the degenerate. As such it is as far from the slippery slope of degeneracy as a society can reasonably be.
Third positionists also fail to consider that prohibitionism has a slippery slope of its own. The Drug War is the most poignant instance of this. Slightly heavy-handed paternalism intended to protect people from themselves becomes predation through civil asset forfeiture and other grievous injuries. Third positionists may invoke the point raised in the preceding paragraph – their belief that through sheer monopolistic might the state can maintain prohibitionism with steady-handedness rather than heavy-handedness and prevent it from spiraling. Why is this unlikely? The reason is because by nature prohibitionism is a violation of the property norm. The property norm is a principle, and as explained earlier, despite bluster to the contrary, third positionists are no less believers in principle than anyone else. Denying to someone the significance of principle is still affirmation of the principle that expression ought to convey intelligible content. The attempt to persuade someone out of their principles or principles generally is affirmation of the principle that social suasion should precede resorting to violence. This is applicable to prohibition also.
As we have seen, the power of disassociation is a compelling case for why suasion should at least be the default, with violent methods of prohibition resorted to only if dissociation proves inadequate. It is compelling because property is one of the very most important social principles there is. It transcends even the whole human species, and for humans it is a cornerstone of civilization itself. If property is violated in one area, it can in principle be violated in any area. As discussed in the article on power, third positionists explicitly subordinate the principle of property, rather than regarding it as coequal to other other cornerstones. Third positionists may counter that principles are abstractions, and that most people are not concerned with the abstract. Most people aren’t, but the kind of people who architect society are, just as literal architects are concerned with the principles of engineering statics. People who are higher in intelligence tend to have more extreme political views because they have greater capacity to take principles to their logical conclusion. The logical conclusion of property violation is global race communism. The reason why even paternalistic violations lead there is because they result in negative externalities. One is the pointless conflict over the apparatus of prohibitionist control. A more immediate one however is simply that violation instantly creates deadly enemies where none need exist. Yes, degenerates are generally enemies, although a fair few can be quite productive despite their bad habits. Violation of their property alone, not to mention that of the innocents caught in the crossfire of a Degeneracy War, impairs productivity. The negative externalities from violation are more social ills that provide a pretext for the state to expand its scope of activity to remedy. A monopolistic state is for this reason actually incentivized to exacerbate these problems.
Another principle whose violation has serious consequences is personal responsibility. The notion that a benovolent state needs to save people from folly isn’t limited to “social” issues either. The same paternalistic attitude is what has given us state retirement programs. If we accept the premise that people will not save enough for retirement on their own without being forced to by the state, a mandatory miminum contribution to an account designated for retirement by the state makes sense. The problem is that once you accept the premise that people need to be protected from themselves and their unreliable behavior, it follows that they need to be protected from the unreliability of capital market behavior. This is why most state retirement programs are pensions, which create serious solvency problems for states due to the insatiable desire by the public for more and more handouts, and by welfare bureacrats to exand their fiefdoms. A state pension system, because of its income guarantee, coerces redistribution from the young to the old, creating enemies of demographics that ought to live in harmony. Technological advance that increases abundance and extends lifespans creates an older and more burdensome population as well. The temptation is then to import younger foreigners to support the pension system. All of statism’s logical conclusion is globalism. Prohibitionism, because of its totalizing premise, even before its enrichment of bad foreign actors via smuggling, is no exception. While on the subject of international trafficking, it is worth noting that prohibitionists, even third positionist ones, tend not to differentiate between the rights of citizens and those of foreigners in dealing with trafficking of vice. It is arguably more robustly nationalist to accord your own people their right of privacy in vice, but not foreign entrants. This can be best enforced when ports of entry are marketized, with resale of shares limited to citizens only. This system is more resistant to capture by bad foreign actors than a socialist one.
