The legalization of sex, drugs, and gambling would help remedy these industries by bringing them into the spotlight, Tom Matlack argues.
Priests can’t have sex, but the Church—and law enforcement—has allowed pedophilia to run rampant for years (First One to Come Forward). Apparently the only place it every happened is Happy Valley (Look in the Mirror).
Strip clubs are legal, but if you are going to serve drinks, you can only be topless (Inside a Strip Club). The most explicit sexual acts are OK on the web as long as they don’t involve a minor. The states with the highest pornography consumption are the most religiously conservative: Utah and the Bible Belt. Meanwhile, the federal government has decided to invoke the 13th amendment to the Constitution and deploy Homeland Security resources to fight sex slavery .
Alcohol and cigarettes kill significantly more Americans than all other drugs combined. Yet they are legal, and the “bad” drugs are illegal. The demand for illegal drugs in the United States is ripping Mexico apart as rival cartels kill each other for a share of the enormous black market.
For many minorities in our inner cities, the only realistic way to make a living is to participate in the distribution of drugs (Blood Splattered). Because it is illegal, this requires gang-style violence to enforce selling territories and selling relationships. Drugs dominate not just the lives of our most vulnerable citizens, but the economies of their communities as well. It’s mob-style abolition on a massive scale.
A long time ago we stole the land of the Native Americans. We used guns, a concept of property that was foreign to them, and sometimes even spread disease in their midst with the intent to kill them off. To make up for this immoral behavior, we have allowed a certain few Native Americans have a monopoly on gambling casinos.
State governments have long used lotteries to raise much needed money. This has been proven to be a regressive form of taxation. But now with state budgets in disarray, lawmakers are looking to increase gambling as a last resort. In my home state of Massachusetts, we have been debating slots forever and have now passed a law approving new Vegas-style casinos.
♦◊♦
The United States government is very good at auctioning off licenses. Since 1994, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has conducted auctions of licenses for the electromagnetic spectrum. The government has raised billions of dollars to grant the rights to the airwaves to private communications companies. Why not do the same thing for the supposed vices that are tearing our country apart?
Here’s how it would work. Each state would be granted the right to sell off licenses to particular forms of prostitution, gambling, and drug distribution. Massachusetts might decide they want two statewide providers of legalized cocaine and city-by-city prostitution licensing. Bidders would not only propose a license purchase price but also detail a process by which they would manage, monitor, and keep control over the business once it’s established.
From the government standpoint, we would receive substantial upfront payment from selling all these licenses. We’d then have the right to tax all these vices heavily, to make them somewhat less attractive and continue to generate much needed revenue. And we would have the ability to regulate, making sure that women in the sex trade are not exploited, that drug dosing is uniform with no foreign substance, and that gambling is fair.
This change in strategy would produce two much needed consequences.
First, it would allow us to take the prevalence of drugs, gambling, and sex out of the darkness and bring it into the light for all to see. Think of what has happened to the tobacco industry in this country. We didn’t outlaw it. We sued the companies for killing people and lying about it, and we made it uncool to smoke through large ad campaigns and banning it in public places like bars and restaurants.
Every drug container would have a warning label outlining the risks of using that substance. We’d finally get clear on what drugs have what scientific impacts on the human body and make that public knowledge. For every form of gambling, we would advertise, in bold letters, the exact odds of winning and losing, making clear you have to be an idiot to play. And we could finally start advertising the actual statistics about what is going on in the sex trade from pornography to strip clubs to prostitution. It wouldn’t be made illegal, but we’d finally begin to deal with its influence on our society.
The second major change would be to move from criminal to civil prosecution of cases involving vices. With licenses bought for large sums by established private companies, their right would be to police against anyone selling their product without a license. What before was a criminal matter would become purely economic with private companies suing anyone infringing on their rights just the way a patent holder might bring suit against a rival for using their intellectual property.
We’d finally stop putting so many minority men away in prison for becoming the foot soldiers in the illegal distribution of narcotics. Abolition didn’t work with booze, and it sure isn’t working with drugs. Booze may have bred the mob, but drugs have come to dominate manhood in our inner cities, and threatens to take down the whole of Mexico.
