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Comment by clavalle | Hacker News Reader

This is a Very Good Thing.

I know that it is currently in vogue, with the libertarian current in our society and in the tech world in particular, to ask why prostitution should be illegal. People should have control over their own bodies, shouldn't they?

Here is the answer: many of the people selling their sexual services are not in control of their bodies. Beyond the obvious example of people forced into it by violence, there is also a huge population of people that are trying to feed themselves, or their kids, or their addictions with very few options to achieve those ends. That is not liberty.

If it were true that everyone is absolutely free to choose to engage themselves in such a way with no whiff of active or passive coercion by individuals or their circumstances, sure, they should have the choice. But when the choice is 'do this thing or die, or be in pain' that is no real choice.

This industry needs to connect to customers. Sure, something else might pop up, but at least there won't be a central repository for a while. Hopefully that makes it a less viable.

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The solution is to build a system in which people who are forced into sex slavery are able to be identified and helped and their traffickers prosecuted. The current system, which assumes that every sex worker is there by force, muddies the waters heavily and ensures that people are not going to get the individual support they need to get out of sex work.

I know a number of independent sex workers as part of my communities, and for the most part they do it because they consider it less demoralising than working at McDonald's. (Sorry, but that's the truth - sex isn't sacred to some people, and being somewhat independent, being able to choose their clients, not being subject to wage slavery, and being able to keep the proceeds of most of the value they provide is appealing to them.)

Yes, there's a large amount of sex workers who are there by force, or perform sex work because they're ineligible for benefits and can't survive without it. But criminalising sex work doesn't actually help those people in the slightest, in much the same way that criminalising drugs doesn't help addicts. They're going to keep doing it because they're forced by their circumstances to, and in fact it prevents them from getting the help they need, on top of adding another socially unacceptable label which can make it difficult to access housing and other necessary services.

Criminalise pimps and traffickers all you want, they're the scum of the earth. But support sex workers.

>because they consider it less demoralising than working at McDonald's

I honestly think that people shouldn't be forced to sell their time to McDonald's for less than fair value because they are afraid of starvation, either.

Elsewhere in the thread people advocate a licensing system -- my fear of complete legitimization would be that people who need help from society will be refused that help if it seems that they could just get a job at the local brothel. BUT if that licensing system is used to screen people who are in desperate straits to give them solid alternatives before they make that decision, I think that might be a very workable solution.

> I honestly think that people shouldn't be forced to sell their time to McDonald's for less than fair value because they are afraid of starvation, either.

Sure. But solving that involves a complete overhaul of the current capitalist system, and we're not going to get that for a long time. In the meantime, allowing people to survive within the capitalist system however they need to is a necessity.

> my fear of complete legitimization would be that people who need help from society will be refused that help if it seems that they could just get a job at the local brothel

I don't think that's ever likely to be the case. It certainly isn't the case in first-world countries where prostitution, and even brothels, are legal right now. Nobody has been turned away from receiving services and benefits in the UK or Nevada, for example, because they could be performing sex work, similarly as they're not forced into a number of other things (such as the military).

>Sure. But solving that involves a complete overhaul of the current capitalist system

The current capitalist system, maybe, but I think it is perfectly workable within some flavor of capitalism. In fact, I think that having a solid social safety net would push capitalism to even greater heights of efficiency. With the notable exception of the taxation to pay it people would be making transactions that are guaranteed to be a net positive. That assumes, of course, that paying for such a system isn't an overall negative which is debatable (but more and more plausible with productivity gains over the last century or two).

> In fact, I think that having a solid social safety net would push capitalism to even greater heights of efficiency.

I live in the UK. We have a solid social safety net. The issue is that it exists to support a capitalist understanding of wages - i.e. that your wage is a result of a market, which is more-or-less unrelated to the value that you create through your work (except insofar as an upper limit is created) and more to do with how many people and companies you're competing with to do the work.

A "safety net" which somehow ensures, in perpetuity, that people are able to work for a wage which has some relation to the value they create winds up looking a lot like certain forms of socialism. But as with all real-world politics, it winds up being blurry.

> that your wage is a result of a market, which is more-or-less unrelated to the value that you create through your work ... and more to do with how many people and companies you're competing with to do the work.

That's how supply and demand works. The wages are low because the more people are looking for a particular job, the more people there are willing to do it for less than others. In a well functioning society, this is a signal saying "we have enough people doing this job, go do something else".