Another aspect of the slippery slope to consider is its hypothetical bottom. In right-wing circles non-libertarian rightists attack libertarianism on this by identifying extreme depravity that could technically be legal in a libertarian society. Examples are things like consensual cannibilism and necrophilia. The first problem with appeal to depravity is that prohibitionism’s problems of forced integration apply at least as much to depravity as they do to degeneracy generally. Likely more, due to the extreme rarity of such behavior, it is a total absurdity for everyone to be treated like a potential suspect. No matter how rare extreme depravity is exactly, the integrationism of prohibition and statism generally create conditions where extreme deviants are potentially in position to respectively capture the enforcement apparatus and thereby victims en masse. For example, a third positionist regime is more likely to socialize businesses like mortuaries. This is because burial of the dead is an important part of affirming kinship ties in eternity and for this reason some nationalists may it deem it “too important” to leave to the “Mammonistic” whims of the market. If it were socialized, this represents an opportunity for the handful of necrophiles out there to command the industry, with no alternatives available to their victims due to the state’s elimination of competition. Socialized housing for the living becomes dominated by the dregs; there is no reason to expect any different of socialized housing for the dead. As for cannibalism, it should be noted that in history, third positionist regimes allied with Stalin, whose terror famine drove significant numbers of europeans to cannibalism. Even after Hitler turned on Stalin and invaded Ukraine, his appointed administration there maintained Stalin’s ruinous farm collectivization policies. It is reasonable that we want to resemble either regime as little as possible.
The practical possibility of extreme forms of depravity like cannibalism and necrophilia being legally practiced in a libertarian society is near zero. As mentioned earlier, the most extreme degenerates are also those least likely to be deterred by their behavior’s illegality. Because such behavior is an extreme taboo, the default legal assumption in all encounters of it in a libertarian society is that it was not consented to, and therefore unlawful. Consent would carry a very high burden of proof, such as written and notarized documentation. An extreme degenerate is not the type of person who would comply with such measures. Only degenerate notaries and other professionals would promulgate such contracts, and in a realistically libertarian, i.e. right-wing libertarian society, such professionals would be, at best, expelled from all reputable certifying organizations. Their customers would also be ostracized. While extremely depraved people are largely immune from social, if not economic ostracism, sensitivity to social ostracism increases greatly by degree of separation. We can go even further than this in a free society however. Legal and law enforcement professionals can refuse their services to the depraved not just for promulgation of depravity, but altogher. Meaning depraved people will not be defended even if violent crimes are committed by them. This is the practice of outlawry, which has strong precedent in Medieval europe. In a free society, just as law enforcers and adjudicators cannot force anyone else to associate with one another, no one can force law enforcers and adjudicators to serve anyone they don’t want to.
The legal calculus regarding consensual depravity is overwhelmingly in favor of maintaining the property norm as an absolute so as to maximize privacy. Privacy is often confused with secrecy, but what privacy really means is choice over what personal information others get to see or not. Privacy is inextricably linked to the property norm, which is that scarce resources that are peacefully acquired give one the choice over who can and cannot use them. The media by which personal information is transmitted are no less such a resource. We do not consider it acceptable to surveill private places even though that’s where the majority of murders are committed. Third positionists may counter that the state should simply refrain from surveillance of such places under prohibitionism. The problem with this is that the commission of a crime forfeits the criminal’s property rights, including their right to privacy. Meaning that even the many people who indulge in vice privately and responsibly have no right to privacy. Third positionists may counter again that suspects, as distinct from criminals, retain their rights. A problem with this, is that a suspected criminal does forfeit their right to privacy if the authorities have probable cause. Here lies the rub: To obtain probable cause in the first place regarding private vice, privacy and property must be violated. As explained earlier, not even victims of others’ non-violent degeneracy have a claim that is comparable in terms of practical legal actionability to that of victims of domestic violence. Vice’s lack of victims embodying real evidence of harm necessitates surveillance, with all of its culture of gossip, snitching, and blackmail, as a substitute. It becomes easy rather than hard for the authorities to conduct intrusive searches on flimsy pretexts. There is no property without privacy, and there is no civilization without property. Civilization is too valuable to allow the handful of people who are both depraved and legally scrupulous to ruin for the rest of us.
Other Issues
In arguing for statist social engineering, third posititionists often analogize family and nation. They believe that the relationship between government and the rest of the nation is like the relationship between parents and children. This analogy is obviously false because 1) most of the nation are not children but adults, and 2) the best custodians for children by far are intentional biological parents, not other coethnics. This is true vis a vis such parents’ own local community, let alone the national government. While there is a substantial element of truth to “it takes a village to raise a child,” third positionists do not get to invoke this because they believe that their subjectively-defined interests of the nation as a whole take precedence over the interests of the village. Third positionists like to march around exhorting people to “kill your local pedophile,” yet their argument has a significant feature in common with that of pedophiles: that children and adults should be treated the same concerning significant lifestyle decisions.
