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Comment by edraferi | Hacker News Reader

I've been thinking about this a lot this morning.

I think almost every vice would be less damaging to society if it was in the open. Polite society doesn't want to see sex work or drugs, but they still exist. Hiding them makes things much worse for the people directly involved. It's trafficked kids with broken immigration status who are more scared of the cops than their captors. It's drug addicts who OD on tainted drugs.

Bring it all into the open. Have the government certify providers directly. Crack down on unauthorized middlemen. Tax it. Use the taxes to pay for programs that help people leave when they realize they can have a better life without it.

We need the classic American Market here: free trade enabled by regulation that ensures market quality and protects participants from fraud.

Unfortunately I don't think this is politically possible. It would take a long, well funded campaign. The people who are willing to do that kind of work are motivated by stories of individual tragedy and focus on draconian solutions like this mess of a law. The people who would push for openness can make more money elsewhere, and don't want to make their name "Advocating for drugs & sex."

Frustrating.

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I've been thinking about this peripherally for a while, especially the bigger picture when some law is passed, and it seems exceptionally out of touch with the reality, and does more harm than good.

A depressing thought: What if we apply something akin to Occam's Razor? What if the lawmakers want to hurt the people struggling at at the lower rungs of society? To me it feels unlikely it is intentional in most cases, or conscious, but what if on some level, there is a motivation to hurt these people who they feel are inferior? You can easily apply Hanlon's razor here as a counter-argument, but that's not what I'm saying. I'm not attributing malice to any individual actor, but to something more subtle, e.g. unconscious bias.

Maybe subconsciously, there's a force that's trying to destroy people who are for whatever reason unable thrive in society? I guess maybe this force IS society?

Apologies if this is a bit vague and short. I just wanted to share this thought in case it resonated with anyone else. I'll be happy to expand upon this thought if there's interest.

What if the lawmakers want to hurt the people struggling at at the lower rungs of society?

There can be malice, but I think this is mostly akin to the idea of "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" only substitute ignorance for stupidity.

When I was homeless, I certainly ran into malicious behavior rooted in classism, mostly on a particular forum (not HN). But mostly I ran into people who just couldn't really comprehend my situation, so they didn't really know how to be effectively helpful. This can easily turn into a case of "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

> There can be malice, but I think this is mostly akin to the idea of "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" only substitute ignorance for stupidity.

The history of the "war on drugs" is fraught with racism, there's no need to assume malice - it's quite well documented.

Crusades against other vices like prostitution and alcohol have often had religious or other motivations of "purity" behind them, the same thing with nicotine. One could argue excessive alcohol consumption and smoking are of course genuine public health issues as well, but while the anti-smoking movement started with mostly good intentions you can see the "dirty smoker" sentiment that's developed when raising taxes on tobacco products has been a decent way to generate tax revenue in a way that mostly targets the poor without raising suspicion or ire from the public.

The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions, but often those good intentions are extremely thin veils over supposed moral superiority.

It’s interesting to think of the interplay of carbon taxes and economic standing. I think high gasoline taxes would, on balance, benefit society. It would at the same time disproportionately affect the working and commuting poor.

"The state is the institution or complex of institutions which bases itself on the availability of forcible coercion by special agencies of society in order to maintain the dominance of a ruling class, preserve the existing property relations from basic change and keep all other classes in subjection." Hal Draper

Thanks, that’s very succinctly put!

Besides Hal Draper, what authors would you recommend to further explore this thought? I’m educated as a programmer and only beginning to deliberately explore ideas outside of science and engineering.

Just a term you may not have heard before that will lead you towards similar conversations - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

I have been reading "Strategy: A History" by Lawrence Freedman, and reading the papers and books mentioned in the bibliography as I go.

Take a look at anarcho-capitalism and Murray Rothbard. You can find many works of his on mises.org

Reason and Liberty by Shayne Wissler. It can be downloaded for free online.

Thanks everyone, I'll do some reading! Maybe I'll even follow up in a month or so. No promises.

Replying at the end of the thread because I think that makes the most sense.

It's even worse than that: politicians created over-reaching laws and enforcement, to demographically target political opponents and take away their right to vote.

> "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." – John Ehrlichman, to Dan Baum for Harper's Magazine in 1994, about President Richard Nixon's war on drugs, declared in 1971.

