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The article reminds us of some very good points about our relationships with developing countries. Education does so much more for spreading democracy than dron

The article reminds us of some very good points about our relationships with developing countries. Education does so much more for spreading democracy than drones do, but our monetary priorities don't reflect this, unfortunately. I stumbled in the last paragraph: It’s estimated that 100,000 girls under 18 years old in the United States are trafficked into commercial sex each year. What does that mean? With on the order of 5 million births per year (both boys and girls), that would imply 4% of all women are affected. That seems a bit on the high end. Does anybody know what's going on here in terms of statistics?

brc 12y ago
I always always doubt the veracity of these numbers - how could you possibly collect them accurately? - but that is not to say I doubt the truth that the problem exists. The mistake in your logic is that you're assuming all the children trafficked were born in the USA. Most likely, they would be trafficked by people smugglers and sold as prostitutes, and would come from poor countries. From my understanding (and I don't claim much knowledge at all) the home-grown, self employed, 'Pretty Woman' type of prostitute is very much a minority.
rosser 12y ago
As I understand it, most of the American girls trafficked into sex slavery are runaways. They're typically "recruited" by a pimp who initially poses as a boyfriend or caretaker. Before long, he needs help coming up with money for rent or something, and it's "just this once", and, and, and... Appreciably lower numbers are kidnapped, or introduced into the trade by someone they already know.
cturner 12y ago
> Education does so much more for spreading democracy than > drones do, but our monetary priorities don't reflect > this, unfortunately. Education often gets reduced to money arguments. Is there a relationship between the amount we spend on education and the quality of it? As I see it - not beyond a point which is fairly low. You need to pay enough that people who are given to be teachers can live a comfortable life doing what they love. The hard bit is the culture - having people around who are motivated to be a teacher for its own sake. And not because it's simply a stable job, or for the prestige associated with it. We try to use money to blast momentum into broken culture - Afghanistan, Iraq, South Sudan, poor neighbourhoods in our own countries. Sometimes
- Fede_V 12y ago
  Think of it this way - a teacher makes a very small fraction of what a programmer makes. With that kind of pay, and the kind of bureaucratic restrictions they have to work with, how easy do you think it is to recruit top tier ambitious talent?
  - cturner 12y ago
    Your point about the bureaucratic restrictions is a good explanation for the kind of things that affect education - and it has nothing to do with money. To return to my earlier point - it's dumb to reduce the education debate to just a question of money. Even if you paid teachers quadruple, the bureaucracy would put off a lot of talent.
DanBC 12y ago
"Trafficked" has different meanings. Some places (the UK) it includes: * women who voluntarily travel from one country to England for sex work and who have assistance to do so * women working as sex workers who are assisted to travel within the uk * all the other more troubling definitions that include coercion and violence
- tsotha 12y ago
  So basically they included a bunch of voluntary stuff to plump up the statistic?
  - gadders 12y ago
    Yeah. It's a charity. Nobody funds charities that aren't scaring people with statistics.
    - waterhouse 12y ago
      I'm not sure how many layers of sarcasm are in that last statement. ;-) But really, that would be a great thing to know for sure: Whether certain kinds of dishonesty are useful in charitable campaigns. If we had studies proving it was counterproductive overall, then we could confidently and on principle criticize and discourage that behavior. If they proved the opposite, ... I would sigh, let others do that for my causes, and not work too hard to discourage them. Has anyone made serious attempts to study this sort of thing? I know there have been some A/B tests on charity pitches that other people've cited. For this... ideally you'd like to compare the long-run success of a charity, but that'd probably be too hard. Studying specific fundraising drives with specific end dates seems more doable and might turn up something useful. It probably would contaminate the results if you had the same charity putting out an honest and a dishonest message that would both reach the same audience, 'cause I think a failure mode of dishonest messages is someone loudly disproving it and denouncing the organization, which would probably hurt both messages. So you might want a lot of charities... or a nationwide charity doing local campaigns in several different states, and assign them randomly to the honest or dishonest message. And then there's plausibility, and other kinds of effectiveness... you may have to try a lot of messages, or make an honest/dishonest pair with a very small change (e.g. just the number). Probably difficult... but I'd be interested to see someone do it.
chongli 12y ago
Education does so much more for spreading democracy than drones do, but our monetary priorities don't reflect this, unfortunately. That's because our priority is not spreading democracy; that's merely the pretext. The priority is lining the pockets of the members of the military-industrial complex.

