another_why

It will not work in the same way if the time won't be limited - I will be more relaxed.

People can spend years solving one problem in their mind and there are not many experiences in your mind until it generates smth you haven't thought about, and this doesn't happen often.

Considering that more than 50%(70? 90?) of IT is 100% based on those ad revenues, sounds very reasonable, yeah. Bees against honey. All those, who cry the most about evil giants, will stand in the lines demanding to fuck off from Google the moment something will REALLY start to happen with those revenues

Oh, those are tight boundaries. What does "something adults do" mean, though?

> Some jobs are explicitly about you putting yourself into harms way > Other jobs have an inherent risk like > There are jobs that can be very bad for your mental health > And dull, repetitive work does not have a reputation of being particularly good for your psyche either.

So the goal is to reduce that harm and risk, not in using their existence as justification.

> Selling organs clearly does not fit that.

Kidney donation and liver donation are considered safe and dont even seem to affect life expectancy much(kidney does but its like a year or smth). And you can also sell one of your eyeballs, if you have 2. All those are not harmful and you can perfectly function afterwards. What's wrong with selling organs, i don't get it.

> Slavery does not either

The difference between slavery and work at Mcdonalds is just the level of exploitation, it perfectly fits. Prostitution is just sexual slavery, no big deal

> Child prostitution does not either.

[x] consensual

[x] something adults do

[x] relatively safe

[x] according to you, it isn't necessarily more of a health risk than a lot of other jobs both for physical and mental health(ofc, talking about kids who reached puberty)

You seem to be afraid of kids. Kids are allowed to work part time almost everywhere, because they are supposed to study, not because they are magical. What's the difference?

> Your argument seems to be "if we allow any paid work, this will lead to child exploitation". "If we allow factory work, then it's a slippery slope to legalizing child factory work", "If we allow prostitution, then it's a slippery slope to legalizing child sex work".

It's about the direction. If we start gradually increasing the length of the working day on a factory, we will get back to child factory work, eventually, because that's where we started. That's how lifting of restrictions works, one be one. And no, there is no physical law from which you want a citation and if there is no physical law, then it doesn't exist, i already understood your position. What you are trying to protect here, as many others, is "yes, i did take all his means for survival but I didn't kill him, shitty life did. And he would've died anyway, so who cares."

> Your only other objection I keep hearing is that that genitals are somehow magical and very different from other organs so that when you use them for work instead of pleasure they will immediately fuck with your head, unlike say your brain or hands which are fine to use for work. And that prostitution is somehow degrading in itself [citation needed] most of the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_human_sexual_promis...

Sex and intimacy, and intimacy of sex are one of those things that turn a good friendship into a relationship. The word intimacy is kinda self-explanotory. I don't know, read a psychology book about human sexual relationships or smth.

> And that prostitution is somehow degrading in itself [citation needed] most of the time.

I don't know what percentage of people made a "thoughtful analyses" prior to using it as a source of income, but i presume it's less than 10. So yes, most of the time it is.

> All those claims are not just outright wrong

You just don't like it because you decided that liberalizing your mind in one way but not the other is the right thing to do without much facts to support it. The positive effect you know about, on a tip of the iceberg in Germany, is not much evidence, would've been if we knew for sure where forced ends and voluntary starts. They say that decriminalization in New Zealand led to some improvements, but that's a unique case - 5 million people on an island, - and we have no idea about it's scalability.

=== ================== ===

But alright, nothing is important, everything is the same, prostitution is just a physical labor. Then it shouldn't be decriminalized, like Aella and others want it to be, it should be legalized. All that noncoerced stuff should be registered as individual entrepreneurs, and be prosecuted for tax avoidance. Even more so, unemployed on welfare should be sent to brothels the moment a vacancy opens What will we get here? Nothing. The real problem which was supposed to be solved there for the majority, problem of human trafficking, will not be solved. Even Aella with friends will lose as they won't be able to compete with brothels/callgirls and will get the same payment as McDonalds, eventually. And, suddenly, the only reason you wanted to do that for - more money for the same thing, - doesn't work anymore. So maybe it's not the problem, eh?

Legalization of prostitution is not the problem, that's a consequence of the problem. I read several stories about women getting education while sex working, getting a job and then still going back to prostitution because it's "easier". The easier the legalized work, the cheaper it is and even cleaning toilets requires smth more than consent and genitals.

