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If your geniune goal is to protect sex workers, you would not do so by working on general labor rights, because those rights do not apply to sex workers. If yo

If your geniune goal is to protect sex workers, you would not do so by working on general labor rights, because those rights do not apply to sex workers. If you want the government to protect sex workers you, almost by definition, need to make sex work legal. In reality, you might not need to go that far. The effectivness immigration policy of sancuary cities and safe harbor laws for reporting drug overdoses show that it is possibly to provide services (including law enforcement) to criminals; but building and maintaing the nessesary trust with the community is very difficult.

dx87 7y ago
Legalising it can also have unintended side effects. When prostitution is legalised, the demand often outstrips the supply, leading to an increase in human trafficking. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065
- roenxi 7y ago
  Aha, I've seen that study on Hacker News before and I wrote a variant of the following observation: A charitable read of that paper, particularly p. 25, would suggest that trafficking dropped from 19,740 cases to 12,350 cases when prostitution was liberalised. I've done enough statistics to say that I don't think the paper conclusively shows evidence of a problem; particularly given how hard it must be to gather data on illegal things. Need more rigour to be used for this sort of discussion although it does show that there is a risk to be considered.
- henrikschroder 7y ago
  I'm generally in the liberal camp on this, and that legalization/decriminalization is the way to go, and that you have to listen to actual sex workers and ask them what they want. But this argument is the strongest I've seen for the opposing view. It basically says that legalization/decriminalization does make things better for existing sex workers, but since it increases trafficking, the whole thing is net negative, since a lot of people are now made to suffer to supply this new market. The best defense I have against that is that then you haven't enforced the legal landscape properly. It should be possible for local police to protect legal sex workers and treat them with dignity and respect, and crack down hard on trafficking. But I also realize how naive that makes me sound.
  - detcader 7y ago
    Can we really just outright claim that all sex workers think the same way? Does this work for any other group I want? Or could it be severely infantilizing? And it's just not true: https://sarahditum.com/2014/02/24/who-do-you-listen-to/ https://sarahditum.com/2014/02/24/who-do-you-listen-to/
    - rndgermandude 7y ago
      Nobody here claimed that all sex workers think the same.
      - detcader 7y ago
        > you have to listen to actual sex workers and ask them what they want. This is what was I was responding to. The article I linked talks more on this sentiment, which generally ends up doing the same as Amazon warehouse workers chiming in on Twitter about how much they love their jobs: defending exploitation by appealing to the convenient ideologies of individuals.
        rndgermandude 7y ago
        >Can we really just outright claim that all sex workers think the same way? And this is what I responded to. Also a) implying that prostitution is exploitation per se and b) implying every sex worker who said something positive about their work is a somehow rewarded astroturf shill is at the very least problematic. There are happy sex workers, there are unhappy sex workers (who still do it with the same level of voluntary participation as a "data entry specialist" in some cubicle or a worker gutting fish in a factory do their jobs; to make ends meet) and there are exploited/coerced/forced sex workers. The latter is a problem and a big one, and there were and are many proposed solutions to tackle it, and nobody found a really well working one yet, but putting those victims in a spot where they themselves are criminals is something that I would think cannot be helpful.
        deleted 7y ago
- dcolkitt 7y ago
