Extreme realizations and exploiting workers is a problem in any industry. People have died farming gold in video games. Its why we have labor laws.
It is better for the government to constraint people's action, rather than allowing them learn from their choices and adjust over time.
Many sex workers are not in a position to leave "job paying below the market rate", for a combination of reasons like illegal immigration, underage, drug addictions, and psychological and corporal torture and abuse.
In most definitions of human rights there is a provision that these rights are "unalienable", making it at least highly questionable to "buy" the right to violate someones sexual self-determination, or inflict the long term damage that has been shown to occur even in "voluntary" prostitutes.
For the majority of the poor (and everyone else) who want to work and move up in life, don't put up any barriers to action and economic activity.
For the tiny minority who don't want to work and move up in life (usually, because they don't really care that much), who cares? Don't sacrifice the virtuous and capable majority for their sake.
You may say, "What about a country like India or (less extreme Eastern Europe), where the poor genuinely can't move up?" Well, the only way to change that is to free up the economy and let people pursue sustainable economic action. If you put up barriers to economic activity, the people who want to move up will never be able to; they will be permanently poor.
For example, ith an expanding economy, you can eventually make it so a person making $10/hour is able to live nicely, as productivity rises and prices fall.
But if you instead put minimum wage at $20/hour, people who only actually produce $10/hour of value won't have jobs, and the economy won't be able to expand to the point where if they had a $10/hour job, they could live decently on it.
Minimum wage and other regulations are why America no longer manufactures. We could be making all the things now made in China, with a commensurate decrease in expenses. Our factory workers wouldn't be rich, but they'd be able to afford the kinds of things they themselves make in the factories. Meanwhile, China would also be doing fine, it just would have grown at a more measured and sustainable pace, which isn't a bad thing.
Don't assume that a prostitute can just walk away from her pimp, because you think you would be able to do so in her place.
I'm not talking about higher-priced or even "self-employed" prostitutes, I'm talking about the "mass market". These women don't earn more than minimum wage. Sometimes less, all things considered. In lots of cases they would even get more social benefits than the pimps pay them... In some reported cases the pimps take even the social benefits from their "employees".
First case: I am totally against slavery and any kind of coersion. That is what we have a government for.
Second case: Psychological problems. We can't actually solve for those people by forbidding prostitution (or whatever the cause du jour is).
If wages are still so low that people literally can't survive, guess what? You have a glut on the labor market, probably because of decades of government policy that encouraged people to have more children than the society can economically sustain. Don't blame that on capitalism. You have to either take the medicine (reduce social benefits) or be permanently sick.
In Germany we have legalized prostitution. Turns out, that pimps and illegal prostitution benefited a lot more than "regular" prostitutes, however you define that. For that matter all of these girls would be able to earn more money and live a better life (even illegal immigrants in some cases) if they would just go to the authorities and claim unemployment benefits.
How do you explain that they "prefer" sex work over easier jobs with more money or no job with more money. Easiest explanation: It's not so much about the prostitutes' "preferences".
In many countries around the world, especially the more developed ones there just is no economic need for women to go into low-rate prostitution. More expensive "engagements", maybe, but that's more of an exception than the rule. Even begging is preferable to being kept in a brothel and get raped multiple times a day (no, they don't have "fun", and without "fun" it will feel and hurt like rape).
It is possible for poor Americans to move up, but how probable is it for hard working Americans to be able to move up?
Step 1: Go to college, which you can do very nearly for free these days, and major in something useful, like (say) computer science.
Step 2: Get a job using that useful degree.
My grandpa took 8 years go to to college, by taking every other year off to work. There isn't much excuse for people these days except not having the knowledge of the above two steps.
If you fucked around in high school, that is also a barrier to going to college. But you can go to community college (they let everybody in) and then transfer after 2 years. It's a common occurence.
You can also simply become a tradesman at community college: Plumber, welder, electrician, heating/AC repairman, etc. From what I can tell, there is no glut of people in these professions, people just don't want them. 51% of Americans are now on government welfare, and that's a lot easier than working hard.
No, because the government is US, the will of the people as expressed in voting.
What.. really? Died farming gold?
Please Google it or something. I have used it correctly, I think you do not know ...
From what is available in the media and public discussion you can deduce that commercially viable prostitution without exploitation is a very "niche" product.
I also wasn't speaking only about webcam studios, but even with these studios there is a lot that is going on "off screen". Forcing a model to perform sexual acts is still rape, even if the perpetrator is not on screen and even when he has "trained" the model to make a good show.
On behalf of the ignorant masses, forever shrouded in blindness by our inferior power of deduction and lack of access to such hallowed sources as the media and public discussion, I would like to thank you for educating us on the true state of the world.
There's plentiful evidence of exploitation, coercion, and suffering involved in labor in many industries . In other industries, we deal with this by attacking specific exploitative, coercive, and suffering-inducing practices directly -- and by doing so, we've (in the developed world) managed to greatly mitigate the exploitation, coercion, and suffering in all kinds of industries.
In the sex industry, we've mostly taken the approach of viewing the problems inherent in having a sex industry, and used it as an excuse to preserve and reinforce the illegality and taboos against sex work, and as a result we've managed to perpetuate (and in some cases exacerbate) the exploitation, coercion and suffering in that industry