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Comment by jsz0 | Hacker News Reader

I bet most of the people freaking out about CL's adult services haven't considered that censorship usually leads to an increased demand. They're doing an excellent job advertising to the world that you can easily buy sex online. If they really wanted to help people they'd be advocating a safe highly regulated adult services industry that satisfies the demand while eliminating most of the ugly side effects of prohibition. They completely reject this idea so it seems obvious to me their agenda is more about moral pontificating than helping people or they truly have no understanding of how the real world works.

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The Cook County (Chicago) Sheriff, Tom Dart, has been leading the charge on this. The Tribune had an article a few days ago about him increasing prostitution busts, and putting up ads around O'Hare warning johns to stay away.

With all this moral outrage coming out of him about prostitution, I'm expecting that he'll soon be arrested in a prostitution bust.

Anti-prostitution groups always drag out trafficking as a reason to be against prostitution, and also child prostitution. But being a prostitute or being a john are both misdemeanor offences, whereas trafficking and sexual child abuse are both very serious felony charges. It seems to me that anti-trafficking and child sexual abuse laws are a lot more effective in dealing with those problems than general anti-prostitution laws are.

The argument about trafficking really rings hollow. These busts mostly target the prostitutes. If they really wanted to find trafficking victims, they'd get a lot better luck approaching women not in the context of arresting them, and asking them about their situation. Throwing women against the police car and slapping handcuffs on them seems counterproductive if your goal is to limit trafficking. If anything, it reinforces everything the traffickers tell the women about the police, making them less likely to cooperate.

If a women is not a victim of sex slavery or underage, it seems absurd that she could be charged with a crime for selling something she can legally give away for free.

> If a women is not a victim of sex slavery or underage, it seems absurd that she could be charged with a crime for selling something she can legally give away for free.

Agreed. Especially because I think arguably many woman who are not technically prostitutes do give sex in exchange for money, gifts or other material things. There may not be a difference in kind but in degree. (This holds for men too, in other areas, I think.)

From the perspective of the police force, prostitution being illegal is 1% moral uptightness, and 99% pragmatism. Having prostitution be a misdemeanor helps catch people in the act of other, more serious crimes, as the "crime" of prostitution justifies search warrants to otherwise-unassailable places. It's a workaround for a permissions issue, basically, and has no ethical justification.

>It's a workaround for a permissions issue, basically, and has no ethical justification.

I think you mean no ethical justification that you agree with.

For example, take as an axiom "sex should only be allowed between partners in long term monandrous relationships" and it follows logically from there.

This is an ethical justification. You just apparently disagree with the premise. Most theistic ethical systems have something akin to this as a rule (whether derived or axiomatic within the system).

If you're starting with complex axioms like

> "sex should only be allowed between partners in long term monandrous relationships"

then what you've got is a moral justification, not an ethical one.

I've only dabbled in moral philosophy (the study of ethics!) but my understanding is that the more common use amongst professional philosophers is that ethics relates to a system established usually by a particular group, like a legal code or religious doctrine whilst morals concern an individuals actions. Morality then is considered to concern a naturally occurring right whilst ethics concerns a constructed set of rules (often based on or intended to enforce particular morals).

The terms in common parlance are used interchangeably and unfortunately even those (possibly novices) working in the art use the terms in a contrary way - http://www.philosophyblog.com.au/ethics-vs-morality-the-dist... highlights the mess very well.

Perhaps you could enlarge on your objection, is it merely semantic or does it have a substantial element too?

Don't those other serious crimes generally stem from prohibition too? If you're running girls you might as well sell drugs too. Illegal gambling? Now you need guns to protect yourself because you can't call the police and report that your prostitute just stole $20k worth of cocaine from you. It's such a vicious cycle.

From what a policeman friend of mine told me, the busts they spend all their time on have the reverse of that story: a local gang/mob forms, and then, since they're already assaulting and murdering to keep their place in the criminal underbelly of the city, and since they know their shit well enough to be getting away with it, they can run as many side-businesses as they like doing other, lesser illegal deeds, because they've already ensured their protection. This is pride before a fall, because these lesser crimes—especially if they involve non-group others, like prostitutes or drug mules—can be the cracks in the dam that allow the police to nab them.

I agree 100% - in the unregulated environment, the real evils of sex-traffiking and prostitution of minors exist side-by-side with quasi-legal adult prostitution.

Properly regulated brothels don't have traffiked workers or minors, do have STD testing and are safer for the workers and the johns. As with drugs, many of the problems are created by prohibition, and those who insist on prohibition are responsible for the continuance of those problems.

