legalization?
The curious part here is the Swedish purchase law. It reminds me of the Dutch possession laws on pot (on the opposite spectrum). I'm not sure that either party is necessarily in the wrong. As pointed out, the real issue with prostitution isn't the actual commercial transaction, but rather the problems with how people get involved (and of course, left unregulated, problems with STD epidemics). If that's the case, I'm not sure that punishing the 'john' is more important than punishing the actual prostitutes (the 'suppliers' may be a different issue here).
It would be interesting to see why people actually oppose this. Much like the drug war, there really isn't a good reason to do it. An unregulated black market more or less guarantees violent behaviors, human trafficking, and the potential risks of disease (with additional spin-off problems such as drug addictions caused by pimps to control their women). I'm fairly sure these are all worse than trying to understand the demand for paid sexual relations by individuals and attack that. It's possible the anti-john law in Sweden is effective at attacking demand (because of the shame factor), and there are similar efforts here in America. But I'm not sure this actually addresses demand and really only forces a degree of circumspect behaviors to avoid detection. In the same way that a black market for drugs is not generally run in an open air market, I would expect a market for prostitutes to be much more privately maintained in order to continue to meet demand. Forcing the market back underground sort of defeats the purpose of not punishing suppliers of sex, because now their behaviors are not openly observable (not literally of course). I'm referring to the transparency of the market as well as the potential for individual problems of abuse still in an underground economy.
The other story on freakeconomics yesterday of amusement was how hedge funds should be blowing up, which was quickly followed by an editor's note that hedge funds are blowing up (or about to).
Also I appear to have a cat with a cold. The former dog sneezed from time to time, but these sniffles are much common.
Just a Beautiful Drawing of Bluebells
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I know other Nordic countries, like Iceland, have made it legal in most respects except it's illegal for third parties to make a profit from sex selling. So the prostitute can make money, the john can pay money, and sex can be exchanged and it's all legit. I think public advertising is illegal but soliciting isn't. I'm not sure and it varies from country to country where they have sane prostitution laws. The main thing about those set-ups though is that it limits pimping and sex lords. It also makes it easier for prostitutes to come forward should they have a run-in with a bad john or pimp because they won't have to worry about being prosecuted for prostitution. That, to me, seems sanest. I do think some regulation should be put in too for STD control, but other than that, the only reason I can see people opposing it is because they're prudish. No one has to do it, buy or sell, if they don't want to. The whole "no woman would do that if they didn't have to" argument falls to the wayside for me. How many men really want to work sewers, dangerous mine shafts, radiation work, etc.? Hopefully you can demand higher wages to compensate for the negative aspects of the job, and if women aren't hounded by pimps, they're free to charge what the market will allow. Seems simple enough to me.
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