> How exactly do you figure it's "the more likely reason"? What informed that? Do you have any foundation to make this claim?

Somewhere there or all of that together.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4627728/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2563855/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2254224/#R1

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16114585

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249707796_Sexual_Ab...

> That's what happen in Germany, by the way. Prostitution counts as regular work and thus you get access to all kinds of benefits and access to the national retirement insurance, workplace injury insurance, etc.

Do they send unemployed to brothels yet?

>> So, if prostitution is just the same, we get serious inequality: women, by birth, have better opportunities than men.

>Uh... what?

You heard about the term "privilege", right? Last i checked, female prostitution was in a much higher demand and has always been.

The other side of a coin is that with current gender inequality, prostitution become an "equalizer" - women in difficult financial situation have no choice but prostitution or finding a wealthy husband if they want to raise their quality of life. So what's the point of legalizing this inequality? Women should be prostitutes because they can?

> Everything is rather complicated, I know. But it also gives you a lot of options and different way to get there.

I think, much more options would've been given if companies HAD to hire at least one apprentice if there happen to be one. Ofc, for a partial compensation from the government.

> The point is: you don't get paid going to school, and you don't get paid enough being an apprentice.

So this is the actual problem, not legalization of prostitution.

> I am sure that some people earn money from prostitution and other sex work to finance their time in school as opposed to taking out loans or work dead end side jobs with a lot worse pay-by-hour rate.

Be honest, it's not "some people", it's women. Women earn money from prostitution and other sex work to finance their time in school.

> The thing is, you'd get that slap under the current situation, where prostitution is not legal were you are and highly stigmatized.

That's a speculation

That's alright

> how prostitution is exclusively all of the following and worse...

You never explained why we should exclusively decriminalize prostitution but not everything else which perfectly fits into wiki's labor definition

> necessarily extremely "degrading"

not necessarily. There is a tip of the iceberg - girls who write "fantastic articles", "informative, well-written, thoughtful, human, and funny",- whose rights you are trying to defend here.

> "leads to pedophilia"

I think, you should've said "leads to gay marriages", for consistency

> "like selling organs and slavery"

you never explained where should we stop and why prostitution is different

> Divorced from reality in other words.

Alright

> I feel like I am talking to a creationist who argues that evolution is just an unproven theory.

Same

= ====================================================== =

> But this shit had my blood boiling:

I know that there are more than 2 opportunities and I figured out that you are from a developed country, so I chose a more likely reason to go into prostitution, according to my divorced from reality views.

> First of all, aren't we a little bit elitist and superficial? I am friends with her because I like her as a human and she is a nice person and fun to hang out with, not because she is "able to keep my interest" with smarts and education...

I don't think so. Humans have a huge variation in intelligence so understanding each other may be a big problem. I have acquaintances who are nice people but I feel very uncomfortable talking to them - it's like talking to big, adult-size kids. I also have nice acquaintances, who are like on the edge of understanding, from the left side of the scale - sometimes annoying but hanging out is fun. And I have those with whom I feel like we have a complete understanding(not agreement), and those with whom I myself feel like an idiot and need to put lots of effort to just keep up.

> And prostitution wasn't the only choice for her, even tho thanks to her rebellious years and bad academic record, her choices were limited.

Is technical college in Germany somehow a bad choice, compared to cleaning? Good grades are not needed and you get payed while studying, or it's not as cool as internet describes it?

That was interesting, thank you for writing.

= ====================== =

Let's cut everything I said before as irrelevant so you won't feel bad talking about it. Let's talk about what you wrote as I need your help to understand it, no sarcasm intended.

Prostitution is no different from work in McDonalds or even cleaning toilets, they are all labor. Alright. But then we get into a situation where .

So, if prostitution is just the same, we get serious inequality: women, by birth, have better opportunities than men. Men are stronger but it doesn't bring much to their table: blunt force is not smth of a high value nowadays.

