On Markets and Morals: The SEC, Apple, and Internet Pornography

James Stoner writes at Public Discourse: “. . . one can commend Steve Jobs for steadfastly refusing to allow Apple to become a platform for easy access to pornography, and commend him as well for showing that this can be done through determined business leadership, without recourse to government regulation that can threaten legitimate freedom and impose its own social costs. In the end, though, these policies need to be defended by reasons—in light of the clear exploitation involved in the creation of pornography, of the harm done to individuals who use it and to their families, and of the larger social costs—even when the policies result in the voluntary action of private companies rather than in government coercion. And their defense will draw on the same ideas that defend human freedom itself: an account of the integrity of the human person, of his status as an intelligent and therefore moral being, and of the enhancement of human prospects when people live in a community and share in its civic life. If this is right, then the repair of the breach between social conservatives and libertarians is not just a matter for coalition-building and negotiation, but an occasion for serious reflection and theoretical development. The recovery of a healthy market and the restoration of healthy public morality are not two separate aims but two dimensions in the quest for human freedom. To form the capacity to choose is not to suppress freedom, but to empower it . . .”