Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground • Hacker News Board

Re: Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground

#101

Post by Doxin » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:49 AM UTC

Thorentis wrote: post #94

paulgb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was so infuriating to watch Democrats willingly get played by the religious right into supporting something that was so blatantly designed to legislate morality rather than actually help victims of trafficking. Glad that elected officials are now rethinking it, at least.

> designed to legislate morality Like... almost all other laws? Do you think murder is immoral? Well guess what? There's a law for that. Just because you disagree with the morality being legislated, you can't pretend that "legislating morality" is the problem.

Making murder illegal should be mainly about preventing people from being the victim of murder. Whether or not murder is moral or not shouldn't really be relevant. We've decided that people have a right to not be murdered for whatever reason. The only thing the law should then be concerned about is how to prevent murder.

Using the same reasoning to outlaw prostitution is harder. Sure you could argue people have a right to not be a prostitute -- and I heartily agree with that -- but then the job of the law is to prevent people from being prostitutes against their will. All outlawing prostitution outright does is hide it from view. It doesn't help people get the rights they deserve. In fact it takes away the right to be a prostitute if you want to. The only line of arguing that prostitution should be illegal is either because we should outlaw anything we deem immoral, or because somehow concocted a right that prevents people from doing what they want to do.

In my opinion the basis for any system of law ought to be that people can do what they want to. The only exceptions being when doing so infringes on the right of others. I should be free to be a prostitute. I should not be free to force other people to be prostitutes against their will. I should be free to wildly swing my arms. I should not be free to punch someone in the face.

Of course everyone has their own opinion of what the law should be and so we end up with a patchwork of intentions -- let alone how the law actually gets applied. That's fine. People are free to have opinions.

Either laws are written based on morality, or laws are written based on rights. You can't have both without being inconsistent.

Re: Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground

#102

Post by jillesvangurp » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:53 AM UTC

paggle wrote: post #85

“Stamping out” anything moves it underground. The transaction volume almost always goes down and the risk for those remaining in the market almost always goes up.

In the same way the war on drugs had a lot of casualties (and collateral damage) and did absolutely nothing to reduce drug usage.

Prostitution is called the oldest profession in the world for a reason. It has always existed, in all countries, cultures, etc.

IMHO legalized prostitution with some sane policies for health and safety combined with a threat of prosecution for 'customers' of victims of human trafficking (e.g. for rape, because that's what that is) would do wonders to clean that business up. A blanket ban just drives women in the hands of criminals.

Re: Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground

#103

Post by taneq » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:55 AM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #78

hiram112 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't just the religious right that pushes for backwards prostitution laws. It is also... feminists. Aren't feminists always going on about "my body, my right" when it comes to abortion and other forms of contraceptives? Of course, but when it comes to prostitution, they seem to take a 'differing' view. Why? When prostitution is decriminalized, the price of sex goes down, as would be expected in any market where t…

Some feminists surely do, but conflating some with all is a fallacy of composition that hinders discussion. Your reasoning in the rest of the comment seems rather questionable and veers into seeming even more like a generalization.

I thought we’d decided “not all X” arguments were inadmissible?

Re: Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground

#104

Post by bdhdbbdbdjdns » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 9:57 AM UTC

As an occasional consumer of sex work, here is the reality: yes, It’s more dangerous now for both parties, but much more so for the women. The labor supply has gone down sharply because the economics went upside down. If you can’t count on as many clients per day the fixed cost of the hotel room becomes harder to risk so many girls exited the market. Prices have gone up sharply. The kind of girls that were charging $250-300 are now charging $400-500. “Trafficking” is an almost nonexistent issue at these price points where I dabble but as I understand is depressingly common on the low end of the market where people are picking up girls on the street for $20 blow jobs. Those girls are now more vulnerable than ever because with the smaller size of the marketplace they need pimps, madams, agencies, etc. to help them get enough work.

Re: Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground

#105

Post by PTPoster » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 10:15 AM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #92

scarejunba wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need complex market forces. It is fairly common for people to disallow other people from doing things: * for their own good * for perceived externalities This is common enough for drugs, heavy metal, child employment, and contracting that it doesn’t surprise me they would apply it to prostitution. In fact, I think the probability of women wanting to corner the market for sex is low.

For context, I'm a left-wing Canadian socialist. 1. Drugs should all be legal as Portugal's legalization of all drugs has shown us the war on drugs is a massive boondoggle. [1] So has Canada's legalization of marijuana. 2. Child employment is legislated on the basis that children aren't able to make their own decisions, and that sounds ok. 3. Heavy metals, I assume you don't mean the music, is regulated to protect th…

A created an account just to tell you that you are wrong about Portuguese laws. It's a common mistake.

