I was going to make this same analogy but you beat me to it: UltraVires’s argument is the equivalent of saying that if we have health and safety requirements for restaurants they must apply to private kitchens. And that conclusion doesn’t remotely follow from my previous post.
Right, and this gets at my disagreement with the “if you can give it away, why can’t you sell it” argument. We agree that there is a difference between the two.
And because of these differences, it does not follow that follow that the sale of an item must be allowed simply because society allows it to be given away. For most things, we have said, yes, if you can give it away, you can also sell it so long as you follow this list of government regulations, but there is nothing that logically requires the government to allow Voyager’s wife to sell her baked bread at all, even with regulations.
Or indeed, the regulations can be so effectively prohibitive such as to allow only those who are engaged in the profession to a large degree to get a license. Sure, I can give away liquor to my friends, but if I want to sell it, then I need a storefront, a liquor license, training for the bartenders, signage, etc. Such a thing is so prohibitive to most people that it could be effectively said that in general it is legal to give liquor away but illegal for most individuals to sell it.
I’m trying to cut off several flank attacks and am arguing against many points at once. The sex without condoms argument was directed at those who are arguing the “two consenting adults” point.
But most of your argument doesn’t really support your conclusion without generous interpretation.
There are valid reasons for a high level of regulation around the sale of liquor just as there are valid reasons for a high level of regulation around the sale of sex (or food or cars or guns etc). The barrier tends to be an issue of scale (if you’re planning on doing this as a side hobby, meeting the required level of compliance with the regulations may make that plan impractical), but that doesn’t necessarily make it so “prohibitive” that it is “effectively illegal” - obviously, the nature of the actual regulations will determine where the line is drawn but the fact that so many people open bakeries, restaurants, cafes, liquor stores, etc suggests that such barriers aren’t that onerous to get over.
As such, there’s no reason why a professional sex worker or brothel couldn’t comply with the sort of reasonable regulations they have already implemented in New Zealand. And requiring condom use is not remotely onerous, particularly compared to many of the other regulations in place where sex work is legal (which are put in place both for public health reasons and to minimize exploitation). It’s certainly not an argument against legalization; you are correct that there is no argument that it must be allowed but conversely the argument that it must be prohibited under any circumstance isn’t exactly compelling either.
I think we are saying largely the same thing. The “if you can give it away why can’t you sell it” argument at least to me has the implication of if a woman can meet a guy at a bar and go home and sleep with him, why can he not just hand her a $100 bill instead of buying drinks, telling her lies, etc. It seems to mirror the Libertarian argument. It doesn’t ring in my ears that “If she can give it away, then why can’t she fill out a bunch of government forms, apply for licensing, abide by health and safety codes, and then sell it.” Perhaps I am not understanding the argument correctly.
For most things, as you noted, regulations constitute an effective ban on selling, even though you could give it away, unless you are willing to make it a profession. I can give my own kid a haircut. People in the neighborhood can say what a wonderful haircut it was. I might think that I could make a few extra bucks by cutting hair. But unless I am willing to invest money and time into going to cosmetology school and getting a barber’s license, taking time away from my day job, then what the government has done is effectively banned me from selling haircuts, even though I can give them away for free.
And I agree with you last point. This argument does not support keeping prostitution illegal, but its purpose is to advocate for legalized prostitution, which you concede that it fails to do.
So what I see in your argument is you are saying the government has the power to arbitrarily restrict trade for no valid reason. Which it does.
State governments restrict vehicle manufacturers from selling their cars directly. Because of corruption. They require every plumber to essentially be indentured under another plumber for years, essentially also a form of restricting trade. (Yes bad plumbing can make a mess but it’s not such a sophisticated profession to need years of training). In some counties they make obtaining a liquor license so hard no one does it.
But good government, the government needs a valid reason for it’s policies. There are strong reasons to ask for licensed prostitutes to use condoms. There isn’t a valid reason to ban them completely.
Yes there is. In a democracy, a majority of the people can enact morals laws, even if that were the only justification, which it is not. That has always been a valid reason. Just because you declare it is not a valid reason does not reverse 800 years of common law. Society is not required to adopt laissez faire in personal matters anymore than it is required to adopt it in economics.
Further, this is not a proper debating tactic. The burden is on the person attempting to change the status quo, especially thousands of years of it, to argue the reasons for the change and what positive good it would bring.
You are correct that “We don’t (collectively) want to” is a reason not to do something. But it’s a subjective reason, not an objective or empirically-derived one, and opinions change. Occasionally revisiting the question to see if we (collectively) want to now is not unreasonable.
Insisting that because we once didn’t want to do something means we should never do it, however, is unreasonable. Insisting that because we didn’t want to do something there must have been an objective reason behind it (with no relevant evidence) is unreasonable. And insisting that we shouldn’t do something we want to do just because it’s difficult to implement can often be unreasonable too.
Regulations are for when an activity can affect the general public. Kids growing up on farms can drive around private land all their parents permit, but when they get out in public they need a license.
I think most of us would agree that regulation would be a good thing for prostitution, especially since it is happening now unregulated. The lack of harm to the general public given regulation is a good argument for legalization - I should say reduction of harm.
As for common law - up until recently certain forms of sex were illegal based on common law, and as the case of Alan Turing shows, this led to real harm. I don’t think religious-based morality should be that much of a guide in this area.
