One Book Shelf: Censorship Warfare

[Erttheking]

Are we doing the "Store not selling thing out of free will, therefore censorship" thing again? This thing wore out its non-existent appeal a long time ago. Man. The people who say we should just let the Free Market flow really change their tune when the Free Market does something they don't like. Also kind of ironic that those were the same people who complain about the ism card being played, even though that rarely crops up around here and they freely spam the censorship card.

 

[The Lunatic]

Am I supposed to have a problem with any of that? Why should a Christian book store have to stock books by authors they disagree with, exactly? Why should they have to stock books of religions they disagree with? And why the hell would a book store sell contraceptives in the first place? I'm also confused as to why you seem to believe there aren't stores that cater exclusively to rich people.

Next time you want to try and call me out for some kind of inconsistency of my argument, it might help if you actually address my stance, rather than inventing one for me.

P.S. It should be noted that I have no personal problem with Tournament of Rapists. But just because I really don't care about the book and whether it's sold doesn't mean I also lack the meager amount of intelligence and empathy required to understand why other people might object to such a book and why a business might not want to sell it.

You yourself brought up restaurants in your post, not sure why you're getting confused here, but, neither of us is referring to just book stores! According to you, properties have a right to decide what is and isn't sold on them.

Unless you're saying "Properties that are exclusively book stores have complete freedom"? Which seems a bit daft.

I mean, after all, if a Walmart in the ghetto sudden stops selling food, and the only other store is all the way across town, when most people in the area don't have cars, they can just open a new store, right? Or if rent suddenly goes up, and a community can no longer afford to live in an area, they can just move, right? Who are we to question business or expect answers for such behavior?

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Anyways, talk about yourself wanting "freedom", but you and I both know there's more than a bit of difference here. You can get Pepsi at every third store in the world. This RPG stuff? OBS has the same kind of monopoly that Steam has on video games, in that if you don't have Steam-cred, your game is going to sell a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what you could get with Steam.

And yet, it's still their business, their decision. Just because they were savvy enough to get that large of a share of the market and no one else tried very hard to keep up the competition with them doesn't mean that they therefore deserve to have control over their business taken from them and be forced to sell products that they do not want to sell. In other words, no, there really isn't more than a bit of difference here. Just because they're the biggest retailers in the market doesn't mean they're obligated to sell someone's product. They do not somehow owe that to the publishers of Tournament of Rapists. If they want their products to sell on that platform, then they can come out with a product that the platform is willing to sell. If you don't think that's right of the platform to do, then don't buy from that platform. If enough people disagree with the decisions that platform makes and someone offers an alternative they find more agreeable, they can go and buy from that alternative platform, make it successful and eliminate the problem of the original platform having too big of a presence on the market. If the only solution you can think of is to strip a business that becomes too successful of its freedom, I'm not really going to believe you care much about freedom at all.

Now hold on, that's getting close to defending monopolies. Because we HAVE actually taken control from companies before when there had been a lack of meaningful competition within a space.

 

[SecondPrize]

What exactly is wrong with hunting down and killing rapists in a game?

 

[Strazdas]

A platform/store choosing not to carry or sell a specific product is not censorship and doesn't go against free speech.

yes it is and yes it does. It is legal and fully within their right. But it is censorship.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Now hold on, that's getting close to defending monopolies. Because we HAVE actually taken control from companies before when there had been a lack of meaningful competition within a space.

Which would depend on 1) how essential the service they provide is, 2) how they managed to become a monopoly and how they manage to prevent competition, and 3) how predatory their prices are.

Someone not being able to make as much money as they feel they deserve because they can't sell their blatantly offensive and objectionable book on the biggest marketplace for selling those kind of books is quite the insignificant concern when it comes to potential problems with monopolies, so comparing that to an actual monopoly that requires intervention to break is not quite but almost as absurd as the idea of a ghetto super Walmart closing shop and all the locals starving to death as a result.

That doesn't change the fact that your argument sounded like it could have been made by a 19th century robber baron. "Companies that dominate the marketplace don't have to listen to your petty concerns" are why we have anti-trust laws in the first place. Just because this isn't Ma Bell doesn't mean they should be ignored.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

That doesn't change the fact that your argument sounded like it could have been made by a 19th century robber baron. "Companies that dominate the marketplace don't have to listen to your petty concerns" are why we have anti-trust laws in the first place. Just because this isn't Ma Bell doesn't mean they should be ignored.