All children are of diminished capacity. They cannot form crime syndicates, corrupt public officials with bribery, and for the most part lack the avarice that causes criminals to do things like cut drugs with toxic chemicals. When adults are treated like children by an authority they become resentful of that authority and will likely seek to undermine it in some way, such as refusing to comply with investigations into serious crimes. It is difficult to be paternalistic without also being patronizing, and when paternalism is taken this way it erodes respect for paternal authority figures, even when they are well-meaning. Prohibitionism also creates a parallel to the Streisand Effect we could term the ‘Forbidden Fruit Effect.’ When something is treated as so inherently evil that it must be universally prohibited, that thing gains allure for its transgressiveness. Harsh punishments including death compound this effect. Although prohibitionism reduces experimentation generally, the Forbidden Fruit Effect is greatest among those whose personalities are high in openness and low in agreeableness. It is types who are cosmopolitan enough to engage with the world their nation’s behalf, yet also hard-nosed enough to negotiate effectively, who are disproportionately those who are suited to political leadership positions. Prohibitionism therefore has a disproportionately adverse affect on a key demographic of a functional polity. It is adverse primarily not because it increases experimentation per se, because this class is better able to handle vice responsibly, but because it brings them into contact with the criminal underground, thereby increasing corruption. It is better for vice to be mundane, for innocuous experimentation therewith to be broadly accessible. This way leader-types are less likely to experiment with dangerous forms of vice - because vice generally is too “common” to be cool.
The flip side of the ‘Forbidden Fruit Effect’ is the effect that prohibitionism has on the less independently-minded class of people. This is of complacency – when people think a social ill has been “cured” by law, they are less conscientious in protecting their families from that ill. It is an instance of moral hazard, which is the general effect where people who perceive themselves to be insured in some way against the risks of a behavior will engage in that behavior or tolerate it in others to a greater degree. Crucial virtues that should be universally cultivated are vigilance and agency. It is better for degenerates to be “out in the open” but in their own enclaves, so that ordinary people can be perpetually reminded of their existence, of the fallen nature of man generally, but also at a safe distance. People will thus take measures to make sure that degenerates remain at such a distance.
A free market in prohibition minimizes the harm that degeneracy does, not only because of its superior efficiency in punishing degeneracy but also in helping people rehabilitate from it where possible. This is due to the inherent superiority of voluntary aid over a welfare state: Benefactors can cut such aid off at will if it is abused. Organizations that are lax in doing so will see their funds swiftly diverted to those that are strict. The coercive nature of a welfare state contradicts this, because there is little incentive to penalize lax administrators. The state can simply keep taxing the productive no matter how much such laxity disgusts them. Voluntary rehabilitation organizations are maximally productive because it allows productive people to ensure that their funding of it is only to the extent that it benefts them.
An element of coercion in rehabilitation that prohibitionists also consider beneficial is involuntary commitment of degenerates, similar to how the criminally insane can be involuntarily committed to a mental institution. This creates a perverse incentive regardless of whether a rehabilitation clinic is state-run to feed it patients who should not be there to increase its revenue. A better approach is for people predisposed to degeneracy, especially genetically, to be able to get a tattoo authorizing forcible intervention if they succumb. Voluntary contracts into irreversible arrangements already exist in irrevocable trusts. Marriage can be treated similarly up to a point; it is perfectly reasonable for people to opt for a marriage contract with criminal rather than civil penalties for breach.
Voluntarism with respect to rehabilitation is a soft social Darwinism: It allows those who are best able to help the fallen do so without being dragged down themselves, while the worst degenerates who refuse help perish. The soft argument is not necessary however. The case against prohibitionism can be made through hard social Darwinism alone. This means that we could concede as a hypothetical that prohibitionism does save a great many of the nation from themselves. This still does not answer the question of whether they are worth saving. Degeneracy is largely a bottom quintile issue, and even in cases where it is severe, the worst of it is still a small portion of this percentile, such where even at the worst of Portugal’s heroin addiction crisis it was only 1% of the population. It is also a small percentage of the population that is responsible for national survival, the core value of third positionism. Less than half of a percent of the european population is military. Of course, it takes a much larger percentage of the population to power an economy supporting the military, but this still not necessarily a majority due to the Pareto Principle, which is that half an organization’s productivity is attributable to the square root of the number of its members. The nation is best protected when its greatest protectors are not subordinated in their property rights to its least. This was taken to an extreme in ancient Sparta, whose warrior aristocracy ruling over its Helot slave caste was only about 10% of the population. Even a society of 90% literal slaves, not figurative slaves of degeneracy, was a force to be reckoned with.
