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I've been thinking about this a lot this morning. I think almost every vice would be less damaging to society if it was in the open. Polite society doesn't wan

I've been thinking about this a lot this morning. I think almost every vice would be less damaging to society if it was in the open. Polite society doesn't want to see sex work or drugs, but they still exist. Hiding them makes things much worse for the people directly involved. It's trafficked kids with broken immigration status who are more scared of the cops than their captors. It's drug addicts who OD on tainted drugs. Bring it all into the open. Have the government certify providers directly. Crack down on unauthorized middlemen. Tax it. Use the taxes to pay for programs that help people leave when they realize they can have a better life without it. We need the classic American Market here: free trade enabled by regulation that ensures market quality and protects participants from fraud. Unfortunately I don't think this is politically possible. It would take a long, well funded campaign. The people who are willing to do that kind of work are motivated by stories of individual tragedy and focus on draconian solutions like this mess of a law. The people who would push for openness can make more money elsewhere, and don't want to make their name "Advocating for drugs & sex." Frustrating.

DanBC 9y ago
I'm in favour of careful legalisation. The submitted article is talking about a reaction to the behaviour of one publication who were openly allowing people to advertise kidnapped drugged children for sex; and then when they took a minimal step back from that the publisher was giving advice to advertisers about how to create an ad to sell drugged kidnapped children for sex without hitting the publications new filters. Once these children were rescued they were telling the publisher that some of these ads contained images of them; that they had been kidnapped, drugged, and repeatedly raped; and that they'd like the images taken down and preferably for the ads to be taken down. That publisher refused. One of the problems of decriminalisation of buying and selling sex work is that someone who wants to fuck a 14 year old child isn't going to use the service a 25 year old provides, so legalisation has limited usefulness to prevent the kidnap and drugging of children.
- edraferi 9y ago
  I am unaware of this behavior by Craigslist. I want to believe that people are taken seriously when they alert authorities to crimes against them. The #MeToo movement suggests this doesn’t happen as readily as I would like. > but someone will still want to fuck 14 year olds This is still wrong, we can still criminalize it. That’s fine. We can still give a lot of other sex workers way more safety and legitimacy than they have now. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. There could be secondary effects that help the 14 year olds. (1) Most Johns would prefer the legal adult market, so that’s where the money will be. (2) There would be a bigger stigma to the illegal stuff because there are good legal alternatives, creating s higher barrier to entry. (3) institutions would develop to support sec workers, and they’d have resources and visibility to help the minors, more than exists now. The point is we can decriminalize/ legalize a LOT more than we do now, and have a net positive impact.
manofmanysmiles 9y ago
I've been thinking about this peripherally for a while, especially the bigger picture when some law is passed, and it seems exceptionally out of touch with the reality, and does more harm than good. A depressing thought: What if we apply something akin to Occam's Razor? What if the lawmakers want to hurt the people struggling at at the lower rungs of society? To me it feels unlikely it is intentional in most cases, or conscious, but what if on some level, there is a motivation to hurt these people who they feel are inferior? You can easily apply Hanlon's razor here as a counter-argument, but that's not what I'm saying. I'm not attributing malice to any individual actor, but to something more subtle, e.g. unconscious bias. Maybe subconsciously, there's a force that's trying to destroy people who are for whatever reason unable thrive in society? I guess maybe this force IS society? Apologies if this is a bit vague and short. I just wanted to share this thought in case it resonated with anyone else. I'll be happy to expand upon this thought if there's interest.
- NotSammyHagar 9y ago
  I would believe that lots of politicians do want to hurt people at the lower rungs. This is also an explanation of why there is so much opposition to welfare - I want to help 'good people' who lost their jobs and need help, but not those losers who just live forever on welfare and are in "some group I don't like". Same argument will be used against UBI. It's very compelling for a lot of people.
- mtreis86 9y ago
  "The state is the institution or complex of institutions which bases itself on the availability of forcible coercion by special agencies of society in order to maintain the dominance of a ruling class, preserve the existing property relations from basic change and keep all other classes in subjection." Hal Draper
  - manofmanysmiles 9y ago
    Thanks, that’s very succinctly put! Besides Hal Draper, what authors would you recommend to further explore this thought? I’m educated as a programmer and only beginning to deliberately explore ideas outside of science and engineering.
nojvek 9y ago
Almost every major show on Netflix and other media companies is filled with Nudity. It’s like America loves butts, boobs and bullets. I don’t get why prostitution is not legalized when more states have weed legalized. I spent quite a bit of time in Australia, where it is legalized. There was a time when Brothels advertised in newspapers in lesser read sections. I’m glad that America is not the rest of the world, because it sure has some weird culture. They would rather have easier access to guns than sex. Not that I support prostitution. Every man and woman for themselves. I do support their right to live their lives as they wish if they aren’t interfering with others’ lives.
adoago 9y ago
Totally. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sunlight_is_the_best_disinfectant https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sunlight_is_the_best_disinfec...
nathan_long 9y ago
> I think almost every vice would be less damaging to society if it was in the open. Polite society doesn't want to see sex work or drugs, but they still exist. Hiding them makes things much worse for the people directly involved. I understand what you're saying. However, compare sex work to slavery (which it often is). Nobody wants to be a slave. Some desperate people might agree to be enslaved to pay off a debt. You could say that if someone agrees to be enslaved, it's OK. But I'd argue that removing certain choices promotes freedom. If slavery is illegal, a person found with slaves can't force the slaves to say they agreed to this arrangement; the arrangement itself is illegal and the slave holder is always in the wrong. I think treating prostitution the same way makes sense. People are free to sleep with whom they choose, but when it's done for money, it's far too easy for exploitation to occur. If we say it's always illegal, we remove the veneer of respectability that enables one person to exploit another "by agreement". Note that in both cases we should target the exploiter and not the victim. The point isn't "you can't be a slave", but "you can't enslave anyone."