.
Most posters on this board would agree with legalized prostitution and regulation, but not most people in society. And this “lack of harm” idea is simply question begging. I have shown how there is harm to legalization and the people through their elected representatives who have not legalized it believe there is real harm there.
As far as your second argument that because we have legalized homosexual sodomy, we should also legalize prostitution, then you seem to agree with at least a part of Scalia’s dissent in Lawrence v. Texas. He said that if we are saying that it must be legal because it is just a morals law, then by that logic, we must legalize same sex marriage, prostitution, polygamy, incest, and bestiality.
The Court and the law school academia poo-pooed that logic saying that the decision was only about non-commercial consensual sexual conduct between adults and Scalia was just using scare tactics to hide his hatred of homosexuals. However, he keeps being proven right.
…no you haven’t.
Have any polls about legalizing prostitution? I’d suspect that there would be a lot of don’t cares. But I agree there is little chance legalization is going to proceed. Sex workers have little power, customers of sex workers are not about to out themselves to support them, and the religious lobbies would have a fit. I’m more interested in the ethics than in practical politics.
As for the reasons it is bad, the ones I got were the nobility of sex and the harm to marriage, which is far from proven. Remember that many of the arguments against SSM involved horrendous things that would happen. If prostitution were legalized, I doubt marriage would be affected at all.
I don’t think legalizing homosexuality is in any way an argument for legalizing prostitution. My point was that laws based on hundreds of years of common law and on religious morality can cause real harm for no gain. And note that while Scalia was right, and we did legalize SSM, there was no harm to society. There are good ethical arguments against the last three on the list, prostitution not so much.
What about women being oppressed by pimps or the spread of STDs?
Personally I think prostitution should be legal and regulated but there are more objections than the two you listed.
Well, ok, but an objection isn’t valid if it isn’t true. If it turns out that pimps are an artifact of it being illegal (they provide protection, while legal hookers can just hire a security guard), then that objection would be untrue.
And if it turns out that the STD spread rate from hookers using condoms is too small to be detectable (like the New Zealand example), then it can’t be considered true.
To be fair, in reality we never know if something is true or false. A rational being would multiply by the (probability true + probability false) and determine if the weighted sum, considering both outcomes, is favorable or not.
Fair enough but you will still have women beholden to criminals…prostituting for drugs for instance. Just because a thing is legal doesn’t mean criminals don’t find a an angle in it to exploit. (For instance “legal” prostitutes who follow the law may be expensive thus making a market for those who charge less and are not so scrupulous about the rules…there would be a market for that).
STDs are almost certainly reduced by being legal and regulated but then you get into the weird world of the government supporting something that spreads disease and trying to tell people that while the government allows some activities that spread disease it is less disease than if they did not allow activities that spread the disease. You can count on some politician going to town with that (and likely get a lot of traction).
I was talking about legalized prostitution. Illegal prostitution is bad in lots of ways not only your set, but in the encouragement of human trafficking.
I’d disagree about it being cheaper when illegal. Paying off the cops is a big cost. And capitalism will prevail. I can just see a chain of Wal-Tarts opening.
The reason pimps have power now is that the women often have nowhere to go, and can be threatened with being turned in.
Also, maybe men going to illegal prostitutes could get treated more harshly than they do today. All the powerful ones will go legal, and there should be no big outcry.
Illegal prostitution won’t go away right away - there are still illegal pot farms in California - but the problem should be reduced by a lot.
Cigarettes are still legal. So government supporting something which causes diseases is nothing new.
Your ‘shown to have harm’ is specious and ‘the people’ believe there is real harm there, not demonstrated. An experiment in legislating other people’s morality was tried some generations back with the 18th amendment. It turned out badly.
To control women.
I have to admit, the Robert Kraft incident made me wonder why it’s illegal to go to a place where someone manipulates one specific part of your body, but it’s legal to go to a place where people manipulate other parts of your bodies, you can go to a chiropractor who may put your joints in all sorts of positions that might not actually do ANYTHING to help you; you can go to an acupuncturist who will stick little needles in your body; it just seems somehow arbitrary. Remove the notion of sexual pleasure from the equation and just look at it in as detached a way as possible. “But sexual pleasure is the whole point”, you might say. Maybe so. But then we’re essentially talking about an emotion. And laws against feeling certain emotions seem bizarre.
Maybe prostitutes should have to be licensed, like doctors or at least like a massage therapist (do those even need to be licensed? It probably varies from state to state, right?) but just outlawing them outright doesn’t seem to be consistent with the idea of capitalism (which most of the opponents of legalized prostitution would probably tell you is a good idea.)
I guess it’s a “vice” like other vices, but alcohol is legal, gambling is legal…seems to me that vices are always going to be a thing. They’re regulated, but they’re tolerated.
Of course there’s the human trafficking angle, but it seems to me that they could crack down on trafficking more EASILY if it were regulated rather than just being 100% off the books.
She is then required to use other contraceptive methods which may be harmful. The women in both sides of my family have medical histories of secondary effects of hormone-based medications ranging from “not good” to “get a doctor here NOW!”
Also, will you get to the brothel, have blood drawn, provide biological samples, and wait in isolation until the tests come back negative? No? Then sorry, the clean bill of health you got in your last test may not be true any more.