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We try to prohibit plenty of things, like murder and rape. What’s wrong with that? The imperfection of our attempts in. Omway invalidates those attempts, and th

We try to prohibit plenty of things, like murder and rape. What’s wrong with that? The imperfection of our attempts in. Omway invalidates those attempts, and the prevailing wisdom supported by evidence is that prohibiting violent crimes has better outcomes than not. Raping children and trafficking them for the purposes of rape is pretty violent, and while some black market will exist, it’s worth constraining, and fighting. This isn’t prohibition against adults choosing to smoke some pot or have a drink after all, and trying to parlay the semantics of that prohibition to this discussion is grossly inappropriate.

busterarm 9y ago
People don't seem to want to consider that prohibition of these things is exactly the measure that creates violence around them. This is exactly the thing that sex workers are opposing this law and the destruction of Backpage for. I'm not saying make it legal and I'd happily throw the switch on any human trafficker or child rapist myself. The point is not to take people who are already in a desperate situation and put them in the way of more harm. That's what this does. It's an easy win for whatever politician is pushing this but does next to nothing to combat the real problem.
- scottie_m 9y ago
  Raping a child is violence. Kidnapping is violence, as is trafficking humans for the purpose of being raped. These are inherently violent acts. You cannot take the violence out of raping kids or sex trafficking them. Prohibition measures are all about restricting the availability of something to curb the desire of it. No one thinks that you’re reducing demand for raping children by cracking down on child rapists. People think that they can reduce the rates of child rape by arresting people who rape children, and facilitate the rape of children. They also think that it’s worth saving some people from being raped, even if it’s a given that you can’t save everyone. Murder is just about the freest, easiest thing you can do if that's your desire. Murder rates are on the decline because it's just something not that many people want to do anymore. What? No. The risks of being caught for murdering someone have increased, so it’s far from free and easy unless you don’t care about losing your freedom or life as a result. The same applies for trafficking children for sex. You reduce activity by increasing the cost in the cost:benefit relationship. While people driven to murder will still do it, you reduce things like casual killing, or murder for hire. While you’re not going to make pedophiles lose their desire to rape kids, you can reduce the willingness of the people supplying them with kids to try and profit from those urges. Prostitutes were so much safer when they had pimps and had to stand out on the street and hop into peoples' cars, right? I question both your reasoning and your motives, given that you’re switching between talking about child sex trafficking and prostitution.
  - busterarm 9y ago
    Prostitutes were so much safer when they had pimps and had to stand out on the street and hop into peoples' cars, right? Yes, let's put them all back to doing that to pretend to save a handful of kids. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/us/backpage-ads-sex-trafficking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/us/backpage-ads-sex-traff... We could make a bigger dent in child prostitution if we dealt with income inequality along racial lines than by closing Backpage, but nobody really gives about giving poorer people the same opportunities they have.
    - anonbanker 9y ago
      I'm saddened, but not surprised, that every post you're making in this thread is greyed-out.
      - busterarm 9y ago
        I have a bad habit of saying the right but uncomfortable thing. Also the average user of HN probably has zero exposure to sex work, other than maybe as a consumer. I grew up in Times Square, with street hookers on my corner. Some of my friends are/were sex workers. There's a lot of fear and anger around what's going on right now.
        scottie_m 9y ago
        You really have a problem understanding that trafficking children isn’t “sex work” it’s kidnapping and rape, don’t you? Why is that? Is it just too inconvenient for your purposes to acknowledge that part of the discussion, and that’s your version of being right? Maybe it’s just that you’re not going to get much pushback from many here about the wisdom of legalizing prostitution, so you lean on that crutch when discussing the issues here? The problem is that Backpage was aiding and abetting something that has no relation to “sex work” unless your definition includes kidnapping and rape. tptacek 20 hours ago [-] They took ads they knew to be for child sex trafficking --- they had keyword matching for them! --- stripped the incriminating words from the ads, and ran them, pictures and all. How can you justify that? Put it together with the rest and it’s both illegal and immoral, and again, not about adult sex workers. If you care about the issue of legalizing prostitution, don’t get it tangled up in this mess.

busterarm 9y ago

People don't seem to want to consider that prohibition of these things is exactly the measure that creates violence around them. This is exactly the thing that sex workers are opposing this law and the destruction of Backpage for. I'm not saying make it legal and I'd happily throw the switch on any human trafficker or child rapist myself. The point is not to take people who are already in a desperate situation and put them in the way of more harm. That's what this does. It's an easy win for whatever politician is pushing this but does next to nothing to combat the real problem.

scottie_m 9y ago
Raping a child is violence. Kidnapping is violence, as is trafficking humans for the purpose of being raped. These are inherently violent acts. You cannot take the violence out of raping kids or sex trafficking them. Prohibition measures are all about restricting the availability of something to curb the desire of it. No one thinks that you’re reducing demand for raping children by cracking down on child rapists. People think that they can reduce the rates of child rape by arresting people who rape children, and facilitate the rape of children. They also think that it’s worth saving some people from being raped, even if it’s a given that you can’t save everyone. Murder is just about the freest, easiest thing you can do if that's your desire. Murder rates are on the decline because it's just something not that many people want to do anymore. What? No. The risks of being caught for murdering someone have increased, so it’s far from free and easy unless you don’t care about losing your freedom or life as a result. The same applies for trafficking children for sex. You reduce activity by increasing the cost in the cost:benefit relationship. While people driven to murder will still do it, you reduce things like casual killing, or murder for hire. While you’re not going to make pedophiles lose their desire to rape kids, you can reduce the willingness of the people supplying them with kids to try and profit from those urges. Prostitutes were so much safer when they had pimps and had to stand out on the street and hop into peoples' cars, right? I question both your reasoning and your motives, given that you’re switching between talking about child sex trafficking and prostitution.
- busterarm 9y ago
  Prostitutes were so much safer when they had pimps and had to stand out on the street and hop into peoples' cars, right? Yes, let's put them all back to doing that to pretend to save a handful of kids. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/us/backpage-ads-sex-trafficking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/us/backpage-ads-sex-traff... We could make a bigger dent in child prostitution if we dealt with income inequality along racial lines than by closing Backpage, but nobody really gives about giving poorer people the same opportunities they have.
  - anonbanker 9y ago
    I'm saddened, but not surprised, that every post you're making in this thread is greyed-out.
    - busterarm 9y ago
      I have a bad habit of saying the right but uncomfortable thing. Also the average user of HN probably has zero exposure to sex work, other than maybe as a consumer. I grew up in Times Square, with street hookers on my corner. Some of my friends are/were sex workers. There's a lot of fear and anger around what's going on right now.
      - scottie_m 9y ago
        You really have a problem understanding that trafficking children isn’t “sex work” it’s kidnapping and rape, don’t you? Why is that? Is it just too inconvenient for your purposes to acknowledge that part of the discussion, and that’s your version of being right? Maybe it’s just that you’re not going to get much pushback from many here about the wisdom of legalizing prostitution, so you lean on that crutch when discussing the issues here? The problem is that Backpage was aiding and abetting something that has no relation to “sex work” unless your definition includes kidnapping and rape. tptacek 20 hours ago [-] They took ads they knew to be for child sex trafficking --- they had keyword matching for them! --- stripped the incriminating words from the ads, and ran them, pictures and all. How can you justify that? Put it together with the rest and it’s both illegal and immoral, and again, not about adult sex workers. If you care about the issue of legalizing prostitution, don’t get it tangled up in this mess.