9 ms·

If you consider this to be exploiting the consumer then this is a good example for the textbooks of how, in a free market, there has to be some regulation to pr

If you consider this to be exploiting the consumer then this is a good example for the textbooks of how, in a free market, there has to be some regulation to prevent exploitation of those at the edges of society. It’s exactly the same argument for laws against the most vulnerable types of sex work, or selling body organs donated by the living. Without those laws, those who are most desperate will be able to act in desperation, to someone else’s benefit, with society doing nothing to stand in the way. It’s probably time ad-tech was re calibrated on this spectrum before we race to the exploitative-bottom there as well, and build a shopping mall that we don’t want on the open common land that we do.

sneak 7y ago
It’s not exploitation if adults, without coercion, agree to it of their own free will. It’s no one’s place to tell them what they aren’t allowed to do with their bodies or their lives (provided it’s not harming anyone else), simply because you wouldn’t make the same choice or don’t agree with it. This is what self-ownership is about. To try to control others in this way is deeply immoral.
- acollins1331 7y ago
  Sorry to inform you but the world isnt as simple as your dictionary definition of exploitation.
- nickthemagicman 7y ago
  Wow you seriously think that someone selling their kidney to feed their kids is done with their own free will?
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    "free will" is sort of a red herring in this situation. the choice should probably be considered to be made under duress, because the person's children are starving. but you don't really help the person by preventing the sale; the family is still starving. if you really don't want people selling kidneys, you need to give them enough food to eat.
  - louisswiss 7y ago
    Yes. As a society, we should put measures in place to make sure no-one ever has to make this decision (easily accessible food banks, state support etc). And we should make sure anyone making that decision is aware of the alternatives (and implications) and not suffering from a medical condition which is impairing their ability to make decisions. But the fundamental choice should be down to the adult in question.
    - tjoff 7y ago
      Now should we first ensure all of those measures exist? Or just pretend they do and not do anything?
      - louisswiss 7y ago
        My original comment (above) made it pretty clear that I believe we should be doing everything we can to ensure people don't have to make these kinds of choices. But the way to do this is by adding new, better options, not by restricting existing, 'bad' options.
        tjoff 7y ago
        Sure, but that is an utopia that I hardly believe we will ever reach. No question hundreds of years in the future. Lets allow people to get exploited because it might not be a problem in the distant future? Or, work from both ends. By restricting bad options at the same time as we add, best we can, the good options.
        louisswiss 7y ago
        The whole point of the scenario was that there are no good options. We shouldn't allow people to get into a situation where they have to choose between losing a kidney and their children starving. But - if someone is in that situation - it makes absolutely no sense not to let them decide which option they find least worst. By doing that, you're only making things worse.
- madiathomas 7y ago
  People need to be protected from themselves sometimes. Just because someone is an adult, doesn’t mean they will always make correct decisions. Plus, you are never sure if they are doing it without being coerced and silenced at the same time by some powerful mafia.
  - sneak 7y ago
    > Just because someone is an adult, doesn’t mean they will always make correct decisions. It is impossible for you to substitute your definition of correct for another person’s own when it comes to their body and their life without denying them agency and declaring yourself their superior, and in the process violating their rights to self-determination. If they are harming no one but themselves, you have no moral basis to deny them their freedom to do so, unless you deem yourself competent to be their parent or guardian simply on the basis of that single decision of theirs, which is not reasonable by any stretch of the imagination. > People need to be protected from themselves sometimes. The only protection that most people want is protection from people who think this way about their lives, myself included.
    - madiathomas 7y ago
      That’s why society as a whole makes that decision about what they consider correct and what they consider incorrect through laws and ethical standards. Unless you are in a dictatorship, laws and ethical standards are representative of the majority.
      - sneak 7y ago
        “Society as a whole” cannot decide anything, as “society” is an abstraction, and a leaky one at that. If an individual can’t decide for another, no assemblage of individuals can legitimately claim that authority either. I certainly don’t want to live in a place where it takes hundreds of years for the majority to finally decide that, for example, racial minorities really do deserve equal protection under the law (or a hundred years to reach the point where it is not legal to enslave them). Surely you see the problem.
- mjburgess 7y ago