The problem is that our society doesn't make it easy for people to do something else. Generally people get one chance at education, and if they make a bad choice, they're screwed. And beyond that, there's nothing that ensures that there will even be enough demand for labour that everyone can earn a decent living.

Yes. Supply and demand as applied to compensation for labour is a capitalist idea of how society should work, and results in all sorts of issues, including the ones discussed in this thread and the fact that the value people create gets siphoned into the capitalist class by way of the companies they're forced to work for to survive, for less compensation than the value they create.

The solutions to this lie in the ideas of worker-led organisations of varying kinds, mutual aid, and more generally the reduction of the role a capitalist class takes in the production of value. And yes, accessible education to all.

The problem with this argument is that I can compare it easily to any job a person doesn't want to do. This argument is usually formed with circumstances surrounding the action, but not the action itself (abduction, coercion, lack of choice, rapes, drug addictions).

There are also people that argue because there is a transaction of money that it is coercion.

Again, easy to compare this to any job a person doesn't want to do but has to in order to survive (no matter how well paid). Given the alternative to have the thing they want for free or working in whatever form for what they want, many would choose free. Many work to obtain what they desire or what they need to survive.

When I'm in this line of thought I wonder which is better? A pain felt acutely, physically and emotionally. Or one that the masses encourage, are numb to, accepted as way of life, dragged on for 40+ years.

Let's not pretend it is as simple as that. By your own logic, of the options "Prostitute and feed myself" and "do not feed myself", they should only be allowed the latter.

Not all states have adequate alternative options as you yourself pointed out. You don't solve coerced prostitution by banning prostitution, they are already being forced to do it so they have no choice anyway. You solve coerced prostitution by solving the various coercions. By giving them adequate alternatives. Be it food programs, housing or other state care. Be it drug rehabilitation or cracking down on pimps and traffickers.

Banning prostitution would be like punishing slaves for working for free. Similarly, banning prostitution for the sake of stopping coerced prostitution is taking away a line of work many individuals are perfectly happy and proud to do.

I would support a licensing system that would screen for people that need help and providing alternatives to those people that would rather not be doing that work.

Or, alternately, splitting the duties currently handled by law enforcement into law enforcement and societal support. Law enforcement would do what they do for crimes like murder or other crimes with victims other than the perpetrator but Support might detain someone in a questionable situation for a short time but would have a primary mission of identifying those that cannot help themselves for whatever reason, be it the addicted, the mentally ill, the people who risk starvation and getting them the help they need. Of course, that would be predicated on help actually being available.

You are making the all too common and incorrect assumption that banning an in-demand good or service is a good way to prevent it from being bought and sold.

Making prostitution illegal doesn't stop it, it just pushes it underground where it becomes a massive revenue stream for organized crime and the state is powerless to regulate the industry and protect its workers. To top it off, the increase in price caused by illegality becomes a strong incentive for human traffickers, making worse the problem you were trying to solve in the first place.

> This is a Very Good Thing.

I disagree, my opinion is based on the economics of drug prohibition [0]. I agree with your sentiments about the industry itself but the challenge is that the more prohibited a service like this is the more profit there is to be gained for providing it.

With that thought in mind it's guaranteed that new services already exist attempting to take over the abandoned space. The reason I think this is bad is because the likelihood is that these new services will be less ethical than backpage.

I'm inclined to think using backpage to identify sex traffickers, minors, and pedophiles would have been more effective at actually making a difference in the victims lives.

My belief is that actions like these just hide the behavior from public view allowing political pressure to be reduced without actually resolving the problem.

[0] http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/d...

> there is also a huge population of people that are trying to feed themselves, or their kids, or their addictions with very few options to achieve those ends.

Should we shut down strip clubs? What about coal mines? Factory jobs where people lose digits and limbs? Service industries where people are overworked and underpaid?

There it is. There's the line.

Those things are different and you know it.

EDIT: I would think that libertarians would be more interested in personal sovereignty than has really been apparent in this thread? At least I thought there was more to libertarianism than boiling everything down to commercial transactions.

> At least I thought there was more to libertarianism than boiling everything down to commercial transactions.

One person's "commercial transaction" is another person's "personal choice"

So a libertarian who supports "personal choice" is being logically consistent by bristling against any limitations put on a "commercial transaction", because that's one stroke of the pen away from a ban on personal choices.

I disagree.

If I could snap my fingers and be granted a wish no one would have to sell anything, including their time and effort, merely to survive.