Meta source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs#20th_century

This is a very powerful quote. It is too bad that it was first published[1] 12 years after Erlichman told it to Baum and after Erlichman died. It sure fits with what I think Nixon was capable of, but I wonder how embellished the actual quote given by Baum so many years after Ehrlichman said it. Would have been nice to have Ehrlichman confirm it but he was already dead when this quote was published.

[1]https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/

I don’t think your assertion is supported by the facts. Your own Wikipedia citation even seems to counter your claim.

I would believe that lots of politicians do want to hurt people at the lower rungs. This is also an explanation of why there is so much opposition to welfare - I want to help 'good people' who lost their jobs and need help, but not those losers who just live forever on welfare and are in "some group I don't like". Same argument will be used against UBI. It's very compelling for a lot of people.

Malice is one possibility, but I think indifference is more likely. Such people are the ants about their feet; they aren't usually going out of their way to step on them, but they are also not particularly troubled if they do.

I think the upperclass mostly "controls" lawmaking decisions for their own interest, and are almost entirely unaware of the condition/state of mind/customs of the lower classes. They don't understand how it works, and because they don't understand they feel superior, so they make decisions on behalf of the lower classes with the intent of nobly showing the masses the way while serving their own interests.

There's also a lot of superior moralizing etc.

There's an interesting theory, which I can't recall the name of, that says that poor people understand the rich because they can empathize with them, but it takes too much energy for the rich to empathize with the poor because there are so many of them and their burden is overwhelming. So the rich don't understand the poor but the poor understand the rich, which explains why we have the laws we have.

It seems more likely that the lower classes can easily empathize with the rich because they want to be the rich, while the converse is not normally true.

It would be interesting if you could explain this a little better, or find the source. Sounds a little vague but I'd like to know more.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797610387613

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wealth-reduce...

I'm not a sociologist, so I won't try to explain it, but that should give you a start. I can't find the article that used my exact explanation, but the rich are consistently shown to be worse at empathizing with others

My friend (middle class) dated a daughter of Staples founder. This was his takeaway too: while her father sort of understood ordinary people, the daughter already did not.

> what if on some level, there is a motivation to hurt these people who they feel are inferior?

I think this insightful, and I suggest there is a motivation to hurt other people in general - but it's only feasible to do so when those others are relatively powerless. Hence the targeting of the defenseless.

This is not a popular opinion in the modern age, as it's become dogma that "all men are brothers". However from an evolutionary perspective, a tendency to get pleasure from causing pain (sadism) is a vital component in the kind of psychological makeup which thrives in a Darwinian world.

We shouldn't justify this tendency but recognize it and learn to work around it (perhaps by playing contact sports, for example).

Follow the money. Either the hurt being inflicted on the helpless leads to more votes or business opportunities for cronies.

The "kick the helpless" is because they helpless can't fight back.

Might I suggest an introduction course to political science? Additionally consider learning legal history and contemporary things. The law isn’t as Ill considered as most techies believe, and also recognizes the imperfections of the human system it is. There are just no better options.

Unfortunately technology isn’t infaliable either and the result of thinking it is, is the refusal to fix problems because they “can’t happen”.

I don't think it is so much wanting to hurt people. It's more that they see the poor as barely people, and see the Internet as a seething crowded marketplace where the poor bustle and jostle against each other, breathing each others air, grinding out their meager existences. And if left to their own devices, they will first destroy the pillars of society (major industry) and then themselves. This is a tremendously large topic, but the underlying rabid anti-sex motives underlying this bill and the total lack of caring about how it will furthermore expunge human sexual expression from the Internet goes back to the Industrial Revolution. There was arguably reason for it back then. But no more. It survives purely out of a wrongheaded blind sense of 'denial is virtue, satisfaction is sin'.

"What if the lawmakers want to hurt the people struggling at at the lower rungs of society? To me it feels unlikely it is intentional in most cases, or conscious, but what if on some level, there is a motivation to hurt these people who they feel are inferior?"

Doubtful. It's not that they don't want to help them, but more that there's simply not much government can do.

Consider drug addicts. One of my good friends died of an overdose last year, and all of his friends including myself had tried for years to get him to quit. No luck. If someone's closest friends can't help them, what makes us think the government will be anymore effective?

In fact the government has tried through the "war on drugs". You can disagree with the means of the war, but the intent was to help society and the people most vulnerable in society by eliminating drugs through force.

> You can disagree with the means of the war, but the intent was to help society and the people most vulnerable in society by eliminating drugs through force.

