I can't help but admit to some schadenfreude here. Where are all the claims of doordash being a private business that can do whatever it wants? Why isn't anyone advocating to build your own food delivery platform?
There is a big difference between saying "This is bad and this company should stop doing it" and "This is bad and the government should step in".
This is made worse, because most people don't even bother to propose a solution and just say "this is bad!" leaving others to fight over the implications of the incomplete thought.
My point is rather that most people don't even bother making a coherent criticism. "This is bad and I think they should update their policy" is a vastly more constructive position than "this is bad"
Wether consensual sex work is good or bad, it’s clear to me that discriminating against victims of human trafficking is a terrible idea. Those people need to be saved from their abusive circumstances. Using the panopticon to ban them from everything only hurts them more.
Is that not to become a victim?
edit - the intense support for prostitution on HN (mostly computer programmers) will never cease to make me smile.
Great. Let's legalize selling yourself into slavery while we're at it.
> Morality is not universal, so yours has no more value than anyone else's.
Morality is universal, it's not mine though.
This is a non-sequitur. A slave, does not have autonomy. Nothing in the parent comment supports slavery. You're trying to draw a false equivalence between consensual sex work and slavery.
> [it's] support for any person to have autonomy of their body in whichever way they see fit, including making a living by selling access to it to other people
There's simply no way you can claim that doesn't include selling yourself into slavery. Not a false equivalence and an extremely common practice around most of the world until recently. Usually you were paid after your term of slavery terminated.
I understand why you're shocked. You just realized that you support slavery. The good thing is that you can change your mind and come around to not supporting the exchange of human bodies for money.
For the second time, slavery by definition means depriving someone of autonomy. This directly contradicts what the comment supports. The comment directly opposes slavery, because it deprives people of autonomy.
This kind of false equivalence between consensual sex and slavery is going to take this conversation nowhere.
Read the rest of the thread. That commenter already admitted they support legalizing slavery.
Supporting absolute autonomy clearly means supporting selling yourself into slavery. How could it not? Part of autonomy is choosing when and for what duration to surrender it.
I think you're arguing in very bad faith here. I do not condone slavery, but yes, I condone the right of people to sell themselves into slavery. I'm not sure why you would perceive these two things as not* different, but nuance is very important when thinking about stuff. Let me ask again: are you sure you're not being blinded by your biases?
edit: actually making sense this time.
You just admitted that you support legalizing slavery! Okay, fair enough, you're not encouraging people to become slaves. And it would involve voluntary sale of oneself into slavery. But I was fairly close to the mark.
Also, questions have to be asked: if a man is poor, is he really voluntarily selling himself into slavery?
> Let me ask again: are you sure you're not being blinded by your biases?
Perhaps it is "bias" that is keeping me from supporting the legalization of slavery. Or perhaps it's something else. I'm going with something else.
Well:
> You just admitted that you support legalizing slavery
I have also admitted that I support abortion, assisted suicide, sex work and probably some other unsavory things that you can think of. I'm not sure why when I say "full autonomy over their bodies" you fixated on just the one.
Who's is it then: Jesus, Budda, Kali, Jahveh, Mohamed, Musk, Thor, Ganesh, Gates, Bernie?
I don't mean to be an asshole, but even if you are religious (which I take you are) you can't fault people that find moral relativism a worthy concept when there are so many points of view between different religions. And I understand that "faith" strips relativism from your own belief, but you beeing someone that posts on HN, you probably understand that not everyone can say the same thing and it's a little rude to not even acknowledge that.
I don't know. We should keep asking though.
I would say that your comment:
> Morality is not universal, so yours has no more value than anyone else's.
is much "ruder" than mine:
> Morality is universal, it's not mine though.
Essentially, there's no case in which cheating is not "wrong." There's many where prostitution isn't.
Neither does tweeting that you won a presidential election but here we are.
I especially dislike this unthinking and unconsidered memeing of sex work because it only serves to normalize the profession and has a net-deleterious effect on society.
