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Comment by jimbob45 | Hacker News Reader

Both coal miners and soldiers can freely choose other professions. Many sex workers are forced into the profession out of an inability to put food on the table or make rent.

People today gravitate toward the path of least resistance. Legalizing sex work results in swaths of men and women performing a job that is, at best, a massive negative for the economy and a known gateway to drug abuse and mental dysfunction. You could make the same argument about other professions like professional gamers who play 12 hours a day destroying their bodies. I’d be inclined to entertain such an argument.

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Both of those jobs are very often performed my people with little to no other option to escape poverty. A poor kid growing up in WV in some bumfuck town may only have the option of mining coal like generations before him or joining the military to escape the town. Of course he could just leave the town on his own but now he's out in the world with no family or friends to support him with a high school education that puts him at the bottom of any job applicant pool. These kids are at the same level of advantage as poor kids in inner cities. Poor education and possibly a poor home life leads to limited opportunities which leads to a cycle of poverty that's hard to escape. Things like basic income and free college can really help those that wish to succeed and escape their economic class. To simply ignore the situations that drive people to join these jobs is ignorant at best and classist at worst.

I clearly remembered if I wanted a shot at going to school for engineering and getting out of my meth ridden rural town, volunteering in the Navy. I really had no other options than either I was going to be a consumer or a maker of meth.

A net negative how? Because it's a non-necessary service? Then it's as much of a negative as nice restaurants or TV shows are.

It's just supply and demand. There's demand for sex work, so there's a supply of sex work. Criminalizing sex work just makes life harder for sex workers. They have to dodge cops constantly, and they have trouble getting healthcare. If they get in trouble, they can't call the police.

It's a free country — let them do their jobs in peace. If they'd rather have a different job, they can switch careers on their own, without getting arrested.

"But what about sex trafficking victims?" Sex trafficking victims will have a lot less trouble going to the police if they're not at risk of having charges pressed against them for being prostitutes.

She also refers to high class escorts in her article. They are not forced workers.

It's really hard to believe coal miners love backbreaking dangerous work in mineshafts so much that they won't switch if they had other job options. How many tech workers(or any desk worker working in an air conditioned building for that matter) left their job to become a coal miner?

I believe there has been plenty of commentary of coal miners saying they hope their kids don't end up in mine.

Just an example: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/us/miners-steer-children-...

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