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Comment by c21h30o2 | Hacker News Reader

The question of whether it's good and wholesome is orthogonal to the question of whether society should punish those who do it.

Scenario A: Resourceful, successful, happy. Should she be forced to accept dangerous working conditions and live under the constant threat of eviction, imprisonment, harassment and stigma? Why? What's the argument in favor of making her life difficult?

Scenario B: Physical or mental disability, unattractive, can't afford to refuse clients even though they make her unsafe, doesn't have any other way to pay for rent, food, meds and diapers. Should she be prevented from going to the police when someone beats, rapes or robs her? Should she be prevented from organizing with her friends for mutual protection? Should she be prevented from advertising online and instead forced onto the streets? Again, why? What's the argument in favor of making her life even more difficult?

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The point is her experience is niche and unique, it is not indicative of how the industry at large actually operates so making any judgements would not be meaningful as OP was doing.

but the issue the article points out that she as an escort has no access to law, should something go wrong.

If an in-house hair dresser was assaulted/robbed/stolen from, they would be able to report it to the police. There would be a strong chance (well as high as any other crime) that it would be punished.

There would also be an opportunity to use/create a verification scheme for clients, but also ask for insurance/tax/qualifications for the hair dresser.

This is what operating in a "decriminalized" world looks like. You don't get harassed by the law, but they wont help you either.

Ideally we would have a world where sex work is legally allowed (so long as its not coerced) and allow those workers to form companies, hire security, use payment systems, have vetting functions. All of the services that would make life much less precarious.

I know that in the people I have encountered in the sex worker world (who are related but not the same as escorts) are very against "legalisation" as they fear it would lead to registers and no chance to limit or control anonymity.

So unless the moral objections are sorted, I don't see any future in these changes.

> hire security

In the UK, being paid by a pro sex-worker for services in support of that work is a crime called "Living off immoral earnings", and it's treated quite a bit more seriously than prostitution. How do you tell whether the big guy in the car across the street is really just protection, or whether he's a pimp, taxing a harem of girls with threats of violence?

more information on this:

https://www.inbrief.co.uk/offences/living-off-immoral-earnin...

Modern law has been complicated somewhat by a change in heart. There was an attempt at loosening the rules around prostitution(pre 2009), but they have subsequently been tightened a bit. In short its a mess.

> really just protection, or whether he's a pimp, taxing a harem of girls with threats of violence?

this is where I diverge from sex workers on my opinion on this. They are pushing for discrimination. But this doesn't solve the coercion/security hired help issue.

The only practical way I can see it going away is by allowing sex workers to be fully legalised, as in form a company, have accounts, pay tax, be inspected by environmental health(or would it be CQC?). have three workers, but only pay tax for one? time for an inspection!

There are risks, and the stigma will force people underground. Holland and germany _still_ have a people trafficking problem

I suspect there are better ways, but unless it sex work can be done on the high street(well not literally), we will never truly over come the stigma, and subsequent exploitation of people.

>but the issue the article points out that she as an escort has no access to law, should something go wrong.

She has little to no access to state sanctioned violence. Call it what it is. If she has a business dispute she has no recourse, she can't sue the other party and get the state to put them in a cage if they don't pay. Drug industry also has the same problem and does its violence in-house. Formerly prostitution did in-house the violence necessary to settle business disputes (i.e. pimps) but the internet has changed the business model somewhat.

> so making any judgements would not be meaningful as OP was doing

The OP's judgment was that he saw no reason why this escort's business should be illegal. That's not a judgment on whether other forms of prostitution should be legal.

He said "this stuff" , which i assumed to mean escorting in general, he would have been more specific if he meant only hers ?

Also it hard from government to legalize only some form of prostitution over others even if politically that is possible, practically impossible to enforce.

Sure, escorting businesses like hers, where there's clearly no victim being trafficked or abused.

Also it's not at all difficult to legalize only some forms of prostitution. Consider this analogous situation: it's hard for a government to legalize only some forms of cutting people with knives, but we seem to do fine legally distinguishing surgery from assault with a deadly weapon.

