* drinking
* gambling
* prostitution
* drugs
* adultery
* homosexuality
* lending money
* black markets
Regulation doesn't need to "suppress an activity into inconsequence" to be useful. There are many ways regulation can beneficially impact activity in between the extremes. The vast majority of regulation does this. The extreme of "completely abolish an activity" isn't a practical or useful goal in most cases.
What about taxes on alcohol that fund anti-drinking campaigns and help fund treatment centers?
Yes, exactly.
> What about taxes on alcohol that fund anti-drinking campaigns and help fund treatment centers?
They mostly fund anti-youth-drinking campaigns and responsible drinking campaigns, not anti-drinking campaigns (OTOH, tobacco taxes often do fund anti-smoking campaigns.) They also fund licensing and enforcement agencies that license vendors and enforce laws against selling to youth, selling in inappropriate venues, etc.
I think you would find that many people who oppose prohibition of prostitution would support loosely similar tax, regulatory, and enforcement structures.
It's exactly the kind of thing I was talking about
> What about
That is not making it illegal.
Today Islam still holds this as a majority view in many places (not universally). I'm simplifying it a lot, so I really recommend the book. There is a strong correlation between debt and guilt. In Christian doctrine, they're very interchangeable (forgive us our debts/sins as we forgive those who are indebted to/have sinned against us).
Guilt, Sin and debt are the same word in many ancient languages, including old English. Guilt and debt are still the same word in German.
Usually, not that, just charging interest.
only if it is a private transaction. Making pornography is legal. You are correct, there lies no sense here.
..or I guess you could move to Nevada.
[1] If they use a fake ID and are underage, you can still be liable.
But then the way the laws are written, a couple recording a sex tape is covered under these regulations. If they don't maintain the proper records, they could find themselves being indicated under child porn laws, even though they were both consenting adults.
This is true, only if individuals have a good education, job opportunities, a broad enough safety net, etc.
Otherwise, you are just pushing abused women or women with no resources to submit to sexual servitude.
When you have a high correlation between prostitution and poverty, you are just realizing that that choice was never there.
A good approach is to punish clients instead of prostitutes. This way you help to shift power balance and protect prostitutes that denounce abuse.
There is no freedom without a possibility of choice.
[0] Fast Food Nation (I think it's written about in Chapter 8 "The Most Dangerous Job").
Or any other job, really.
How would this help poor women?
However, I would hope no one has to resort to unwanted sex work to afford life and liberty--just for a simple roof over their head, for food and basic healthcare. That's what I fear with legalizing prostitution... I just personally think the idea of knowing people have to do that out of economic necessity is horrible.
This is why I think the economic constraints argument is specious here, it is still a form of imposing one's moral values onto others; unless you are willing to provide a living wage out of your own money to anybody opting to renounce prostitution, denying them that option means subjecting them to something even more horrible in their view, only because you think it's not.
You've already suggested some places where US law restricts contracts that might seem to be between consenting adults. It's a moral choice for the law to restrict you from "selling your organs, selling yourself into slavery, highly dangerous drugs etc."
I think there's good reason for the law to be protective, because merely allowing some contracts to be valid, will allow large power-discrepancies to effectively force people into them.
Whether prostitution falls into this category is a question of culture/morality.
The law is an expression of the social contract, so it's a truism to say it will be shaped by cultural norms.
However, some cultural norms are so universal and beyond debate that we can move to an utilitarian perspective to see how well those universal values are protected by various policy choices. For example, if we posit human life as a right, there is no moral question on whether, say, a market of hit men should exist.
Back to our regulation choices, I wanted to underline how banning a dangerous substance is a clear cut, less moral and more objective issue, because it objectively threatens life. Whereas banning prostitution is squarely into the subjective end of the scale, since there is no shared moral value that is objectively infringed.
That's not to say that tough choices don't exist (recreational drugs, handguns, certain pornography) where the law must espouse moral choices, but that prostitution shouldn't be such a case. It is only treated as such as a political appeasement to the minority of voters for whom it's a major moral issue.
I think this ie consistent with my original point: society should not allow exploitation of people who are simply trying to survive.
Again, I'm asking because I dont know. To me, I think the above example would cause a lot of public harm in that people would be pressured into giving up their lives to potentially save their families from poverty. But at the same time, that reasoning could be applied to prostitution. But then again, with prostitution, you can always stop.
Your scenario doesn't exist because these fights aren't a good deal/risk for most people. Prostitution is a lot more popular because it's not a risk, it's a sacrifice.
The point being, the societal harm of outlawing your suggestion is little, but the societal harm of outlawing prostitution is much more than prostitution itself causes. At least I think that's a reasonable conclusion, as many others advocating for prostitution legality do. In addition to ownership of one's own body, etc.
> To me, I think the above example would cause a lot of public harm in that people would be pressured into giving up their lives to potentially save their families from poverty. But at the same time, that reasoning could be applied to prostitution.
Another problem is that this is quiiiiite a stretch. Prostitution is not giving up your life, it's a profession. In some cases people even enjoy the profession, though this is not to imply that most or even many do. Should we say all unhappy accountants are sacrificing their lives as well? Prostitutes can still have normal fulfilling lives. You can't if you're dead in your example.
Aren't we all pressured into working in order to survive?
In a typical/expected sex worker transaction, the worker performs a sexual act and then goes about their day without any lasting issues (other than perhaps minor symptoms like soreness). In a typical/expected gladiator duel, the person doesn't go about their day because they die. I'm not sure how you can compare those at all.
When done safely and with precautions, sex work isn't very dangerous. See: Australian sex workers, after it was legalized there.
There is a precedent for this type of law - Mutual combat is legal in Washington - https://fightstate.com/mutual-combat-law-in-washington-lets-...
You could say that about employment in some SV companies...
You wouldn't have SESTA / FOSTA if you didn't have the pathologically terrible Backpage.
Bad actors doesn't excuse bad law, and good intentions does not make unintended consequences any less real.
I've heard they started auto-filtering words (teen, loli, etc.) but that could be interpreted with different intents. These aren't strict liability crimes, so intent will come in to play and need to be proven.
You don't have to believe anything in this document. You can follow the links this documents gives to the court cases, and the court cases contain what Backpage themselves were saying.