Interestingly, the one area where prohibition works very well is prohibition on firearms, but this is not a popular prohibition in the US.

Mexico has fairly broad prohibitions on private ownership of firearms. Mexico has a fairly high rate of firearms being used for antisocial behavior. Switzerland, on the other hand mandates that a significant portion of its population keep assault rifles and ammunition at home. Switzerland has a fairly low rate of firearms being used for antisocial behavior.

It seems to me that prohibition of firearms has fairly little direct effect on firearm-related crime. There may be other differences between Mexico and Switzerland worth considering as explanations for the difference in crime rates, and it seems likely that similar factors might better exp.lain crime rates in other countries.

Do you have evidence for this?

(Note: I'm looking for something a bit stronger than "Country X has gun prohibition, a different social structure, different demographics and different laws, and has lower homicide rate than Country Y which does not have gun prohibition.")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gun_owners...

Countries that have prohibitions on firearms have fewer firearms. It's a huge difference in the numbers and that's an example of prohibition working.

I don't know that countries that have prohibitions on drugs reduce drug taking by the same amount, or countries with prohibitions on prostitution reduces prostitution by a similar amount.

Mexico is an outlier because of its large porous border with the US. Switzerland is just an outlier.

> Countries that have prohibitions on firearms have fewer firearms. It's a huge difference in the numbers and that's an example of prohibition working.

Who cares? You're working from a premise that having fewer firearms is a good thing. I'm not going to say I disagree, but I'm not sure I agree either.

The real metric is whether or not firearm-related crimes are significantly reduced in countries where there are prohibitions on firearms.

There's also the question of whether firearm use matters in some crimes. Take these two scenarios:

1. Burglar commits armed (firearms) robbery of a house. Owners of the house are suitably frightened but give in to the burglars. Stuff is stolen but no one gets hurt.

2. Burglar commits armed (knives) robbery of a house. Owners of the house are suitably frightened but give in to the burglars. Stuff is stolen but no one gets hurt.

They are essentially the same crime, but now #2 is not lumped in with the "firarms-related crime" group.

And let's try keeping #1 as it is, but now #2 is this:

2'. Burglar commits armed (knives) robbery of a house. Owners of the house think a knife isn't too scary and fight back. One owner gets stabbed and dies.

I don't know about the frequency of stuff like this, but it's certainly not a quick "look at the numbers" thing to decide which is better.

The real metric is whether or not firearm-related crimes are significantly reduced in countries where there are prohibitions on firearms.

No, the real metric is whether or not firearms cause a net increase in the amount/severity of crimes - firearm crimes are not the only relevant ones.

There are all sorts of factors which make it a tricky question. Deterrence (burglar is afraid to rob a house, since homeowners might shoot him) is a fairly big effect. Substitution (criminal 1 wants to kill criminal 2, since no guns are around he uses a knife) are some of the biggies. If criminals stab 20 people instead of shooting 15, that's not a good thing.

No, the real metric is whether or not firearms cause a net increase in the amount/severity of crimes - firearm crimes are not the only relevant ones.

How can you draw causal relationships there? At best I'd think you'd be able to make correlative arguments, but not much more.

The real metric is whether or not firearm-related crimes are significantly reduced in countries where there are prohibitions on firearms.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir_percap-cri...

Contrast US with UK and Ireland.

Actually, I think US cultural exports are a large factor in the increase of gun crime in the UK and Ireland, a certain glorification of the weapon that gang members feel they need to live up to.

North Dakota in 2008 had 2 murders (both by stabbing) and has a pretty high percentage of the population owning guns. People who look at the "how" in political matter instead of the "why" really bug me and do not serve society well. People who want to kill others will find a means.

// I have a cousin who would not be alive today if he didn't have a gun in his youth (damn city people dropping off dogs after they are no longer cute)

In this case, censorship does not lead to increased demand. In prostitution, demand is fairly constant, and supply is what is usually affected by legalization. Legalization tends to increase supply (women willing to engage in prostitution), which has the effect of increasing the number of prostitutes, making their jobs safer, and lowering prices (there is an risk premium embedded in prostitute pricing in countries where prostitution is illegal).

It's much easier to shoot the messenger than solve the problem. It's all posturing.

They can demand all they want. They just can't get it from CL now.

It's both, they have no understanding how the real world works, and so they think they are doing everyone a favor with their agenda. And they have neither the desire nor the ability to change.

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