  > When prostitution is legalised, the demand often outstrips the supply, leading to an increase in human trafficking. This line of reasoning makes very little sense to me. Let's just consider another profession. It's pretty undeniable the demand for skilled software engineers currently outstrips the supply. Especially for certain in-demand specialists. Yet we don't see machine learning PhDs being kidnapped and enslaved to work in a dank basement tuning Netflix's recommendation algorithm for hours on end with Reed Hastings and his goons threatening to kill their families. The simpler solution is for Netflix to just pay enough money to attract qualified people for the job. Every single other market in the world has a simple mechanism to deal with the scenario where demand outstrips supply. And that is simply to let prices rises to the point where the two reach equilibrium. There's absolutely zero reason why the market for prostitution should be any different. To the extent that it isn't it's only because law enforcement either is incapable of or refuses to investigate the complaints of crimes committed against sex workers.
  - Mathnerd314 7y ago
    There are some really shady things going on with H1B's; maybe kidnapping isn't the right term, but the choice is between working pretty terrible conditions and getting deported. The simple supply/demand argument you see in economics class works in very few cases that feature in internet debates. It works well on eBay when you're selling a used iPhone, but not on labor, healthcare, or housing as those markets are all heavily regulated in comparison.
rndgermandude 7y ago
Prostitution is legal around here for a while so general labor laws apply as well as some special ones, and e.g. the ver.di labor union (largest one representing workers in all "service" occupations, with about 2 million members) since then allowed prostitutes to join their union and lobbies on behalf of all sex workers, as well as providing members a wide array of legal services and representation in work and social matters and a lot of advisory/informational services (tho few sex workers actually become members due to a plethora of reasons). The decriminalization actually helped weed out most of the small "street pimps" and violent or non-paying Johns/Janes are now a lot more regularly reported and prosecuted, especially since prostitutes can now actually go to the police without fear of being charged for prostitution. Legal prostitution also means brothels are now registered as legal businesses a lot more often, which in turn means they have to follow health and safety regulations and are subject to inspections. Before, the state only ever could raid a brothel (illegal by definition) and shut it down, at which point it often popped up again in some new place. This also means brothel operators can invest in their properties, thereby usually improving the physical working conditions as well. But admittedly it hardly put a dent into the larger criminal enterprises which have an entire "supply chain" incl human trafficking and (illegal) brothels with sex slaves. Those criminal organizations just continued as usual, maybe even profiting from generally increased demand in prostitution now that it is legal, keeping their enslaved people in check with fear and outright violence, but are helped by trafficked sex workers nowadays originating from non-EU states which means those people would have to worry about deportation (aside from violent retribution by the criminal enterprises) if they went to the police. Now that the state has freed up some resources it previously spent on prosecuting sex workers and their customers, I'd like to see those resources go towards fighting those larger criminal enterprises, but that didn't really happen yet as far as I can tell. There have been some high profile busts, but not more than it used to be.
- e12e 7y ago
  > Prostitution is legal around here for a while so general labor laws apply (...) Like protection from unwanted and unsolicited sexual attention in the work space? It's something that's pretty common in labour protections - but also highlights how prostitution is different from other forms of "wage slavery".