Ha, ha, no it wasn't. It was started by Republicans to get people angry at the hippies and black people. Read this: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/nixon-aide-war-drug...

The salient quote is: "“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

A true "war on drugs" would seek to increase access to rehabilitation and counselors, while identifying and working to reduce the causes of addiction. Any time a lawmakers seeks to make something punishable by jail time, he is seeking to hurt someone he disagrees with. (There are obvious exceptions, like murder, theft, etc).

Sure that may have been one individual's motivation for the plan, but the public and subsequent governments thought it was a the best way to prevent drugs from infecting society.

When lawmakers seek to punish someone, they aren't doing it because they relish the suffering of the other person, but because they hope that person's pain will dissuade others from committing those same crimes.

>lawmakers seek to punish someone, they aren't doing it because they relish the suffering of the other person, but because they hope that person's pain will dissuade others from committing those same crimes

Unfortunately this belief is completely unfounded in reality. I really wish this were the case, but we have mountains of evidence on how to help people fight addiction, poverty, get out of the criminal cycle, etc. And that's all ignored in favor of punishment.

Are theft and murder so obvious?

Obviously murder is among the greatest tragedies, but often it's a product of circumstance. Theft especially so

Really? A product of circumstance? How so?

A product of circumstance in the sense that murders and theft often occur in low income, low education areas. It doesn't excuse the behavior, but it does shine a light in a place we can make drastic improvements.

Little Bobbie Brown observes a 'rat' try out his brand new cement shoes. One of the boss' hired help sees Bobbie in the bushes, and, in accordance with the boss' desire for no witnesses, moves to kill Bobbie

> Consider drug addicts. One of my good friends died of an overdose last year, and all of his friends including myself had tried for years to get him to quit. No luck. If someone's closest friends can't help them, what makes us think the government will be anymore effective?

The government's much greater resources and number of full-time professionals at its disposal is one reason to think they might be able to do things an addict's friend could not.

Almost every major show on Netflix and other media companies is filled with Nudity. It’s like America loves butts, boobs and bullets.

I don’t get why prostitution is not legalized when more states have weed legalized.

I spent quite a bit of time in Australia, where it is legalized. There was a time when Brothels advertised in newspapers in lesser read sections.

I’m glad that America is not the rest of the world, because it sure has some weird culture. They would rather have easier access to guns than sex.

Not that I support prostitution. Every man and woman for themselves. I do support their right to live their lives as they wish if they aren’t interfering with others’ lives.

I'm in favour of careful legalisation.

The submitted article is talking about a reaction to the behaviour of one publication who were openly allowing people to advertise kidnapped drugged children for sex; and then when they took a minimal step back from that the publisher was giving advice to advertisers about how to create an ad to sell drugged kidnapped children for sex without hitting the publications new filters.

Once these children were rescued they were telling the publisher that some of these ads contained images of them; that they had been kidnapped, drugged, and repeatedly raped; and that they'd like the images taken down and preferably for the ads to be taken down. That publisher refused.

One of the problems of decriminalisation of buying and selling sex work is that someone who wants to fuck a 14 year old child isn't going to use the service a 25 year old provides, so legalisation has limited usefulness to prevent the kidnap and drugging of children.

I am unaware of this behavior by Craigslist. I want to believe that people are taken seriously when they alert authorities to crimes against them. The #MeToo movement suggests this doesn’t happen as readily as I would like.

> but someone will still want to fuck 14 year olds

This is still wrong, we can still criminalize it. That’s fine. We can still give a lot of other sex workers way more safety and legitimacy than they have now. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

There could be secondary effects that help the 14 year olds. (1) Most Johns would prefer the legal adult market, so that’s where the money will be. (2) There would be a bigger stigma to the illegal stuff because there are good legal alternatives, creating s higher barrier to entry. (3) institutions would develop to support sec workers, and they’d have resources and visibility to help the minors, more than exists now.

The point is we can decriminalize/ legalize a LOT more than we do now, and have a net positive impact.