♦◊♦
Some might argue that legalizing drugs, sex, and gambling would make it more available and, therefore, increase the prevalence of these vices in our society. Just on first blush, I find it hard to believe that drugs, sex, and gambling could be any MORE dominant than they already are. Every state government is talking about opening casinos and expanding the lotto to pay their bills. Porn and the sex trade have become the biggest single entertainment industry. Drugs are arguably ruining our country as it is, both from use and by imprisoning so many men who might otherwise be useful members of our society.
These problems exist and are getting worse. We should legalize them, so we can actually get a grasp and start to make sense of it all, eliminating the dark underbelly, getting children out of prostitution and drugs out of our poorest communities.
We need to get radically honest about the impact of these vices on our people. Stop the hypocrisy of gambling under only certain nonsensical conditions that prey on the poor. Regulate and systematize the narcotic industry so we can focus on education and treatment rather than throwing away a whole generation. And finally, stop talking about sexual exploitation like it never happens when it’s actually omni-present.
Do you have a better idea?
—Photo Samantha Jade Royds/Flickr
About Tom Matlack
Vocalyze
I’m with you, with the exception of hard drugs. Not sure that one wouldn’t come back to haunt us over time.
No hard drugs, no thank you. Heroin and meth are not like cigarettes.
A reasonable criteria for prohibition would be if a substance’s acute effect (acute, not long term) is violence or unacceptable anti-social behavior.
First of all, selling women into sexual slavery isn’t the same as selling an object. Secondly, read the first sentence again until you get it. To include the selling of women with the selling of drugs and gambling as if the selling of women is just another “vice” is frankly, stupid.
And who is writing these articles? This organization sounds like Men’s Rights Advocates Lite.
how about women selling them selves, are you willing to concede that some working girls are independent agents?
How is sexwork any fundamentally different from the work that a masseuse performs? In both cases they are paid to touch a client in order to bring that client physical pleasure. Is it just because one of those touch their clients in ways that happen to be sexual?
Get over your reactionary notions of sexuality, already. It’s the 21st century.
Nothing Tom Matlack wrote suggests he favors legalizing enslavement. If you think prostituiton is ipso facto sex slavery, perhaps you’re the one holding the short end of the intelligence baton.
Oh forgot to mention. The picture you included is most likely not a prostitute, but a regular ole college woman out having fun. Nice to see you can’t tell the difference.
Having looked the bone structure and dress – I was wondering if it was a Transvestite on their way home after what looks like a Rough Night On The Tiles!
Having looked closely at the photograph, it looks like Belgravia, London, SW1 to me! In fact, I’m fairly certain that’s Belgravia Square in the background!
Early morning – looking like death and the highest concentrations of Embassies per square yard in London? Politics and Diplomacy are odd businesses! Oh – maybe I’m giving too much away about my own experiences in life! P^)
On the other hand – if you look at the TAGS used by the person who took the photo and the published it on flicker – they do have a tag that reads “Prostitute” – along with quite a few others. So I would take it that the photographer was of the view that he image was for them Indicative of Prostitution. It may even indicate that the person pictured is a person of the night – and available for hire! The tags don’t provide a gender!
… and I love it when folks look for any reason to be offended. It’s easy to be offended, but far more difficult to leave the (o)fences alone! P^)
I’ve been reading the GMP for several months now, and I’ve learned to assume that the title and photo may have nothing to do with the article below it. I dropped the expectation of correlation a long time ago.
Cheryl, you’re right in that there sure have been some differentiation between commodities such as money from gambling and drugs, and women who freely enter into prostitution because it is want they want, and frankly should be able to without fearing negative legal ramifications. However I think what Tom is getting at is that so often women are sold into the sex industry against their will as though they ARE objects which is problematic and legalizing prostitution with the caveat of some sort of regulation would help alleviate that. Without the protection of the law, there is no way to differentiate prostitution that is chosen and that which is forced, by legalizing it, the hope is that forced prostitution would decrease while women who want to enter into sex-work could monopolize the trade.