It's just odd to see an attractive western woman advocating for "sex work" because she made a killing on onlyfans from her bedroom. That is not the reality of most sex workers!
Not trying to be snarky here, and I'm not mounting a defense for complete prohibition of prostitution and the varying types of sex work, I'm just terrified by the increasing acceptability of the work in common society: I want little girls to have engineers and doctors as role models instead of being prodded into sex work by virtue of its encroaching and increasing presence and exposure, a trade that obliges (commonly) the woman to invest their time pleasing men, a trade that has diminishing returns overtime as they age. Leaving aside the mountain of studies that pinpoint poverty as root of most sex work the continents across the globe and related psychological issues brought on by the experiences later on, if you cannot accept earlier-stated premise, then I reckon we come from differing views and further debate on this forum on this subject will likely be fruitless.
Off topic, but congratulations, you've just found an example of why the phrase "trust the experts/science" is not a good argument!
One of the few fallacies that stops being a fallacy if your science checks out. Which it doesn't here.
Nobody wants their kids to grow up and do sex work, no matter how progressive they claim to be. So yes, there is a clear difference.
And unlike a lot of low end service jobs, some people actually seem to enjoy doing sex work and make a much more reasonable wage.
Work that alleviates the hardships of poverty is a good thing. This is a positive good, not a mark against sex work. Same with other low skill jobs with low barriers of entry.
Isn't that massively debatable?
Even if you find someone that says yeah I want to do this - what in their background/life story pushed them into that and made it what they "want"
Of course! Anything is massively debatable, if you want to be unreasonable enough about it. I've had discussions with people who were on the pro side of the "slavery debate", which is a thing apparently, and then tell me off using woke language to stay in my lane.
But, yes, all anti-sexwork positions must begin and with the premise and insist that the sexworker does not really have agency. Not really a reasonable perspective, no matter how cleverly you try to twist it.
I am a victim of my middle class upbringing that made me want to be highly compensated and do white collar work.
It does.
The point being made isn't that this is okay behavior. The point being made is that people should be honest with why they're against or for something rather than pretending to appeal to some more basic moral/political/civic reason.
(The deeper point is that some on the left and on the right are okay with censorship/deplatforming/refusal of service in specific situations because it was only happening to the people on "the other side". When in reality these are universal negatives and absolutely WILL be applied to your side as well once they become the norm.)
Their reporting and review is so bad, I once received a 7 day ban for telling a newspaper to "cease existing" (exact words, probably banworthy had they been aimed at an actual person, but well, wishing bankruptcy on a newspaper isn't exactly the same).
edit: I also just find it very odd and disappointing that so many on the left are so eager to defend the "rights" of massive multinational corporations. As someone who used to be proud to call myself a democrat, what the hell is that about???
>Their reporting and review is so bad, I once received a 7 day ban for telling a newspaper to "cease existing" (exact words, probably banworthy had they been aimed at an actual person, but well, wishing bankruptcy on a newspaper isn't exactly the same).
Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about hate speech laws?
I'm also frequently the target of hate speech and a cult that wants to see people like me eliminated from society exists freely on Twitter, but that is not down to it being impossible to moderate them, that's because moderation on Twitter is an uncoordinated afterthought executed by an overworked and underpaid workforce that does not get nuance. For instance, I'm regularly told to "join the 41%". That's code for "trans people that attempt suicide". Twitter doesn't care.
Well I don't know what to tell you, because one way to describe what happened to you is that twitter removed an account that uses hate speech. What you said can easily be interpreted as "kill yourself", and if you think that's silly because it's a newspaper and not an individual, I would agree. But that is the "slippery slope" that you seem to dismiss while being a victim of it.
edit:
>I'm also frequently the target of hate speech and a cult that wants to see people like me eliminated from society exists freely on Twitter
Another question for my curious mind - do you know what BNWO stands for?
