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Comment by alpaca128 | Hacker News Reader

As someone living in a country where prostitution is legal I have a hard time seeing how your argument goes from that to dystopia. It's heavily regulated and controlled, which is better than people doing it anyway without any oversight and the safeties from that.

And even aside from that I don't see a problem with it, of course as long as it's 100% consensual. Maybe I'm missing some obvious problem, but the thing currently driving my country towards a dystopian society is mainly growing corruption with shrinking consequences as well as ignorance, not people choosing what to do with their bodies.

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I think the dystopia part comes in if a particular male's only chance for a sexual relationship is via prostitution. That seems pretty dystopian to me.

Can I ask why? I mean it sucks if someone can't get laid without paying but isn't the alternative where they never get to have sex worse?

Because "dystopia" doesn't necessarily mean the exact worst of all possible worlds.

Yes, it would be better than "never getting to have sex at all", but it would still be a pretty unfortunate situation to be in for a lot of people.

It means they don't get children.

Ah, I can see that. Although a part of this might also be the social stigma attached to the whole thing.

On the flipside I've read somewhere about e.g. the Dutch government acknowledging sex as human desire to a point they pay it for some people with permanent disabilities, kind of as a form of therapy. I guess you could call that dystopian in a sense, I'd say it's much less so than people literally dying from a lack of accessible healthcare. But that's another can of worms.

Just out of curiosity, which country are you describing?

I can't speak on their behalf, but it sounds like a pretty accurate description of both Australia and New Zealand to me.

As someone living in NZ, I had thought the same in the beginning, until they mentioned corruption being a problem. I'm not saying it doesn't exist here at all, but it's so low it's on the bottom of the list of problems this country has

My guess was Germany.

The issue here is that the idea of “100% consensual” is 100% unrealistic. If working as a prostitute is acceptable and pays 10x the average salary, living costs adjust in reaction, then what is consensual about this?

Allowing unhealthy or undesirable behaviors to be economically lucrative doesn’t make them ethically good. To me, the scenario is dystopian because it’s saying we are incapable of managing our own desires to the benefit of society, and instead must (economically) force young women into selling their bodies en masse. Instead of having healthy relationships as the baseline, we just choose the easy option.

Adding to that, prostitution is tied up with human trafficking and lots of other horrible things that have nothing to do with individuals choosing what to do with their bodies.

Are you equally concerned with how many men are (economically) forced into selling their bodies for construction (and other physically taxing) jobs en masse?

If working as a porn actress/actor is acceptable and pays 10x the average salary, then what is consensual about this?

You could say the same here, almost exact same profession other than a more limited pool of partners in exchange for less privacy. What do you say to the nurse in the US who was fired from her job and center of public outrage because as a nurse she got paid so little she decided to make extra money on OnlyFans? Where do you draw the line between this, which is legal, and prostitution?

> prostitution is tied up with human trafficking and lots of other horrible things

You think when prostitution is illegal this problem is nonexistent? Epstein ring any bells? You can have prostitution and still fight human trafficking.

OnlyFans is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind. Maybe it’s an unpopular opinion, but I see its popularity as being indicative of deep moral decline.

Edit: Why do people downvote a comment seconds after it’s been posted? It’s absurd and immature. Leave that behavior back on Reddit, thanks.

> I see its popularity as being indicative of deep moral decline.

The behaviour of people didn't change, OnlyFans just gives them a simpler way for compensation. It's not the first of its kind, it just has more publicity than others.

In terms of moral decline I'm not sure what you mean. Unless you confuse morality with religious faith(some religious people like to equate the two) it's been a better time for morality than almost any other time in the history of humanity.

> Allowing unhealthy or undesirable behaviors to be economically lucrative doesn’t make them ethically good.

You're pre-supposing that prostitution is unhealthy or undesirable. Isn't that exactly the stigmatising attitude that makes it "dystopian"?

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