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> So, for every person who is there because its a voluntary job choice, there are 100x there because they have no other choice. Citation needed. As someone wh

> So, for every person who is there because its a voluntary job choice, there are 100x there because they have no other choice. Citation needed. As someone who is very interested in epistemology, I would like to know where you came up with this number. From what I can tell, we don’t have any accurate way of arriving at the numerator or denominator.

bsder 4y ago
You're so full of crap. You can walk out your door and for a couple hundred bucks start gathering data. Do you know of no one who works in that economy? Do you know of no one who has availed themselves of services from that economy? You probably know more of those people than you think... Simply out of my acquaintenances that I know who have worked in that economy, I know exactly 2 who worked it specifically for the money and then got out well--not rich, but they used their money to bootstrap themselves to something else. The rest got sucked into it and got used up by it and definitely didn't come out ahead. That's >x10 right off the bat out of the people I actually know. So that's the bottom estimate. If I match against the stories of the ones who got out, that x10 is low. By a lot. There are a lot of shady people actively always trying to put workers in the category where they can use them up. Is x100 high? Maybe, but not off by an order of magnitude. And this is just a standard, middling blue-collar kind of area. We're not talking desperate poverty or sex trafficking as part of those numbers. Now, Covid and OnlyFans has probably shaken this up some. That combination has meant that online interaction has gone way up. That will certainly change the calculus. But probably less than you think--after a bit of grace period, OnlyFans pimps started organizing things. Nevertheless, very few people voluntarily choose to go into the sex economy if they have other valid options. The combination of stigma that may follow you due to permanent record (cell phone cameras, porn posting sites, etc.) as well as the possibility of getting something on your legal record permanently are both strong disincentives. I recommend going and collecting some data, Mr. Epistemologist. Meeting some working stiffs who are just trying to figure out how to navigate life will do you some good.
- shkkmo 4y ago
  Your response here is very kneejerk and innappropriate. It would have been much better if you left out the name calling at the beginning and end and just kept the part in the middle that was focused on explaining how you came to the "100x" number.
  - hither_shores 4y ago
    GP was obviously using "100" to mean "many", not "literally exactly 100".
    - shkkmo 4y ago
      Yes, that's obvious.
- thephyber 4y ago
  > I recommend going and collecting some data, Mr. Epistemologist. My overriding point is that “collecting some data” in this industry is fundamentally faulty. It’s not that we have zero anecdotes or data. It’s that we can’t know if the little data we have is truly representative of the wider data set. > You probably know more of those people than you think... Of course that is likely. That just reinforces my point that there is more that we _don’t_ know about statistics in the industry than we _do_ know. > That's >x10 right off the bat out of the people I actually know. So that's the bottom estimate. You haven’t proven that your sample is random, so you have no basis for calling this the floor. > Is x100 high? Maybe, but not off by an order of magnitude. How do you know it’s not off by a magnitude? My whole point with epistemology is that this entire data set is shrouded. We can’t know if our estimates are accurate or not. Your methodology is clearly not accurate. I don’t have any confidence that mine would be any better. But at least I’m intellectually honest enough to know what I don’t know.

bsder 4y ago

You're so full of crap. You can walk out your door and for a couple hundred bucks start gathering data. Do you know of no one who works in that economy? Do you know of no one who has availed themselves of services from that economy? You probably know more of those people than you think... Simply out of my acquaintenances that I know who have worked in that economy, I know exactly 2 who worked it specifically for the money and then got out well--not rich, but they used their money to bootstrap themselves to something else. The rest got sucked into it and got used up by it and definitely didn't come out ahead. That's >x10 right off the bat out of the people I actually know. So that's the bottom estimate. If I match against the stories of the ones who got out, that x10 is low. By a lot. There are a lot of shady people actively always trying to put workers in the category where they can use them up. Is x100 high? Maybe, but not off by an order of magnitude. And this is just a standard, middling blue-collar kind of area. We're not talking desperate poverty or sex trafficking as part of those numbers. Now, Covid and OnlyFans has probably shaken this up some. That combination has meant that online interaction has gone way up. That will certainly change the calculus. But probably less than you think--after a bit of grace period, OnlyFans pimps started organizing things. Nevertheless, very few people voluntarily choose to go into the sex economy if they have other valid options. The combination of stigma that may follow you due to permanent record (cell phone cameras, porn posting sites, etc.) as well as the possibility of getting something on your legal record permanently are both strong disincentives. I recommend going and collecting some data, Mr. Epistemologist. Meeting some working stiffs who are just trying to figure out how to navigate life will do you some good.

shkkmo 4y ago
Your response here is very kneejerk and innappropriate. It would have been much better if you left out the name calling at the beginning and end and just kept the part in the middle that was focused on explaining how you came to the "100x" number.
- hither_shores 4y ago
  GP was obviously using "100" to mean "many", not "literally exactly 100".
  - shkkmo 4y ago
    Yes, that's obvious.
thephyber 4y ago
> I recommend going and collecting some data, Mr. Epistemologist. My overriding point is that “collecting some data” in this industry is fundamentally faulty. It’s not that we have zero anecdotes or data. It’s that we can’t know if the little data we have is truly representative of the wider data set. > You probably know more of those people than you think... Of course that is likely. That just reinforces my point that there is more that we _don’t_ know about statistics in the industry than we _do_ know. > That's >x10 right off the bat out of the people I actually know. So that's the bottom estimate. You haven’t proven that your sample is random, so you have no basis for calling this the floor. > Is x100 high? Maybe, but not off by an order of magnitude. How do you know it’s not off by a magnitude? My whole point with epistemology is that this entire data set is shrouded. We can’t know if our estimates are accurate or not. Your methodology is clearly not accurate. I don’t have any confidence that mine would be any better. But at least I’m intellectually honest enough to know what I don’t know.