Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground

What is sad is that there are a lot of real-size social experiments in various countries that have a variety of legislation and situation and a ton of literature to guide policy there.

I have (like everybody) some opinions on how sex should work and what limits paid sex should have. I'll just say that: My preferences are totally irrelevant and should be dismissed if they have any chance of increasing human trafficking.

These policies should have a single, fact-based, evidence-based goal: fight sex slavery and human trafficking. If it leads to a system I don't like, so be it. Fighting slavery is the #1 goal there.

I just wrote this, in reply to an essay about The Irishman https://jakeseliger.com/2019/12/18/links-lessons-to-unlearn-... :

“The lonesome Irishman.” On the movie The Irishman; the essay almost makes me want to watch it, but not quite enough, because I feel like I’ve seen enough mob movies. After The Sopranos, Goodfellas, The Godfather, and probably some more, plus reading Diego Gambetta’s Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate, I think that universe is pretty played out. Killing people is also bad. Many of the things that thrive in the underworld should be legalized, like gambling has been and marijuana is being. If gambling, prostitution, and most non-opioid drugs are legal, there’s not much left for the mob to do, and it will be starved of revenue, because most activities are best done using conventional means and corporate or legal structures.

We've seen gambling move from being illegal to being conducted by the state (lottos) or sanctioned and taxed by it. Marijuana is moving in the same direction. Certain other things, we should probably be seeing move that way too.

The only part of this article that can be considered "news" is that two presidential candidates support doing a study on the bill's effects. Everything else is the same as the articles written before it passed.

What prompted reprinting this article without actually doing any investigation into the ramifications?

Noooooo! When I ehard about backpage being shut down because it was the biggest place for child sex trafficking, I said it was the dumbest move they could make. You have a website with the vast majority of illegal sex traffickers COMING TO YOU, and you close it? Why? Make BP a deal, give the FBI an office to scan everything so they can go after child sex traffickers, and you can stay open. We'd have arrested thousands of them by now.