Therefore, when women tell me about their serious or not so serious financial troubles, I should suggest them to go into prostitution and give them a link to this topic which explains how to do it right. Yeah, people don't like advises they didn't ask for, but I just want to help - helped a couple of girls to get junior positions in IT when they didn't even consider it as an option, thinking that it immensely hard, but IT not even remotely close to the benefits of the prostitution. Most(I'd say absolute majority, but I'm not inclined enough to google statistics) IT positions, for which someone is willing to pay you, are extremely repetitive and boring, whether it's junior, middle or senior, and, if you come there for the money only, it will be a trouble getting higher on the salary ladder. In a country I am from, a highly qualified senior I know gets around 2600$ and he is not very thrilled about this job as he been doing it for 10 years but he likes the salary and that's enough for him. If we legalize prostitution so prostitutes could get pensions and other security benefits, it wins, hands down. And I'm comparing it to mental labor because it's hard for me to imagine physical labor to compare.

Alright, prostitution is the same and it wins.

But there's a problem here - if I advice that to the women/girls I know, I can 100% tell you that the response I will get is a slap or, more likely, a punch in the face, a kick in the balls or a combination from those. What am I missing here? Do you think it's because they are just not as open-minded as you are?

>...whereas selling organs is not prostitution and vice versa.

Alright.

> Much wage labor, both physical and otherwise, involves sacrifice of psychological and/or physical health.

And the goal was to reduce those sacrifices overtime. Or so I thought.

> We have, in fact, a massive labor regulatory and enforcement bureaucracy that exists not to prevent that, but to try to limit it to what is deemed reasonable for each specific job. (Including, where it is legal, for prostitution.)

Help me out then. Where is the limit? I mean, at what point we can say:"no, this is unacceptable to decriminalize doing that, even though it can perfectly be classified as labor definition on wikipedia". Why governments prevent trading some stuff, if trading, whatever you trade, is the same labor like everything else and shouldn't be prevented?

Are you a libertarian? I'm asking because discussing all that with people who believe in stuff has no purpose

Maybe that's because you expect yourself to benefit from it as much as your friend or the girl who wrote the article. Will you disagree that decriminalizing it, just like that, will lead to an increase in competition in that sphere which, in turn, will lead to more and more people agreeing to all kinds of stuff which they wouldn't agree to before? The money will still be there, you will just have to "work harder" to get them, consensually, so some other Aella wouldn't be so picky anymore and will be greatful to have a client who will choke her and call a whore.

I didn't watch interviews with prostitutes, but i watched interviews with pornstars. Whether they want it or not, most of them eventually have to bend as they are getting older and most of them are not educated and/or intelligent enough to save money or invest it into something which can help them get out of this. I couldn't find age statistics in porn but the average, 22, median is more interesting though.

> She'd like to get a better accepted job with better job security that she can still work when she gets older

So maybe that's what we need to talk about?

If you had a choice between toilets and prostitution, it would've meant one thing - you wouldn't be as smart(educated+intelligent) as you are now so your chances to benefit from it would've been low and you would've likely ended with cleaning someone's dirty dick with your mouth instead of cleaning toilets with your hands. Considering that this prostitute was/is your friend, she must be educated and intelligent enough to keep your interest. Why was that the only choice for her, btw? Family violence or smth?

> Recycled slippery slope FUD "somebody think of the children" argument, used a lots of times, e.g. when "they" claimed that same sex marriages would lead to people marrying their dogs, daughters and children.

Oh come on, i didn't expect that you will compare child prostitution to "think about children" and then compare it to gay marriage. The fact that you can compare anything to some stupid religious shit doesn't instantly make those things false, it just makes people afraid to use those comparisons and carefully avoid them in the conversations, as otherwise it will instantly turn into "ah, you are one of those idiots! Not talking to you!" I am yet to develop this brain reflex of "no-no-no, can't say the kid word, bad, bad!" as I don't expect people to get the "gay marriage" reflex.

Kids are just another age group, who(for some unknown reason) are protected from this shit by law. Change it to decriminalizing gladiator fights to the death or work for 112 hours per week - it's all the same in the sense of making it all worse, not better. But you say that until someone is standing behind you with a gun to your head it's all consensual.

> I was planning to give you a more detailed response, but after reading this, and the "male capitalist bias" bull post you linked, I am honestly not so keen on spending brain cycles on arguing with you.