- ayemiller 9y ago
  I would argue that the sea between "sex slavery" aaaand "sex worker" is just as vast as that between professional engineer and enslaved engineer. Again, polite society would have you think otherwise...
  - hackbinary 9y ago
    Please can we call sex workers pleasure technicians? A pleasure engineer should require a degree ...
- nybble41 9y ago
  By saying that a person can't voluntarily agree to become a slave, you are saying that you, not they, have the right to determine what happens to them. That is the essence of slavery right there. By taking away their choice you are claiming ownership over them. You haven't eliminated slavery at all; you've just assumed the role of slave-owner yourself "for their own good", much as other slave owners throughout history have justified their actions by claiming that their slaves would be incapable of managing on their own as free individuals.
pmarreck 9y ago
I'm with you. This is also basically the Portugal approach to drug control, which appears to be working. You think we would have learned with the experience from Prohibition to inform us... Guess not.
DoreenMichele 9y ago
Bring it all into the open. Have the government certify providers directly. Crack down on unauthorized middlemen. Tax it. I don't agree. Decriminalization is a better approach than legalization and regulation. If it is decriminalized, then victims don't have to live in fear of the police. Legalization and regulation often makes things worse, not better.
- edraferi 9y ago
  I’m open to decriminalization. There’s a spectrum between criminality and unrestricted markets. I think we’re way to far towards the criminality side of that spectrum. We can start decriminalizing now, open up more if it appears to work. Whatever policy we choose, it should have a clear goal and be evaluated against how well t achieves that goal. “Fewer deaths by tainted drugs” and “fewer sex workers living with abuse” is a good place to start. I think decriminalization work further both of those goals.
- oplav 9y ago
  If it is decriminalized, then victims don't have to live in fear of the police. Isn't this the same as with legalization? Legalization and regulation often makes things worse, not better. Do you have examples of this?
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    No, they aren't the same. Unfortunately, googling decriminalization vs legalization gets me articles that state the exact opposite of my understanding. As I understand it, decriminalization means making no law against it. Legalization means making laws about it that boil down to regulation. Thus, decriminalization is more free. This article seems to be generally in line with my understanding: http://time.com/3005687/what-the-swedish-model-gets-wrong-about-prostitution/ http://time.com/3005687/what-the-swedish-model-gets-wrong-ab... Example of making it worse: From what I gather, prostitution in Las Vegas is mostly run by the mafia and legalization has not led to women being free to be their own boss, set their own hours, etc. Legalization of prostitution often means sex workers are subjected to a lot of rules and regulations such that it becomes akin to wage slavery rather than freedom to pursue work independently like a small business owner. I will suggest Obamacare as another example of regulation making things worse. I'm quite poor and being hit with harsh financial penalties on my taxes this year for failing to have full coverage for all of last year. Prior to Obamacare, I could just forego having healthcare and the government did not get all up in my business about why I did that and whether or not I was allowed to do that, etc. My support of decriminalization of prostitution comes from having read Working: My Life as a Prostitute by Dolores French. Prior to becoming a prostitute, she was a political activist.
cpt1138 9y ago
While I agree with your list of things that would help there is a significant problem I've been thinking about with respect to everything that's been happening lately. There is no "government" that does anything, its all people. The quality of people we have making up our (where FOSTA/SESTA is) government are not the type of people that at the end of the day could work with anyone like drug dealers or sex workers. Then you have the problem of the types of people that could work with drug dealers and sex workers may have more fluid ethics that could be corrupted in some ways. For example, if everyone could be like Violet Blue that would be one thing. But I could imagine some less than savory person applying for the job but with the intent to look the other way for some payback. I think we really need to stop thinking about the problems as if there is some uncorruptable benevolent "government" that is going to help us. And start think about systems that are realistically run by fallible people but have checks and balances in place to remove corruption. Like maybe the "terrible" government is responsible for punishing only? I don't know how to solve the problems honestly, just seems like we are looking where the light is rather than where we lost our keys (maybe down the sewer).
- ethbro 9y ago
  This is the corruption trap that you see in narco-regimes and countries where government institutions are being built or rebuilt. If X personal compensation exists for corrupt behavior, and < X is the reward for serving legal government institutions correctly, then how do you make government function? If you prosecute people for corrupt behavior, then your prosecutors and justice system now have to make the same decision. Ultimately, rule of law only exists because of tradition and a sufficiently widespread support of it.
garfieldnate 9y ago
I've long believed that culture is the most powerful law enforcement. It's quite common in the US to believe that people deserve what they get when take drugs, or that you are a bad person for taking drugs or the sex trade. Your comment about putting everything in the open reminds me of _Peter Freuchen's Famous Book of the Eskimos_. One of the greatest sins among the Eskimos was to hide your behavior. His example is a man who would masturbate with seal corpses when he went hunting; people laughed and said he was ridiculous because he had a pretty wife yet somehow preferred seals. But he wasn't considered bad for it; it only would have been bad if he had hidden it. He was teased a little and that was the end of it. A more serious episode involves a murder. The murdered man was quite disliked by everyone, but the witnesses and the murderer participate in a long conversation/declaration that the murderer had done wrongly, that he was terrible, that he should have died instead, etc. And when that conversation was over, they all went to dinner and spoke no more of it. A clandestine murder with no confession, however, would have been atrocious. Not sure this directly contributes to the convo, but it was a good read :)