  Person A1 has value X, Person A2 has value X Person A1 and A2 are compelled by circumstance to compete. The nature of this competition forces A1/A2 to prioritize their values according to the cost to retain them (eg., suppose X = privacy in living quarters, and retaining X costs $100/day) The impact of X being unaffordable is equal on A1/A2, ie., equally traumatic. But A1 is more able to compete than A2 (ie., retain their values) due, eg., to having more money. Are we saying that A2 is free when she "decides" that $100/day is too expensive? And therefore has to abandon X (eg., dignity)? Should we instead, rather, regard these circumstances suspiciously. Circumstances in which people are compelled to throw-away their values and race-to-the-bottom. If A1/A2 never enters these circumstances they both retain X, if they do, only one does. Do we wish for dignity, privacy, (...) to be so circumstantial? We can regulate to prevent this (and routinely do, very successfully) -- if society bares additional costs for its members retaining X (eg., via taxation to provide welfare/housing), then so be it. Circumstances routinely bring people into competition where success requires abandoning values such that all participants would have preferred never to have been in that competition -- but when in it, abandon them. The libertarian view of the mind is deeply naive -- it takes behaviour as always based on desire. We are more complex: we endure the trauma of not being free to act on our preferences when circumstances overwhelmingly incentivise behaviour contrary to those. Freedom is not mere action, it is acting according to our desires. Addiction is a paradigm case, but extreme competition for resources is of the same kind: we sincerely wish not to do what we are compelled to do by external incentives that destroy our sense of self, will, freedom.
  - sneak 7y ago
    > Circumstances in which people are compelled to throw-away their values and race-to-the-bottom. I don’t think anyone is being compelled to do anything here.
    - mjburgess 7y ago
      That's because you have a peculiar (and I think) false view of psychology. Any person can be made into a slave through "abusive freedom": overwhelming financial incentives (eg., blow up this building and ill give your very poor family $1mil); overwhelming social incentives (eg., take drugs or you wont be our friend); overwhelming constraints; ... A person is a deeply malleable thing and circumstances change people, they traumatise and abuse them. A person can be arbitrarily reduced to an arbitrarily murderous/desperate/slavish state. The libertarian notion of freedom mystifies this and prevents us from recognising it. We need to distinguish between those cases where people change through learning, growth, development (ie., value their X differently due to learning more); and those cases were people are caused to abandon freedom-preserving, dignity-preserving, life-preserving values. We oughtnt regard all behaviour as "expression of true desire", and all changes to what we desire as being of the same kind. When the very poor are provided with an overwhelming incentive to abandon their dignity (ie., here, essnetially free housing) we should regard the effects of these incentives as harming those people. And that harm isn't theoretical: it is abusive to live without privacy; it is traumatising. That people do it does not mean they desire to, it does not mean they want to. This is a vicious misunderstanding of human psychology. People are trapped in circumstances of abuse "freely" and routinely. So much for that notion of freedom.
- MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
  > It’s not exploitation if adults, without coercion, agree to it of their own free will. This is the only moral stance to take. It is amazing how people, with totally incomplete information and no matching life experience, decide they can decide for others. Popular example: payday loans are bad. Well sometimes they are the last line of defense between having a working car and being able to go to work vs loosing everything. Just ask them, people may have better reasons than you can imagine. Its the same kind of folks who think that Facebook should be outlawed/heavily regulated because it caused all the ills in the world ("Trump"). No it didn't, stop thinking of other people as gullible idiots and yourself as the one with all the smart ideas.
  - learnstats2 7y ago
    Payday loans are bad - a proper "democracy" would provide fair protections for people who are at risk of losing everything. Payday loans exist because people in vulnerable situations are not protected as they should be.
    - sokoloff 7y ago
      Abortions are “bad”. Chemotherapy is “bad”. Payday loans are “bad”. In many cases, the “bad” is less bad than the alternative; I’m opposed to restrictions on freedom of informed choice in general. I would love for the rate of all three of those things to be reduced to zero by effective interventions upstream. Until they are though, I want all of those things to be available options.
      - chr1 7y ago
        Payday loans are a bit different, because someone signs a bad contract by mistake, and then government has to use force to ensure the contract is maintained. Banning payday loans seems like a noble thing to many people, but that simply ignores the real question, which is: what to do if someone signs a stupid contract and then wants to annulate it.
      - learnstats2 7y ago
