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Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

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Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#101

Post by djsumdog »

1024core wrote: post #21

Why is it that in such cases, the government reaches for the CEO right away; but when Wells Fargo employees open millions of fraudulent accounts, it's not the CEO's fault? If I were to commit identity theft (which is basically what the WF employees did), then I would be facing jail time; why hasn't anyone in WF been charged with criminal fraud yet? Why not the CEO?

Kim dot com is facing extradition to a country he has never set foot in, for crimes far less than what Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz have done. Justice is a sort of illusion.

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#102

Post by Singletoned »

empthought wrote: post #67
Dylan16807 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's not shameful to force someone to perform manual labor without their consent? Why not?

Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. (Community service is an alternative to jail, for example.) Coerced sex is rape, however. It is qualitatively different from coerced labor. As Dworkin wrote a long time ago, "in prostitution, no woman stays whole. It is impossible to use a human body in the way women's bodies are used in prostitution and to have a whole human being at the end of it, or in the middle of it, or clo…

Out of interest, what about male prostitution? Is it possible for a man to be paid for sex "and to have a whole human being at the end of it"?

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#103

Post by perlgeek »

anon12345690 wrote: post #54
DavidWanjiru wrote: post #50

Question: If Bernie Madoff had advertised his pyramid scheme in, say, the New York Times, can the paper be held responsible for subsequent losses suffered by those who took up the offer made in the advert? Is this case legally similar, or do the specific crimes of human trafficking make it different? You know, sort of like how contracts are ordinarily enforceable, but if I agree to marry off my 12-year-old daughter t…

The basic rule is contracts cannot override the law.

The real question is: to what degree are providers of platforms (such as ad agencies and newspapers that publish ads) responsible for checking the lawfulness of the content that is published through them?

And is it consistent for the different kinds of platform?

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#104

Post by BigJono »

blazespin wrote: post #2

There really is only one appropriate solution for this and that is universal basic income.

I love the concept of UBI as a way to offset jobs lost due to automation, but I have no clue how people think it is supposed to become a replacement for other forms of welfare.

In Australia, our welfare system pays around $250/week and it's about the right amount to live on without starving or being kicked out of your house. We have 24 million people. To pay them all $250/week we'd have to spend $312B/year.

Our entire current federal budget is $450B/year.

I don't see how this works. Not in the slightest. Even if we used all the current allocation for welfare (~120B) and cut out all the administrative overhead that's only ~$100/week. Nowhere near enough to live on.

I can't speak for America or elsewhere, but a UBI here would be enough to stop anyone from taking up prostitution to support themselves. Not even close.

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#105

Post by dorfsmay »

empthought wrote: post #38
tuxracer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are those who believe that sex work can never truly be consensual...idealized circumstances free of such pressures, few people would choose sex work In idealized circumstances free of economic pressures many of us would spent all day at the beach. It's great many found their dream career and are getting paid to do what they love. But for most what work is just work, a means to an end. Not sure why sex workers…

No one should feel shame at having a toilet at the office and needing to pay someone to help clean it. Everyone should feel shame at coercing a person who would otherwise not have sex with them into having sex with them. Buying someone's labor is different than buying their bodily autonomy and consent to sex.

What about the porn industry? Actors being paid to have sex. Should that be legal?

What about marriage between a very rich and a very poor person, or between a citizen and a non-citizen?

What about being paid for doing drug trials? Isn't that coercion of poor people? Should this be legal?

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#106

Post by icebraining »

maxxxxx wrote: post #70
rayiner wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing apples and oranges. The CEO of a small internet company almost certainly has a hand in everything the company does. The CEO of a large corporation has no idea what the line workers are doing.[1] If a bunch of Yahoo employees had gone off and run as sex-trafficking site off Yahoo's servers, they wouldn't go arrest Marissa Mayer. Not because "lobbying" but because that would be stupid and unreasonable.…

The CEO gets credit and a lot of money when things go right so he should take blame when things go wrong. Personally I think they could find out about a lot of wrongdoing if they wanted to.

