I dont necessarily disagree with the OP, but it would have to be highly regulated because of the dangers of abuse.
What should legislation be based on?
That opinion has very little bearing on the discussion. What other reason to work? If there is no reward for work, why should one bother, a sense of societal obligation? That probably would work for sentient bees/ants, but we’re primates.
Except when those functions are attached to a legal and non-coerced industry, we can just call them “recruiters” and “bosses” as with every other field.
Rational analysis of benefits vs. costs, with an eye to maximizing freedom and minimizing coercion. What else? (before someone accuses me of being a libertarian, one might consider carefully that “maximizing freedom” might have multiple meanings)
You can call them that already, doesn’t change the jobdescription.
Certainly it does. There’s a world of difference between a trafficker (connotes moving objects illegally from one place to another) and a recruiter (connotes offering jobs to people). My boss doesn’t routinely attempt to get me addicted to drugs in an effort to prevent me from leaving his employment, or use corporal punishment on me when I don’t do some specific job task.
The job description changes entirely under legalized prostitution.
There are numerous motivations for working, only some of which are related to personal gain. For instance, people thrive on altruism. There is some evidence to suggest that people will prefer a greater reward at a slightly more distant point in the future using hyperbolic discounting too. There are individuals that continue to work despite having enough money to live comfortably. There are others that incur pecuniary costs by accepting a lower paying job.
One immediately obvious exception to working for reward is subsistence farming, where one works in order to live. That is the “free labour vs. wage labour” contention that I’ve been posting about.
How do we determine a benefit or cost of legislation? Why is freedom superior to coercion?
Human traffickers - as they are defined nowadays in Europe - often just set up arrangements for people (not just for sexwork) to work in richer EU countries. These people will be there legally, yet still have to ‘compensate’ their ‘managers’ accordingly. I’m quite sure that if the US were to legalize prostitution, girls will need arrangements (get into clubs, have accommodation near these places, etc.) as well. Think of a poor girl in Detroit being told about the luxurious club in Manhattan.
If I were to venture a guess to the biggest reason women will go into this business is the income differential with other available jobs. This isn’t your middle class neighbor, if she wants to be in this business, she’d already be a high class call girl. These will be girls who will ind it hard to start up on their own…hence the ‘managers’.
Pimps don’t need to get girls ‘hooked on drugs’ necessarily, they are providing an easy service and get obscene amounts of money from it… and many girls are perfectly happy with their ‘manager’; who often is also their boyfriend/husband.
Maybe the situation in the US would be different, but this is the experience from Europe.
Those terms have quite different connotations in the US.
This is exactly the same situation I’m in when I do consulting work on retainer under the umbrella of an employer–my employer charges a rate to the company under whose auspices I am doing consulting for, and I might see half of that in my own pocket. If I were more inclined to be business-savvy and market for myself, I could do it for myself, but I’d need to be established in the business first to command the same hourly rate and get into the same high-end jobs.
In all those palces you have seen legal prostitution. Would you say that the traficking problem is better or worse? Do you think prostitutes were more or less exploited in thsoe countries?
I don’t know if prostitution would save many marriages.
Unless Finn sucks dick for a living now, there is no reason he should suck dick if he loses his current job.
Byb living conditions, do you mean living standard or some minimal living standard?
So I can refuse to serve minorities in my bar?
Can a masseuse refuse to service me because I am not white?
And theft, don’t forget theft. 
Actually, their living standard. If their rent and borrowing causes them to be forced into prostitution, their expenditure doesn’t really impact the level of dignity.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but a business can refuse any customer for a valid reason not covered under Equal Protection.
So for example, you can’t refuse to serve a person because they’re black, but you can refuse to serve a person because they are making you suspicious, or because they are requesting a service you do not offer or do not wish to offer at that time.
Well I left out the full explanation of my fiduciary duty to myself. Doing better than a position from which I may be easily coerced is at the top of the list. Achieving that can be rather difficult for a person with a long road to hoe, but the key to success in this is really setting it as a goal in the first place.
So what happens in those countries where prostitution is legal? Does it work? Are the women safe?
My daymare today was the legalization of prostitution resulting in bosses and managers all over the country handing out orders to the effect of, “After you count the till and sweep the floor, step into the office and blow me. It is part of your job description now. You can quit if you don’t like it.” I know that appears to be sexual harassment, but once prostitution is legal how do we prevent sucking dick from being inserted as a clause into all kinds of work agreements?
Yah well that stuff is highly regulated. And I meant ‘impregnate’ in the old-fashioned sense, and maybe while you watch like I’m some kind of horse since we’re talking about prostitution and all. But I’m not going to be marching in the streets over this issue either way you know. There are bigger fish to fry.
Show me that such quid pro quos are no longer considered sexual harassment in Nevada, and you might have a case. I doubt you can, but you may surprise me.
The Marquis de Sade believed prostitution should be universally compulsory.
Why don’t we start with that as our default position, and work back from there? 
The thing is there are so many different types of “legal” and it’s difficult to make sweeping generalisations. The two models that seem to work best, from the health and safety standpoint, are New Zealand and New South Wales, Australia, both of which have decriminalisation rather than legalisation (the OP briefly explains the distinction) as well as enforceable sex worker rights. There’s some good research into both of these (see Gillian Abel’s PhD thesis for NZ and the recently-published Law and Sexworker Health report for NSW), which indicates that there are better health and safety outcomes under these models of decriminalisation than under either NZ’s previous criminalisation or under the other Australian models (legalisation in some states, criminalisation in others).
Honestly? Same thing that prevents other distasteful but legal services from doing so–it’s hard enough to find people to apply for “counter clerk at McDonalds”, no one is going to bother applying for “counter clerk at McDonalds, who also inspects the septic tank” or “counter clerk at McDonalds, who also sucks off the boss”, unless the offered pay for the latter two positions is commensurate with the added job duties.
Especially since “prostitution”, if sanely legalized, will require a panoply of additional documentation and conditions, just like any other dangerous job. I’m imagining STD tests and no conflicts of interest at a minimum.
Also, don’t we prevent it in the same way we prevent “you’ll also star in an amateur porn series with me” clauses in the face of legalized pornography?
Wait so you are concerned that some woman might be “forced” into prostitution to preserve her standard of living? I might be a bit concerned with women who sell their bodies to keep her children from starving (which is a highly unlikely scenario in this country) but it really doesn’t trigger my paternalistic instinct to keep women from prostituting themselves to make payments on the Lexus.
At this point the woman has decided that gets more dignitiy from the Lexus than she loses from sucking cock for money.
Oh, OK. I thought we were talking about something else. Like a prostitute hanging a “whites only” sign outside her bedroom door.
Could a prostitute do that or would she have to service all paying customers?
Everywhere I know of, it’s up to the girls to decide whether to take a client on or not; and that includes factors as race. If a girl works in a club, management might have a problem with girls that often refuse clients and might decide it be better if she didn’t work there anymore… How this exactly pans out, all depends on how you regulate the business. If girls are free entrepeneurs, they have the final say… if they are employees, they might have less choice (if they want to keep their job).
@Fumster There are still pimps, traffickers and girls that have little choice about their work (working of the ‘initial investment’ of starting). It’s just better (as are the possibilities of fighting the former) than it used to be when everything was underground. Real data is almost impossible to find by the way.