That is certainly one overly simplistic and vaguely generalized to the point of meaninglessness descriptions as to why we have anti-trust laws, yes. Realistically, still not in any way comparable to the actual situation we are discussing in this thread though.

And when your point is indistinguishable from an internet pseudo-Libertarian with a justification of "I don't care/this doesn't affect me", your argument sounds flimsy.

 

[The Lunatic]

So you've got no point and are just desperately clutching at straws in an effort to blindly yell "BUT YOU HAVE TO BE WRONG SOMEHOW, I JUST CAN'T THINK OF ANY VALID REASON WHY YOU ARE RIGHT NOW!"? I mean, honestly, a Super Walmart (you know, the kind that sells groceries) in a ghetto? And it suddenly decides to stop selling food thereby creating a demand for food because they're the ONLY source who were providing it? And no one interested in making money sees that golden opportunity suddenly open up and fills that demand? THAT'S the example you want to go with? And rent goes up and people are forced to move because they can no longer afford it quite often. Sucks, but, what is your proposed solution? Demand that the property owner keep rent the same despite the rising property value? Fat chance that's going to happen without the government stepping in and forcibly controlling what prices for rent people are allowed to set.

Come back to me when you have a realistic example of something that might actually challenge my stance and/or isn't something that already happens and that society finds perfectly acceptable in the real world.

... Wait, let me get this right, you're arguing that gentrification doesn't exist and never happened?

Uh... I've got some news for you, and I'm not sure you'll like it.



Gentrification is the product of "It's a business, they can do what they like!" It's not a particularly moral thing. And I think, as a moral person, you have to question the action behind such activities. However, you seem to believe that it's not something that happens, so, I guess that's an easier way of dealing with it.

My argument is not "We should force retailers into doing XYZ" it is "Any retailer that does something and doesn't explain it, should be met concern."

You seem to struggle with the concept of consumer activism. It's not about saying "You must do this" or "You must do that" it's about asking "Why have you done this, and what can we expect you to do in future"?

Also, do remember The Escapist operates a "Don't be a Jerk rule" and try to keep your posts polite.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

I did not trust the government with the power and responsibility to censor what I can or cannot have access to. I do not trust politically-motivated anonymous virtual gangs to do the job either. I don't even really trust the CEO of One Book Shelf to make that call given his complete lack of a spine.

I fucking hate authoritarians.

They'll plea for complete freedom of expression for themselves when they're in a position of weakness, but as soon as the shoe is on the other foot they will take that freedom of expression from others without so much as the blink of an eye.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

And when your point is indistinguishable from an internet pseudo-Libertarian with a justification of "I don't care/this doesn't affect me", your argument sounds flimsy.

And if that were the case, then it shouldn't be so hard to counter it with something that isn't absurdly hyperbolic and unrealistic. If you want to try your hand at coming up with an argument as to why OBS shouldn't be allowed to pull all of 2 items from its inventory that doesn't rely upon worse case scenarios and manufacturing a moral panic, something that reasonably justifies forcing them to sell those items against their will, something that justifies the argument that they should only be allowed to do so if they can justify it in a way certain people will accept, I'm all ears. But excuse me if I'm not really expecting one, because so far, none have been given in all the moral panic and outrage threads crying censorship over the most trivial of non-issues people have made here.

Which is to say that there needs to be a compelling justification to deny a business control over its own platform, one that has been so far completely lacking in any argument I have encountered in threads such as this that argue such control should be denied. No one is owed someone else's platform from which to express themselves on, and no one is owed someone else's storefront from which to sell their product. You may believe otherwise, but if you want to convince me to believe otherwise as well, you're going to have to put in more effort than yelling "but it's censorship!"

If we're talking about justification, yours is that monopolistic tendencies are okay so long as you don't think they're big enough. Corporate apologism isn't a very good position to have.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

If we're talking about justification, yours is that monopolistic tendencies are okay so long as you don't think they're big enough. Corporate apologism isn't a very good position to have.

While that is an interesting spin on "if something is not actually a monopoly, then I see no reason to treat it like one" I do have to ask, are you going to put forth an argument, or are you just going to continue arguing against ones you make up and pretend are mine?

And yet, it's still their business, their decision. Just because they were savvy enough to get that large of a share of the market and no one else tried very hard to keep up the competition with them doesn't mean that they therefore deserve to have control over their business taken from them and be forced to sell products that they do not want to sell.

This is where I came in, at you defending virtual monopolies.