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>executives of Oxfam, a poverty eradication charity, visited prostitutes while delivering aid in earthquake-stricken Haiti, Hmmm to me it seems like a pretty s

>executives of Oxfam, a poverty eradication charity, visited prostitutes while delivering aid in earthquake-stricken Haiti, Hmmm to me it seems like a pretty shitty thing to do. You're an executive at a charity there helping people after a natural disaster....paying one of those people for sex seems just ya know...like a bit of a shitty thing to do. Even if it was their job. I think it's more the context and timing of the situation that's the problem. Again...these are executives in a charity...in a disaster stricken country....supposedly there to help out...having sex with local prostitutes. I'm sure if it was during their own free time, possibly while not in a disaster stricken place it would likely be less of a big deal. Especially because as an executive at a charity devoted to ending poverty you should probably be trying to help these women find other means to live rather than encouraging them to sell themselves...especially right after a natural disaster. Just saying...seems real shitty to me. They're basically taking advantage of people in a desperate situation despite supposedly being there to help.

meruru 8y ago
>paying one of those people for sex seems just ya know...like a bit of a shitty thing to do. Why? There's nothing wrong with sex work, it's just a job. Would it be shitty to pay them to wash your car or whatever?
- mLuby 8y ago
  The "it's just a job" rationale falls apart when there's no alternative to having that job. When you have no other option, you'll say yes no matter what, so you have no agency and can easily be exploited. It's likely the case that these women had no real option for survival, which is why the third world recent disaster part is an important detail, and why the comparison to Vegas/Amsterdam isn't super accurate. It would be shitty to drive from your city (where a car wash is $10) to the neighboring tent city and give them only $1 to wash your car, because you know they won't have another option.
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    Sticking to the car washing analog: If you decide to stay local and pay $10 for a car wash so you can feel better about yourself, realize that you haven't improved the lot of the person in the tent city at all. They would probably be better off if you'd "exploited" them...
  - meruru 8y ago
    None of that makes sense to me. Sure it sucks to be in such a shitty place that you just have to take whatever pays, but that's the reality for a lot of people and I don't see anyone being all morally outraged at people who hire construction workers or whatever. It's like you're saying that having sex is so terribly bad that it's better to let people starve instead, but that's a bizarre idea considering the fact that sex actually feels really good. What would you do in the car washing example? Drive back to your city and pay $10 because paying someone who's willing to do it for $1 is exploitative? Surely the people doing it for $1 would rather do it for $1 than not do it for $0.
  - hnzix 8y ago
    > The "it's just a job" rationale falls apart when there's no alternative to having that job. If there's no alternative, doesn't that mean they'd starve? Are you saying death by starvation is preferable to sex work?
    - HappyDreamer 8y ago
      I'm wondering if you and the others who replied just below are serious or if you're trolling? The charities should instead hire people who aren't predators. People who don't take advantage of the vulnerable people at the catastrophe site. What if you had a child or sister, who got kidnapped. Then the police came, and said to your child or sister: "Ok, we'll rescue you, if we can have sex with you." Based on your reasoning, this would be fine to do, to your child or sister. Because if it wasn't for those hero policemen, she'd remain kidnapped, right. However, the make-sense approach, is to fire those policemen and instead hire others, who took the job because they want to help victims and society, rather than wanting power so they could abuse vulnerable people.
fuzz4lyfe 8y ago
The huge power imbalance involved is what makes that gross to me. I may be wrong I don't imagine Haitian prostitutes to have many other options, especially during a disaster.
- meruru 8y ago
  Do you also refuse to have your trash taken due to the power imbalance between the garbage men and their employer? I don't imagine garbage men have many other options.
  - fuzz4lyfe 8y ago
    My garbage man lives in the same country as me and had similar opportunities. For years my garbage man made much more than I did, only in the last few years have I made up the difference. So no.
pure-awesome 8y ago
> I'm wondering if you and the others who replied just below are serious or if you're trolling? No-one here is trolling - this is part of a contentious philosophical debate. It does not help to assume bad faith on the part of your opponents: there are strong points on both sides of the argument, and it is a difficult issue. To sum up what I understand the reasoning to be: On the one hand, there's the basic "utilitarian" approach. Essentially, regardless of moral values or rules, in which instance would more people end up better off? Between sex with people you don't really want to, and death, if you prefer the former, then the world in which you end up doing so is the preferred world. Taking your example, if the alternative to exploitative policemen were NO policemen, then she'd just end up dead - I'd rather someone were exploited than dead (though obviously I'd also prefer they weren't exploited at all). Now, on the other hand, there is your argument, well-formulated, that exploiting someone in this way is a pretty crappy thing to do, to put it mildly. You are correct - the approach we would take is to fire policemen who would do such a thing, and instead aim to hire to those that would do their job properly without exploiting people. We have the ability to do so - there are enough people who are good enough and willing enough to become policemen that we are able to make this decision, so we definitely should. Now, there are some cases where we don't necessarily have this alternative option. Let's take unwilling prostitutes. I think we can agree that it's terrible that there are people who have to have sex in order to get enough money to live. Now, let's say there's someone near the prostitute, with enough money to help her out of her plight, you feel he should give money to her, but he doesn't, and he walks on. How harshly do you judge him? Now, there's a second person with enough money to help her, he instead decides to pay her to sleep with him. Do you judge him more harshly than the first? Why? She's ended up in an overall better situation after her interaction with the second man, than the first, even if her situation overall is still terrible. Yes, it would be better if the second man gave her the money and went on his way, just as it would be better if the first man did so, but in the absence of being able to convince either of them of doing so, do we win anything by chastising the second man's action as awful? The prostitute is making a choice between unwanted sex, and death, a bad choice to be sure - but taking away that choice is equivalent to forcing upon her the choice of death. > I'm sure if it was during their own free time, possibly while not in a disaster stricken place it would likely be less of a big deal. So there is a question of why this would be the case? What is the difference? Now, of course, I don't feel that those taking part in the disaster relief are absolved. It doesn't sit right with me either, and I also feel like it would be better to have people there who were purer in their intentions. And I would take the fact that they did this as evidence that they might not be as moral in other aspects of their life / job. The point is - I think that this is a difficult moral question, and just because your moral intuition is strongly repulsed by a certain action does not necessarily mean to say that it is wrong (though it very well might be) - our moral intuition is largely shaped by our society. People in other societies, as well as people from older times in our own societies, judge actions very differently to the way we do today, yet their moral intuitions feel just as strongly. I think deciding on what is Good requires a combination of feeling and logical reasoning, as well as some discussion and debate. I'm not suggesting that you should change your opinion regarding this specific instance, or even this general moral value. All I'm saying is that others might have valid reasons for believing the things they do, with as much consideration as you have for the well-being of those under discussion, and that you shouldn't necessarily dismiss the viewpoints of others as trolling just because they don't align with your intuition or viewpoint. On the other hand, sometimes you should, because sometimes people really are trolling. And sometimes people are just so wrong you can't help them. I'll concede that it can be difficult to decide. But more often than they should, people dismiss others as evil, or their viewpoints as stupid, without giving sufficient consideration to whether they have legitimate, non-strawman, non-selfish reasons for holding them.