We don’t have to pretend selling sex resembles selling tobacco or lotto tickets, to know how silly bans are on truly voluntary prostitution. Scratch the surface of these putative arguments against legal prostitution and you invariably find someone uncomfortable with sex for its own sake. Should we ban that, too? Well, from the dudgeon raised by social conservatives and many feminists, you’d think it were vital to do so.
“legalizing prostitution with the caveat of some sort of regulation would help alleviate that.”
The whole appeal of prostitution to prostitutes is that it is easy. You can become a prostitute without an education, filling out forms, or doing anything. All you have to basically do is write an ad on craiglist. If you legalize it but regulate it you will generally find it extremely difficult to get any prostitute to register.
Tom Matlocks idea is therefore a non-starter.
The commercial argument for liberalization is as old as the hills.
So we take the sex industry. Those who trade are regulated. A Service is provided – even taxes raised. But, what happens with those who’s interests fall into unacceptable areas, such as children – maybe those who are mentally incapacitated and other targeted groups. Liberalization addresses some issues but still needs to address all issues. It depends on what some wish to achieve from the perspective of improvement. Is it better or best?
If the House Rate is set at say $600 and someone can’t afford it, they will go looking for a better deal at say $50 – and I’d love to see the license holders pursuing those who are undercutting the market. It would be so costly in legal fees and services it just would not happen. In countries where legal control is in place you still need criminal sanction to support the License holders and their profit margins. Free market only goes so far when the market is so vast.
It’s easy if you hold a patent – but I believe the patent on genitals and sexuality was owned by mother nature – and it has also expired. I’d love to see the faces of the US patent office if anyone tried to corner the market! P^)
Gambling – enforce age limits, which frankly can be subverted rather easily given on-line gambling. The Las Vegas model of people having to be physically present is outdated due to the net. Gambling is in many ways irrational, so legislation and licensing only acts to exploit such irrational behavior. It can even be seen to promote magical thinking and beliefs that are counter productive.
Drugs – and at which age is it to be seen as acceptable? One of the biggest issues with the drug trade is not the price or even the quality. It’s targeting children to get the hooked and made into long time users – and legalization would only benefit those who have the time and money for recreational usage. Kids end up hooked and needing to feed a habit. That can mean becoming a courier or street trader, or raising money through crime. On average, if a seller is removed from the streets, it takes less than 30 minutes for a replacement to be in place.
Legalize and license cocaine, heroine, crystalmeth and so many others, and allow children access free of parental control – but the Kids still have to get the money from somewhere, unless the license holders are obliged to provide free below a certain age – in which case the Kids will take the free supply and undercut the supplier by trading on the streets. So you would have to have law enforcement in place again to stop the kids from subverting the markets.
Even when you look at countries that have addressed all three issues of sex, gambling and drugs – it addresses some issues and even brings unintended consequences to the wider population – but there are still many issues to address as well and it’s never as simple as people think.
It will improve the general social good and welfare, but it also has to address those who are exploited by free market ideals and fall outside of the licensing systems – and even those who then subvert the systems to make money by unintended routes.
The one thing that has been found to address all three areas of concern is the reduction of social inequality and poverty. Access to services, eduction and jobs under cut all three markets.
Licensing will allow those with ready income to purchase sex, drugs and gamble freely – and those who lack such income will simply be drawn into being the units of supply in the new service industries created. That could be on your back – serving drinks and food at the slots – or cleaning up the vomit at the latests Drug Salon…. and even digging the graves for all.
Very much agree that legalization is the proper route to minimizing the coercive aspects of human vices. Reference Portugal’s foray into addressing hard drug use within its borders:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization
Shifting dollars/efforts from penal and court systems to mitigation and support is the only worthwhile action left to pursue.
Selling licenses to engage in a particular activity is not legalizing that activity. If these things are actually rights, they should be legalized- which means we would not have to pay a bribe to be allowed to engage in them without risk of retribution from government.
Spoken like a true Montanan!
