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[Mothra]

Yeah, prostitution has been legal in Germany for a while now.

Now that I think about it, why isn't prostitution legal in most places? Or at the very least, decriminalized?

Cultural and religious shaming issues aside, is there any real issue to legitimizing it as a job? If for no other reason than to put someone in charge of these feral packs of hoes besides abusive, amoral assholes? Like perhaps people who have in mind the best interests of the company and its' workers rather than themselves?

[TA]

Yeah, prostitution has been legal in Germany for a while now.

Now that I think about it, why isn't prostitution legal in most places? Or at the very least, decriminalized?

Cultural and religious shaming issues aside, is there any real issue to legitimizing it as a job? If for no other reason than to put someone in charge of these feral packs of hoes besides abusive, amoral assholes? Like perhaps people who have in mind the best interests of the company and its' workers rather than themselves?

Pretty much entirely the cultural and religious shaming issues.

[Mothra]

 

[Ziiro]

But really it's fucking awful that it isn't legalized. Instead of having it in safe brothels we have the shitty dangerous situation we have now. It's one of those "It's going to happen anyway, you fucking morons. At least legalize it and get revenue out of it."

[Zaratustra]

Because prostitution is deeply tied to human trafficking, and legalizing it would increase demand and exacerbate the issue.

[TA]

Because prostitution is deeply tied to human trafficking, and legalizing it would increase demand and exacerbate the issue.

Except the opposite, because legalization means the ability to regulate.

[Mongrel]

Man, you think your laws are messed up.

Prostitution is legal in Canada, however it is functionally illegal, because it is illegal to pimp or keep a bordello (bawdy house), it's illegal to offer it in public, and because solicitation is illegal. So under Canadian law it's johns who break the law. Legalization would be an improvement here just because the existing laws are so ridiculously awkward.

Anyway I think it's too easy to dismiss objections to legalization as just the religious frumps howling about "moral values". There are serious issues that would have to be addressed and not just ones you can handwave away with "We'll regulate it!".

It's been a long time since I read up it and I am only semi-conscious right now, so I am going to beg off this particular argument today. So I will simply say that I would not say yes to legalization without some fairly heavy qualification.

EDIT:

One thing I'll add is that I remembered one fellow talking about it some time ago and his point was that no other job involved the sale of access to a person's body. To which one respondent replied "Well what about medical testing? That's legal". I didn't see where that went afterwards, so I can't say whether it was meant as a point for or against.

[Mothra]

Because prostitution is deeply tied to human trafficking, and legalizing it would increase demand and exacerbate the issue.

Except the opposite, because legalization means the ability to regulate.

Well, I can see how an increase in legal, legitimized availability would directly lead to an increase in demand, and with an expanding market would come an increase in the appallingly immoral underbelly of prostitution (slavery, human trafficking, child prostitution). Once there's more money coming into the equation, there's going to be an increase in this sort of thing.

It's been a long time since I read up it and I am only semi-conscious right now, so I am going to beg off this particular argument today. So I will simply say that I would not say yes to legalization without some fairly heavy qualification.

What's stopping you from saying it would be a good idea to legalize prostitution (in the states, we'll say)?

[Zaratustra]

Because prostitution is deeply tied to human trafficking, and legalizing it would increase demand and exacerbate the issue.

Except the opposite, because legalization means the ability to regulate.

So you regulate all the illegal immigrants and underage girls out. They then make an illegal secondary market and we're back to square one.

[Rico]

Except with better protection for the legal ones? That's hardly square one for the big picture.

[Classic]

You're saying a whole lot of stuff I'm not sure you can justify.

Well, I can see how an increase in legal, legitimized availability would directly lead to an increase in demand,

This is probably layman's shorthand for a shift in the expected cost function. i.e. Demand won't change, but because there's less criminal risk inherent in contracting sex workers people deterred by that expected cost might now become customers.

and with an expanding market would come an increase in the appallingly immoral underbelly of prostitution (slavery, human trafficking, child prostitution).

I'm not sure why one leads to the other here, especially when the entire point of legalizing this branch of the sex industry is meant to create a just regulatory system. If you want an example of how this stuff shakes out, a decent analog might be pornography as it's also a part of the sex industry. It's still shady as fuck and maybe(?) dangerous to the health of it's labor force. I'm not a scholar on this kind of thing, so it's possible that in the decades since legalizing pornograohy the conditions for workers have gotten worse (domestically), but I doubt it.

Once there's more money coming into the equation, there's going to be an increase in this sort of thing.

Since we're positing regulation with the legalization, I'm not sure why you'd expect more criminal activity.

So you regulate all the illegal immigrants and underage girls out. They then make an illegal secondary market and we're back to square one.