While I agree with your list of things that would help there is a significant problem I've been thinking about with respect to everything that's been happening lately. There is no "government" that does anything, its all people. The quality of people we have making up our (where FOSTA/SESTA is) government are not the type of people that at the end of the day could work with anyone like drug dealers or sex workers. Then you have the problem of the types of people that could work with drug dealers and sex workers may have more fluid ethics that could be corrupted in some ways. For example, if everyone could be like Violet Blue that would be one thing. But I could imagine some less than savory person applying for the job but with the intent to look the other way for some payback. I think we really need to stop thinking about the problems as if there is some uncorruptable benevolent "government" that is going to help us. And start think about systems that are realistically run by fallible people but have checks and balances in place to remove corruption. Like maybe the "terrible" government is responsible for punishing only? I don't know how to solve the problems honestly, just seems like we are looking where the light is rather than where we lost our keys (maybe down the sewer).

This is the corruption trap that you see in narco-regimes and countries where government institutions are being built or rebuilt.

If X personal compensation exists for corrupt behavior, and < X is the reward for serving legal government institutions correctly, then how do you make government function?

If you prosecute people for corrupt behavior, then your prosecutors and justice system now have to make the same decision.

Ultimately, rule of law only exists because of tradition and a sufficiently widespread support of it.

Bring it all into the open. Have the government certify providers directly. Crack down on unauthorized middlemen. Tax it.

I don't agree. Decriminalization is a better approach than legalization and regulation. If it is decriminalized, then victims don't have to live in fear of the police. Legalization and regulation often makes things worse, not better.

I’m open to decriminalization. There’s a spectrum between criminality and unrestricted markets. I think we’re way to far towards the criminality side of that spectrum. We can start decriminalizing now, open up more if it appears to work.

Whatever policy we choose, it should have a clear goal and be evaluated against how well t achieves that goal. “Fewer deaths by tainted drugs” and “fewer sex workers living with abuse” is a good place to start. I think decriminalization work further both of those goals.

If it is decriminalized, then victims don't have to live in fear of the police.

Isn't this the same as with legalization?

Legalization and regulation often makes things worse, not better.

Do you have examples of this?

No, they aren't the same. Unfortunately, googling decriminalization vs legalization gets me articles that state the exact opposite of my understanding. As I understand it, decriminalization means making no law against it. Legalization means making laws about it that boil down to regulation. Thus, decriminalization is more free.

This article seems to be generally in line with my understanding:

http://time.com/3005687/what-the-swedish-model-gets-wrong-ab...

Example of making it worse: From what I gather, prostitution in Las Vegas is mostly run by the mafia and legalization has not led to women being free to be their own boss, set their own hours, etc. Legalization of prostitution often means sex workers are subjected to a lot of rules and regulations such that it becomes akin to wage slavery rather than freedom to pursue work independently like a small business owner.

I will suggest Obamacare as another example of regulation making things worse. I'm quite poor and being hit with harsh financial penalties on my taxes this year for failing to have full coverage for all of last year. Prior to Obamacare, I could just forego having healthcare and the government did not get all up in my business about why I did that and whether or not I was allowed to do that, etc.

My support of decriminalization of prostitution comes from having read Working: My Life as a Prostitute by Dolores French. Prior to becoming a prostitute, she was a political activist.

The reason you get those google results is because your understanding is not consistent with how other people use the words. Your suggested usage is reasonable, but it's not the usage that is common, and I suggest that you change your understanding.

Legalization has always meant "making it legal", which in most societies means "removing laws that make it illegal" (though it might mean something different in North Korea, if you see what I mean).

Decriminalization is a wishy-washier idea, that includes lightening or removing criminal penalties, while potentially keeping other penalities. For example, changing indictable offenses to non-indictable offenses (in the U.S. that'd be roughly equivalent to changing felonies to misdemeanours).

Prostitution should be legalized, not merely have the penalties lightened. And that alone is not sufficient; legal regimes that legalize the actual act of sex-for-money, but still force most prostitutes to hide from the cops (I'm looking at Canadian law, here) are still inadequate, because such regimes still victimize sex workers (consensual or otherwise). It's simply a human rights issue.

I also think it's clear that some degree of regulation is desirable, but I think that reasonable people can disagree on this.

My understanding of the difference is rooted in the opinions of Dolores French who was a sex worker and political activist. She advocated for decriminalization, not legalization, because it was more beneficial to sex workers. I find some articles that fit with that framework and some that don't.

I don't think it's just me. It's a little more complicated than that.

I do try to be mindful that the words get used inconsistently and I do try to make a point of clarifying my intended meaning. I'm human and I don't always remember that this is an ongoing issue.

I'm with you. This is also basically the Portugal approach to drug control, which appears to be working. You think we would have learned with the experience from Prohibition to inform us... Guess not.

