If you truly wanted to curb sex trafficking, you’d legalize prostitution, not drive it farther underground.
Intent and actual outcome are two completely different things.
and airbnb is gone, and so on.
The intent was to protect people who are being harmed against their will (held in sex slavery against their will).
Of course the actual effect of the law is different than the intent. The actual effect is limiting.
We're talking about seasoned politicians, not naive dreamers.
But at a certain point, it's reasonable to start objecting that an outcome was so obvious that people claiming they didn't intend it are either dishonest or incompetent, and in either case unfit to make the decision.
In this case, I suspect the answer is a little of each - a lot of anti-trafficking campaigns are run by people who openly oppose voluntary sex work, and also Congress is grossly incompetent at knowing which technology laws will limit free choice.
Given all that - I agree that it's worth knowing whether this was intended, but I worry "not our intent" becomes a shield for Congress to hide behind when they do things with horrible outcomes they were warned about well in advance.
Yes, because legalized prostitution has totally curbed sex trafficking in places where it is legal like Nevada and Germany.
Oh, except that it hasn't. Not even remotely.
There must be some steps in between I am missing.
Legal prostitutes are incentivized to work with the police to report others being coerced, it’s competition.
Bringing things out into the open helps clean them up. Keeping them in the dark allows evil to multiply. The next time Prohibition helped the people it was trying to protect will also be the first time.
Which is why the Prohibition thing rings false with me, especially the alcohol one. Alcohol was pretty much enjoyed by everyone to various degrees. Buying sexual services, while popular, not as much. So it's an analogy, but not the greatest. (Also ignoring that most sexual services are bought by men, while alcohol was/is used to a much larger degree by both sexes.)
https://books.google.nl/books?id=RAXtCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT172&lpg=P...
Forgive me if I’m not especially impressed by the think of the children rhetoric. Drawing a line from Lutherans to modern day Sweden isn’t exactly hard. The judgmental attitude hasn’t changed one iota.
If prostitution was legal and well-regulated like it is in many countries, then workers would have to be documented, they'd get workers' rights, etc. There are people willing to do sex work of their own free will, and if you create a normal market for it, then people will not resort to illicit, lower-quality secondary markets dependent on sex trafficking.
Here's the analogy: to reduce drug violence, legalize drugs.