DanBC 9y ago

I'm in favour of careful legalisation. The submitted article is talking about a reaction to the behaviour of one publication who were openly allowing people to advertise kidnapped drugged children for sex; and then when they took a minimal step back from that the publisher was giving advice to advertisers about how to create an ad to sell drugged kidnapped children for sex without hitting the publications new filters. Once these children were rescued they were telling the publisher that some of these ads contained images of them; that they had been kidnapped, drugged, and repeatedly raped; and that they'd like the images taken down and preferably for the ads to be taken down. That publisher refused. One of the problems of decriminalisation of buying and selling sex work is that someone who wants to fuck a 14 year old child isn't going to use the service a 25 year old provides, so legalisation has limited usefulness to prevent the kidnap and drugging of children.

edraferi 9y ago
I am unaware of this behavior by Craigslist. I want to believe that people are taken seriously when they alert authorities to crimes against them. The #MeToo movement suggests this doesn’t happen as readily as I would like. > but someone will still want to fuck 14 year olds This is still wrong, we can still criminalize it. That’s fine. We can still give a lot of other sex workers way more safety and legitimacy than they have now. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. There could be secondary effects that help the 14 year olds. (1) Most Johns would prefer the legal adult market, so that’s where the money will be. (2) There would be a bigger stigma to the illegal stuff because there are good legal alternatives, creating s higher barrier to entry. (3) institutions would develop to support sec workers, and they’d have resources and visibility to help the minors, more than exists now. The point is we can decriminalize/ legalize a LOT more than we do now, and have a net positive impact.