Under those conditions, those jobs would have to pay enough to /entice/ someone to do that work rather then rely on the implicit threat of pain through starvation, homelessness or what have you, to keep the price of getting those jobs done artificially low. Therefore they must provide enough value to society to justify their natural, uncoerced, price after that likely labor price increase is taken into account.

People often do things they wouldn't do if they were not paid. That's business. It is when people do things that they'd rather not else they face pain or death that we should work to minimize.

So, if someone wants to work in a mine, or a factory line, or on a stripper pole because it pays well enough knowing that if they don't they could still feed their kids, more power to them.

The approach you are advocating is incorrect because you are only targeting the symptom and not the solution to the problem. Now you have two problems, one of disenfranchised people (who are now criminals) and one of people wanting to exchange money for legitimate services who are forbidden to. If you instead permitted and regulated the industry but protected those who work in it, you'd be in a far better situation.

These people need help. They are often addicted to drugs, mentally ill or come from an abusive past (or all of the above).

The idea that making something illegal will help these people is misguided. Presently the women are offered no protection of the law, they are often harassed and targeted by police over Johns. They often face threats of violence and rape (and more than threats) with no recourse of the law.

What is needed are rational harm reduction policies and bringing sex work into the light under the framework of protection under the law.

Assume we do that.

When someone asks for public assistance, do we then tell them "Well, you can have a job over here at the brothel"?

Such advocacy groups already exist. They provide basic healthcare services, needle exchange, free condoms, food and emergency shelter.

I'm not sure if your comment is serious, but groups already exist to address the specific needs of sex workers (which aren't that different from the subset of people they come from: impoverished and drug addicted).

What is not happening, the most important part, is for the law to view sex workers as victims rather than perps. Protection of the law would go a long way in reducing the violence and trafficking involved.

When people ask for public assistance, we either give it to them or deny it. There may also be assistance for people looking for jobs, but it does not force anyone to take those jobs.

If someone denied public assistance chooses prostitution to make a living, that is not any more inherently coercive than if they choose to flip burgers.

If someone has a single option to feed themselves/their kids, and you remove that one option, how is that an improvement?

Not only remove that opinion, criminalize it, which hurts sex workers even more.

It is not the only option.

Removing it changes the value balance. If it is not quite so easy, the other options become relatively more desirable.

Not only that, assuming more people who would normally get by on selling their sexual services turn to public assistance for help, their problem becomes more visible and the rest of us in better positions can react rather than ignore what is not being measured.

>If it is not quite so easy, the other options become relatively more desirable.

So by your own logic, prostitution is more desirable to those who choose it than the alternatives? So you want to make it artificially less desirable so they choose a different (worse) option?

Yes.

In the short term it would be a 'worse' option but in the long term it would lead to a better outcome for them and others.

Much like we make it artificially less desirable to do things like build a house that is not up to code.

> in the long term it would lead to a better outcome

I'm not really sure I follow the argument for it leading to a better outcome.

Prostitution has been illegal for a long time, long before the existence of Backpage, and we haven't seen an outpouring of support for improved public assistance.

Indeed, people on public assistance are usually characterised as lazy scroungers who can't be bothered to get a real job. Meanwhile prostitutes are usually considered tragic victims of adverse circumstances.

So if anything, it would seem like a massive increase in the numbers of prostitutes as a result of legalisation (not to mention the increased visibility of the existing amount) would be far more likely to lead to support for change than the status quo.

It's more complicated than that - even for those being trafficked, in-calls and indoor prostitution are safer than street/outdoor prostitution:

http://scunning.com/resubmission_july2016.pdf

Services like backpage allow sex workers to vet clients ahead of time, control the time and place of an assignation, have that indoors, and then leave. Certainly some of those sex workers are trafficked, but not all are, and driving either population out onto the street for sex work puts them in greater danger of violence, sexual assault, and/or STIs.

My assumption is that the extra risk would be taken into account and many, if not most, would decide that it is no longer worth it and choose to do something that is less lucrative in the short term but lead to better outcomes in the long term.

>Removing it changes the value balance. If it is not quite so easy, the other options become relatively more desirable.

The value balance should be changed by making other options easier and more desirable, not by making the lives of prostitutes harder.

Otherwise it sounds like you actually just don't like prostitution, regardless of what freedoms prostitutes have.

Ideally, I agree. Unfortunately we don't live in an ideal world and we have to settle for the quicker stopgap, the point of which isn't to punish prostitutes but change the value calculation of people before they go that route.