And a jury nullification advocate! We should simply be refusing to convict people of victimless “crimes”. As Lysander Spooner made explicitly clear, vices are not crimes. http://FIJA.org
Right on
I would like to see evidence that legalizing prostitution won’t increase human trafficking. Prostitution is legal and highly regulated in Amsterdam, yet there is a huge problem with trafficking of women from Eastern Europe, or so I’ve read. Legalization will almost certainly increase demand, since I assume that many men who would otherwise like to visit prostitutes are currently deterred by the illegal aspects of it. Organized crime will not ignore the huge profits to be made and it is naive to think that the criminal element can be eliminated through increased regulation or government oversight. I would support legalization of prostitution if it would reduce trafficking and improve the situation for women in that line of work, I’m just not sure that’s what will happen. Legalization of medical marijuana has created a multibillion dollar industry in California and organized crime is heavily involved, according to my friends in law enforcement. I suspect the same would happen with a legalized prostitution industry. I just don’t think government has the resources to adequately regulate such an industry, regardless of increased taxes or fees. We see that problem now with alcohol (the state agency responsible for regulation of liquor licenses is chronically underfunded) as well as medical marijuana (which has become the Wild West in California). Prescription drugs are heavily regulated by the government, yet there is a huge black market. But I suppose who cares about a poor woman from Burma brought illegally to the U.S. and forced into prostitution, whose papers are forged, who doesn’t speak English and who lies to the government regulators out of fear for her life or fear for her family back in Burma?
Jill – quite right.
Legislate and license – It does not solve all the issues and brings up quite a few new one’s along the way.
Legalization of prostitution also allows Women to openly and lawfully rent another persons body for sex – it is not just men who access prostitutes – and that then drives human trafficking to meet that need too!
There are many cases of males from disadvantaged backgrounds being used by Janes – with the top taking the money. If you have ever spoken with male prostitutes you get told all sorts of stories. The mythology of Males only using prostitutes is past it’s shelf life.
Oh – and women drink, gamble and do drugs too! Some even act as mules to traffic the hard stuff, and stats indicate that women do that more often than men.
When I see you calling for the banning of autos because of pollution and global warming, I’ll take you seriously on the idea that the vice industry should be banned until it comes up with a way to solve all the pitfalls associated with it.
Yes, let’s ban everything bad that might have a slight negative effect on socirty in the tiniest way no matter how much worse civilisation would be without it. Because driving a car is totally equal to selling a person for sex.
The dark side of human trafficking is in part because the immigration itself is illegal. You are at the mercy of the coyotes who smuggle you into the country because you can’t turn to the police because of your immigration status. This happens to some degree when you are smuggled in to work in *any* part of the economy. By definition, illegal immigration *is* organized crime, so of course organized crime is going to be part of it whether people are smuggled in to clean bathrooms or sell sex, whether selling sex is legal or not.
It’s interesting how in debates about prostitution all of the sudden prostitutes are foreign slaves from far away, not local streetwalkers or local escorts. Perhaps legalizing prostitution would protect current citizens more than non-citizen immigrants. That’s generally the case with every kind of law. I’m not sure that’s the end of the world. Perhaps if you could get a job visa for sex work just like you could for other work, you would have some legal protections you would not have as an illegal immigrant.
P.S. That woman from Burma could also be forced into doing work that is perfectly legal for citizens or people with appropriate visas. The central problem is the kidnapping, coercion, and enslavement, which the illegality only reinforces. There are plenty of sweatshops that have nothing to do with sex work, in which women are treated as slaves at the mercy of unscrupulous people. Perhaps if we made sewing machines illegal this would cut down on human trafficking?
You’ve read mere speculation on the situation in Holland. Foes of sex work assume every prostitute that is in Holland without a permit has been trafficked. Of course they’d do that; they earn a living from saying this. As for medical marijuana, complete legalization would largely eradicate any mob connection, if there is one. Marijuana would be ubiquitous and therefore no more likely to be mob-controlled than Snickers bars.
Will legalizing prostitution lead to an increase in human trafficking?
That’s a totally valid question to ask, but not a decisive question in my opinion.