        I'm saying that payday loans are bad because there is a better alternative today, yes. We could replace payday loans overnight if the government provided decent welfare. So, that's what we should do. It seems like you agree, so hopefully you are contributing to the political/democratic will to do this. That clearly doesn't apply to the other two cases. I also disagree that "interventions" are necessarily preferable.
- caseymarquis 7y ago
  Adhering to axiomatic principles like self-ownership to the degree that you can justify scenarios like 'an addict legally selling their kidney' is a mistake. It's the equivalent of trying to stick to Newton's laws to explain the universe: they work great right up until there's a contradiction. I'm all for decriminalization of drugs and sex work, but another first principle is that society should protect the vulnerable. Sometimes, regulation will be the best tool for that. Other times, a deregulated market will be the best tool. Unfortunately, the world is complex. While our principles can guide us, each situation needs to be considered individually and the right set of tools needs to be selected after careful consideration.
  - CryptoPunk 7y ago
    No court would consider the exchange you describe as consensual. The addict wouldn't be judged as having the capacity to provide consent. These issues should be decided by courts, after deliberating on the facts of individual cases, and not narratives that spread throughout the public due to the virality of simplistic generalizations that appeal to emotions.
  - sneak 7y ago
    > Adhering to axiomatic principles like self-ownership to the degree that you can justify scenarios like 'an addict legally selling their kidney' is a mistake. It's the equivalent of trying to stick to Newton's laws to explain the universe: they work great right up until there's a contradiction. That is precisely when it's most needed! There is no entity on Earth that can make any better claim to authority over a person's kidney than the owner of that kidney. The fact that you call them an "addict" as a way to delegitimize their decisions is an appeal to emotion; but ultimately every person is the sole determining authority on their own kidneys, without exception. This is not something that the opinions of others have any bearing on. In fact, "in cases of addiction" is a good canary in this coal mine: it's frequently trotted out by people who think that circumstances—any circumstances—are legitimate reasons to override another person's self-determination about their own physical person or choices about which that harm no other party, in an appeal to "common sense". It's not! There isn’t a contradiction in an addict deciding to destroy themselves in continuing an addiction, and this decision is no more or less legitimately made than an addict deciding to cease their addiction. In all cases it is theirs alone to make. Many of my friends have made each choice. It is always theirs to make, and neither is correct and neither is incorrect—unless it is forced upon them against their will! It’s not a matter of “vulnerable”, or “decriminalization”, or “regulation”, or of markets. It is the basic philosophical premise that you don’t get to make these decisions for others unless you are willing to declare yourself their master and dominate them, using some handwaving excuse (e.g. "addiction") as justification for substituting your wishes for theirs—over their own body or choices. The fact that you may have widespread opinion supporting “people shouldn’t get addicted to drugs and destroy themselves” is irrelevant. No person can legitimately claim this power over another in any circumstance, especially and most importantly the extreme ones. Self-destruction of any kind, but, to use an example, euthanasia, is not only legitimate in the case of terminal illness, or when loved ones agree and empathize with it. It is every person's own right to determine what happens physically to their own body, at all times and in all circumstances. You’re using a lot of words and emotional context to dodge this plain and simple (and perhaps inconvenient) fact; the truth is, unfortunately, that such arguments have no moral basis, and are fundamentally immoral in that they violate consent. Our bodies are our own to destroy and mutilate in any way we see fit. To use force to impose your will over top of their own and prohibit someone from exercising that basic right of self-determination is the blackest of crimes against an adult human being; it is logically equivalent to raping them, in my view of the violation of consent that it opts to impose upon them. Please abandon this way of thinking, that you (or anyone else, or "society", or "government") are entitled to choices over the body of another person—for any reason, including and especially the ones you find disgusting, destructive, distasteful, or repugnant.
colechristensen 7y ago
Money and debt have a weird way of distancing people from morals often entirely.
jdjdid7282 7y ago
I realize this is nitpicking since you were just reaching for examples to list, but a plethora of research and even the WHO has suggested that criminalizing sex work primarily just makes things even more dangerous for sex workers. This is part of what makes the efforts by law enforcement to rebrand their battle against prostitution as a battle against "human trafficking" especially insidious. Regardless of how a trafficked human got where they are, making sex work illegal only makes it harder for those workers to practice their work safely. A perfect example of this is whatever that American law was that made Backpage take down what was effectively their adult services section, there was a fairly substantial outcry at the time from members of the 'industry' because this had been a tool that allowed at least some minimal way to vet clients.
