Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#301

Post by dropit_sphere » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:36 PM UTC

jjk166 wrote: post #299

charles_f wrote: post #201

> Despite a user base of over 130 million, OnlyFans has failed to attract venture capital I don't get why that's a problem? They already built their platform, it works, they're the gold standard and they have a massive paying userbase! Why do they need VC money? Why would you want to dilute your stock rather than just build with your already existing, sizeable revenue stream?

It's not a problem now, but in a strictly rational economy a company that was so obviously going to acquire a massive paying userbase should have had no issue finding investors back when it would have been useful. Adult content hosting sites face some unique (read expensive) challenges relating to both scale and content moderation. It's not like you can just run videos through a nudity detector to stop your servers f…

it's "rational" if you don't factor in the complications

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#302

Post by powerslacker » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:37 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #229

a-user-you-like wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, except that you get more of what you subsidize. Besides being immoral, it’s destructive to society.

I don't understand this. Why is it destructive to society to provide an easy way for people to get laid if they need to?

A significant amount of people aren't looking at this as an issue of metrics, convenience, economics, or anything of the sort. That's a utilitarian approach. The vast majority of people opposed to legal & regulated prostitution are approaching it from a religious and moral perspective. The Christians that the article rags on believe that the Bible is truth that has been revealed to man by God and that it encourages the civil magistrates to deter sexually perverse behavior of all kinds including but not limited to pornography and prostitution.

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#303

Post by uoaei » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:38 PM UTC

dropit_sphere wrote: post #301

jjk166 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a problem now, but in a strictly rational economy a company that was so obviously going to acquire a massive paying userbase should have had no issue finding investors back when it would have been useful. Adult content hosting sites face some unique (read expensive) challenges relating to both scale and content moderation. It's not like you can just run videos through a nudity detector to stop your servers f…

it's "rational" if you don't factor in the complications

The "complications" are exactly what's being examined here.

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#304

Post by giantg2 » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:39 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #222

pclmulqdq wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chargeback risk in these industries is considerably higher than in other industries. If your wife/husband finds a porn subscription on your credit card bill, a lot of people take the approach of denying it and charging it back. Chargebacks are expensive, whether you fight them or accept them. A lot of adult industry businesses also accept ACH transfers or crypto because there is no chargeback risk on either of these.

I just don't see a lot of users of porn sites submitting ACH transfers. Every ACH transfer I have ever been a part of takes 5 days for the balances to settle. What porn user subbing to a site is going to wait 5 days? Maybe brothels or similar adult businesses allow you to setup an account with them as part of their onboarding steps to allow these types of transfers? I totally see crypto becoming more popular with the…

I think the main thing holding crypto back is the instability and the ability of centralized entities to control the additon of "currency" (average people can't mine after a certain point).

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#305

Post by gautamdivgi » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:39 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #294

_ktx2 wrote: post #272

The most troubling thing, that is somewhat observable in today's threads, is that ostracizing sex work is almost entirely normalized. People favor legal structures analogous to Don't Ask Don't Tell. This tees up a system of cascading effects: - Sex workers must now navigate a very fluid monetary system. Sex workers must be paid in cash, Bitcoin, etc. Then they have to somehow represent this money to the federal gover…

The OP appears to be mostly talking about porn, but your points seem to be mostly addressing prostitution. Prostitution has long considered an disreputable and undesirable activity, and it along with other types of sex work are often tightly coupled with involuntary exploitation. A lot of the stuff that you're criticizing derives from attempts to continue to legally discourage prostitution while preventing the legal…

Isn’t prostitution essentially porn without the cameras? Why ostracize legal prostitution? If porn is allowed, prostitution should be too.

Yes, there are issues of exploitation and licensing. They are at both places - maybe less for porn because it’s not as much in the shadows. Bring sex work out of the shadows. Just normalize it.

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#306

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:40 PM UTC

mellosouls wrote: post #117

In other words, a world in which payment processors and content platforms rule unchallenged is a problem not just for porn creators and consumers. It also establishes a precedent, allowing private companies to set opaque, moralizing, and arbitrary censorship terms without oversight They've only just noticed this after years of WrongThinkers being deplatformed?