manofmanysmiles 9y ago

I've been thinking about this peripherally for a while, especially the bigger picture when some law is passed, and it seems exceptionally out of touch with the reality, and does more harm than good. A depressing thought: What if we apply something akin to Occam's Razor? What if the lawmakers want to hurt the people struggling at at the lower rungs of society? To me it feels unlikely it is intentional in most cases, or conscious, but what if on some level, there is a motivation to hurt these people who they feel are inferior? You can easily apply Hanlon's razor here as a counter-argument, but that's not what I'm saying. I'm not attributing malice to any individual actor, but to something more subtle, e.g. unconscious bias. Maybe subconsciously, there's a force that's trying to destroy people who are for whatever reason unable thrive in society? I guess maybe this force IS society? Apologies if this is a bit vague and short. I just wanted to share this thought in case it resonated with anyone else. I'll be happy to expand upon this thought if there's interest.

NotSammyHagar 9y ago
I would believe that lots of politicians do want to hurt people at the lower rungs. This is also an explanation of why there is so much opposition to welfare - I want to help 'good people' who lost their jobs and need help, but not those losers who just live forever on welfare and are in "some group I don't like". Same argument will be used against UBI. It's very compelling for a lot of people.
mtreis86 9y ago
"The state is the institution or complex of institutions which bases itself on the availability of forcible coercion by special agencies of society in order to maintain the dominance of a ruling class, preserve the existing property relations from basic change and keep all other classes in subjection." Hal Draper
- manofmanysmiles 9y ago
  Thanks, that’s very succinctly put! Besides Hal Draper, what authors would you recommend to further explore this thought? I’m educated as a programmer and only beginning to deliberately explore ideas outside of science and engineering.

nojvek 9y ago

Almost every major show on Netflix and other media companies is filled with Nudity. It’s like America loves butts, boobs and bullets. I don’t get why prostitution is not legalized when more states have weed legalized. I spent quite a bit of time in Australia, where it is legalized. There was a time when Brothels advertised in newspapers in lesser read sections. I’m glad that America is not the rest of the world, because it sure has some weird culture. They would rather have easier access to guns than sex. Not that I support prostitution. Every man and woman for themselves. I do support their right to live their lives as they wish if they aren’t interfering with others’ lives.

adoago 9y ago

Totally. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sunlight_is_the_best_disinfectant https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sunlight_is_the_best_disinfec...

nathan_long 9y ago

> I think almost every vice would be less damaging to society if it was in the open. Polite society doesn't want to see sex work or drugs, but they still exist. Hiding them makes things much worse for the people directly involved. I understand what you're saying. However, compare sex work to slavery (which it often is). Nobody wants to be a slave. Some desperate people might agree to be enslaved to pay off a debt. You could say that if someone agrees to be enslaved, it's OK. But I'd argue that removing certain choices promotes freedom. If slavery is illegal, a person found with slaves can't force the slaves to say they agreed to this arrangement; the arrangement itself is illegal and the slave holder is always in the wrong. I think treating prostitution the same way makes sense. People are free to sleep with whom they choose, but when it's done for money, it's far too easy for exploitation to occur. If we say it's always illegal, we remove the veneer of respectability that enables one person to exploit another "by agreement". Note that in both cases we should target the exploiter and not the victim. The point isn't "you can't be a slave", but "you can't enslave anyone."

ayemiller 9y ago
I would argue that the sea between "sex slavery" aaaand "sex worker" is just as vast as that between professional engineer and enslaved engineer. Again, polite society would have you think otherwise...
- hackbinary 9y ago
  Please can we call sex workers pleasure technicians? A pleasure engineer should require a degree ...
nybble41 9y ago
By saying that a person can't voluntarily agree to become a slave, you are saying that you, not they, have the right to determine what happens to them. That is the essence of slavery right there. By taking away their choice you are claiming ownership over them. You haven't eliminated slavery at all; you've just assumed the role of slave-owner yourself "for their own good", much as other slave owners throughout history have justified their actions by claiming that their slaves would be incapable of managing on their own as free individuals.

pmarreck 9y ago

I'm with you. This is also basically the Portugal approach to drug control, which appears to be working. You think we would have learned with the experience from Prohibition to inform us... Guess not.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