I said "smth like", it was night already and I have problems with concentration: seen a canvas of the message which seemed close to what was on my mind but which i couldn't put into words, but didn't see the other part. I don't know what "male capitalist bias" is and i shouldn't have related to the messages i dont understand. Can remove that part from my message completely - it won't lose anything. Point taken, no hard feelings, my fault

>> _In capitalistic society everything can be called labour, including selling people, their organs and their genitals for sex._

>Selling people and selling organs is hardly the same as doing some consensual work for paying customers.

Ah, right, the slippery slope of consensual work.

People who gave me themselves, part or whole, did that consensually. I'm just a retailer who wants to work honestly and without fear. I sell, you buy. I say, if a person wants to sell their organs or themselves completely, then it should be their lawful right, if there was no coercion. After all, what else do we actually own but the meat on our bones?

> I am pretty sure nobody here even made that argument, but I guess it's easier to attack that strawman.

Why is it a strawman? There is literally no barrier from going down or up on social security ladder but the barrier of public opinion and actions. Decriminalizing stuff, the way it is argued here by the majority, is a try to patch the consequence of the problem and avoidance of the problem itself.

And I already said that i agree with decriminalization of the prostitution, as well as one for using heavy drugs, dont know why you ignored that. Considered it irrelevant?

> Oh hurray, Marx is alive!

Ah, sarcasm which is supposed to mean something but the sarcasm itself. I'm not a marxist, but it's pretty obvious, to me, that most people won't do anything until they really-really-really have nothing to lose, whether Marx is alive of dead.

> Sorry, but you cannot eat "empowerment" and you cannot break the chains of "famine" or "overpopulation".

No shit sherlock, maybe the reasons for overpopulation need a solution too? And not by throwing people into bioreactor, using them to fertilize the soil or making soap, but, you know, education and stuff. If 42 millions of prostitutes(in 2012, right now it should be much more than that) are being paid, then those money have to come from somewhere. How about using them for raising the quality of life of the people instead of making them have sex for that security(consensually ofc)?

> What's the goal here? Bloody revolution against capitalism towards a collective utopia? > This would only work if everybody was pure and virtuous, and that's just not the reality.

Wasn't my intention to get into this conversation but ok. The goal is raising the quality of life

You don't get pure and virtuous people by some kind of a switch. It's a longterm goal which should be achieved by increasing the level of education and gradual raise of the quality of life, and, therefore, raising the awareness of society. Right now we have much more people thinking about racism, overpopulation, inequality, global warming and stuff than 50 years ago. Changes are not made by some kind of a global vote, you just need to have a critical mass with enough influence - tetraethyllead gasoline can confirm that.

And, btw, right now we have a choice a choice between bloody revolution for your rights and bloody war for the rights of 1%, haven't you seen the news? And revolutions are much less bloody

> You can make things fairer, and we should strive to do that.

true

> But "breaking chains" rhetoric in this context ...

It really was rhetoric, i had a chance to use it so i did, no harm done. I meant what i wrote above.

> ...is counter-productive at best, and destructive at worst, as well as divorced from reality.

Since when striving for the improvement of the quality of life is counter-productive?

Agree.

>> Sure, if you have 2 choices - prostitution or dying from starvation, then it's not coerced consent.

> Correct, that's life being shitty to you. It's not coercion because coercion requires somebody to make threats.

To pressure, intimidate, or force (someone) into doing something.

I don't see a difference here, drug dealer or shitty life, it's the same life threat with the same outcome. What consent can we talk about here? How prostitution can be not destructive for the psychic health? We can't look at our body as some crutch which you can sell for a couple of hours. Prostitution is destructive for the person and as such, for the whole society. And no, physical labor and repetitive work are not the same as prostitution.

I understand the conversation better now, kinda, so now i think i should've written smth like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28932786

> It seems to me you're advocating taking away the prostitution option,

I wanted to say: ~Not at all. I think it should be decriminalized everywhere, not because there is "no easy solution", but because no one is interested in actually doing smth - same labor as everything else, nothing to see here. Brothels should be forbidden though if they are "for profit".~

but what's next? Let's decriminalize child prostitution? They have nowhere else to go and have to get some money for living, you know? Ah, the age of consent is too high? Let's lower it, kids need to work and there are so many wealthy guys who would like to get some. And, since there is no coercion, it's all fine. In selling organs too - those are you own organs and no one "coerced" you, your choice.

Maybe decriminalization of __adult__ prostitution will make sense only in case smth being done for it's elimination? Like raising minimal wages, better protection of the workers, social security, stuff like that?

