Not sure I agree, but I’m finding it hard to find a place to disagree.

I suspect that you probably plagiarized one of my inner monologues

I’ll have to ponder this at some length.

Hmmmm. Interesting.

But in sum, I’m going to have to say the thought processes are valid but I disagree with the majority of the conclusions. I used to be more libertarian than I am now.

Legalize pot? No.
Legalize prostitution? No.
Prostitution = victimless crime? Well, in the informal interpersonal marketplace, such as the TSG case here, sure. In the big large world, oh hell no. Not even close.

But the arguments about it are fun, informative, and enlightening, because it’s certainly not clear cut.

You’re going to stir up thought, obviously, so nicely done.

Prostitution is legal already though. It’s just that it’s only legal in politics.

I would support legalizing both prostitution, pot, and probably a few other drugs as well. The cost of incarceration of these victim less crimes is extremely high. Our county jails at time overfills with these and more aggressive criminals are let loose in order not to get sued by the ACLU for having to many suspects and not enough beds.

I just don’t see why our government feels the need to intrude but I guess we all need someone to pretend to be our parents no mater what our age.

This diary, and subsequent comments agreeing with it, has laid out a perfect summary of European Socialists’ arguments in favor of prostitution, legalizing pot and other drugs, While it’s the same argument in essence, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it worded so elegantly from my European friends and coworkers (understandable, since they are usually speaking English as a foreign language). Bravo!

And you’ve convinced me. I am absolutely ready to follow Socialist Europe’s lead on this.

We all know that the Dutch, Danish, and the Germans have created the ideal society.

Yes yes, I’d love to follow Germany, Denmark, and Holland in the dustbin of history. How exciting!

Oriental hookers used to do the same thing in the 60s-70s, if there was a pay dispute. A fairly common scam.

Many states, in order to keep illegal gambling (Local poker, crap games, etc) out of the public eye allowed treble damages against the guy trying to collect gambling debts. He can send Augie and Vinnie over with baseball bats, uses the courts at this own peril,

Good re-telling of an old, old story. I’m not a libertarian so believe the people, the masses, have the right and power to inject their own pecking order of sins into what behavior should and should not be prohibited by statute…the more local the better. Banning prostitution is about as High Church of England as you can get,, meaning progressivism at a time when statism and churcism were joined at least at the kneecap.

I doubt prostitution carried out on a cash and carry basis today is as big on the public pecking order as it was in the day of Yankee blue bloods. I know of lot of burgs that would step a notch or tow with a Miss Pauline’s down at the end of Jimtown Road.

I note that a high percentage of those who are discussing the legalization of prostitution automatically assume that it must be followed by government regulation, whether at the state or federal level.

Why do we always assume that the government must take control?

A good example here: New Orleans Cops/Prosecutors Tagging Prostitutes as Sex Offenders

New Orleans city police and the district attorney’s office are using a state law written for child molesters to charge hundreds of sex workers like Tabitha as sex offenders. The law, which dates back to 1805, makes it a crime against nature to engage in “unnatural copulation”—a term New Orleans cops and the district attorney’s office have interpreted to mean anal or oral sex. Sex workers convicted of breaking this law are charged with felonies, issued longer jail sentences and forced to register as sex offenders. They must also carry a driver’s license with the label “sex offender” printed on it.

It’s interesting to me that a large part of arguments against decriminalization for particular vices are based around slippery slope appeals. If we decriminalize then surely x, y, and z will happen. One I hadn’t heard much til now was the concept that decriminalization would actually require greater government spending than criminalization.

The point is, criminalization carries it’s own potential for sprawling government involvement as the above article nicely illustrates. As soon as you’ve codified some behavior management goals into legislation, you’ve raised the potential that some government official, prosecutor, or other actor will use that legislation in ways that it was never intended. And they get to do this under the protection of the legal system.

in Anchorage and Fairbanks though de jure illegal Statewide. I know that when I lived in ANC I was much more comfortable with the many thousands of transient military and construction workers being able to find a little “comfort” in the massage parlors than pursueing my daughter.

There is crime associated with it, but much of that crime is centered on how women get into that business. Many are foreign and they are the chattel of the patron who either smuggled them to the US illegally or brought them in on a fraudulent “family reunification,” particularly common with Asians. These women are sex slaves, pure and simple. Many others hook to buy drugs or to have drugs bought for them. To me the distinction is very hard-sought between a young, pretty woman who wants $500 to have sex with someone so she can buy drugs and the young, pretty woman who will have sex with a man who in the process spends $500 on a fancy dinner, drinks, and a gram or two of cocaine. The most obvious distinction is that the purely commercial transaction is far more certain. In the other case, it is easy to spend the money and still go home alone. And for some, it is just an easy way to make a living; they dance at the strip joints and hook, working at most a few hours a day and making an awful lot of money, money that someone with their “qualifications” couldn’t make any other way. A pretty young woman can make $10/hour working at Nordstom or make $500 an hour by hanging in hotel bars and have a pretty good chance of being taken shopping at Nordstrom’;s to boot. A few of them might be working their way through college or a single mom taking care of her kid, but most of them are just working at not working.

About 75% of the women in Alaska prisons have some sort of record for drugs and prostitution and they’re quite good at getting over on weak-minded men. I’ve rearranged the career plans of quite a few cops and COs for what we euphemistically called “undue familiarity” with the State’s female guests. The temporarily semi-retired working girls are a real joy to rely on as your primary witness in a dismissal hearing.