nickpp 7y ago
Regulating freely consented exchanges _you_ don't like out of existence will not actually make them disappear, just push them underground, out of society's eye and where the REAL exploitation takes place. That's why adults actually working in those domains militate for legalization and that's why totalitarian societies require so much surveillance just to avoid collapse. Because people WILL do the deals they need to do to survive or get ahead. Your laws will just provide the reason to catch and incarcerate them afterwards. See the marijuana legalization mess.
- gorgoiler 7y ago
  I think it’s ok to separate what one approves of or doesn’t approve of, from a separate axis of looking at what causes objective harm and misery to people. Some of the hardest policy topics involve accepting things one finds distasteful because there is a moral ground for people being allowed to do what they want, and vice versa. Your point on cannabis is certainly an excellent example of how to get policy wrong and create a huge net harm to society, especially in the US where late night TV hosts can joke about getting high, while 8 million others were arrested and harassed for possession over the last decade. In my experience, from what I’ve learned from my friends who work with rough sleepers, all sex work is exploitative of those in desperation to some extent. It’s a spectrum that has at one end people trying to make ends meet, and at the other, slavery and trafficking. I know of attempts to unionize and protect some kinds of sex work, but I don’t know if that represents the majority or a vocal and comparatively unexploited minority. It’s never the most exploited that you see in a debate arguing for complete legalization. It’s easy to see both sides of an argument. It’s difficult and important to focus on where harm is being done, and to do something about that. For something with as rocky a history as prohibition has, I’m in favor of the arguments for it when it comes to sex work, and to my original point — to try to drag this back on topic! — it’s an example of required action to step in where the free market fails to protect the most vulnerable from harm. Edit: and it’s stories like this $1 voyeur hotel that really add positively to thought on the subject. A really good non-tech HN submission, imho.
  - mirajshah 7y ago
    Your friends are probably not the best source on the matter. Go on YouTube and listen to interviews with actual sex workers in places where it is institutionalized (e.g. Amsterdam, New Zealand). There are plenty of Vice documentaries e.g. https://youtu.be/Q8_UGthO3CM https://youtu.be/Q8_UGthO3CM
balfirevic 7y ago
> It’s exactly the same argument for laws against the most vulnerable types of sex work, or selling body organs donated by the living. So, invalid? Selling organs is such a curious example because people present it thinking it's a completely clear-cut case. But it's nowhere close: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_trade#Ethical_debate_for_organ_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_trade#Ethical_debate_for... https://www.npr.org/2008/05/21/90632108/should-we-legalize-the-market-for-human-organs?t=1574603870269 https://www.npr.org/2008/05/21/90632108/should-we-legalize-t... Please note that you don't have to be persuaded that organ trade can be good, just understand that it's very far from obviously and always being bad.
- gorgoiler 7y ago
  Thank you for the counter-point. I can see how it’s easy to come from the view that it is always bad. It certainly puts Hotel Voyeur into perspective, as an issue for society to spend its finite energy on tackling.
LudwigNagasena 7y ago
We should tell Kardashians and all other reality shows stars that they are being exploited!
timwaagh 7y ago
If anything he's helping poor people to be able to afford traveling. I do not understand the comparison.
CryptoPunk 7y ago
How about let courts decide if it's not genuine consent, after carefully deliberating on the facts of the case, and not social activists having knee-jerk emotional reactions based on a very low resolution view of the situation - often based only on a headline. >>Without those laws, those who are most desperate will be able to act in desperation, to someone else’s benefit, with society doing nothing to stand in the way. A law prohibiting it doesn't solve the problem of them being desperate. It only takes away an option that they perceived as the best one available to them, all so that you can be sure no one is profiting from an exchange that exposes the inequality that exists in the world.
technoplato 7y ago
What if you turn this around though and rather than the hotel owner take 100% of the profit (assuredly from ads as the article mentions), create a fungible digital token that tenants “earn” when staying at the hotel and stake interest against speculation in the token, therefore sharing the profit with those that are part of generating it - the actors so to speak. Of course this doesn’t apply to sex trade but I’m just curious on picking your brain here. Would love a bit of engagement into the idea rather than just downvotes. Specifically into the idea of how to create mechanisms by which the free market could produce ethical outcomes at least moreso than current practices.
antihero 7y ago
Weird, I had a totally different take and thought it was more of an exciting, fun concept with aspects of exhibitionism etc.