Just because something will allow more human trafficking doesn’t mean that it should never be done. I know that sounds heartless, but hear me out. If we increased cell phone coverage, sped up internet speeds, lowered freight costs, and expanded the country’s rail system, this would no doubt benefit human traffickers while benefitting almost everyone else as well. I’m sure these traffickers are using cell phones, the internet, online banking, GPS tracking, container shipping systems, probably Tweeting deliveries in coded messages as well. That doesn’t mean we should therefore ban Twitter, cell phones, banking, ships, and railroads.
The human trafficking issue should not be the definitive question about legal or illegal prostitution. It’s a question of costs versus benefits, and a question of how far we should go to stop the trafficking. Some possible measures would be going too far, some not. For example, keeping all planes, trains, and automobiles from reaching the U.S., but this is surely overkill.
My view is that continuing to make prostitution illegal is another extreme and unnecessary way to fight human trafficking.
Not to sound like a hair-splitting troll, but “sex” is already legal, if we’re talking about consensual sex. I assume you mean making overt prostitution legal. I say “overt” because there are already many ways in which people exchange sexual favors for various sorts of compensation. (Bumping and grinding my way to a promotion, for example.)
Now to sound like a real nutcase: The recent attention to sexual slavery in America is totally overblown. It’s a social and moral panic over something that does exist, but not nearly on the scale that warrants an argument against all forms of sex work or that rises to the level of public enemy number one. Of course it’s wrong, and every case of sex slavery is a crime against humanity, but the statistics have become inflated as part of the larger media competition over which current problem is worse than which other problems. Track down the estimates to see where they come from, count up how many actual cases have been discovered since billions of dollars have been thrown at the problem, and this apparent epidemic dissolves in front of your eyes. I get the feeling that this is a case of justified outrage being stoked up so it can be mobilized for other reasons.
When money is involved, and big money, I don’t know if legalizing anything matters. There are always markets for the “good stuff” the government won’t allow. As Amsterdam has seen, trafficking increases. I’ve actually been pro legalization of the things mentioned, but I’m actually not really of a belief it would make any of them go away.
I know Thaddeus was banned, but damn I’d love to see his responses here. I realize he posted a lot, but I found his points stunning and rigorous.
I think I used a word I shouldn’t have used.
When money is involved, and big money, I don’t know if legalizing anything matters. There are always markets for the “good stuff” the government won’t allow. As Amsterdam has seen, trafficking increases. I’ve actually been pro legalization of the things mentioned, but I’m actually not really of a belief it would make any of them go away.
Dark stuff, all of it.
I don’t believe opponents of prostitution who claim trafficking in Holland is higher because of legalization. They have a pecuniary interest in seeing every illegal immigrant who works in the sex trade as trafficked.
Legalize, regulate and unionize them all I say!
Someone brought up the possibility that legalizing more kinds of sex work would lead to an increase in human trafficking. Possibly. But, from the immigrant’s point of view, would it be better to be smuggled into a legal job or into an illegal job? I’m guessing moving into a legal job would be better.
In any case, the people most exploited in *any* local industry are people who immigrate illegally and who are brought into an underground economy. They would be in an underground black market whether prostitution was legal or not. (I’m assuming under legalized prostitution that employing illegal immigrants would still be technically illegal, just like in other industries.) The issue there is using the labor from illegal immigration, and I’m not sure someone who is smuggled in to work in a legalized field is going to be treated any worse than someone who is smuggled in to work in a farm field.
(The flippant answer to this would be to make all immigration legal, in which case a lot of these problems would disappear….)
To stop Prostitution altogether is the only way.
Legalizing sexual slavery ,which has happen in Amsterdam,has made this kind of slavery worse than ever.
Do men have no conscience ,these women are beaten raped falsed to take drugs and worse,
how can anyone thing of legalizing something that should have been closed down at the end of slavery.
Prostitution is where a man pays to rape a woman,so your suggesting legalizing rape ?
I’m kind of a morality libertarian. I don’t think there should be such a thing as a “consensual crime.” If two (or more) people engage in something in private that both consent to, then I don’t see why the state should make it illegal. Same thing with consenting to do something to yourself – I don’t think the state should stop me from smoking pot in my own home. If it doesn’t harm the lives or property of others, then it is not really in the public interest to stop it. Even if something is “immoral,” that does not automatically mean that it should be illegal. Once you start trying to protect adults from making decisions for themselves, you are on the road to eliminating individual autonomy.