Zara, that's a bad argument. I still buy a washing machine, even though I still need some of my clothes dry-cleaned. You're conceding hypothetical improvement and then saying that improvement doesn't matter because some horrible parts of the status quo remain.

[Classic]

Just to say it again, look at the porn business if you want an idea of how this stuff will look in the US. You could also try looking overseas at other 1st worlders that already have a fully legal sex industry, but I don't know if the politics is similar enough to be a reliable analogue.

[Zaratustra]

Zara, that's a bad argument. I still buy a washing machine, even though I still need some of my clothes dry-cleaned. You're conceding hypothetical improvement and then saying that improvement doesn't matter because some horrible parts of the status quo remain.

That's... a rather strange metaphor.

Anyway my point is that I don't think you can aggregate enough value to prostitution and still keep prices competitive with the secondary market. Sex is not a complicated device like a washing machine, it's something pretty much anyone can do. More like... a burger.

SexDonald's.

[Cthulhu-chan]

Removing the illegality of the act is also a reduction in "price".  A fairly significant one, at that.

[Mongrel]

What's stopping you from saying it would be a good idea to legalize prostitution (in the states, we'll say)?

Sorry, just realized it sounded like I was avoiding the US entirely... I meant for my last sentence (Legalization would probably be good, but but require many things in place before it happens) to apply to all of North America.

Also, I don't really know what the law is in the US! Is it like it is in Canada (technically legal, but functionally criminalized), or is it flat out illegal. Am I correct in assuming it's a state-level law? If yes, how much variation is there from state to state?

[Mongrel]

SexDonald's.

On another board I go to a bunch of the members started referring to porn as "McDonald's for your penis".

[Classic]

That's... a rather strange metaphor.

It was actually a metaphor I was given to justify learning how to use a testing environment that the professor gave the students in the class. It wasn't perfect, but was good enough to isolate all but one of my bugs.

The important part is that our hypothetical legalized prostitution solves a suite of problems.

I don't see why you'd think that about legal and illegal markets anyway. Criminal markets have additional risk-related mark ups. There is a reason that criminal or unregulated alcohol sales don't try to compete with legitimized sellers.
Though, I concede, it could be entirely unrelated to cost.
In to wit:

Removing the illegality of the act is also a reduction in "price".  A fairly significant one, at that.

Also, I don't know if I should be jealous or piteous of you that you don't seem to grasp the difference between sex that goes together well and doesn't.

[Brentai]

Are we laboring under the impression that the child trafficking market doesn't exist because the Russian Mafia is too busy with the adult trafficking market here?

[Thad]

Also, I don't really know what the law is in the US! Is it like it is in Canada (technically legal, but functionally criminalized), or is it flat out illegal. Am I correct in assuming it's a state-level law? If yes, how much variation is there from state to state?

State-level and in some cases city-level (it's legal in Reno, technically illegal in Vegas though the "escort" loophole is applied pretty liberally -- I think; one of our Vegas rats can correct me if I'm wrong).  Entirely illegal in most of the country.

Are we laboring under the impression that the child trafficking market doesn't exist because the Russian Mafia is too busy with the adult trafficking market here?

Right, that's kinda where I am WRT Zara's argument.  Sex trafficking will and should continue to be illegal under any scenario where consenting-adults prostitution is legal; I don't see the latter increasing demand or tolerance for the former.

The washing-machine analogy is a little bizarre, but the porn one is pretty apt (and indeed fits under the same "sex worker" umbrella).  Mainstream availability of porn has not created a mainstream acceptance of child porn.

I suppose Zara's argument DOES hit on the "gray area" in this example -- while every professional porn distributor keeps records and ensures the ages of its girls, there's been a proliferation of amateur porn that doesn't have any documentation with it.  It's a lot harder to verify a model's age than it was when the record-keeping law was passed following the Traci Lords scandal.

The equivalent for prostitution would, presumably, be small-time pimps operating outside of the regulatory system.  And yes, they would still exist even if prostitution were legal, and no, they wouldn't be terribly concerned about age verification.

The argument in favor of legalization, then, is that situations like that would not increase -- indeed, I think people arguing for it argue that they would decrease, precisely because women (the ones of legal age, at least) would have a better option.  Would you rather have a pimp, or a union?

[Pacobird]

The problem is that hella human trafficking has been going down in Western European nations where prostitution is legalized.  It's not even a separate black market for kids like Zara suggests.  I have not given this anywhere near the amount of research it deserves but the 20 or so minutes I spent reading about it 18 months ago suggested lax post-EU monitoring of travel plus ease of identity theft made it pretty easy to enslave somebody in Eastern Europe and make them turn perfectly legal tricks in the brothels of the West.