sneak 7y ago

It’s not exploitation if adults, without coercion, agree to it of their own free will. It’s no one’s place to tell them what they aren’t allowed to do with their bodies or their lives (provided it’s not harming anyone else), simply because you wouldn’t make the same choice or don’t agree with it. This is what self-ownership is about. To try to control others in this way is deeply immoral.

acollins1331 7y ago
Sorry to inform you but the world isnt as simple as your dictionary definition of exploitation.
nickthemagicman 7y ago
Wow you seriously think that someone selling their kidney to feed their kids is done with their own free will?
- leetcrew 7y ago
  "free will" is sort of a red herring in this situation. the choice should probably be considered to be made under duress, because the person's children are starving. but you don't really help the person by preventing the sale; the family is still starving. if you really don't want people selling kidneys, you need to give them enough food to eat.
- louisswiss 7y ago
  Yes. As a society, we should put measures in place to make sure no-one ever has to make this decision (easily accessible food banks, state support etc). And we should make sure anyone making that decision is aware of the alternatives (and implications) and not suffering from a medical condition which is impairing their ability to make decisions. But the fundamental choice should be down to the adult in question.
  - tjoff 7y ago
    Now should we first ensure all of those measures exist? Or just pretend they do and not do anything?
    - louisswiss 7y ago
      My original comment (above) made it pretty clear that I believe we should be doing everything we can to ensure people don't have to make these kinds of choices. But the way to do this is by adding new, better options, not by restricting existing, 'bad' options.
      - tjoff 7y ago
        Sure, but that is an utopia that I hardly believe we will ever reach. No question hundreds of years in the future. Lets allow people to get exploited because it might not be a problem in the distant future? Or, work from both ends. By restricting bad options at the same time as we add, best we can, the good options.
        louisswiss 7y ago
        The whole point of the scenario was that there are no good options. We shouldn't allow people to get into a situation where they have to choose between losing a kidney and their children starving. But - if someone is in that situation - it makes absolutely no sense not to let them decide which option they find least worst. By doing that, you're only making things worse.
madiathomas 7y ago
People need to be protected from themselves sometimes. Just because someone is an adult, doesn’t mean they will always make correct decisions. Plus, you are never sure if they are doing it without being coerced and silenced at the same time by some powerful mafia.
- sneak 7y ago
  > Just because someone is an adult, doesn’t mean they will always make correct decisions. It is impossible for you to substitute your definition of correct for another person’s own when it comes to their body and their life without denying them agency and declaring yourself their superior, and in the process violating their rights to self-determination. If they are harming no one but themselves, you have no moral basis to deny them their freedom to do so, unless you deem yourself competent to be their parent or guardian simply on the basis of that single decision of theirs, which is not reasonable by any stretch of the imagination. > People need to be protected from themselves sometimes. The only protection that most people want is protection from people who think this way about their lives, myself included.
  - madiathomas 7y ago
    That’s why society as a whole makes that decision about what they consider correct and what they consider incorrect through laws and ethical standards. Unless you are in a dictatorship, laws and ethical standards are representative of the majority.
    - sneak 7y ago
      “Society as a whole” cannot decide anything, as “society” is an abstraction, and a leaky one at that. If an individual can’t decide for another, no assemblage of individuals can legitimately claim that authority either. I certainly don’t want to live in a place where it takes hundreds of years for the majority to finally decide that, for example, racial minorities really do deserve equal protection under the law (or a hundred years to reach the point where it is not legal to enslave them). Surely you see the problem.
mjburgess 7y ago