I don't think that's true. I know a former escort pretty well and she's told me a lot about her work. It lines up very well with the article, except that she didn't have a high opinion of the very high end/expensive escorting because there simply isn't enough business available at the $1200/hr level. At least, not in Europe. It worked out much better for her to charge a more regular price and work full time.

Otherwise the rest is the same. Most clients are whatever. A few she got to know well and liked. She worked with another person who did screening for her, etc.

Perhaps the regular price for your friend is high end equivalent of 1200 ?. The author strongly says the population of an area makes a big difference in the rates you can charge.

Also mean income (as measured by her study of other workers) is $100,000 with her average rates of her sample around 500-600.

Effectively

    = F(x)(y)(z)

   X - number of people earning 200x the hourly rate

   Y -  % of that interested in paying for sex[1]

   Z - relative beauty rank among service providers[2] in that area

You cannot control beauty much but you could change for location and optimize for all the factors to get best rate[3]. Or optimize for total money depending on what is preferred.

[1] age is strong factor so demographics is a good proxy metric.

Also perhaps friction with law is proxy for cultural acceptance and can be numerically scaled : fully legal, decriminalized, or criminal with quantum of punishment for scaling. And degree of enforcement measured by number of arrests / convictions etc.

[2] probably being 9 in LA wouldnt be the same as say Wyoming( demand would be lesser as a counter pressure)

[3] touring is a thing perhaps because of this.

Well they all tour because otherwise they saturate demand after a week or two in a local area. It's not about big disparities in local earning potential. Guys like novelty and even the ones that pick a girl and stick with her can't afford to come all the time.

No, prices are almost standardized, at least in the 'normal' escorting world. I was surprised by this at first. My belief had always been that it'd be super competitive and the hottest girls would charge the highest prices, but it's not like that. Turns out guys don't really care that much about what a girl looks like beyond a baseline level of beauty, which is why so many can get away with hiding their face.

What does matter a lot is what special services are offered (e.g. dominatrix stuff has a different price), and customer retention, which is 100% about whether you're nice and make the guys feel happy. The most successful girls are the ones that develop a loyal customer base. A few men even follow the girls around as they tour, but that's rare. Girls who are cold, uninterested etc don't get repeat custom and exhaust the area quite quickly.

Whether to go high end or not probably depends a lot on how much else you have going on in life. Aella presumably has lots of other projects like OnlyFans, social media etc. This girl was a full timer. It was her job, and she worked pretty long hours (not anymore). She didn't use social media or create websites or whatever. That's normal. Most escorts use ad sites but they aren't creating dedicated websites for themselves. This girl doesn't even use social media at all, not even in her personal life (and never did, and she's not old).

I did ask her once about the high end work but she indicated that at these sorts of prices you could get maybe one client a month, which just wasn't enough to be interesting given she could be making thousands per day reliably by charging a more normal price (a few hundred an hour). And of course with fewer customers you're a lot more exposed to one of them not coming anymore. The people saying "wow $1200/hr is a lot" are right, I suspect only in Silicon Valley are there a large enough percentage of über-rich but unlucky-with-women people to pay those sorts of rates. Most guys visited her around payday, it was a very cyclical business.

If you do ever get to know an escort on a personal level, or especially more than one, be aware that this is a world that will seem - to the average office worker at least - astoundingly racist. It's touched on in the article but is something else that surprised me a lot. All the girls have strong opinions about different races and a large number demand to know a client's race before they turn up and will simply refuse clients of particular races. There is no stigma or shame associated with such discussions or policies. In escorting there are no HR departments to tell people what to think, 'diversity' isn't a thing, they're all independent or at most work with one or two other girls who are just like them. Learning about this made me reflect a lot on to what extent the middle class office/tech world obsession with anti-racism is a function of the heavy level of filtering that goes on at the front door as part of selecting for skills, university, background etc. The belief that everyone is culturally homogenous and race is just a pigment, just doesn't fly amongst escorts. They learn to generalize about their client base very quickly. To them the link between race and culture is both real and of critical importance.