This conversation makes me realize that I don't have much data, though. How many prostitutes are doing it out of some level of desperation? I assume most since it is so risky in so many different ways (the risk of legal punishment being near the least of it). But, I'll admit, I don't know.

If the risk of legal punishment is near the least of it, then how is that going to change the value calculation?

If it is only a trivial inconvenience, it is useless. If it is a grave inconvenience, it is evil.

Being for free speech is like being for motherhood. It's not exactly the brave stance that lots of people make it out to be. It's just that they don't have to put anything on the line to have a maximalist free speech position.

Just reading all of the libertarian pseudo-economic analysis for this post is pretty painful. It's kind of telling that prostitution keeps being described in terms of employment or work. Left out are the social and psychological implications/causes/side-effects of prostitution.

I'm actually on the side of legalizing prostitution, and I generally support any policy that makes the lives of sex workers safer or healthier...but you are spot on about Backpage.

They have been knowingly participating in and fostering this behavior but have tried to keep themselves at an arms length from a strictly legal sense. It's a lie and they have participated in spreading a great deal of misery because they couldn't find another way to make money.

So, because "do this or be in pain" might be coercive, your solution is to remove the "do this or", so it's just "be in pain"?

I'm genuinely unsure how removing an option is helping the situation, if you're not going to provide a solution at the same time. It just sounds like you'd rather they suffer than do something you find distasteful.

Want to know how it's not a very good thing?

Backpage gives a marketplace to everyone. This is both negative and positive. It supports sex trafficking, but it also supports individuals who need sex work to survive, and provides them a small amount of security.

In the neighborhoods near mine in the upper east side of Baltimore, there are two particular regions for sex work: trans people and poor people in general.

It is obvious that trans people are a high risk population for violence, and so they often turn to online sites to help weed out potential bad actors. Without these sites they are forced to walk the streets more, where they will come into violence, either just by accident, or by individuals or gangs who control territory.

The poorer neighborhoods, and neighborhoods controlled by gangs, maintain a stranglehold on prostitution in their given territory. Online sites allow either motels or private homes to be used to avoid running afoul of restrictions by these gangs.

It is also safe to assume law enforcement will have more excuses to take advantage of sex workers now that they will be more visible & vulnerable. (If you find that suggestion offensive, my city is well known for corruption in both prisons and law enforcement)

There are organizations working to help protect sex workers in most major cities in America. Please feel free to reach out to them for detailed information on how these events affect sex workers and what you can do to help.

> Beyond the obvious example of people forced into it by violence, there is also a huge population of people that are trying to feed themselves, or their kids, or their addictions with very few options to achieve those ends. That is not liberty.

Couldn't you same the same for work => slavery?

Some work, yes.

There is a class of people that work their entire lives, earning less then their time and effort would be worth sans passive coercion, simply to keep their head above water, if that.

This is a disservice to them and society since, if like the rest of us, they worked because it was a good trade of their time and effort and felt like they come out of the transaction with more value rather than merely not losing everything, it would be a guaranteed net-value add and we, as a society, wouldn't be dancing on the edge of a permanent underclass all of the time.

I know many people that don't need to work to survive but do because they are continually better off for it. In fact, most of the people I know in that position work as hard or harder than anyone else. Even though, on the surface, the wealthy are making the same decision to work as someone who must work or suffer immediate negative and physically painful consequences, the frame of that decision and the outcome is very different for the two groups.

We would be better off if people of all walks of life had the choice to sell what they have without worrying about their continued existence if they don't.

> Beyond the obvious example of people forced into it by violence, there is also a huge population of people that are trying to feed themselves, or their kids, or their addictions.

Any you are exactly WHO to tell them it is not okay to do this or that with their OWN body ???

Where do you draw the line? Should people be able to sell their kidneys? How about retinas? How about both kidneys? It's their body, after all.

I don't know if I agree with their arguments, but people have argued that people should be able to sell kidneys.

Currently, this is illegal - people end up forming "donation chains" to spread the availability of organs.

Of course, there are coherent arguments for this. Among other things, it makes organs more available to recipients. But then where do you draw the line from there? If the principle is "my body my rules", why not sell both kidneys?

Why not? You stupid to sell both kidneys you die. How is that your problem?? If I have a need to help other people to the extend that it will kill me, let it be!

Then, should people be allowed to accept money to "perform" in snuff films? Or is it only OK to sell ones life if there's some material net benefit to other people that results from it?

I think people should be able to sell their organs, too /if/ they are perfectly free to make that choice and in no way coerced, actively or passively, to do so.