And no, I have no interest in fetish race play terminology? Or are you being serious? Sorry, but last I checked the GC cult had actual backing by russian dark money and conservative think tanks like Heritage[1] while black fascism exists mostly in the minds of few right wingers.
[1]: https://xtramagazine.com/power/far-right-feminist-fascist-22...
Please explain your reasoning.
Yet another "they're so vulnerable, let's re-order society" push that throws around all of the right buzzwords (vulnerable, discrimination) but fails to make any real sense in a broader context.
If you want to protect sex workers then legalize and tax it
Yes, obviously we need to stop making consensual sex a crime. But that alone won't protect a type of worker that is obviously at a higher risk than food works, which is a nonsensical comparison.
So was slavery, but we don't pretend that past moral failings should make us question our modern moral understanding, as you have just suggested we do for sex work.
Anything that can be changed (like a job) is not considered a protected class.
This isn't universally true.
E.g. pregnancy is a protected class under many laws.
Religion is a frequent one, too.
And in e.g. California, political affiliation is one.
I think that falls under "health" in OP's post.
Furthermore, companies are allowed to discriminate on aspects of religion/culture - not allowing time for prayers, requiring certain dress code, e.t.c.
In other news, the State Department announced the release of passports with “x” as the gender.
I think is it silly to carve out sex as different and sacred, and the one thing that cant be bought and sold.
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vlJ80i...
>However, it is economically nonsensical for a consumer to buy a commodity in the market if a qualitatively identical ‘product’ is freely available to him in the domestic sphere.
Clearly sex with a prostitute is not the same as sex with a lover. How does Marxist thought deal with the pricing of a good like a painting? Are they all worth the time put into them?
> if the sexual acts are the same, what is the difference which compels men to pay for sex which they could feasibly access through personal, private relationships?
This glaringly ignores transaction costs and availability on demand. If a man only wants sex, there is an enormous cost to obtain it via private relationships.
Yes, so simple. Let DoorDash not deliver to minority neighborhoods for a few weeks, and observe the simplicity.
Sex workers aren't a protected class, but that doesn't mean customers have to like it or shut-up about it.
Similarly, McDonald's is private company and can decide to go 100% vegan. That doesn't mean the customers have to like it.
The solutions are simple, complain to the company, tell others, and take your money elsewhere
It was highlighting the complete and utter hypocrisy in causes people argue for.
It highlights how people care more for their side winning, rather than the principle itself.
It is exhausting to see all these attacks against hypothetical and hypocrit straw men. "people argue this" and "people care about that", with no concrete examples for meaningful discussion
You’re telling me you are unfamiliar with people arguing that private companies can do as they please when somebody they don’t like gets canceled, then decry free speech restrictions when their side gets the axe?
You seriously want references? Go on twitter.
That's my point. If I go on twitter, I can find people arguing every conceivable combination of arguments. I'm sure many are hypocritical.
In this context, neither the twitter post or the replies I saw were calling for government intervention.
I just think it is a bizarre social phenomenon to criticize and in this case find schadenfreude in a hypothetical reaction. It is the political equivalent of shouting out into the night because you know some is out there, and laughing that you scared them off.
"Im sure someone out has this hypocritical take, and boy do they look stupid"
2 phones.
In the first case, that is banning people for actions that they take directly on their platform that goes against terms of service. Great, easy, we know that that a private business can set rules for their own platform.
For the second, I think its reasonable that a company might be cautious allowing certain groups to actively fundraise and recruit if they demonstrate a direct harm to others (hate groups with militias).
For this case of Doordash x Sex Workers, the case is a lot less defensible. If true, this would mean that Doordash is extending their terms of service to include off site activity. This does raise some red flags... but from case (2), we know that that can be defensible if A) that action hurts others and B) if the service used directly aids in those acts.
A) Consensual Sex Work is not harmful, and the moral panic around it is probably more harmful than the act itself and B) Doordash does not directly aid in the operation of Sex Work... So yeah I think some outrage around this is warranted if it is true.