The porn industry wants economic stimulus. It wants a federal bailout, which should resolve any confusion as to what this country has become.

Some don’t believe in the free market’s ability to turn garbage into gold, to deliver anything and everything a consumer could ever want. People like that have never examined the diverse and thriving porn industry.

It’s barely regulated. Motivated by profit, kept free by the First Amendment, it provides almost anything anyone could possibly want. Hotel room TVs, satellite and cable pay channels, porn shops, bookstores, the Internet and some newsstands provide   porn for just about any fetish one can imagine.

It’s not the least bit underground. One of the great American startup success stories of the past decade is a company called Girls Gone Wild — in Portales late last year — which uses infomercials to promote mail order videos of naked college girls at parties. Creator Joe Francis has made hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.

One can easily disrespect and denounce the evils of porn while gleefully acknowledging the industry as a great example of free enterprise providing exactly what any consumer could want.

Central planning doesn’t create Girls Gone Wild. Only a profit-minded entrepreneur could find a way to combine a video camera and a beach party to create a large fortune.

So how does socialist porn compare? Central planners don’t hold videos of naked beach parties in the same esteem as someone who profits from them. So they tend to restrict the sale of such images.

Of course, socialist central planners are first and foremost in the business of choosing winners and losers. That’s why the massive bailouts of some failed big businesses in the United States work as a giant step in the direction of socialism. Chosen winners are getting bailout money paid by individuals and businesses who will become losers as a result. Those who don’t get bailouts pay for the bailouts.

Francis and porn entrepreneur Larry Flynt, the founder of Hustler magazine, obviously know how to profit from porn in a free society. And it appears they fully grasp the swift socialist drift of their country, and want to ensure their success under the new system.

The men announced plans last week to ask Congress for a $5 billion bailout of the porn industry, even though industry profits are strong. Flynt argues a bailout would benefit the collective:

“Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex. With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind. It’s time for Congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America.”

These captains of porn want bailout cash even though they’re smart enough to know federal money comes with federal control. They understand that in the United States today, winners and losers aren’t determined by a market the government has mostly destroyed. Winners and losers are chosen by central planners in the Congress and the White House. Winners get bailouts and losers do not.

It isn’t about competition for customers anymore. Today, business success involves competition for the hearts and minds of planners in Washington. For those who don’t see this, the plea for a porn bailout should clear things up.

Central planners, not consumers, have been asked to help porn prevail.