Interesting and insightful information. I wouldn't think $1000/ hour as lot from consultant PoV. The billable hours are only small part of the hours compared to time put in other related work, in this case activities like screening, adverts, keeping fit, healthcare, accessories, photo-shoots adverts etc. At the same time the sense I get from your post is few hundred/hour as mid range and not high end, maybe it is my lack of knowledge of how this works, but to me it feels like even that is expensive/high-end for most people out there.

I am surprised that saturation can happen in 2 weeks. Unless I am completely clueless about this, that is probably maybe 20-25 appointments (having more than sex 3-4 times a day especially professionally(she seemed to do most of the work) must be incredibility exhausting ). Even if more was possible I can't manage to schedule more than 3 external work meetings a day that is not video conference, scheduling definitely must be more challenging than that here.

It seems pretty small pool if saturated after only 20-25? Perhaps the screening process or narrow advertising ability ( only few platforms allow/ expensive) limiting the reach or competition is pretty heavy at this price point perhaps.

What you are describing regarding race is they find putting race a filtering criteria helps keep screening easier (Somewhat analogous to companies only hiring from tier-1 universities etc ). Better screening leads to better results in hiring rather than arbitrary criteria, I can attest to this in hiring, perhaps it applies here as well but it usually cheaper /easier to implement criteria than screen candidates better for companies. If institutional resources don't do it well, independent workers can hardly be expected to do better. I don't think anything is wrong in sex workers applying race or any type of criteria, it is risky and vulnerable business without any legal or social support, they have to err on the side of caution if they can.

I am not sure there has been exploration of the emotional stress and challenges for the client too. Imagine being rejected often(race or not) even when you are ready to pay for sex on top being unable to attract partners normally that would be quite hard to accept for anyone.

Also the amount of personal information clients are expected to share and references they need to have (while I understand why it is being asked) is pretty steep. There are so many vectors this information may leak from and could damage your life/marriage, lead to arrests etc. That has got to be stressful too.. I would be totally paranoid towards sharing any PII, I guess a good chunk of rich men in the valley would also hesitate on that.

Only 3-4 appointments would have been considered a bad day, by this woman. You'd think it'd be exhausting but they are usually young and have a lot of energy, and 3-4 hours work is a lot less than most people do per day. The men come to them usually. For the high throughput cases they team up with another girl who pretends to be them on the phone and handles the scheduling and screening because that's also a full time job.

So within two weeks (working 6-7 days per week) it's easy to pack in like 80 different punters and there's a limited supply in most towns. Most men aren't visiting, and there are plenty of other girls competing for the business. In a big city sure you can't saturate it but there's also correspondingly much more competition and the police are more active, so some of them prefer to avoid the cities and stick to the smaller conurbations.

Most men don't share any PII. They pay in cash and may or may not use their real names. If they get "banned" it's the phone number that gets banned.

In the blog post she talks about ID cards linkedin profiles, paystubs, blacklists ,refs from other escorts thats a ton of PII!.

My understanding was cash is more because tax or no service from formal banking, not directly to hide identity

I guess that's another aspect that differs from what I heard, then. I don't think it's normal for customers to share their real identity or be required to do so.

My experience was not that niche and unique; I tried to consistently show data around how prices might impact your experience. The amount you charge is not correlated with the majority of the questions I asked sex workers.

In some Nordic countries, it's not illegal to sell sex, but it is to buy it. What do you think about that? Do you think making the men fear the law, but not the women, would do anything to help the women?

I guess the government's objective is to kill the business completely, which is about as realistic as prohibiting alcohol.

I think that situation is somewhat absurd. People in general don’t think sex between consenting adults is wrong, so why is it suddenly when money is exchanged? And, at least, Sweden still has the law that any form of procurement of prostitution is illegal, which means it is still impossible for a prostitute to for example legally pay a guard, or even use the money to pay rent.

From the linked article

This increases competition of sex workers for johns, artificially drives prices down, gives johns greater bargaining power over sex workers, and doesn’t fix the problem of johns trying hard to remain anonymous and requiring situations where you’re less able to go to the police if you wanted. Sex workers hate this.

