I have heard the argument that according to supply and demand that once prostitution and drugs become legal that the rules of the marketplace will take over and they will become less expensive and of better quality.
However I don’t know if that is the case. With drugs I can see the point because due to no patent laws on things like marijuana or heroin there can be anybody or any company selling these drugs anytime they want to. Anyone can grow marijuana and sell it and a small company can produce most of the other drugs. So drug prices would probably go down alot in a market system.
However with prostitution I don’t know if that is true. Prostitution doesn’t look like the supply of prostitutes would go up with legalization, but I’m sure demand for prostitutes would go up if it was made legal, safe and private. If anything legalization sounds like it would increase costs as supply would probably remain constant but demand would increase.
Plus as far as drugs, I don’t know if any of the countries like Holland that have legalized the selling of drugs like marijuana use marketplace rules to set the price or if the government sets the price and people just pay whatever the set price is.
So in developed nations (with developed economies) do prices go up or down with legalization of sex and drugs?
Two things. Some hard drugs like crack, meth, and even heroin in small quantities are already pretty cheap. From what I hear, they run in the $10 - $20 a high range which isn’t that bad until addiction demands more and more frequent use. I don’t know if those were the kinds of drugs you meant but I can see the costs for those going up once you involve business, quality control, and regulated distribution. Oxycontin, an opiate, for example is both a legal drug and one that is often used illegally and additively. It is not cheap at all even by prescription.
I saw legalized prostitution in Costa Rica when I went there (no, I was on my honeymoon). Those prostitutes were usually young, attractive, and had frequent medical exams. Their fee was $20 - $50 for an hour or two and $100 to be a multi-day companion. However, this is in a country that has an average monthly income of less than $200. I think you will run into that problem when you do comparisons.
Hell, prostitution isn’t illegal everywhere in the U.S. Nevada has legalized prostitution in certain areas outside Las Vegas. I don’t know the rates there but that should give you your answer.
Make sure to compare apples to apples. Make sure that the illegal prostitutes are as healthy and attractive as the legal ones before making your decision.
If things like prostitution and illegal recreational drugs were made legal and readily available, wouldn’t there just be something else illegal (I don’t know what it would be) to take its place?
Weed in Canada is pretty cheap. $20 will give you enough to get high with your friends for the night whilst you play video games. Meth, while cheap, doesn’t last very long, and that 20 bucks is only good for one hit. Really about the only expensive drug that I can think of at the moment is coke. Drugs tend to be cheap. LSD, $5 a hit, is dirt cheap.
I am not sure how expensive Wesley Clark thinks drugs are, but the announced value of drugs in a drug bust is, in my experience, vastly over estimated. Or at the very least they will have something like 100 pounds of weed and calculate the ‘street price’ at the $10/gram. This is in no way how that amount of weed will be sold. Hell, probably most of it will never get sold at the price of $10/gram.
Shoot, sorry, forgot 1 thing. When I visited Amsterdam about 6-7 years ago the price of weed/gram was, once currency conversion was taken into account, about the same price as it is here. Much better quality though.
I can’t comment on the prostitution though. I was visiting a girlfriend in Amsterdam so there was no need to partake, nor have I ever paid for it here nor would I ever exactly because it isn’t controlled. I may or may not if I felt that prostitutes were both safe and clean.
Japan has adopted a stance of very strict prohibition on drugs, and a very relaxed “technically illegal but nobody really cares” attitude on prostitution.
The result is that the 'tutes are pretty easy to find in just about any urban neighborhood. There are very few ‘streetwalkers’, though. Most work indoors in massage parlors or through call-girl agencies, which vary in the level of ‘service’ they provide, as well as in their level of explicitness in describing the services provided. According to the websites I’ve looked at, prices range from about US$75 to $150 for the massage places, and $150 to $400 for the delivery services.
Drugs, on the other hand, are harder to find, and a lot more expensive. Marijuana, in particular, is a lot more expensive than in other countries. According to this Manila Times article from last year:
Japanese in general don’t seem to be into getting mellow. Most of the pot busts reported in the papers are about dumb expat English teachers trying to grow weed in the school’s flower garden. Most of the busts of Japanese people, OTOH, tend to be for unspecified “stimulants”.
While I haven’t partaken of the delights myself, I do live in Nevada. Anecdotal evidence suggests $100-250 for your run of the mill ashes-hauling. You can get delivery service for $400-500ish. This is higher than Japan’s prices and suggests there may be more economic forces in play than just the legal-illegal thing.