[deleted]

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#307

Post by throwaway4aday » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:40 PM UTC

forgetfreeman wrote: post #263

vorpalhex wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think conservatives are attempting to endanger sex workers - they believe sex work is fundamentally risky and leads to abuse. There is no safe way to do sex work that doesn't result in problems. Therefore they believe it should be discouraged and made illegal, the same way many progressives believe firearms should be illegal since they are dangerous. Tribal groups are alive and well, and even if you dislike y…

That is easily the most wildly inaccurate categorization of conservative positions on sex work I have ever, and am ever likely to, encounter. Conservatives (in the US anyway) view sex work as grossly amoral and sex workers as sub-human and a threat to the community. Collectively they don't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about sex worker safety, they just want it banned outright through any means necessary.

Opinions vary. Certainly many people, not just conservatives would think that sex work is immoral. I don't believe I've ever met someone that believes sex workers are subhuman, that reeks of hyperbole. The perception of sex work as a threat to community is probably wider spread still, in its current form it certainly isn't conducive to safety for anyone involved.

Overall, you're simply setting up a strawman that poorly characterizes your opponents. There are many reasons why someone would oppose sex work, including concern over the safety of the sex workers. Even if it were fully legalized and regulated there would still be significant risk when you have two people who don't know each other well in a room alone together and questions of sex and money are money are involved. Especially if it is a physically stronger man with a woman. The more cogent arguments take that into consideration along with the other effects such as sex workers becoming trapped in the occupation, the poor prospects for aging workers to earn an income or be able to retire, the second order effects on the community which are poorly understood but could be far reaching, economic effects of making the occupation more available to the working age population who might otherwise pursue other careers, etc. All of that generally lines up with the conservative take on any change which is to ask "Are you sure you have considered all of the consequences?" and "Do the benefits outweigh the costs both short term and long term?".

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#308

Post by tablespoon » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:41 PM UTC

hackeraccount wrote: post #56

There's a libertarian ethos that says anything between two consenting adults is the their business. I'm more and more skeptical not just of that principle but the self awareness of the people who purport to support it. I know that the choices I think are correct may not be - either for myself, for everyone or for any particular person. For that reason I don't think that anyone should run my life or that I should be t…

> There's a libertarian ethos that says anything between two consenting adults is the their business.

IMHO, that's one of the libertarian oversimplifications that can make it a supremely seductive ideology. It's basically: throw out all the hard stuff and admire a toy model where all the pieces fit perfectly.

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#309

Post by tick_tock_tick » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:41 PM UTC

TremendousJudge wrote: post #286

floor2 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This statement is fundamentally flawed on two different core aspects. First, the phenomenon you're referring to is "natural monopolies" which is a well understood situation which appears in every freshman-level Economics 101 class, but that only applies to certain industries. For instance, utilities are natural monopolies because it's far more efficient to run one set of wires to every house rather than try to have 1…

I don't think your comment has exposed any flaws in GPs point. The first point doesn't refute anything GP said. If Amazon, Google, Meta, etc, are natural monopolies like utilities, then have the state regulate them as such. If they aren't, have them broken up like Standard Oil. You yourself have pointed up that monopolies are bad for the users. Second, even if "free market" is used by (some) economists to mean a spec…

In what way are any of the those companies a monopoly? Maybe I could see an argument about Apple in the USA but I don't see it for those 3.

Re: Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?

#310

Post by staticassertion » Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:43 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #297

npteljes wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>ostracizing sex work is almost entirely normalized 100%. One of the universal curses people throw at each other is implying that someone's mother is a prostitute, or that they are a product of extramarital sex, implying the promiscuity of the mother. This all is hand-in-hand with the implied comtempt towards women of course.

> 100%. One of the universal curses people throw at each other is implying that someone's mother is a prostitute, or that they are a product of extramarital sex, implying the promiscuity of the mother. This all is hand-in-hand with the implied comtempt towards women of course. How so? Not all women are prostitutes.

Because no one's throwing around "your father is a prostitute" as an insult.