Prostitution should definitely be decriminalized… 2 (or more?) consenting adults = no one else’s business.

As for possible increased/decreased cost regarding the decriminalization of prostitution and drugs that others have brought up… I think it’s hard to predict which way it would go.

On the one hand, you have savings in terms of not keeping these people in jail. Also, the government could tax these things…especially drugs, just like they currently tax alcohol and tobacco. They’d make a fortune, IMO.

On the other hand, there’s the cost of any government regulation, and the possible cost of these people (possibly) being a burden on our health care system.

And yes, I am imposing my morality on you. Tough.

In an ideal world, we could criminalize just about everything that is bad for people.

Red meat that causes heart disease. Alcohol that impairs the ability to think straight. Gambling that induces people to bet “the rent money.” Chocolate that causes you to gain weight.

But as a practical matter, these prohibitions don’t usually work out well in the real world. People are much more diverse in their lifestyles than we would like to admit.

Some people are willing to risk a heart attack for a juicy T-bone steak. Some people want to enjoy several beers while they watch the football game. (And we haven’t even talked about banning football, where the risk of injury is very high.)

So, what we end up with is a government at war with the lifestyle choices (many of them, admittedly, ill-advised lifestyle choices) of its citizens.

So, yes. Let’s be pragmatic and legalize it.

Just recently, a legal brothel in Nevada hired the state’s first male prostitute. Caused a good bit of consternation among certain groups, actually.

http://intelligencesquaredus.org/index.php/past-debates/its-wrong-to-pay-for-sex/

Unfortunately most of the side arguing that it is wrong looked at it from a point of view stating: “if we allow this, then it will lead to even worse things.”

I don’t buy the slippery slope argument, because it fails to adequately debate the point. As I look at it, two consenting adults are free to do whatever they so choose, as long as their actions do not infringe on the choices of others. From a practical point of view, it would certainly free up law enforcement resources and also encourage anyone who’s been victimized in the process to report it to the police.

Many people opposed to this are unopposed to the adult video industry. Why? Is it the issue of who pays whom? Is it the issue of enjoyment? Because in the end money is changing hands from one person to another for the purpose of satisfaction. All that’s different is the level of connectedness.

“Legislating morality” is precisely what a government is supposed to do: the problem is how much goes into a legal code.

Parallel with prostitution is a problem the British faced in the 18th century. Gin was being brewed at an ever increasing rate, and produced a an increasing amount of tax revenues, but after some years, the rate of alcoholism and its attendant problems – child abuse and general domestic violence, work efficiency and quality, crime, indigence, etc. – all began rising.

The brewers, innkeepers, some government officials (treasury) and what passed for libertarians at the time argued in favor of a low tax rate, since it kept up a steady flow of business and therefore tax monies. Some claimed gin was necessary to counter England’s cold, damp climate!

Nationalists and reformers (some of them religious) began wondering about the future of England, if alcoholism kept rising: how would England be able to compete in world affairs (especially against the French) with a large percentage of the population incapacitated by alcoholism? A proto-Darwinian argument was made about England’s fitness for the future being threatened by widespread drunkenness.

After decades of debate, the British decided to tax gin at a much higher rate to curb alcoholism. It worked. This was one of the first examples of using tax policy to produce what might be called “social engineering.”

The question:
Does prostitution cause so many problems (like the British had with gin and alcoholism) that it should be proscribed? Disease, family destruction, alienation, violence against both seller and customer, etc?

because AChance has written too much for me to do so. Instead, I’ll say, so far he’s made the best arguments in the “con” side of the debate, IMO, and has given much to mull over.

Thanks, Achance.

Look, our governments are headed for an apocalypse. We frankly need to shrink government to the bare essentials so there’s less to collapse. We need smaller prisons and a smaller police force, and a smaller judicial system. We will no longer have the luxury to enforce all laws. Let’s rationalize the laws we have and start taking them off the books, starting with prostitution.

You can have sex for money as long as you get filmed. You can marry for money and exchange sex in return. A girlfriend could have sex with you if you buy her things. Why you can’t have a red light district is beyond me. And frankly I don’t need to make the moral argument when the federal debt will do the arguing for me.

I actually don’t think legalizing prostitution is a good idea, because, even where it is legal, it is inevitably mobbed up. I wouldn’t enforce laws against it, in most situations, as someone else said ..who cares if someone wants to advertise on craigslist, but I do want something in the arsenal, if there is a case of forced sexual servitude etc.

Having said that, it would make no difference for the state of marriage whether it was legalized or not. Between working in close quarters and the Internet, it is literally always there. It is one reason I can’t fathom WHY someone would go to a hooker at this point. In terms of American social mores, at this point apparently about half of men cheat, and close to a third of women do. The religiously devout apparently aren’t that much less likely to than the secular. The social mores will end up evolving (one reason I think the gay marriage issue is overblown, things are FAR past that for heteros already) on this, just like they did about divorce. There comes a point where you can’t socially censure what the majority does.

Very long term monogamy doesn’t have much of a chance in the future. It was probably inevitable from the moment the birth control pill was available, and whatever chance it had isn’t going to survive the age of instant access …where you no longer have to go out and look for it ..it comes to you.

Btw please, don’t take this as an endorsement of all this, this comes from an analytical point of view.