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Comment by danbruc | Hacker News Reader

Why should prostitution be illegal?

good question, I have many answers but they are not good enough to justify a law. Since I am not a libertarian and I think that the state should have some control over their citizens I can understand why the state objects prostitution under the assumption that most (or many) sex works don't (or wouldn't) choose this lifestyle voluntarily. I also in favor of gun control, limiting SMS loans, limitations on drug usage (not sure to which level) etc.

Huge disclaimer- I don't have any numbers or data to support my feelings, the fact that there is a community with 170k members worldwide (probably not all of them sex workers) which have positive online attitude towards selling sex doesn't mean that this is their real life attitude. Mental problems or financial hardships can push people to justify things they might regret later.

But then address the underlying problems, offer better ways out of financial hardships than going into prostitution, require a psychological assessment before granting a work permit, ...

I can't argue bout that, and actually Sweden is not that bad at that

Since I am not a libertarian and I think that the state should have some control over their citizens I can understand why the state objects prostitution under the assumption that most (or many) sex works don't (or wouldn't) choose this lifestyle voluntarily.

It gets chosen because women have too few opportunities to make similar amounts of money any other way. Not giving women the right to sell sexual services condemns them to having no means to adequately support themselves. It doesn't protect them from anything at all.

Think about why this conversation is always about women selling sex. Why is that? Why are sex workers almost universally female or assumed to be while their clients are almost universally male?

That's the real issue here and it doesn't get fixed by criminalizing sex work.

actually Sweden has a decent job equality, I have seen women doing work that is considered men's work elsewhere- we are talking low level, unskilled work here not computer science

Then I imagine it doesn't pay as much as prostitution.

So it's not really a rebuttal to my point.

I don't know how much prostitutes earn in Sweden but low skilled employees earn a very decent salary that includes pension, the state covers health and education. You can actually have a decent life by being a McDonald's worker ( obviously there are exceptions)

Look, I don't understand why you are arguing in this way. This is not a rebuttal to my point.

Whatever else is going on in Sweden, prostitution exists there as well and criminalizing it is not stamping it out and is not a means to address the concern some people have that "Women who become prostitutes without being trafficked do so because they are desperately poor, so they still aren't truly there voluntarily."

I'm not saying that "Good paying jobs will stamp out prostitution." I have no goal of stamping out prostitution.

I'm saying that criminalizing prostitution gives desperately poor women no remedy for the poverty that forces some of them into prostitution. It just closes another door and makes their life harder, not better.

Just a healthy discussion, no arguing

The swedish answer is simple- because they don't see prostitution as legitimate, criminalization or not

That also doesn't address my point.

>I can understand why the state objects prostitution under the assumption that most (or many) sex works don't (or wouldn't) choose this lifestyle voluntarily.

I've never understood how sex work gets singled out from all the other forms of selling your body for money. I can't think of many(any?) working class jobs that aren't some form of selling your body for money. Typically for way less money then I would argue our bodies are worth.

true, but it's a range where prostitution is on the lower side. Do note that some of those professions are supervised to some degree, for example by health services, or requires some license

True, but I feel like that is an argument for the state to not object to prostitution. If the state wasn't onjecting, the industry or the state could then have some more oversight/licensing and be 'safer' for all. I put safer in quotes because I don't think "oversight" is always very effective or makes conditions safer, easy to look at Amazon wearhouse workers or cell phone assembly factories as pretty exereme cases of people selling their bodies for money and the supposed oversight not really doing much to lessen the exploitation/abuse.

> Since I am not a libertarian and I think that the state should have some control over their citizens I can understand why the state objects prostitution under the assumption that most (or many) sex works don't (or wouldn't) choose this lifestyle voluntarily.

So then shouldn't porn be illegal too?

Human trafficking. Prostitution is a lucrative racket for organized crime groups and unlike drug legalization, making it legal makes it _easier_ for organized crime to control it.

The legalization of prostitution in Austria resulted in a greater increase in illegal sex work:

“It indirectly supports the spreading of the illegal market in the sex industry,” the report concluded. “Organized crime has flourished and increased its influence in the sex industry.”

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/etudes/join/20...

Then crack down on human trafficking. Making something illegal that should not be illegal to solve a different issue should be one of the last options, not the first one.

Decisions should be made and laws passed based on real-world projected efficacy and data-driven feedback, not wishful thinking.

I haven't seen any data yet, what's the percentage of human trafficking prostitutes? how many prostitutes are forced to work and haven't chosen that? what's the violence rate toward prostitutes (even the linked reddit channel shows not insignificant number)?

I am aware that some women are fully aware of what they are doing, and won't regret it but how many don't?

How high would the rate have to be? Sure, if 99% of prostitution is forced prostitution I might be willing to say make it illegal but even then I am not really feeling good about it, I am still interfering with the free choice of the remaining 1%. But one might argue that life will never be totally fair and the 99% are so much better off that we can justify the collateral damage we do to the 1%. But I can not really say how high or low the fraction would have to be, are 10% to much, are 50% acceptable?

Is there free choice in modern democratic societies? Not at all, the state decide for you on abortion, marriage, car safety, gun usage and even what medications can get used (pseudoephedrine is not sold in Sweden!) so why not prostitution if (and only if) data shows that it's beneficial? As to what percentage the answer like everything else is whatever the winning party in the elections think

No society is perfect, but existing failures should not be the standard or justification for future changes. And there will probably never be universal consensus on everything because many policies are, at least to an certain extend, a matter of personal preference. Whether you want the state to be involved in something is often a matter of personal preference, do you prefer universal healthcare, do you prefer private health insurance, or are you willing to take the risk and have no health insurance at all? At least at first glance there is no single right answer to such questions and letting everyone decide is also not generally an option, for example if all healthy people get cheap private health insurance then universal healthcare does not work.

And your preferences are often a consequence of who you are, if you are healthy and wealthy and have a good job, then it is easy to prefer a state that does not want your money and lets you decide freely. If you are poor or have health issues or a high risk of being unemployed then you might reasonable prefer a stronger state. What you should be actually doing to decide your position in such matters is using the veil of ignorance, what policies would you want implemented if you were not yet born and you did not know whether you will be born into the richest family, or the poorest, or what sex or skin color you will have. So even in questions of personal preferences one can at least to some degree be more objective by considering different points of view.

So if the state decides for you that does not necessarily mean that the state acts arbitrarily, it might just optimize for different goals. And those might be arbitrary preferences by the people in power but there might also be sound reasoning behind and the resulting policy just does not align with your personal preferences. And sure, if there is some sound reasoning behind making prostitution illegal, then one should do this. But if the reasoning behind making prostitution illegal is to limit human trafficking then I do not see how you can have the resources to harass all the prostitutes but can not target human trafficking specifically and keep prostitution legal. But this might admittedly just be ignorance on my side.

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