I am aware of her view from the article. The approach I believe is more aimed at involuntary victims not being further victimized or being threatened with being reported to law enforcement as a mechanism of control. The sex workers Aella is sampling and interacting with may or may-not be a representative of this segment or Nordic countries have bigger problems with this than in United States

I don't have an opinion(or data) on whether this is effective or is good approach or not, just wanted point out that it is less about driving demand down, they are not trying to criminalize johns(it already was) but trying to address issues on the workers side perhaps ineffectively.

But in the current situation the buyer will be a criminal whether the sex worker is there voluntary or as a victim of trafficking, or even underage. So it's very unlikely a buyer would ever report to the police if they suspect that the sex worker is there involuntary or is abused by her pimp.

The law is supposedly there to protect the sex workers, but you don't do that by forcing into hiding and making it unlikely that any crimes against them will be reported by anyone else.

If they really cared about the sex workers they would instead make it easy for them to get anonymous support with health, in particular mental health, and drug abuse problems. And institute a hotline for sex buyers to call without risk getting into any legal troubles if they suspect that a sex worker needs any help for whatever reason.

Laws against sex work traditionally also make victim(involuntary or forced workers or trafficked) also the criminal.

It is extremely hard to differentiate who is involuntary legally even if there was strong provisions for it and sex workers mostly can not pay for expensive legal counsel who can make that case.

Nordic laws are an attempt to not decriminalize sex work at the same time not punish the workers at all.

It is not about controlling demand over supply

It lets SWERFs pat themselves on the back and feel good by pretending they're not punishing sex workers, only the "evil" men who provide sex workers with income. In practice we have seen in both Sweden and Norway that police systematically pressure landlords and hotels to evict sex workers from rented apartments/rooms under threat of pimping charges. Immigrant sex workers have been deported after going to the police to report crimes.

With "systematically pressure", you can actually say "tries to enforce the law"[1], if they're aware that the premise is used for swapping sex for money, they need to make it stop. Simply paying for a not-for-work apartment or should not fall under that legal space, though.

[1] https://lagen.nu/1962:700#K6P12S2

They really don't need to. They are kicking people out of their homes because of a law that shouldn't exist. They could just not prioritize it and free up resources for other crimes.

Your data collection was insightful[1] thank you for that.

All your caveats upfront on the quality of sampling is more than I have seen in many academic papers.

I don't have experience either as service provider or client to give a professionally informed comment here.

However having said that, sex work in general (even only in the United States) starts at lot less than 200-300$/hour in the lower end of the your study[2]. It is a great study and amazing subject testimony but it does only cover mid to high end of the spectrum.

As a basis for policy making covering the lower end of the spectrum and cover specifc policy issues and also cover other stakeholders like healthcare, law enforcement, welfare etc would be important.

I am sure there are lot more qualified people than me you are already in touch/working with, however I am happy to offer my help with statistics or code or lit review and publish formally /research proposal if you wish to go down that route.

[1] Your content, there are some parallels with how startups publish quality industry reports as a brand recognition strategy that I found very interesting.

[2] you have indicated the limitations in many places quite clearly am not finding faulting with your study .

Scenario B workers under legalization will lose their jobs/income.

Marginalized workers in the cannabis industry got pushed out when Canada legalized cannabis.

How do they lose their jobs? I get that a dealer who just sold weed now has to compete with legal alternatives or leave the sector. How so with sex work? You think the increased competition would put them out of work?

What is a marginalized worker in the cannabis sector?

Customers buying from black markets have less choice.

If I want drugs, I buy the drugs the dealer is pushing.

In a legal market for sex, a customer can be more selective, so the less desired workers will lose customers.

When weed was legalized the bottom rung of the weed dealers, lost their market to stores who suddenly offered a better option to consumers.

Marginalization in the cannabis dealer scene would be poor people who sell a bit of weed to make ends meet or cheap/free weed in exchange for dealing.

I think you are over estimating a cross over between these customers. Cheap Mexican brick weed is still being sold because legal cannabis is pricing poorer users out of the legal market.

Legal stores are employing people legitimately and paying taxes, so I don't mind if some dealers now have to quit or diversify. The more jobs we have in legal drugs the fewer required in the illegal drug trade. This is a net positive to society.

This is why most sex workers are specifically in favor of decriminalization and not 'legalization'.

Ask the ones in Europe and Canada how that's going for them.

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