The things that should be illegal are generally already illegal. Prostitution may be associated with rape and kidnapping and assault. Rape and kidnapping and assault are already illegal, as they should be. Those are real crimes against people. Stop those crimes. It’s a lot harder to stop those crimes if you can’t come forward to file a report. Selling drugs to children is exploiting children, because they are too young to make informed decisions. That should be a crime whether selling drugs to adults is a crime or not. (It’s already illegal to give perfectly legal prescription drugs to children without a legal guardian’s consent.)
I don’t think legalization of all these consensual activities would be a cure-all. It would not create a society-wide miracle of rainbows and unicorns and fully funded public programs. It would bring new problems. I’m suggesting that the new problems would be much smaller than the problems with the legislation of private morality.
We would have to have a much, much bigger conversation about the role of drugs in our society, both legal and illegal drugs. We would have to come to terms with the fact that medical mistakes are one of the leading causes of death in the U.S., often from the misuse or bad side effects from perfectly legal drugs. (More people killed by this than breast cancer and AIDS put together.) It’s absurd to think that we’ve banned the sale of the “bad ones” and only sell the “good ones.” (See Michael Jackson.)
Yes, making powerful drugs legal would lead to some deaths that would not have happened otherwise. The FDA is already doing this on a daily basis for the public good. We already balance the benefits and drawbacks of making certain drugs legal and decide in the affirmative all the time.
Legalize it all you want, it isn’t going to get better. Pros that have licenses and belong to a union won’t put up with certain behaviors and an underground market will appear in no time that will allow the consumer the freedom to abuse. So, no change there.
“Legalize it all you want, it isn’t going to get better. Pros that have licenses and belong to a union won’t put up with certain behaviors and an underground market will appear in no time that will allow the consumer the freedom to abuse. So, no change there.”
Ok then legalize and completely deregulate. Then an underground market is impossible.
I just finished reading an interesting book called “The Origins of AiDS” which among other things talks quite a bit about prostitution in the city of Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) in the former Belgian Congo. When the city was founded by the Belgians, they tried to keep out women and families — they only wanted laborers. Not surprisingly, prostitution flourished. However, it was a kind of prostitution very unlike what you might expect. There were no brothels, no pimps or madams. The prostitutions were, by and large, independent women who came to the city for a variety of reasons (abandonment by a husband, for example) and they mostly used prostitution to supplement their income. For example, they might work as a housekeeper for a few clients and also provide those clients with sexual services. Many used the money from prostitution to start small businesses. They were in high demand and very well paid. They could pick and choose which clients they wanted and most of them had only a handful of clients. It wasn’t until after the Congo gained independence, which was followed by massive social and economic disruption, that the more familiar, brothel type of prostitution emerged. There was so little money around that the women had to start servicing multiple clients a day for a pittance, and their quality of life obviously declined.
The first kind of prostitution seems fairly unobjectionable to me. The problem is that I think prostitution as a modern industry has multiple avenues for exploitation and abuse, not just of women, but of children as well. As I commented above, I don’t think regulation can solve those problems as legalization will just make the industry bigger and more uncontrollable. I used an example in my previous comment of an illegal immigrant from Burma. It could just as easily be a legal immigrant or a runaway teenager from Tennesee. If you have a business where others are profiting from the bodies of women and children (and boys and men), tragedy will follow. Our country can’t even effectively regulate the banking industry. Here in Californiaoffstage regulators failed for decades to properly oversee PG&E and now we probably have hundreds of miles worth of defective and unsafe gas lines all over the state.
I think my point is that calls to “Legalize and regulate” is not going to solve any problems with the existing illegal prostitution industry and may only exacerbate the problems. If people think legalization is a good idea then they are naive IMO. Libertarianism is really the only intellectually honest argument in favor of legalization, and by that I mean that a libertarian would say it shouldn’t be a concern of society or government to prevent exploitation or abuse and that prostitution is simply an economic activity that should be allowed to exist regardless of the harmful consequences to individuals. Similarly, a libertarian would say that preventing drug abuse is not society’s problem. I don’t completely agree with those kinds of arguments, personally, but I accept that it it is a valid point of view.
