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The solution is to build a system in which people who are forced into sex slavery are able to be identified and helped and their traffickers prosecuted. The cur

The solution is to build a system in which people who are forced into sex slavery are able to be identified and helped and their traffickers prosecuted. The current system, which assumes that every sex worker is there by force, muddies the waters heavily and ensures that people are not going to get the individual support they need to get out of sex work. I know a number of independent sex workers as part of my communities, and for the most part they do it because they consider it less demoralising than working at McDonald's. (Sorry, but that's the truth - sex isn't sacred to some people, and being somewhat independent, being able to choose their clients, not being subject to wage slavery, and being able to keep the proceeds of most of the value they provide is appealing to them.) Yes, there's a large amount of sex workers who are there by force, or perform sex work because they're ineligible for benefits and can't survive without it. But criminalising sex work doesn't actually help those people in the slightest, in much the same way that criminalising drugs doesn't help addicts. They're going to keep doing it because they're forced by their circumstances to, and in fact it prevents them from getting the help they need, on top of adding another socially unacceptable label which can make it difficult to access housing and other necessary services. Criminalise pimps and traffickers all you want, they're the scum of the earth. But support sex workers.

clavalle 10y ago
>because they consider it less demoralising than working at McDonald's I honestly think that people shouldn't be forced to sell their time to McDonald's for less than fair value because they are afraid of starvation, either. Elsewhere in the thread people advocate a licensing system -- my fear of complete legitimization would be that people who need help from society will be refused that help if it seems that they could just get a job at the local brothel. BUT if that licensing system is used to screen people who are in desperate straits to give them solid alternatives before they make that decision, I think that might be a very workable solution.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  > I honestly think that people shouldn't be forced to sell their time to McDonald's for less than fair value because they are afraid of starvation, either. Sure. But solving that involves a complete overhaul of the current capitalist system, and we're not going to get that for a long time. In the meantime, allowing people to survive within the capitalist system however they need to is a necessity. > my fear of complete legitimization would be that people who need help from society will be refused that help if it seems that they could just get a job at the local brothel I don't think that's ever likely to be the case. It certainly isn't the case in first-world countries where prostitution, and even brothels, are legal right now. Nobody has been turned away from receiving services and benefits in the UK or Nevada, for example, because they could be performing sex work, similarly as they're not forced into a number of other things (such as the military).
  - clavalle 10y ago
    >Sure. But solving that involves a complete overhaul of the current capitalist system The current capitalist system, maybe, but I think it is perfectly workable within some flavor of capitalism. In fact, I think that having a solid social safety net would push capitalism to even greater heights of efficiency. With the notable exception of the taxation to pay it people would be making transactions that are guaranteed to be a net positive. That assumes, of course, that paying for such a system isn't an overall negative which is debatable (but more and more plausible with productivity gains over the last century or two).
    - vertex-four 10y ago
      > In fact, I think that having a solid social safety net would push capitalism to even greater heights of efficiency. I live in the UK. We have a solid social safety net. The issue is that it exists to support a capitalist understanding of wages - i.e. that your wage is a result of a market, which is more-or-less unrelated to the value that you create through your work (except insofar as an upper limit is created) and more to do with how many people and companies you're competing with to do the work. A "safety net" which somehow ensures, in perpetuity, that people are able to work for a wage which has some relation to the value they create winds up looking a lot like certain forms of socialism. But as with all real-world politics, it winds up being blurry.
      - aninhumer 10y ago
        > that your wage is a result of a market, which is more-or-less unrelated to the value that you create through your work ... and more to do with how many people and companies you're competing with to do the work. That's how supply and demand works. The wages are low because the more people are looking for a particular job, the more people there are willing to do it for less than others. In a well functioning society, this is a signal saying "we have enough people doing this job, go do something else". The problem is that our society doesn't make it easy for people to do something else. Generally people get one chance at education, and if they make a bad choice, they're screwed. And beyond that, there's nothing that ensures that there will even be enough demand for labour that everyone can earn a decent living.

clavalle 10y ago

>because they consider it less demoralising than working at McDonald's I honestly think that people shouldn't be forced to sell their time to McDonald's for less than fair value because they are afraid of starvation, either. Elsewhere in the thread people advocate a licensing system -- my fear of complete legitimization would be that people who need help from society will be refused that help if it seems that they could just get a job at the local brothel. BUT if that licensing system is used to screen people who are in desperate straits to give them solid alternatives before they make that decision, I think that might be a very workable solution.

vertex-four 10y ago
> I honestly think that people shouldn't be forced to sell their time to McDonald's for less than fair value because they are afraid of starvation, either. Sure. But solving that involves a complete overhaul of the current capitalist system, and we're not going to get that for a long time. In the meantime, allowing people to survive within the capitalist system however they need to is a necessity. > my fear of complete legitimization would be that people who need help from society will be refused that help if it seems that they could just get a job at the local brothel I don't think that's ever likely to be the case. It certainly isn't the case in first-world countries where prostitution, and even brothels, are legal right now. Nobody has been turned away from receiving services and benefits in the UK or Nevada, for example, because they could be performing sex work, similarly as they're not forced into a number of other things (such as the military).
- clavalle 10y ago
  >Sure. But solving that involves a complete overhaul of the current capitalist system The current capitalist system, maybe, but I think it is perfectly workable within some flavor of capitalism. In fact, I think that having a solid social safety net would push capitalism to even greater heights of efficiency. With the notable exception of the taxation to pay it people would be making transactions that are guaranteed to be a net positive. That assumes, of course, that paying for such a system isn't an overall negative which is debatable (but more and more plausible with productivity gains over the last century or two).
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    > In fact, I think that having a solid social safety net would push capitalism to even greater heights of efficiency. I live in the UK. We have a solid social safety net. The issue is that it exists to support a capitalist understanding of wages - i.e. that your wage is a result of a market, which is more-or-less unrelated to the value that you create through your work (except insofar as an upper limit is created) and more to do with how many people and companies you're competing with to do the work. A "safety net" which somehow ensures, in perpetuity, that people are able to work for a wage which has some relation to the value they create winds up looking a lot like certain forms of socialism. But as with all real-world politics, it winds up being blurry.
    - aninhumer 10y ago
      > that your wage is a result of a market, which is more-or-less unrelated to the value that you create through your work ... and more to do with how many people and companies you're competing with to do the work. That's how supply and demand works. The wages are low because the more people are looking for a particular job, the more people there are willing to do it for less than others. In a well functioning society, this is a signal saying "we have enough people doing this job, go do something else". The problem is that our society doesn't make it easy for people to do something else. Generally people get one chance at education, and if they make a bad choice, they're screwed. And beyond that, there's nothing that ensures that there will even be enough demand for labour that everyone can earn a decent living.