brc 12y ago

I always always doubt the veracity of these numbers - how could you possibly collect them accurately? - but that is not to say I doubt the truth that the problem exists. The mistake in your logic is that you're assuming all the children trafficked were born in the USA. Most likely, they would be trafficked by people smugglers and sold as prostitutes, and would come from poor countries. From my understanding (and I don't claim much knowledge at all) the home-grown, self employed, 'Pretty Woman' type of prostitute is very much a minority.

rosser 12y ago

As I understand it, most of the American girls trafficked into sex slavery are runaways. They're typically "recruited" by a pimp who initially poses as a boyfriend or caretaker. Before long, he needs help coming up with money for rent or something, and it's "just this once", and, and, and... Appreciably lower numbers are kidnapped, or introduced into the trade by someone they already know.

cturner 12y ago

> Education does so much more for spreading democracy than > drones do, but our monetary priorities don't reflect > this, unfortunately. Education often gets reduced to money arguments. Is there a relationship between the amount we spend on education and the quality of it? As I see it - not beyond a point which is fairly low. You need to pay enough that people who are given to be teachers can live a comfortable life doing what they love. The hard bit is the culture - having people around who are motivated to be a teacher for its own sake. And not because it's simply a stable job, or for the prestige associated with it. We try to use money to blast momentum into broken culture - Afghanistan, Iraq, South Sudan, poor neighbourhoods in our own countries. Sometimes

Fede_V 12y ago
Think of it this way - a teacher makes a very small fraction of what a programmer makes. With that kind of pay, and the kind of bureaucratic restrictions they have to work with, how easy do you think it is to recruit top tier ambitious talent?
- cturner 12y ago
  Your point about the bureaucratic restrictions is a good explanation for the kind of things that affect education - and it has nothing to do with money. To return to my earlier point - it's dumb to reduce the education debate to just a question of money. Even if you paid teachers quadruple, the bureaucracy would put off a lot of talent.

DanBC 12y ago

"Trafficked" has different meanings. Some places (the UK) it includes: * women who voluntarily travel from one country to England for sex work and who have assistance to do so * women working as sex workers who are assisted to travel within the uk * all the other more troubling definitions that include coercion and violence

tsotha 12y ago
So basically they included a bunch of voluntary stuff to plump up the statistic?
- gadders 12y ago
  Yeah. It's a charity. Nobody funds charities that aren't scaring people with statistics.
  - waterhouse 12y ago
    I'm not sure how many layers of sarcasm are in that last statement. ;-) But really, that would be a great thing to know for sure: Whether certain kinds of dishonesty are useful in charitable campaigns. If we had studies proving it was counterproductive overall, then we could confidently and on principle criticize and discourage that behavior. If they proved the opposite, ... I would sigh, let others do that for my causes, and not work too hard to discourage them. Has anyone made serious attempts to study this sort of thing? I know there have been some A/B tests on charity pitches that other people've cited. For this... ideally you'd like to compare the long-run success of a charity, but that'd probably be too hard. Studying specific fundraising drives with specific end dates seems more doable and might turn up something useful. It probably would contaminate the results if you had the same charity putting out an honest and a dishonest message that would both reach the same audience, 'cause I think a failure mode of dishonest messages is someone loudly disproving it and denouncing the organization, which would probably hurt both messages. So you might want a lot of charities... or a nationwide charity doing local campaigns in several different states, and assign them randomly to the honest or dishonest message. And then there's plausibility, and other kinds of effectiveness... you may have to try a lot of messages, or make an honest/dishonest pair with a very small change (e.g. just the number). Probably difficult... but I'd be interested to see someone do it.

chongli 12y ago

Education does so much more for spreading democracy than drones do, but our monetary priorities don't reflect this, unfortunately. That's because our priority is not spreading democracy; that's merely the pretext. The priority is lining the pockets of the members of the military-industrial complex.