> I think almost every vice would be less damaging to society if it was in the open. Polite society doesn't want to see sex work or drugs, but they still exist. Hiding them makes things much worse for the people directly involved.

I understand what you're saying. However, compare sex work to slavery (which it often is). Nobody wants to be a slave. Some desperate people might agree to be enslaved to pay off a debt.

You could say that if someone agrees to be enslaved, it's OK. But I'd argue that removing certain choices promotes freedom. If slavery is illegal, a person found with slaves can't force the slaves to say they agreed to this arrangement; the arrangement itself is illegal and the slave holder is always in the wrong.

I think treating prostitution the same way makes sense. People are free to sleep with whom they choose, but when it's done for money, it's far too easy for exploitation to occur. If we say it's always illegal, we remove the veneer of respectability that enables one person to exploit another "by agreement".

Note that in both cases we should target the exploiter and not the victim. The point isn't "you can't be a slave", but "you can't enslave anyone."

I would argue that the sea between "sex slavery" aaaand "sex worker" is just as vast as that between professional engineer and enslaved engineer. Again, polite society would have you think otherwise...

Please can we call sex workers pleasure technicians? A pleasure engineer should require a degree ...

By saying that a person can't voluntarily agree to become a slave, you are saying that you, not they, have the right to determine what happens to them. That is the essence of slavery right there. By taking away their choice you are claiming ownership over them. You haven't eliminated slavery at all; you've just assumed the role of slave-owner yourself "for their own good", much as other slave owners throughout history have justified their actions by claiming that their slaves would be incapable of managing on their own as free individuals.

> By saying that a person can't voluntarily agree to become a slave, you are saying that you, not they, have the right to determine what happens to them. That is the essence of slavery right there

I think you're being hyperbolic.

It is not possible for all people to have all freedoms. My freedom to go where I want is limited by your freedom to decide who comes on your property. Like it or not, we have to collectively draw boundaries that restrict some freedoms in order to preserve others.

Some of these tradeoffs are tricky. This one isn't. If large numbers of people start protesting their inability to become slaves, I'll reconsider. Meanwhile, large numbers of people are currently being forced into slavery - 20.9 million, by one estimate. https://www.endslaverynow.org/learn/slavery-today

Restricting the rights of some small number of hypothetical would-be slaves in order to protect the rights of large numbers of real people in forced bondage is clearly a worthwhile tradeoff.

> It is not possible for all people to have all freedoms. My freedom to go where I want is limited by your freedom to decide who comes on your property.

See, this is the sort of contradiction inherent in the "positive rights" worldview. Positive "rights" are always in conflict, which is very convenient when you're looking for an excuse to pick and choose which rights other people have and not very useful as a framework for a stable society.

Negative rights, on the other hand, never conflict; there is really only one fundamental right, which is self-ownership: the exclusive right to decide how yourself, and by extension your property, will be used. The only actions are out of bounds are those which would infringe on others' rights of self-ownership. From this you can infer other rights like the freedom of speech, freedom of association, the right to privacy, and the right not to be enslaved against your will, and together with others you can cooperate to provide each other with things which, while desirable, are not rights, such as food, shelter, defense, gainful employment, and healthcare.

> Meanwhile, large numbers of people are currently being forced into slavery - 20.9 million, by one estimate.

And I agree that this is wrong. The key difference is that these people were forced into slavery—it wasn't their choice. Obviously it's not a very attractive option under any circumstance, but one can easily imagine situations where the alternative might be worse. If you need what someone else can provide, and have nothing else of sufficient value to barter for it, giving up your freedom might be a price you'd be willing to pay. No one else should presume to take that option from you.

> Restricting the rights of some small number of hypothetical would-be slaves in order to protect the rights of large numbers of real people in forced bondage is clearly a worthwhile tradeoff.

Putting aside the fact that it isn't your right which you're trading away, and consequently that this isn't your decision to make, it doesn't actually protect anyone. A person who was coerced into such a situation could simply say so, forcing the other party to prove that they had agreed to it in exchange for some form of consideration.

> . People are free to sleep with whom they choose, but when it's done for money, it's far too easy for exploitation to occur. If we say it's always illegal, we remove the veneer of respectability that enables one person to exploit another "by agreement".

That logic makes pornography illegal.

Totally. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sunlight_is_the_best_disinfec...

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