Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“An old post by Steve Landsburg offered three examples of actions by one person that another objected to but that did no physical damage. He asked whether the psychic cost to the objector should be considered relevant to public policy, whether the answer was the same for all three and, if not, why not. The first of the three was someone reading pornography and someone else being upset by the knowledge that pornography was being read. The third was someone raping an unconscious victim in a way that did no physical harm. Why, Steve asked, do we have different reactions to those cases and is the difference justified? Discussing reactions to the post with my daughter, I commented that the people who were angry about it, mostly online, struck me as either stupid or evil.” (10/17/25)