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i would rather be in porn then working on a freeway in california (statistically safer)... the point is cal-osha would be better served concentrating on industries that actually are failing at being safe like starting with their own. then once they established they could succeed at creating a safe working environment maybe it would be ok to start pointing the finger at other industries that are succeeding (by comparison) so far...




Okay. Neither of us, I take it, are working on a freeway crew. But you use the expression "in porn," which makes it unclear if you're working behind the camera or in front of it. This is explicitly about working in front of the camera, since the issue here is talent's risk.

If working for the California Highway authority or whatever they call it out there is anything like working for Chicago's Streets and Sans, there's no comparison. In Ed Norton vs. Starla Sparkletits, Ed Norton kicks ass. In Streets and Sans, he gets:

1. A Union. A bad-ass union, too.
2. A pension, underwritten by the government, and thus extremely likely to be available when you retire. Streets and Sans has been loaded with ghost-employees and other unique features of Chicago city government for decades, and their pension is under no threat of insolvency.
3. Workman's Compensation. There will be a number of fatal accidents but thousands of non-fatal ones. I'll still be getting paid when I'm recouping.
4. An hourly wage far above what one would expect from what is essentially manual labor (see #1).
5. Health insurance.
6. The esteem, or at least not the recriminations, of society.

Sorry. From Streets and Sans I'd make $35,000 this year, with a damn good chance of getting nothing more than a split nail and a stinky smell to my boots. From porn I might make twice that, have no job when I'm thirty, no health insurance unless I'm with one of the contract companies, no union benefits, etc etc etc.

All that vs. the statistical possibility I could be hit by a car, and more money temporarily, for a job that goes kaput when botox stops wiping away my wrinkles. Oh, and free drugs in exchange for fucking troglodytes off camera.

If you want to be cool and analytical, you'll have to do better than that. My personality would make me a misfit in Streets and Sanitation, so I personally wouldn't work there. But these arguments are the kinds of things that pot smokers say when they're passing a bong and complaining about the government making taxes off of alcohol. They're not totally without validity, but they don't change the fundamental facts.
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