Sorry for typos – damn autocorrect!
I would not call myself a libertarian….I might instead call myself a pragmatarian. I am mostly libertarian but for very pragmatic reasons.
“There were no brothels, no pimps or madams.”
This is exactly what prostitution currently looks like. Craigslist changed everything. A lot of prostitutes these days are independent. They have no pimps or madams and their are no brothels. Its all about economics in the end. Prostitutes needed brothels because they needed some place where the client would be able to find them. Craiglist disintermediates and eliminates the middle man. Getting rid of Craigslist didn’t really change anything.
I find it odd though that feminists and everyone else simply refuse to listen to actual prostitutes. Most of them are in favor of full legilization and total deregulation….no taxes, no laws, nothing. Since prostitutes are the ones everyone is trying to protect shouldn’t they be the one consulted?
I respect that argument. I just wish people would quit arguing that legalization will solve the kinds of serious social problems that are associated with the current industry (such as child prostitution or sex trafficking) because it won’t! So if legalization is the policy decision, it should not be for that reason.
Practicality follows morality, that is to say that moral laws have practical results & immoral laws spawn impracticality.
It is immoral for a person or group to dictate to an individual what activities s/he is allowed to participate in that don’t necessarily infringe on anyone else’s life, liberty, or property. Such an immoral, dictatorial attempt ultimately results in problems of impracticality. There are many examples. The Prohibitionists had no right to use political weapons like pluralism and lobbyism to infringe on other adults’ decision to use alcohol. The impractical result?: the punishments of innocent people, the rise of organized crime, and the doubt cast on the Constitution by mutilating it back & forth.
It’s immoral to dictate an adult’s voluntary intake of chemicals, but the authoritarians have insisted on doing so for years. The impractical results: billions of dollars wasted on a dumb drug war, many people wrongly imprisoned, and the empowerment of brutal drug cartels who wouldn’t have the business sense to compete in a free market.
Should it be illegal for a woman to marry a man for his money? Should there be laws prohibiting a woman from giving affection to a man in gratitude for taking her on nice dates & giving her gifts? Should there be laws to prohibit professional dating? (illustrated by the recent story of a young NYC woman exploiting match.com dates in order to pay for her weekly meals http://www.inquisitr.com/163956/woman-uses-online-dating-to-supplement-food-budget/). Exchanges of affection for goods are difficult to quantify for those outside of the exchange. Consenting adults have sex for many reasons & in exchange for many things: sometimes abstract, sometimes concrete. Should we really empower a ruling political class to regulate these exchanges? It’s those consenting adults’ business, not the business of the masses or of the legislature. Even if we think it’s not a good idea, we have no moral authority to stop an adult from consenting to physical encounters in exchange for pay. So when immoral law makers pass these laws, predictably there are impractical consequences. Prostitutes can no longer go to the law for protection from assault & robbery. Instead, they turn to pimps & sex ring operators, creating a class or underworld thugs who in a free market would offer little value & in exchange would command little influence.
The opinion of greatest importance to me is that of the sex worker, and there is a strong consensus among these workers that some level of (hybrid) legalization / decriminalization is what they desire.
Most workers voice preferences for removing statutes that criminalize sex work, facilitating a social and political environment where they had legal rights and could seek help when they become victims of violence. Safer working conditions and legal protections afforded to other workers are table stakes in this discussion.
The very definition of naiveté is expecting a better outcome by making the same tired policy mistakes that have been in place since Pterodactyl roamed the planet.
You’ve nailed it. If sex workers want sex work to be legalized, I say go for it. No one knows what’s best for sex workers better than they do.
Their opinions are important for another reason. By far they are the most knowledgeable about how the industry actually works. I think feminist researchers, including those that have interviewed prositutes really have no clue as to what they are talking about.
We also have American subcultures that use the word “pimp” as a compliment. That suggests we have a long way to go. (And white people like me calling a man’s tank-top a “wife-beater” shirt is hardly progressive either.)