The question wasn't whether he should take blame, but whether he should be criminally charged. Sounds a bit over the top - I'd rather see WF fined, and then the CEO sued by the shareholders, and forced to pay damages if proven he knew or should have known.

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#107

Post by coldtea »

1024core wrote: post #21

Why is it that in such cases, the government reaches for the CEO right away; but when Wells Fargo employees open millions of fraudulent accounts, it's not the CEO's fault? If I were to commit identity theft (which is basically what the WF employees did), then I would be facing jail time; why hasn't anyone in WF been charged with criminal fraud yet? Why not the CEO?

Because he plays golf with a lot of politicians at the country club.

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#109

Post by Thimothy »

empthought wrote: post #84
imtringued wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sex workers don't care about your morals. They have different morals than you and care about different things. Stop telling them and other people what morals they should have. Regulated prostitution may be bad in your eyes but unregulated prostitution is even worse for those who are already in this industry. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

We have a perfectly good approach already; it's called the Nordic model. Arrest johns, not prostitutes. And there are thousands of former sex workers that will give you an earful about what you think you know about prostitution and what prostitutes think.

Ah, the Nordic model... The country in the middle bans prostitution and offloads it to the neighboring countries. I have yet to see any macro advantage on it, besides a little reduction and a lot of smug people feeling better about themselves.

A while ago I spent quite some time researching the prostitution thing, trying to make up my mind about it. I remember the UN report on global trafficking[1] being specially enlightening. The conclusions I took from it:

-Prohibition doesn't work. It just drives the prostitution underground, and as the pimps are already doing something illegal they don't mind going the extra mile, make it straightforward slavery and abuse the women so much than they are too terrified to escape. A small country (like Sweden) can offload the prostitution to nearby countries, but if all Europe were to do that the consequences would probably be really dire for a lot of women.

-Full legality increases human trafficking. As there is a lot of legal prostitution going on, it's easier to get away with the trafficking. In Europe usually takes the shape of organized crime importing awful lot of women from western Europe to Holland and Germany. Long term, it's thought to increase the well being of prostitutes, both imported and local, but we still have to grok how to do it without make it without the traffic.

-Not legal nor illegal. This is the situation in most countries, and the implementations vary wildly. In some countries the police does not intervene at all and it's a cesspool of mafias fighting for control, others make it a tourist attraction, while others haven't made it legal but don't prosecute the prostitutes. Curiously enough, this last approach is the one that gets the best results at stopping exploitative human trafficking as long as pimping is really prosecuted, don't remember anyone really explaining why. My guess is that in this situation large scale trafficking operations stand out much more, but who knows.

TL;DR; It's hard. Swedes are a tiny bit hypocrites in this one.

[1] http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global-repor...

Re: Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges

#110

Post by oarsinsync »

barrkel wrote: post #93
empthought wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it means that if sex were their free choice, they would not need to be paid for sex (they could have it as much or as little as they like). Instead of trying to wordplay this in HN comments, why don't you take a look at https://www.demandabolition.org/resources/evidence-against-l... -- they've done a far better job than I ever could on lining up the different arguments -- and there are many! -- against blithely s…

If selling fruit was the shopkeeper's free choice, they would not need to be paid for fruit. This sentence has structurally the same form. If you think it's ridiculous, it can only be because you think there is something special about sex - i.e. it is sacred in some way. And thus your position actually doesn't relate to free will. I think you're very confused. Your statements aren't logically consistent and I have to…

> This sentence has structurally the same form. If you think it's ridiculous, it can only be because you think there is something special about sex

> As Dworkin wrote a long time ago, "in prostitution, no woman stays whole. It is impossible to use a human body in the way women's bodies are used in prostitution and to have a whole human being at the end of it, or in the middle of it, or close to the beginning of it. It's impossible. And no woman gets whole again later, after."

I feel like the Dworkin quote is more the basis of their argument, that the human body itself is different to other external objects, and selling your own body is different to selling something external.

In that context, comparing selling fruit to selling your own body doesn't seem like a fair comparison.

That said, I know a couple of people in this industry, none of them are particularly fond of their work, but they don't seem any more unhappy than anyone else in a job they don't particularly like. shrug

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