meruru 8y ago

>paying one of those people for sex seems just ya know...like a bit of a shitty thing to do. Why? There's nothing wrong with sex work, it's just a job. Would it be shitty to pay them to wash your car or whatever?

mLuby 8y ago
The "it's just a job" rationale falls apart when there's no alternative to having that job. When you have no other option, you'll say yes no matter what, so you have no agency and can easily be exploited. It's likely the case that these women had no real option for survival, which is why the third world recent disaster part is an important detail, and why the comparison to Vegas/Amsterdam isn't super accurate. It would be shitty to drive from your city (where a car wash is $10) to the neighboring tent city and give them only $1 to wash your car, because you know they won't have another option.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  Sticking to the car washing analog: If you decide to stay local and pay $10 for a car wash so you can feel better about yourself, realize that you haven't improved the lot of the person in the tent city at all. They would probably be better off if you'd "exploited" them...
- meruru 8y ago
  None of that makes sense to me. Sure it sucks to be in such a shitty place that you just have to take whatever pays, but that's the reality for a lot of people and I don't see anyone being all morally outraged at people who hire construction workers or whatever. It's like you're saying that having sex is so terribly bad that it's better to let people starve instead, but that's a bizarre idea considering the fact that sex actually feels really good. What would you do in the car washing example? Drive back to your city and pay $10 because paying someone who's willing to do it for $1 is exploitative? Surely the people doing it for $1 would rather do it for $1 than not do it for $0.
- hnzix 8y ago
  > The "it's just a job" rationale falls apart when there's no alternative to having that job. If there's no alternative, doesn't that mean they'd starve? Are you saying death by starvation is preferable to sex work?
  - HappyDreamer 8y ago
    I'm wondering if you and the others who replied just below are serious or if you're trolling? The charities should instead hire people who aren't predators. People who don't take advantage of the vulnerable people at the catastrophe site. What if you had a child or sister, who got kidnapped. Then the police came, and said to your child or sister: "Ok, we'll rescue you, if we can have sex with you." Based on your reasoning, this would be fine to do, to your child or sister. Because if it wasn't for those hero policemen, she'd remain kidnapped, right. However, the make-sense approach, is to fire those policemen and instead hire others, who took the job because they want to help victims and society, rather than wanting power so they could abuse vulnerable people.