As an aside I did catch a bit of Howard Stern one night when he had the manager of the Midnight Bunny Ranch (a handy 6 miles from home, should the urge strike) and one of his employees on the show. She had been the Playboy bunny of the year the previous year and was cashing in on her 15 minutes of fame. When asked by Howard how much she charged she said it ran from $2-5,000, depending on what they wanted and how much time they wanted. She went on to say that she only took on 2-5 a night because she didn’t want to wear herself out.
The strict answer is no one knows. Drugs aren’t legal anywhere. The Netherlands has a de facto system where coffeeshop cannabis trade is not interfered with, but producers are still targeted.
Jeffrey Miron, an economist at Boston University, who specializes in economics of the drug war, says:
Well, supply and demand are probably the main reason for the difference. When I said the massage parlors were easy to find in any urban neighborhood, I meant really easy to find just about everywhere. Seriously, if you go around the northern half of the Yamanote (the train that loops around downtown Tokyo) just about every station will have from a dozen or so to well into the hundreds (such as in Shinjuku and Ikebukuro) of sex shops of different varieties.
If the Czech Republic is to be taken as an example, the market forces of some legalized drugs and prostitution reduced the prices to ZERO. No lies.
Back in the day (pre-1999) all drugs were legal in small amounts here. Pot was pretty much free. People would be at parties and someone would pull out a shopping bag stuffed with pot and start rolling joints and handing them out. People in the know had friends who grew it and they would just get gifts of little baggies whenever they wanted. No one I knew ever paid for pot. In fact, you couldn’t find it for money even if you were looking. No one sold it.
If you think back to your microeconomics, then this can make sense. If you take a stable demand curve - not everyone smokes pot, even if freely given - and a very high supply curve - it’s called weed for a reason, it grows everywhere - then what price can the suppliers take? Whatever the buyers decide. And if a buyer is presented with free at a party versus $X from somewhere else, they will most often choose free.
Since the made drugs illegal, pot now costs around $20 to $40 a gram, depending on quality, on the street. Although some people still give it our for free if they are well-connected with the growers.
Other drugs were lower priced because they had to compete with free pot. Now that everything is illegal, all prices have risen dramatically.
As for prostitution, it is now free here at one whore house. Google Big Sister and Prague and you’ll find I do not tell a lie. You walk in, show them a passport, sign a waiver and you are set. Find a girl or two, go into a room, whip out a condom, and fuck all you want. The gimmick? Think what ‘Big Sister’ is alluding too - ‘Big Brother is watching you’ - well, here people sure are watching. The whole world is. Every nook and cranny has a web-linked camera and the waiver you sign allows them to use your image. You become a pr0n star.
Sorry, just looked at the site (research!) and found out that they do charge you a 10 Euro fee for use of the bath robe and slippers. But if you are a ‘pair’ (does boy/boy count?) they waive that fee.
H.B.O. has a documentary on the Bunny Ranch that shows customers are service providers negotiating services. I seem to recall that the charge for vaginal sex was in the range of $1,500. But that figure is probably affected by the fact that Nevada is the only place in the country where you can find legal prostitution.
I’ve watched a few episodes. That’s probably the most expensive of the legal brothels in Nevada. They specialize in porn starletts and the like. The show generally features the top girls at the place too. I remember one episode where a person flew in for an afternoon with Airforce Amy and some other headliner there. I believe the charge to the person’s credit card was in the neighborhood of $15K for the two girls for an afternoon.
On a trip to Vegas about five years ago myself and two friends found ourselves at the main lounge of the Riviera at about 2:00am on a Friday night (really Saturday morning). There were about a half a dozen working girls present. We weren’t sure until we asked a bartender. His answer to my friend was, “open your eyes, man.” The girls were dressed business casual, not super trashy. One friend (really! it wasn’t me!) haggled with a working girl for about 30 minutes. He bought her one drink too. I think she started out at $500 for straight sex. At the end of the haggling, she had agreed to $300 for her and her friend. This was probably a late night special price. He proceeded to really piss her off by then saying he was too tired and was going to go to bed. Keep in mind that purchasing sex from these girls would have been illegal. I’m not certain here, but just his haggling may have been illegal.
I don’t know why this slipped my mind when I made my first post, but it did.
Since the OP asked about prostitution, I started writing about what the Japanese police consider to be prostitution (payment in exchange for penile-vaginal intercourse), which is indeed illegal, but ignored. What I forgot to mention is that just about any other form of sexual service is in fact completely legal, and does not come under the heading of prostitution as the police or government define it (but would most likely qualify as such in the US). In most urban neighborhoods, both lower-class and upper class, there are many establishments offering blowjobs, handjobs, anal sex and other methods for the getting off of rocks. Depending more upon the location and the luxuriousness of the decor than on the actual services provided, prices can range from $50 to well into the thousands.