Person A1 has value X, Person A2 has value X Person A1 and A2 are compelled by circumstance to compete. The nature of this competition forces A1/A2 to prioritize their values according to the cost to retain them (eg., suppose X = privacy in living quarters, and retaining X costs $100/day) The impact of X being unaffordable is equal on A1/A2, ie., equally traumatic. But A1 is more able to compete than A2 (ie., retain their values) due, eg., to having more money. Are we saying that A2 is free when she "decides" that $100/day is too expensive? And therefore has to abandon X (eg., dignity)? Should we instead, rather, regard these circumstances suspiciously. Circumstances in which people are compelled to throw-away their values and race-to-the-bottom. If A1/A2 never enters these circumstances they both retain X, if they do, only one does. Do we wish for dignity, privacy, (...) to be so circumstantial? We can regulate to prevent this (and routinely do, very successfully) -- if society bares additional costs for its members retaining X (eg., via taxation to provide welfare/housing), then so be it. Circumstances routinely bring people into competition where success requires abandoning values such that all participants would have preferred never to have been in that competition -- but when in it, abandon them. The libertarian view of the mind is deeply naive -- it takes behaviour as always based on desire. We are more complex: we endure the trauma of not being free to act on our preferences when circumstances overwhelmingly incentivise behaviour contrary to those. Freedom is not mere action, it is acting according to our desires. Addiction is a paradigm case, but extreme competition for resources is of the same kind: we sincerely wish not to do what we are compelled to do by external incentives that destroy our sense of self, will, freedom.
- sneak 7y ago
  > Circumstances in which people are compelled to throw-away their values and race-to-the-bottom. I don’t think anyone is being compelled to do anything here.
  - mjburgess 7y ago
    That's because you have a peculiar (and I think) false view of psychology. Any person can be made into a slave through "abusive freedom": overwhelming financial incentives (eg., blow up this building and ill give your very poor family $1mil); overwhelming social incentives (eg., take drugs or you wont be our friend); overwhelming constraints; ... A person is a deeply malleable thing and circumstances change people, they traumatise and abuse them. A person can be arbitrarily reduced to an arbitrarily murderous/desperate/slavish state. The libertarian notion of freedom mystifies this and prevents us from recognising it. We need to distinguish between those cases where people change through learning, growth, development (ie., value their X differently due to learning more); and those cases were people are caused to abandon freedom-preserving, dignity-preserving, life-preserving values. We oughtnt regard all behaviour as "expression of true desire", and all changes to what we desire as being of the same kind. When the very poor are provided with an overwhelming incentive to abandon their dignity (ie., here, essnetially free housing) we should regard the effects of these incentives as harming those people. And that harm isn't theoretical: it is abusive to live without privacy; it is traumatising. That people do it does not mean they desire to, it does not mean they want to. This is a vicious misunderstanding of human psychology. People are trapped in circumstances of abuse "freely" and routinely. So much for that notion of freedom.
MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
> It’s not exploitation if adults, without coercion, agree to it of their own free will. This is the only moral stance to take. It is amazing how people, with totally incomplete information and no matching life experience, decide they can decide for others. Popular example: payday loans are bad. Well sometimes they are the last line of defense between having a working car and being able to go to work vs loosing everything. Just ask them, people may have better reasons than you can imagine. Its the same kind of folks who think that Facebook should be outlawed/heavily regulated because it caused all the ills in the world ("Trump"). No it didn't, stop thinking of other people as gullible idiots and yourself as the one with all the smart ideas.
- learnstats2 7y ago
  Payday loans are bad - a proper "democracy" would provide fair protections for people who are at risk of losing everything. Payday loans exist because people in vulnerable situations are not protected as they should be.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    Abortions are “bad”. Chemotherapy is “bad”. Payday loans are “bad”. In many cases, the “bad” is less bad than the alternative; I’m opposed to restrictions on freedom of informed choice in general. I would love for the rate of all three of those things to be reduced to zero by effective interventions upstream. Until they are though, I want all of those things to be available options.
    - chr1 7y ago
      Payday loans are a bit different, because someone signs a bad contract by mistake, and then government has to use force to ensure the contract is maintained. Banning payday loans seems like a noble thing to many people, but that simply ignores the real question, which is: what to do if someone signs a stupid contract and then wants to annulate it.
