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Comment by cantSpellSober | Hacker News Reader

> However, it is not accompanied by a decrease in the number of pimps

> Pimping is also closely related to coercive exploitation of prostitution and human trafficking

This paper seems to hint at the conclusion "legal prostitution results in fewer rapes" but is "coercive exploitation of prostitution" meaningfully different?

My understanding is that prostitution was most recently banned in Sweden because of the human trafficking problem in the first place, not moral grandstanding.

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I realize this is not addressing your point, but it seems that law enforcement and politicians using the term “human trafficking” for everything from prostitution to coyotes helping illegal immigration has done a disservice.

What other term would you like for buying and selling people?

I think the point was that "illegal immigration" is exactly not buying and selling of people, while the coercive/abusive prostitution trafficking pretty much is. And as such, the two things should not share a name. Renaming one or the other would be appropriate now.

But the entire issue is that because the immigration is illegal, there's no way to actually vet the circumstances of the people being transported.

I didn’t think people were including all illegal immigration in human trafficking, but only pointing out that where illegal immigration occurs there is also human trafficking. Illegal prostitution isn’t human trafficking, but they are closely related.

police freely use "human trafficking" to refer to all prostitution. Which is absurd.

Several nations have legalized prostitution in ways where you can be a prostitute in business for yourself, but can't have someone above you taking a cut. This has the downside of preventing prostitutes from banding together to share rent for a space but it does a lot to limit pimping. Further improvements to the law could potentially allow for shared rental agreements of various types as long as there isn't someone getting a % cut and that would still effectively keep pimping illegal.

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