Concluding Remarks
Third positionists would enslave the large healthy majority of a nation to its small degenerate minority through the forced integration inherent to prohibitionism. This inherence can be shown from a priori comparison with a free market in prohibition powered by freedom of disassociation. Freedom of disassociation is the most fundamental human right there is. The modern West’s abrogation of it is the cause of white genocide. Even though prohibitionism can exist without anti-discrimination law, it is always at minimum forced integration on an economic level. It is also forced integration on a lifestyle level, where authorities are incentivized to, through surveillance, treat everyone as with potentially something to hide, which is inevitable when usage and distribution is illegal even in private. Although survivalism is a bad standard of value, prohibitionism is suboptimal even on this count. When quality of life is considered, prohibitionism is abysmal because it lets those who indulge in vice irresponsibly ruin vice for the responsible.
Aristocracy carries with it an expectation of noblesse oblige. This obligation is to promote the greatness of the nation as a whole however, not to negate the ignominy of the nation’s lowliest. It is an obligation to maintain a framework of ordered liberty that produces greatness. Prohibitionism is a policy of chaotic slavery: The chaos is caused by enriching and empowering organized crime, enough to corrupt government to such a degree that it becomes effectively legal in many areas. The slavery is the suppression of a good time among the great merry middle of society who are neither degenerates nor Puritans, their forced integration of this middle with the latter two, and their immiseration with surveillance, framing, and forfeiture. Right-wing prohibitionism is not a principled counteracting of leftism but a horseshoe with it: The exploitation of human weakness as a pretext for exploiting and surveilling those self-responsible enough to overcome it. It is the agenda of a patriarch whipped by the den mother; ultimately nothing more than a less honest longhouse. Only when we are free to leave such a place are we free from the perennial degeneracy of its denizens. The truly aristocratic reactionary is at once serenely indifferent to the unworthies he leaves behind and intensely solicitious for his fellow warriors and wanderers, even when their own shortcomings as men causes vice to momentarily lead them astray.
Footnotes
1Thanks to a loophole, sports derivatives contracts (effectively resellable bets), can be purchased in all 50 states through Crypto.com.
2A somewhat surprising fact concerning eligibility is that only about 36% of creator account applications are approved.
3OnlyFans does not release creator statistics to the public. Grok is using estimates provided by third party marketing organizations.
4The jewishness of pornography and finance is also overstated by third positionists. This will be addressed in a future article.
5 I do not discuss race-mixing as a topic in the body of this article because it is not even a vice in my opinion. No serious nationalist wants literally zero immigration for eternity, and as long as there is immigration there will be mixing. I for one, do not wish to get in the way of true love among the virtuous no matter the races involved. Absence of anti-miscegenation laws is a good thing from a nationalist standpoint. It signals objectivity about endogamy’s dominance as a biological norm. Despite the proliferation of both race-mixing propaganda and of genetic mutants more likely to mix, barely 10% of white people actually do, and there is a firm biological ceiling on the numbers who ultimately will when people are naturally free to choose their mates. The mutants skew left wing, and are thus of sub-replacement fertility. Race mixing actually enhances human biodiversity when sound immigration policy alone prevents it from being anything but the exception that proves the rule of endogamy. As with any form of experimentation there are negative side effects such as limited donation tissue compatibility. This can be mitigated by legalizing tissue sales. Health insurers can also play a role by charging higher premiums to those of mixed race. Only civil rights and certain privacy regulations currently prevent this.
Attacks on mixed-race couples, are counterproductive be they legislative or not. They alienate many key allies in more cosmopolitan spheres. Part of this alienation is the spurious scientific claims wignats make, such as claiming that a mixed-race child is less biologically related to his parents than a random unmixed child from their respective races. This is a basic conflation of haplotype, which is always 50% from each parent, with population genotype. It’s really just a tautology: “A mixed child’s ancestors comprise different races, while his unmixed parents’ and their coethnics’ ancestors comprise the same race.” Race may be an extended family, but it is still vastly different from immediate family. Inbreeding is literally vital for the former yet often deadly to the latter.