But for now, i say, it should be decriminalized the other way - the one who will be prosecuted should be the buyer, for exploiting people in need. And the stigma should go to them instead.

Same could be done about people addicted to heavy drugs and being prosecuted when they are caught with one dosage. Selling heavy drugs should be forbidden, carrying a dosage for yourself - no. And there is at least one country where it worked.

> which then leaves only starvation? How is this better?

It doesn't leave only starvation. It leaves people realizing that they have nothing to lose but their chains. It's not the decriminalization of prostitution we should talk about, but solving the real problems which caused it. DoP will not solve them and after that we will absolutely need to decriminalize something else. Gladiator fights, maybe?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28928183 Someone here was sad that men don't have a luxury of prostitution so let's make gladiator fights men only.

If prostitution, which is heavily stigmatized by the society a person lives in and is illegal, starts looking attractive, then there is something wrong, don't you think? The problem is not decriminalization, the problem is that people don't have anywhere to look at if they want a decent life.

> And some prostitutes reportedly even like their job well enough.

Which part of it, stigma, having no rights or a fair chance to get degraded/killed/catch STD/highly reducing their chances of having a romantic relationship?

>they can join the large group of other people who do not like their jobs either, but do it anyway to provide for themselves and loved ones.

You can't provide for yourself and, even more so for you loved ones, by working at McDonalds. You can barely survive.

> There is no coerced consent.

Sure, if you have 2 choices - prostitution or dying from starvation, then it's not coerced consent. You always had a choice to die.

Maybe this means that you don't really like your job? If you had access to the same goods as everyone else around you, more or less, and liked what you are doing, then doing it for a week stops making sense, doesn't it?

In capitalistic society everything can be called labour, including selling people, their organs and their genitals for sex.

Why?

> You're paying with expensive gifts, trips

Willingly

> you're paying to raise one or more kids

How is that a payment to wife? Those are my kids, it was my decision to make them so now I support them.

> In many countries it's literally a crime for men not to pay child support.

What does paying your social duties has with "payment to your wife"? What, society should raise your offsprings for free?

> Most men have sex once or twice a week with their spouse, and more than half of their disposable income goes towards their partner and their kids.

Partners are not exclusively for sex, partners are someone you want to spend your life with and, optionally, make kids.

Do you have problems with your wife or smth?

Yeah, i guess you're right. I don't talk to people everyday and that's my excuse :) Though, individual reduction of meat consumption, while being a good idea for your health, can influence the problem at hand only if everyone suddenly will stop eating it. And i don't think that this will happen - the majority's lifestyle and resources are too different from the resources available for the majority of people who already care about climate change. It's good for your health, but as tool to influence climate change? - nah, to me it sounds like sorting trash while knowing that the countries which produce a thousand times more trash just throw it into the ocean.

My point is that it have to be targeted towards people below the median wage and especially kids.

> The result is enough votes in enough places to stop any political solution. Even if there's a majority, the rules are designed to prevent action unless the majority is overwhelming.

Sure, that's what i meant. Kids who are 13 now will be able to vote in 5 years and they can be convinced much easier. But I didn't manage to find anything popular in the form which will be comprehensible and interesting for them while keeping arguments and information, not just "CO2 is bad. Bad-bad-bad".

It's a fight for what is important. There's no other way.

> Not everyone wants to be an activist, and you have billions of others to convince.

You don't need to strike in front of the white house anymore. There are different ways to participate - like creating a video blog with a big team behind each video: infographics, analysis, video editing, motion graphics, news about climate disasters, explaining why all those researches are important and what those numbers mean, translate and voice in different languages. Tiktok, Youtube, Reddit, Twitter, HackeRank.

But, as it was said in another comment, it's easier to "press the eco button on your solar powered dishwasher".

> Maybe you can convince USA to clean up, what about China, India, and Russia?

Corporations are influenced by money and money only. You increase the taxes in developed countries on "bad products"(or stop the import completely on nonessential things) - you get the result. All the buyers of China, India and Russia are in developed countries, one way or another. But there is a price to pay - poor people in developed countries will become even more poor, although, this effect also can be downplayed by fighting for the rights of workers.

>Anyway, I'm not here to argue, just trying to offer some counterpoints.

And thank you for that, I appreciate it.