Here in Portugal drug use is what we call ”decriminalized”. It's forbidden but not persecutted/punishable.

But I agree that going after drug users is a waste of effort, and more contries should do like us and just go after dealers and distributors.

The only way you could go after users is if you use an extreme islam way, death penalty. Not very ethical.

Re: Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground

#106

Post by wruza » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 10:27 AM UTC

belorn wrote: post #86

jniedrauer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are always outliers with strange opinions in any sufficiently large movement, but a much more common feminist position is to be strongly in support of sex workers rights and safety.

I can just point to Sweden. The meaning of prostitution has change in the public discussed to be the same as rape, regardless of consent. Being pro-prostitution here is the same as being pro-rape which is very anti-feminist in eye of the Swedish public and people with such views are seen as far-right. The two arguments that people here use is that a person that do sex for money would not had done so voluntary, thus t…

>paying a person to do something with their body is the same as buying a human being, which would be slavery

Just make a law so that persons must do something with payers bodies, not vice versa. It solves two problems with one shot: it’s no slavery anymore and finally you get some service.

Re: Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground

#107

Post by odiroot » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 10:28 AM UTC

orbifold wrote: post #70

jniedrauer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are always outliers with strange opinions in any sufficiently large movement, but a much more common feminist position is to be strongly in support of sex workers rights and safety.

Perhaps the most prominent feminist in Germany (Alice Schwarzer) is vehemently against it, although not for the stated reasons of the gp.

> She has written in favor of the continued legality of circumcision of male children.[6]

She's really not very likeable.

Re: Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground

#108

Post by Noos » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 10:29 AM UTC

hiram112 wrote: post #49

I think the most unmentioned facet regarding prostitution is that for many men, prostitution may be the only way for them to obtain sex, which I feel is just as much of a "right" as is the right for women to obtain an abortion. No I don't believe taxpayers should be required to pay for prostitutes, nor for abortions. But the market for both should be decriminalized. Not only is this something that is morally right, t…

No, it isn't the only way for many men to do so. The issue is that they don't want to put in the time or effort to be the kind of man that can, and they have radically unrealistic expectation of sex itself. No, you cannot bang a supermodel, but you can find a woman who loves you and will be with you.

No, men don't have a right to sex, because it involves a woman surrendering herself; its not something innate to the man that is being denied. It's dark to make it so that women need to surrender themselves to strangers on demand for cash because men have a right to the act, and that's just part of it. Sex is really only healthy where there is mutual love and at least some level of commitment; without it there is a huge lack of protection for the woman and it becomes a banal experience for the man, because he cannot have love or intimacy from it, just the act that becomes more and more extreme over time precisely because its divorced from human sentiment.

honestly i wish dang would ban these kinds of topics because we usually only get one side of them based on sort of an inhuman libertarianism; there's no "intellectual curiosity" about this, just sort of a repetition of a specific set of views with very little attempt to challenge or provide the unpopular side.

Re: Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground

#109

Post by Quarrelsome » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 10:29 AM UTC

paggle wrote: post #100

chrischen wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s definitely a cross section of highly biased and partisan supporters that could have swung either direction at some point in their life if they had hung out with different people.

Almost every person on earth could have swung in any direction if they had hung out with different people. If you or I hung out with Ancient Egyptians our whole lives we would have thought burying kings with living slaves was about as normal as surfing Hacker News.

which holds the implication that people as an abstract between now and ancient Egypt are not actually that different. They're just responding to different stimuli in their respective environments.

Re: Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground

#110

Post by arcticbull » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 10:29 AM UTC

PTPoster wrote: post #105

arcticbull wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context, I'm a left-wing Canadian socialist. 1. Drugs should all be legal as Portugal's legalization of all drugs has shown us the war on drugs is a massive boondoggle. [1] So has Canada's legalization of marijuana. 2. Child employment is legislated on the basis that children aren't able to make their own decisions, and that sounds ok. 3. Heavy metals, I assume you don't mean the music, is regulated to protect th…

A created an account just to tell you that you are wrong about Portuguese laws. It's a common mistake. Here in Portugal drug use is what we call ”decriminalized”. It's forbidden but not persecutted/punishable. But I agree that going after drug users is a waste of effort, and more contries should do like us and just go after dealers and distributors. The only way you could go after users is if you use an extreme islam…

Indeed, I'm usually more careful to distinguish legalization and decriminalization. Marijuana is however legal in Canada.