    - learnstats2 7y ago
      I'm saying that payday loans are bad because there is a better alternative today, yes. We could replace payday loans overnight if the government provided decent welfare. So, that's what we should do. It seems like you agree, so hopefully you are contributing to the political/democratic will to do this. That clearly doesn't apply to the other two cases. I also disagree that "interventions" are necessarily preferable.
caseymarquis 7y ago
Adhering to axiomatic principles like self-ownership to the degree that you can justify scenarios like 'an addict legally selling their kidney' is a mistake. It's the equivalent of trying to stick to Newton's laws to explain the universe: they work great right up until there's a contradiction. I'm all for decriminalization of drugs and sex work, but another first principle is that society should protect the vulnerable. Sometimes, regulation will be the best tool for that. Other times, a deregulated market will be the best tool. Unfortunately, the world is complex. While our principles can guide us, each situation needs to be considered individually and the right set of tools needs to be selected after careful consideration.
- CryptoPunk 7y ago
  No court would consider the exchange you describe as consensual. The addict wouldn't be judged as having the capacity to provide consent. These issues should be decided by courts, after deliberating on the facts of individual cases, and not narratives that spread throughout the public due to the virality of simplistic generalizations that appeal to emotions.
- sneak 7y ago
  > Adhering to axiomatic principles like self-ownership to the degree that you can justify scenarios like 'an addict legally selling their kidney' is a mistake. It's the equivalent of trying to stick to Newton's laws to explain the universe: they work great right up until there's a contradiction. That is precisely when it's most needed! There is no entity on Earth that can make any better claim to authority over a person's kidney than the owner of that kidney. The fact that you call them an "addict" as a way to delegitimize their decisions is an appeal to emotion; but ultimately every person is the sole determining authority on their own kidneys, without exception. This is not something that the opinions of others have any bearing on. In fact, "in cases of addiction" is a good canary in this coal mine: it's frequently trotted out by people who think that circumstances—any circumstances—are legitimate reasons to override another person's self-determination about their own physical person or choices about which that harm no other party, in an appeal to "common sense". It's not! There isn’t a contradiction in an addict deciding to destroy themselves in continuing an addiction, and this decision is no more or less legitimately made than an addict deciding to cease their addiction. In all cases it is theirs alone to make. Many of my friends have made each choice. It is always theirs to make, and neither is correct and neither is incorrect—unless it is forced upon them against their will! It’s not a matter of “vulnerable”, or “decriminalization”, or “regulation”, or of markets. It is the basic philosophical premise that you don’t get to make these decisions for others unless you are willing to declare yourself their master and dominate them, using some handwaving excuse (e.g. "addiction") as justification for substituting your wishes for theirs—over their own body or choices. The fact that you may have widespread opinion supporting “people shouldn’t get addicted to drugs and destroy themselves” is irrelevant. No person can legitimately claim this power over another in any circumstance, especially and most importantly the extreme ones. Self-destruction of any kind, but, to use an example, euthanasia, is not only legitimate in the case of terminal illness, or when loved ones agree and empathize with it. It is every person's own right to determine what happens physically to their own body, at all times and in all circumstances. You’re using a lot of words and emotional context to dodge this plain and simple (and perhaps inconvenient) fact; the truth is, unfortunately, that such arguments have no moral basis, and are fundamentally immoral in that they violate consent. Our bodies are our own to destroy and mutilate in any way we see fit. To use force to impose your will over top of their own and prohibit someone from exercising that basic right of self-determination is the blackest of crimes against an adult human being; it is logically equivalent to raping them, in my view of the violation of consent that it opts to impose upon them. Please abandon this way of thinking, that you (or anyone else, or "society", or "government") are entitled to choices over the body of another person—for any reason, including and especially the ones you find disgusting, destructive, distasteful, or repugnant.

