Thanks, this is a great explanation and you changed my mind on this. This is probably the reason why most people have the intuition that legalizing these things makes things worse for everyone. There were many proposed explanations for that intuition in this thread, but none of the others made sense/seemed valid to me, so I was beginning to think the intuition was erroneous.
It is a tradeoff; both options have their specific bad consequences. It is not obvious which one is greater, and it may depend on the surrounding circumstances.
For example, alcohol was a disaster for Native Americans, but Prohibition in 20th century created a boom of organized crime (but also a decline of cirrhosis mortality). Should the alcohol be legal or not?
Similarly, illegal prostitution is a source of income for organized crime, but using sex as a legal method of payment would probably result in many people being forced to take this option. The exact outcome would depend e.g. on how many people actually live in poverty (so even exactly the same law could become a disaster e.g. in USA, and quite harmless in e.g. Sweden).
It is also difficult to predict how making sex selling a part of everyday life would impact people’s attitudes towards poverty. Would it be like “no one should become so poor that they literally have to sell sex or starve, that is a horrible thing and we should use our tax money to prevent it”, or would it be more like “obviously, poverty is a not a big problem, because those who can’t find a job still have an option to sell sex, and if they think their bodies are too precious and they would rather starve—it’s their choice; why should my tax money subsidize other people’s choices”?
Thanks, this is a great explanation and you changed my mind on this. This is probably the reason why most people have the intuition that legalizing these things makes things worse for everyone. There were many proposed explanations for that intuition in this thread, but none of the others made sense/seemed valid to me, so I was beginning to think the intuition was erroneous.
It is a tradeoff; both options have their specific bad consequences. It is not obvious which one is greater, and it may depend on the surrounding circumstances.
For example, alcohol was a disaster for Native Americans, but Prohibition in 20th century created a boom of organized crime (but also a decline of cirrhosis mortality). Should the alcohol be legal or not?
Similarly, illegal prostitution is a source of income for organized crime, but using sex as a legal method of payment would probably result in many people being forced to take this option. The exact outcome would depend e.g. on how many people actually live in poverty (so even exactly the same law could become a disaster e.g. in USA, and quite harmless in e.g. Sweden).
It is also difficult to predict how making sex selling a part of everyday life would impact people’s attitudes towards poverty. Would it be like “no one should become so poor that they literally have to sell sex or starve, that is a horrible thing and we should use our tax money to prevent it”, or would it be more like “obviously, poverty is a not a big problem, because those who can’t find a job still have an option to sell sex, and if they think their bodies are too precious and they would rather starve—it’s their choice; why should my tax money subsidize other people’s choices”?