Steve Jobs Beats Porn & Poverty
While the Great Recession continue to confound and grind away at the hopes and dreams of Americans everywhere, even the most escapist industry on the planet has proven to be hard hit by the economic squeeze: that’s right, according to The Economist, the porn industry is “scraping by.”
Most of the industry consists of small private production companies whose numbers are secret, but Mark Kernes, an editor at Adult Video News, a trade magazine, estimates that the American industry had some $6 billion in revenues in 2007, before the recession, mostly in DVD sales and rentals and some in internet subscriptions. Diane Duke, the director of the Free Speech Coalition, the adult industry’s trade group, thinks that revenues have fallen 30-50% during the past year. “One producer told me his revenue was down 80%,” she says.
Meanwhile, Apple Inc. reported today their largest single quarter profit ever at $1.6 billion amid revenues of over $7 billion. Altogether this means that in 2009 – right smack in the midst of one of the greatest economic crises in American history – people will have spent roughly 36 billion dollars on Apple computer products and porn alone (I guess now I know why my MacBook is called a “Pro”).
To put all that into perspective, consider this:
- To finally provide clean water for every person on the planet would cost only $10 billion per year for 10 years.
- The elimination of starvation and malnutrition on the planet would cost only $19 billion per year for 10 years.
- The elimination of illiteracy on the planet would cost only $2 billion per year for 20 years.
You could validly dispute the specifics of these figures but the basic point remains true: something is seriously wrong with our priorities.