But, in a world where one can sell their organs, would we refuse public assistance to people who still have both of their kidneys? Would we say to the poor "Why are you asking for help? You have $50,000 buried in your back! Come back when you are truly desperate."

Having consensual sex with someone isn't the same as giving up both your kidneys and retinas.

Coerced consent isn't consent.

That's true but irrelevant given the argument I'm responding to.

Generally, we draw it somewhere south of "Permanent physical damage to one's own body" and somewhere north of "I could sit in my underwear and watch anime all day, but if I put on these pants and go sit in this cube and write this code for these people, I'll make some money, so..."

Let me pose a question to you. (Or perhaps a rephrasing of your own) Should we allow people to end their own lives?

And at the point that we do, would we disallow them from also selling their organs?

I'll openly admit I err on the side of allowing one full control over their body; as someone staring down the barrel of dementia/Alzheimer, I selfishly want that choice when the time comes.

Are you asking because you want to know what I personally think? Remember, I'm just trying to get a coherent principle out of an angry objection.

I think we should allow assisted suicide but regulate it carefully. I do not think we should sell the organs of people who end their lives this way (not that there's likely to be a market for those organs).

Was primarily curious to what the argument would be from someone taking the other side of this debate; if you think your personal opinion would build on that I'd naturally also be curious.

Regarding your second point on selling organs, for me it would heavily depend on our medical understanding of the transmission of whatever the critical condition was. If there is good science that e.g. Alzheimer patients can still be kidney donors, I'd think it'd be both impractical and unjust not to release those organs as the owner sees fit.

I don't "draw a line" with someone elses body. Why would you? This is why the government can get so deep in our lives because people want to "Care" for other people's own bodies.

If someone needs money to pay for their mother's surgery (on out of billion possible examples), then yes let them sell their kidney!

What about both kidneys?

What about them?

Yes. To all of that. The second kidney would be a death sentence. If they sell it, they can do it for whatever reason they want. It is theirs. Life is not something to be held on to at all costs. Perhaps selling two kidneys would end that person's suffering and the resulting funds would end their children's or their friends'.

People make calculated risks all of the time. My parents are not cool with me starting my own company that sells software services. They think that is a terrible risk. It is. I could lose everything. But I'm free to do that under the law.

People take calculated risks when logging. Dismemberment is a real threat. Yet the funds they could make are worth it to them. Who are you to tell them they can't?

I mean it when I ask, "Who are you to tell the they can't?" On what moral or ethical grounds do you restrict a person's liberty? If the worst that can happen is they die, why does that give you the authority to intervene against their wishes?

People take calculated risks when logging, but the logging industry has intensive safety requirements. There's a difference between accepting a heavily mitigated risk and exchanging money for your certain demise. This is a slippery slope argument; in a technical but real sense we accept mortal risk whenever we leave the house.

Do you think parents should be allowed to sell both kidneys in exchange for, say, fully-funded college tuition for their kids?

Do you think the mentally ill should be able to sell both their kidneys? Why or why not?

> Do you think parents should be allowed to sell both kidneys in exchange for, say, fully-funded college tuition for their kids?

Ideally no more than one parent, presuming a two parent household, but yes, I'm morally okay with that. The loss of a parent is sad. It will have an emotional impact. I think that the impact, coupled to the education the parent is seeking will probably cause the child to appreciate and succeed even more. Knowing that dad died to procure the college education will probably cause the child to work harder in HS and college.

The parents have agency. They can look at a situation to see if they can get an outcome they appreciate.

> Do you think the mentally ill should be able to sell both their kidneys? Why or why not?

No, but merely on the arbitrary like that I think agency matters. Agency underlying all things is a premise. I just state it as a fact. If that fact is wrong, all conclusions from it are at risk. I accept that philosophically. I also posit that mental illness precludes agency.

Kidneys and retinas are actually an easier case, compared to prostitution. Transplants are difficult surgeries that require hospitals and specialized labor, so they are very easy to regulate.

Of course people should be able to sell their organs if they have permission of a doctor (who would get in trouble if they authorize a coercive transplant, just like euthanasia) and the recipient (who should be decided ahead of time to discourage organ hoarders and ensure compatibility)

Someone who would rather they have a real choice whether to do it or not.

If the problem is sex slavery the solution is licenses and inspection.

I would get behind that, especially if it means screening for those that would rather not do it but feel like there is no other choice and making them aware of their options.

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