colechristensen 7y ago

Money and debt have a weird way of distancing people from morals often entirely.

jdjdid7282 7y ago

I realize this is nitpicking since you were just reaching for examples to list, but a plethora of research and even the WHO has suggested that criminalizing sex work primarily just makes things even more dangerous for sex workers. This is part of what makes the efforts by law enforcement to rebrand their battle against prostitution as a battle against "human trafficking" especially insidious. Regardless of how a trafficked human got where they are, making sex work illegal only makes it harder for those workers to practice their work safely. A perfect example of this is whatever that American law was that made Backpage take down what was effectively their adult services section, there was a fairly substantial outcry at the time from members of the 'industry' because this had been a tool that allowed at least some minimal way to vet clients.

nickpp 7y ago

Regulating freely consented exchanges _you_ don't like out of existence will not actually make them disappear, just push them underground, out of society's eye and where the REAL exploitation takes place. That's why adults actually working in those domains militate for legalization and that's why totalitarian societies require so much surveillance just to avoid collapse. Because people WILL do the deals they need to do to survive or get ahead. Your laws will just provide the reason to catch and incarcerate them afterwards. See the marijuana legalization mess.

gorgoiler 7y ago
I think it’s ok to separate what one approves of or doesn’t approve of, from a separate axis of looking at what causes objective harm and misery to people. Some of the hardest policy topics involve accepting things one finds distasteful because there is a moral ground for people being allowed to do what they want, and vice versa. Your point on cannabis is certainly an excellent example of how to get policy wrong and create a huge net harm to society, especially in the US where late night TV hosts can joke about getting high, while 8 million others were arrested and harassed for possession over the last decade. In my experience, from what I’ve learned from my friends who work with rough sleepers, all sex work is exploitative of those in desperation to some extent. It’s a spectrum that has at one end people trying to make ends meet, and at the other, slavery and trafficking. I know of attempts to unionize and protect some kinds of sex work, but I don’t know if that represents the majority or a vocal and comparatively unexploited minority. It’s never the most exploited that you see in a debate arguing for complete legalization. It’s easy to see both sides of an argument. It’s difficult and important to focus on where harm is being done, and to do something about that. For something with as rocky a history as prohibition has, I’m in favor of the arguments for it when it comes to sex work, and to my original point — to try to drag this back on topic! — it’s an example of required action to step in where the free market fails to protect the most vulnerable from harm. Edit: and it’s stories like this $1 voyeur hotel that really add positively to thought on the subject. A really good non-tech HN submission, imho.
- mirajshah 7y ago
  Your friends are probably not the best source on the matter. Go on YouTube and listen to interviews with actual sex workers in places where it is institutionalized (e.g. Amsterdam, New Zealand). There are plenty of Vice documentaries e.g. https://youtu.be/Q8_UGthO3CM https://youtu.be/Q8_UGthO3CM

balfirevic 7y ago

> It’s exactly the same argument for laws against the most vulnerable types of sex work, or selling body organs donated by the living. So, invalid? Selling organs is such a curious example because people present it thinking it's a completely clear-cut case. But it's nowhere close: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_trade#Ethical_debate_for_organ_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_trade#Ethical_debate_for... https://www.npr.org/2008/05/21/90632108/should-we-legalize-the-market-for-human-organs?t=1574603870269 https://www.npr.org/2008/05/21/90632108/should-we-legalize-t... Please note that you don't have to be persuaded that organ trade can be good, just understand that it's very far from obviously and always being bad.

gorgoiler 7y ago
Thank you for the counter-point. I can see how it’s easy to come from the view that it is always bad. It certainly puts Hotel Voyeur into perspective, as an issue for society to spend its finite energy on tackling.

LudwigNagasena 7y ago

We should tell Kardashians and all other reality shows stars that they are being exploited!

timwaagh 7y ago

If anything he's helping poor people to be able to afford traveling. I do not understand the comparison.

CryptoPunk 7y ago

How about let courts decide if it's not genuine consent, after carefully deliberating on the facts of the case, and not social activists having knee-jerk emotional reactions based on a very low resolution view of the situation - often based only on a headline. >>Without those laws, those who are most desperate will be able to act in desperation, to someone else’s benefit, with society doing nothing to stand in the way. A law prohibiting it doesn't solve the problem of them being desperate. It only takes away an option that they perceived as the best one available to them, all so that you can be sure no one is profiting from an exchange that exposes the inequality that exists in the world.

technoplato 7y ago

What if you turn this around though and rather than the hotel owner take 100% of the profit (assuredly from ads as the article mentions), create a fungible digital token that tenants “earn” when staying at the hotel and stake interest against speculation in the token, therefore sharing the profit with those that are part of generating it - the actors so to speak. Of course this doesn’t apply to sex trade but I’m just curious on picking your brain here. Would love a bit of engagement into the idea rather than just downvotes. Specifically into the idea of how to create mechanisms by which the free market could produce ethical outcomes at least moreso than current practices.

antihero 7y ago

Weird, I had a totally different take and thought it was more of an exciting, fun concept with aspects of exhibitionism etc.