Bring it all into the open. Have the government certify providers directly. Crack down on unauthorized middlemen. Tax it. I don't agree. Decriminalization is a better approach than legalization and regulation. If it is decriminalized, then victims don't have to live in fear of the police. Legalization and regulation often makes things worse, not better.

edraferi 9y ago
I’m open to decriminalization. There’s a spectrum between criminality and unrestricted markets. I think we’re way to far towards the criminality side of that spectrum. We can start decriminalizing now, open up more if it appears to work. Whatever policy we choose, it should have a clear goal and be evaluated against how well t achieves that goal. “Fewer deaths by tainted drugs” and “fewer sex workers living with abuse” is a good place to start. I think decriminalization work further both of those goals.
oplav 9y ago
If it is decriminalized, then victims don't have to live in fear of the police. Isn't this the same as with legalization? Legalization and regulation often makes things worse, not better. Do you have examples of this?
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  No, they aren't the same. Unfortunately, googling decriminalization vs legalization gets me articles that state the exact opposite of my understanding. As I understand it, decriminalization means making no law against it. Legalization means making laws about it that boil down to regulation. Thus, decriminalization is more free. This article seems to be generally in line with my understanding: http://time.com/3005687/what-the-swedish-model-gets-wrong-about-prostitution/ http://time.com/3005687/what-the-swedish-model-gets-wrong-ab... Example of making it worse: From what I gather, prostitution in Las Vegas is mostly run by the mafia and legalization has not led to women being free to be their own boss, set their own hours, etc. Legalization of prostitution often means sex workers are subjected to a lot of rules and regulations such that it becomes akin to wage slavery rather than freedom to pursue work independently like a small business owner. I will suggest Obamacare as another example of regulation making things worse. I'm quite poor and being hit with harsh financial penalties on my taxes this year for failing to have full coverage for all of last year. Prior to Obamacare, I could just forego having healthcare and the government did not get all up in my business about why I did that and whether or not I was allowed to do that, etc. My support of decriminalization of prostitution comes from having read Working: My Life as a Prostitute by Dolores French. Prior to becoming a prostitute, she was a political activist.

cpt1138 9y ago

While I agree with your list of things that would help there is a significant problem I've been thinking about with respect to everything that's been happening lately. There is no "government" that does anything, its all people. The quality of people we have making up our (where FOSTA/SESTA is) government are not the type of people that at the end of the day could work with anyone like drug dealers or sex workers. Then you have the problem of the types of people that could work with drug dealers and sex workers may have more fluid ethics that could be corrupted in some ways. For example, if everyone could be like Violet Blue that would be one thing. But I could imagine some less than savory person applying for the job but with the intent to look the other way for some payback. I think we really need to stop thinking about the problems as if there is some uncorruptable benevolent "government" that is going to help us. And start think about systems that are realistically run by fallible people but have checks and balances in place to remove corruption. Like maybe the "terrible" government is responsible for punishing only? I don't know how to solve the problems honestly, just seems like we are looking where the light is rather than where we lost our keys (maybe down the sewer).

ethbro 9y ago
This is the corruption trap that you see in narco-regimes and countries where government institutions are being built or rebuilt. If X personal compensation exists for corrupt behavior, and < X is the reward for serving legal government institutions correctly, then how do you make government function? If you prosecute people for corrupt behavior, then your prosecutors and justice system now have to make the same decision. Ultimately, rule of law only exists because of tradition and a sufficiently widespread support of it.

garfieldnate 9y ago

I've long believed that culture is the most powerful law enforcement. It's quite common in the US to believe that people deserve what they get when take drugs, or that you are a bad person for taking drugs or the sex trade. Your comment about putting everything in the open reminds me of _Peter Freuchen's Famous Book of the Eskimos_. One of the greatest sins among the Eskimos was to hide your behavior. His example is a man who would masturbate with seal corpses when he went hunting; people laughed and said he was ridiculous because he had a pretty wife yet somehow preferred seals. But he wasn't considered bad for it; it only would have been bad if he had hidden it. He was teased a little and that was the end of it. A more serious episode involves a murder. The murdered man was quite disliked by everyone, but the witnesses and the murderer participate in a long conversation/declaration that the murderer had done wrongly, that he was terrible, that he should have died instead, etc. And when that conversation was over, they all went to dinner and spoke no more of it. A clandestine murder with no confession, however, would have been atrocious. Not sure this directly contributes to the convo, but it was a good read :)