618 U.S.C. § 922(g)(4)
Sources
iMatsuzawa, Kyutaro and Arnesen, Emily Sports Betting Amplifies Emotional Cues & Intimate Partner Violence. Sep 27, 2024 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4938642
ii“Should Sports Be Illegal?” by Simon Laird 1/31/2025 https://simonlaird.substack.com/p/should-sports-be-illegal
iiiG. Schmidt & U Clement. “Does Peace Prevent Homosexuality?” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7560931/
iv“Prostitution in the Middle Ages” https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/society/sex/prostitution.php
vAquinas, St. Thomas. Summa Theologica: Secunda Secundae Partis (Second Part of the Second Part), Question 10, Article 11
vi Adam Elenbaas interveiw with Marnia Robinson 06/27/2028
https://web.archive.org/web/20080627090833/https://realitysandwich.com/finding_peace_between_our_sheets/
vii“Porn Addiction is Fake” by Deep Left Analysis. 02/04/2026 https://substack.com/inbox/post/149084042
viiihttps://freespeechunion.org/protest-footage-blocked-as-online-safety-act-comes-into-force/
ix“Pornography Use Could Lead to Addiction and Was Associated With Reproductive Hormone Levels and Semen Quality: A Report From the MARHCS Study in China” Zhihong Cui 1,†, Min Mo 2,†, Qing Chen 2, Xiaogang Wang 2, Huan Yang 2, Niya Zhou 2, Lei Sun 2, Jinyi Liu 2, Lin Ao 2, Jia Cao 2,* 2/10/2021 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8461095/
x“How Prevalent Is Pornography?” Daniel Cox, Beatrice Lee, and Dana Popky 5/3/2023
xi Blocker Jr, Jack S. “Did Prohibition Really Work? Alcohol Prohibition as a Public Health Innovation” (American Journal of Public Health, 2006) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1470475/
xii“Alcohol Prohibition and Cirrhosis” Angela K. Dills, Jeffrey A. Miron 07/01/2004
xiiiMark Thornton, “Alcohol Prohibition Was A Failure”. Cato Institute, July 17, 1991 • Policy Analysis No. 157,https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/alcohol-prohibition-was-failure
xiv Richard Cowan, “How the Narcs Created Crack,” National Review, December 5, 1986, pp. 30–31.
xvMark Thornton, “The Potency of Illegal Drugs,” Auburn University working paper, 1986; and Thornton, The Economics of Prohibition.
xviIrving Fisher, Prohibition at Its Worst (New York: Alcohol Information Committee, 1927) pp 28-29
xvii
“Americans knew their booze was poisoned—and drank it anyway” by Isabel Ravenna 04/10/2025
xviii“Psychedelic Drugs – Ancient European Evidence” by Tom Metcalfe https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/psychedelic-drugs-ancient-europe-evidence-menorca
xix“Ancient Europeans Took Hallucinogenic Drugs 3,000 Years Ago
“ By Sarah Kuta 4-10/2023 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-european-hallucinogenic-drugs-hair-strands-180981956/
xx“Did the ancient Greeks use drugs to find God?
“ Interview with Brian Muraresku. 5/24/2024 https://www.wpr.org/religion/did-the-ancient-greeks-use-drugs-to-find-god
xxi“Archaeologists Find Evidence of Hallucinogenic Drug in Ancient Rome”
By Elaine Velie. 2/11/2024 https://hyperallergic.com/871183/archaeologists-find-evidence-of-hallucinogenic-drug-in-ancient-rome/
xxii “The high life: Doing drugs with ancient Greeks and Romans” By Tim Brinkhof. 7/9/2022
xxiii“Magic Mushroom Cult: The Mysterious And Lost Rituals Of The Ancient Celts” By Nicole Buckler.
xxiv “Fly agaric mythology and folklore”
xxvMarc-Antoine Crocq”“History of cannabis and the endocannabinoid system”
“ 1 7/22/2020 in Dialogues Clin Neurosci https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7605027/
xxvii Crocq ibid.
xxviii “The History of Cannabis Part 2: Medieval and Colonial Worlds.” 8/6/2022
xxix Clarke, R.; Merlin, M. (2016). Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany. University of California Press. p. 179. ISBN . Archived from the original on 15 April 2023. Retrieved 23 March 2023.
xxx Herndon, G. Melvin. “Hemp in Colonial Virginia.” Agricultural History, vol. 37, no. 2, Apr. 1963, pp. 86–93. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3740774.