dx87 7y ago

Legalising it can also have unintended side effects. When prostitution is legalised, the demand often outstrips the supply, leading to an increase in human trafficking. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065

roenxi 7y ago
Aha, I've seen that study on Hacker News before and I wrote a variant of the following observation: A charitable read of that paper, particularly p. 25, would suggest that trafficking dropped from 19,740 cases to 12,350 cases when prostitution was liberalised. I've done enough statistics to say that I don't think the paper conclusively shows evidence of a problem; particularly given how hard it must be to gather data on illegal things. Need more rigour to be used for this sort of discussion although it does show that there is a risk to be considered.
henrikschroder 7y ago
I'm generally in the liberal camp on this, and that legalization/decriminalization is the way to go, and that you have to listen to actual sex workers and ask them what they want. But this argument is the strongest I've seen for the opposing view. It basically says that legalization/decriminalization does make things better for existing sex workers, but since it increases trafficking, the whole thing is net negative, since a lot of people are now made to suffer to supply this new market. The best defense I have against that is that then you haven't enforced the legal landscape properly. It should be possible for local police to protect legal sex workers and treat them with dignity and respect, and crack down hard on trafficking. But I also realize how naive that makes me sound.
- detcader 7y ago
  Can we really just outright claim that all sex workers think the same way? Does this work for any other group I want? Or could it be severely infantilizing? And it's just not true: https://sarahditum.com/2014/02/24/who-do-you-listen-to/ https://sarahditum.com/2014/02/24/who-do-you-listen-to/
  - rndgermandude 7y ago
    Nobody here claimed that all sex workers think the same.
    - detcader 7y ago
      > you have to listen to actual sex workers and ask them what they want. This is what was I was responding to. The article I linked talks more on this sentiment, which generally ends up doing the same as Amazon warehouse workers chiming in on Twitter about how much they love their jobs: defending exploitation by appealing to the convenient ideologies of individuals.
      - rndgermandude 7y ago
        >Can we really just outright claim that all sex workers think the same way? And this is what I responded to. Also a) implying that prostitution is exploitation per se and b) implying every sex worker who said something positive about their work is a somehow rewarded astroturf shill is at the very least problematic. There are happy sex workers, there are unhappy sex workers (who still do it with the same level of voluntary participation as a "data entry specialist" in some cubicle or a worker gutting fish in a factory do their jobs; to make ends meet) and there are exploited/coerced/forced sex workers. The latter is a problem and a big one, and there were and are many proposed solutions to tackle it, and nobody found a really well working one yet, but putting those victims in a spot where they themselves are criminals is something that I would think cannot be helpful.
        deleted 7y ago
dcolkitt 7y ago
> When prostitution is legalised, the demand often outstrips the supply, leading to an increase in human trafficking. This line of reasoning makes very little sense to me. Let's just consider another profession. It's pretty undeniable the demand for skilled software engineers currently outstrips the supply. Especially for certain in-demand specialists. Yet we don't see machine learning PhDs being kidnapped and enslaved to work in a dank basement tuning Netflix's recommendation algorithm for hours on end with Reed Hastings and his goons threatening to kill their families. The simpler solution is for Netflix to just pay enough money to attract qualified people for the job. Every single other market in the world has a simple mechanism to deal with the scenario where demand outstrips supply. And that is simply to let prices rises to the point where the two reach equilibrium. There's absolutely zero reason why the market for prostitution should be any different. To the extent that it isn't it's only because law enforcement either is incapable of or refuses to investigate the complaints of crimes committed against sex workers.
- Mathnerd314 7y ago
  There are some really shady things going on with H1B's; maybe kidnapping isn't the right term, but the choice is between working pretty terrible conditions and getting deported. The simple supply/demand argument you see in economics class works in very few cases that feature in internet debates. It works well on eBay when you're selling a used iPhone, but not on labor, healthcare, or housing as those markets are all heavily regulated in comparison.

rndgermandude 7y ago

Prostitution is legal around here for a while so general labor laws apply as well as some special ones, and e.g. the ver.di labor union (largest one representing workers in all "service" occupations, with about 2 million members) since then allowed prostitutes to join their union and lobbies on behalf of all sex workers, as well as providing members a wide array of legal services and representation in work and social matters and a lot of advisory/informational services (tho few sex workers actually become members due to a plethora of reasons). The decriminalization actually helped weed out most of the small "street pimps" and violent or non-paying Johns/Janes are now a lot more regularly reported and prosecuted, especially since prostitutes can now actually go to the police without fear of being charged for prostitution. Legal prostitution also means brothels are now registered as legal businesses a lot more often, which in turn means they have to follow health and safety regulations and are subject to inspections. Before, the state only ever could raid a brothel (illegal by definition) and shut it down, at which point it often popped up again in some new place. This also means brothel operators can invest in their properties, thereby usually improving the physical working conditions as well. But admittedly it hardly put a dent into the larger criminal enterprises which have an entire "supply chain" incl human trafficking and (illegal) brothels with sex slaves. Those criminal organizations just continued as usual, maybe even profiting from generally increased demand in prostitution now that it is legal, keeping their enslaved people in check with fear and outright violence, but are helped by trafficked sex workers nowadays originating from non-EU states which means those people would have to worry about deportation (aside from violent retribution by the criminal enterprises) if they went to the police. Now that the state has freed up some resources it previously spent on prosecuting sex workers and their customers, I'd like to see those resources go towards fighting those larger criminal enterprises, but that didn't really happen yet as far as I can tell. There have been some high profile busts, but not more than it used to be.

e12e 7y ago
> Prostitution is legal around here for a while so general labor laws apply (...) Like protection from unwanted and unsolicited sexual attention in the work space? It's something that's pretty common in labour protections - but also highlights how prostitution is different from other forms of "wage slavery".