fuzz4lyfe 8y ago

The huge power imbalance involved is what makes that gross to me. I may be wrong I don't imagine Haitian prostitutes to have many other options, especially during a disaster.

meruru 8y ago
Do you also refuse to have your trash taken due to the power imbalance between the garbage men and their employer? I don't imagine garbage men have many other options.
- fuzz4lyfe 8y ago
  My garbage man lives in the same country as me and had similar opportunities. For years my garbage man made much more than I did, only in the last few years have I made up the difference. So no.

pure-awesome 8y ago

> I'm wondering if you and the others who replied just below are serious or if you're trolling? No-one here is trolling - this is part of a contentious philosophical debate. It does not help to assume bad faith on the part of your opponents: there are strong points on both sides of the argument, and it is a difficult issue. To sum up what I understand the reasoning to be: On the one hand, there's the basic "utilitarian" approach. Essentially, regardless of moral values or rules, in which instance would more people end up better off? Between sex with people you don't really want to, and death, if you prefer the former, then the world in which you end up doing so is the preferred world. Taking your example, if the alternative to exploitative policemen were NO policemen, then she'd just end up dead - I'd rather someone were exploited than dead (though obviously I'd also prefer they weren't exploited at all). Now, on the other hand, there is your argument, well-formulated, that exploiting someone in this way is a pretty crappy thing to do, to put it mildly. You are correct - the approach we would take is to fire policemen who would do such a thing, and instead aim to hire to those that would do their job properly without exploiting people. We have the ability to do so - there are enough people who are good enough and willing enough to become policemen that we are able to make this decision, so we definitely should. Now, there are some cases where we don't necessarily have this alternative option. Let's take unwilling prostitutes. I think we can agree that it's terrible that there are people who have to have sex in order to get enough money to live. Now, let's say there's someone near the prostitute, with enough money to help her out of her plight, you feel he should give money to her, but he doesn't, and he walks on. How harshly do you judge him? Now, there's a second person with enough money to help her, he instead decides to pay her to sleep with him. Do you judge him more harshly than the first? Why? She's ended up in an overall better situation after her interaction with the second man, than the first, even if her situation overall is still terrible. Yes, it would be better if the second man gave her the money and went on his way, just as it would be better if the first man did so, but in the absence of being able to convince either of them of doing so, do we win anything by chastising the second man's action as awful? The prostitute is making a choice between unwanted sex, and death, a bad choice to be sure - but taking away that choice is equivalent to forcing upon her the choice of death. > I'm sure if it was during their own free time, possibly while not in a disaster stricken place it would likely be less of a big deal. So there is a question of why this would be the case? What is the difference? Now, of course, I don't feel that those taking part in the disaster relief are absolved. It doesn't sit right with me either, and I also feel like it would be better to have people there who were purer in their intentions. And I would take the fact that they did this as evidence that they might not be as moral in other aspects of their life / job. The point is - I think that this is a difficult moral question, and just because your moral intuition is strongly repulsed by a certain action does not necessarily mean to say that it is wrong (though it very well might be) - our moral intuition is largely shaped by our society. People in other societies, as well as people from older times in our own societies, judge actions very differently to the way we do today, yet their moral intuitions feel just as strongly. I think deciding on what is Good requires a combination of feeling and logical reasoning, as well as some discussion and debate. I'm not suggesting that you should change your opinion regarding this specific instance, or even this general moral value. All I'm saying is that others might have valid reasons for believing the things they do, with as much consideration as you have for the well-being of those under discussion, and that you shouldn't necessarily dismiss the viewpoints of others as trolling just because they don't align with your intuition or viewpoint. On the other hand, sometimes you should, because sometimes people really are trolling. And sometimes people are just so wrong you can't help them. I'll concede that it can be difficult to decide. But more often than they should, people dismiss others as evil, or their viewpoints as stupid, without giving sufficient consideration to whether they have legitimate, non-strawman, non-selfish reasons for holding them.