“ Tessa Robinson 1 2, Muhammad Usman Ali et. al. Risk-thresholds for the association between frequency of cannabis use and the development of psychosis: a systematic review and meta-analysis 1 10 11 Psychol. Med. 07/2023 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35321777/
xxxii Li, Z., Mukherjee, D., Duric, B. et al. Systematic review and meta-analysis on the effects of chronic peri-adolescent cannabinoid exposure on schizophrenia-like behaviour in rodents. Mol Psychiatry 30, 285–295 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-024-02668-5
xxxiii Matthew Large, BSc(Med), MBBS, FRANZCP; Swapnil Sharma, MBBS, FRANZCP; Michael T. Compton, MD, MPH. Cannabis Use and Earlier Onset of Psychosis: A Systematic Meta-analysis. Arch Gen Psychiatry Published Online: June 6, 2011 ;68;(6):555-561. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/211301
xxxiv Suhas Ganesh, M.D., and Deepak Cyril D’Souza, M.D. Cannabis and Psychosis: Recent Epidemiological Findings Continuing the “Causality Debate. American Journal of Psychiatry
xxxv Rajput J, Narahari S, Arif T, et al. (September 20, 2025) The Relationship Between Cannabis Use and Schizophrenia As a Risk Factor or For Its Therapeutic Potential: A Systematic Review of Evidence. Cureus 17(9): e92793. doi:10.7759/cureus.92793
xxxvi Vaucher, J., Keating, B., Lasserre, A. et al. Cannabis use and risk of schizophrenia: a Mendelian randomization study. Mol Psychiatry 23, 1287–1292 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2016.252
xxxvii “Jeff Sessions’ War on Marijuana Could Make the Opioid Crisis Worse” By Monica Hunter-Hart. 6/13/2017 https://www.inverse.com/article/32930-jeff-sessions-weed-war-drugs-heroin
xxxviii “Ex-deputy accused of planting drugs on Florida drivers is arrested“ By Eliott C. McLaughlin, 7/11/2019 https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/11/us/florida-deputy-arrested-planting-drugs-charges
xxxix “A New York Police Officer Was Caught on Camera Apparently Planting Marijuana in a Car – For the Second Time” By Alice Speri and Tom Mannon. 3/18/2020 https://theintercept.com/2020/03/18/nypd-misconduct-body-cameras-marijuana/
xl “Ex-Cop Alleges N.Y. Officers Planted Drugs On People” Interview with John Marzulli on All Things Considered. 10/14/2011 https://www.npr.org/2011/10/14/141362858/ex-cop-alleges-n-y-officers-planted-drugs-on-people
xli “Federal appeals court: Drug dog that’s barely more accurate than a coin flip is good enough” By Radley Balko 8/4/2015
xlii “Concerns Over High Potency THC Products Warrant Greater Education, Not Criminalization
“ By Paul Armentano. 8/22/2022 https://norml.org/blog/2022/08/22/norml-op-ed-concerns-over-high-potency-thc-products-warrant-greater-education-not-criminalization/
xliiiLeo Beletsky, Corey S. Davis,Today’s fentanyl crisis: Prohibition’s Iron Law, revisited, International Journal of Drug Policy, Volume 46, 2017, Pages 156-159, ISSN 0955-3959, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0955395917301548
xlivMark Gius. “The Effects of Civil and Criminal Forfeitures on Drug-Related Arrests.” Justice Policy Journal, Volume 15, Number 1 (Spring, 2018) https://www.cjcj.org/media/import/documents/the_effects_of_civil_and_criminal_forfeitures_on_drug_related_arrests.pdf
xlv“Civil asset forfeiture: seven horror stories” By AFP Staff. 4/30/2021
xlvi“Civil asset forfeiture: seven horror stories” By AFP Staff. 4/30/2021
xlvii “Is Portugal’s Drug Decriminalization a Failure or Success? The Answer Isn’t So Simple” By Gregory P. Shea. 9/5/2023
xlviii“5 Years After: Portugal’s Drug Decriminalization Policy Shows Positive Results” by Brian Vastag. 4/7/2009https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/portugal-drug-decriminalization/
xlixHenderson, Mitchell C. A Man Beyond His Mission. 2019Pg 401.
lIbidpp 263-264
Degeneracy be a necessary component to beating dysgenics see safe sleazy @pilleater
Good effort on this essay.
The academic literature on pornography is worse then useless. Totally ideologically biased.