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

thewalrus.ca

481–490 of 511 posts

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

#481
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to point out that this is a natural consequence of a market system, and it's exacerbated by allowing capital to rule those markets. Until we recognize that, we're not going to be able to fix it. One can't just declare that "If only the market were truly free, it wouldn't be like this." We've seen this play out on the freest market that has ever existed (the early internet) and we ended up in the exact…

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…

The problem is all the people calling whatever we have a free market. It would be more appropriate to just call it market or capitalist market because there are also social market theories. The free market represents an unattainable utopia.

What pissess me off the most is that a lot of capitalists actually like monopolies and externalities and then shout and complain that the government is ruining the "free market".

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

#482
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…

> 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 10 competing companies all run their own power lines. But most produc…

>You realize that you just defined a "free market" to be a market that is free of regulation, but requires regulation to maintain its state as a free market?

Did you even read the comment? The only constraint he put on "government regulation" is that price controls and subsidies aren't allowed. That is a tiny subset of government regulation, and not equivalent to all possible government regulation.

Honestly, how long will it take people to realize that money and land are the two most distorting monopolies in the capitalist market that enforces the formation of monopolies in all other industries as only monopoly returns in the non monopoly sectors are able to get the "root" monopolists off your back? Companies often die not because of a lack of money but rather because of too much money and the resulting profitability expectations by the financial sector that cannot be met.

The solution to those problems is very easy. You implement a land value tax and a resource based tax to allocate both land and resources properly. Once you have that you can introduce negative interest rates based on at least a dozen theories you can pick your favourite one. Allowing negative interest rates defuses artificial profitability expectations and allows people and governments to pay off their debt.

The reason why a negative interest rate works is because money is a public institution and liquidity is a degree to how well accepted this public institution is. This means the owner of the money can sell this public service just like the owner of land can sell the convenient public services near his property as a perk. So the lender will always want to get paid interest for the public services the liquidity he holds onto provides and this then forces a profitability expectation on the borrower even of it is completely unreasonable during a recession for example.

In both cases the government is providing public services without asking for compensation, no wonder governments keep running out of money and fail to collect enough taxes, they massively subsidize the holders of land and money by not taxing them in proportion to how much they benefit from the government. These indirect subsidies can be sold for a profit which then effectively turns them into direct subsidies. Getting rid of subsidies is a type of regulation that is compatible with free markets. Meanwhile capitalism is inherently incompatible with free markets as it thrives on monopoly rents.

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

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks work in a network of other banks. If you're the "sex worker bank" you yourself can get shut down

Isn't this true of the Internet too? If no ISPs are willing to host you, aren't you effectively shut down?

Sure.

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

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to point out that this is a natural consequence of a market system, and it's exacerbated by allowing capital to rule those markets. Until we recognize that, we're not going to be able to fix it. One can't just declare that "If only the market were truly free, it wouldn't be like this." We've seen this play out on the freest market that has ever existed (the early internet) and we ended up in the exact…

It's late stage capitalism. It's how all 'free markets' end up eventually. The biggest players gobbling up all of the competition and essentially having a monopoly. All you have to do is drive through middle america to see the Ruby Tuesday/Strip Mall-ification effect on most of the United States. I love capitalism when it's functioning it's the greatest system ever invented. When it's just a market full of monopolies…

Capitalism and free market are inherently incompatible.

>I love capitalism when it's functioning it's the greatest system ever invented.

Capitalism is never functioning. It is inherently dysfunctional. The moment there is wealth and people should be happy, it breaks completely. It only "works" if the economy is growing or in other words, it only works if the economy has been recently destroyed by a war that justifies growth. What you might love is the market that capitalists eventually distort.

>When it's just a market full of monopolies it's akin to dysfunctional communism from a consumer choice perspective.

Capitalism is a monopoly based economic system. Getting rid of the monopolies gets rid of capitalism entirely and you are left with just a market based economy. I don't know what you are even talking about.

>I don't know what the solution is.

The solution is basically an liquidity theory (you could also consider it a trade theory of money) based approach that splits interest or as the Marxists call it "surplus value", into its individual parts and once you do so, you will realize that there is actually no room to compensate the owners of capital, only the owners of liquidity and liquidity is a public good, a service provided by the government and the public combined which then deserves to be taxed to bring costs and benefits in line.

Liquidity preference was Keynes greatest discovery and nobody gives a damn, not even the Communists, so what other option than perpetual inflation did he have?

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

#485
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why will it get worse? what's the model that predicts this?

There seems to be no limit to the insanity people will tolerate with sufficient conditioning, so there is no reason to think there is a natural limit to how bad any economic or political system, capitalism or otherwise, can degrade. If you can't imagine how things could get even worse, then watch some science fiction or read some history books. Tearing people's hearts out to appease the sun god, or to repossess the o…

I agree, people can adapt to basically anything, but we have pretty clear precedents about who does what when faced with this or that.

In the face of constant legally sanctioned/mandated exploitation the frequency of outlaw group appearances increases, similarly revolts start from time to time. (Not saying their success rate was any great.)

Repossessing organs doesn't sound scary. The fanatics do scare me more, after all North Korea and every other successful oppressive regime was built on that. But it remains to be seen if it's possible to scale up totalitarianism to bigger scales.

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

#486
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

citation needed

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Please don't comment like you're on reddit or Facebook.

I commented like I'm on a site that values discussion over blind downvotes, but also substance over empty moral claims.

I was genuinely interested in reading some arguments for that claim. (After all nowadays it's s trope that this or that thing corrupts society. Porn, money, capital, the Internet, music, 5G, drugs, sex, millennials, conservatives, radicals, atheists. And of course DnD.)

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

#487
Most people (not only the religious) wouldn't want their wife, husband, child, mother, close friends etc to be a prostitute or pornographic artist, in a very emotional sense that goes far beyond e.g. having a low status job.

It's completely unsurprising that it's frowned upon.

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

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because no one's throwing around "your father is a prostitute" as an insult. There's all kinds of things that people insult men/fathers for that they wouldn't use for women/mothers (e.g. strength, financial success, etc). It's just gender roles, not generalized contempt for women (and going that far is probably just politically motivated exaggeration).

I think the contempt is there, because we're talking about someone's parent, and for some reason, all cultures (that I know of) picked the mother as the one being out of line. As in, when there's someone that's out of line, that has to be the woman. If this would be random, or balanced, we'd curse at others like your father is a deadbeat, or that your father's sperm is weak, and therefore you are weak, or things like…

>I think the contempt is there, because we're talking about someone's parent

But I feel that this is more because the mother is the more 'revered' parent? People often hate their father, but it's far rarer for people to hate their mother. Cursing someone's mother is, to me, just a way to hurt someone by insulting the person they love the most.

This of course would imply the exact opposite of what you're suggesting.

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

#489
post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the US has freedom of religion, it seems there is a large conflict there

The Constitution says there shall be no church of the United States, but that was at a time when all the states had state churches. And adultery was a capital crime. Outlawing whoring and the founding principles of the country are not at odds.

No post body was provided.

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

#490
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people in the industry, at least in the West, are not coerced or forced, they simply do it because they can make an order of magnitude more money than they can make waiting tables.

Median onlyfans income is $150 per month. You have to be in the top 5-10% for it to be a viable source of income.

I was talking about prostitution.
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