Why not legalize prostitution?

But Grail, we all know you were only working there to feed your crack habit.

History has shown that prohibition achieves nothing except making more money for criminals. You can find something as distasteful as you want but that's not going to stop other people from wanting to do it and when you ban whatever that is, you only force it underground, making any regulation impossible, making money for criminals and lessening the protection for those involved. It really is as simple as that, banning things is a shit way to stop people hurting themselves or others doing them.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I'm one of those crazy people who thinks you ought to give people the choice whether or not they fuck themselves up though. If I'm not hurting anyone else, I don't really see why the government needs to legislate to stop me hurting myself if I so choose.

Now some folks will straight away say "But Shin, what about all the poor prostitutes that you're hurting and drugs farmers in South America you're keeping out of proper work and the huge cost to the health service, you're wilful disregard for prohibition laws hurts more people than you realise", to which I would point out that once an industry is legalised it can be legislated in ways to make it stop hurting people like that. If big business took over from drugs barons in importing coke then the farmers would at least be no worse fucked over than the ones growing chocolate and coffee at the moment and brothels could offer the same level of protection to their staff that say strip clubs do now. The cost of healthcare can be offset either by denying treatment to users of previously banned stuff (If you're a bastard) or realising that the revenue from selling these things with tax on would far outstrip the additional cost of hospital trips, which are already happening from people using shit illegally anyway.

The only downside would be that all the criminals would need other sources of income so would take up something else sketchy instead. Or, have an amnesty on drug dealers and pimps and give them all fucking jobs in the newly created industries. After all, who's going to make a better dealer or pimp, some civil servant or a guy who's been doing it for years already?

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Legalization of prostitution essentially says, "it's okay to exploit, abuse, misuse, or otherwise injure people, as long as the government get's a percentage of the profits."

That's incredibly blinkered. Legalisation of prostitution says "We know this shit happens anyway and there's fuck all we can do to stop it so we'll bring it out in the open to give us a chance of looking out for the people involved, improving their standards of living and working conditions and hey, make a couple of extra tax dollars while we're at it". Just because something is distateful to you, doesn't mean it's inherently evil and can't be conducted in more socially acceptable fashion.

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Until there is a sincere and direct effort to address the REAL problem here, it cannot be legalized. If, in this direct effort, legalization is included, that's fine, but legalization, in and of itself, is not a solution, and is in fact counterproductive by by its very acceptance of dehumanizing commerce.

So what are you saying the REAL problem is? That guys like having sex and some guys are too fucking ugly or socially inept to get any pussy so they go out and pay for it? Good luck addressing that problem pal. Maybe you should start a selective breeding programme for fat chicks with low self-esteem or something.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I can't speak for anyone else here obviously but I am entirely capable of having a shag without experiencing some kind of profound emotional moment. Like Pang said if you do anything enough it becomes humdrum and banal.

I would have thought that taking a gun and shooting someone with it would probably be a pretty fucking emotional experience. If someone stuck a gun in my hand and forced me to shoot someone, it'd probably leave me more than a little traumatised. Despite the obvious horrors of killing other people, the government not only allows such a thing but in fact positively encourages it with their army recruitment ads.

When you join the army, you've got to accept that at some point there's a pretty good chance you're going to be expected to shoot someone. You get training to deal with it and one would imagine that after a couple of tours of the 'Ghan, killing people becomes a rather less emotionally involving act. You're in danger of getting killed every minute of every day and being asked to perform possibly the most morally reprehensible act there is on a daily basis. And you know what, the vast majority of people who join the army come from a poor background. You don't get many lawyers in the army, why is that do you think?

If it's ok for the government to ask people to join the army, put themselves in mortal danger and shoot people dead, why is it so bad for other people to be allowed to have sex for money? I'd suggest that someone working as a prostitute for a year would probably have less mental scars than someone doing the same stint in the army and be a lot more likely to be alive at the end of it.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Tamburlaine

You are right, but I assume there will be a larger number of prostitutes around when it is legalized, exacerbating the problem. Nevada, after all, supposedly has the largest number of prostitutes in the country, and second largest number of child prostitutes, second only to Georgia.

You're talking out of your arse really though aren't you? I mean, your whole standpoint in this thread, apart from the hilariously patronising "Allowing" women to have certain jobs, is that you have nothing against legalising prostitution but for the fact that it will lead to more poor people becoming prossies as they have no other employment prospects, right?

Well currently, when people are so poor they can't eat and so unemployable that even farmers looking for fruit pickers won't take them, a lot of them turn to selling their bodies already. The difference is that as it's illegal, they have no rights like other employees and are often at the mercy of gangsters. If you legalised prostitution, the same people who were thinking about it as a career under the current laws would still think about it, only now they wouldn't get arrested for doing it or beaten up and exploited by pimps. I truly fail to see how this is a bad thing in your mind.

All the things you say are bad about prostituion, the exploitation, the bad conditions, the uptake of the career out of desperation and so forth are all the things that'd be reduced by legalising it.

You seem to have this weird idea that if it was legalised, the industry would still be run by sleezy gangsters with stupid furry top hats and canes. Like things would carry on exactly as they are only with no arrests ever and that's just dumb. You'll notice I'm sure that when alcohol prohibition ended in the US, people stopped making gin in old bath tubs out in the woods and instead, adopted a wholly more professional approach and the same would happen if prostitution was legalised. The face of the industry would change and it'd get a whole lot more professional.

You're not seeing the bigger picture and you're making yourself look silly as a result.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Tamburlaine

How so? If people are poor, have no other job opportunities, and need the money, how will the greater availability of sex work reduce people taking it up out of desperation?

If prostitution was legal, you'd get a lot more people who are really good at it wanting to do it, because they'd make a load of money doing it. As such, the opportunities for someone to just start doing it because they had nothing else to do would dry up straight away. You come across as someone who's not had sex very much, if at all, so I can understand how you might not understand this but there's more to having sex for a woman than just lying there. Like anything in life, some people are better at it than others and as with any other labour market, the more skilled people can demand a higher salary than those who are a bit shit. Once legalised and normalised, the sex industry would work just like any other, meaning if you wanted to be a hooker, you'd have to show some natural talent and get some training. Why would unskilled workers in rural areas not fall into any other jobs? If anything, being a prostitute is a far more skilled job than most rural work. Any fucking idiot can pick fruit but there's an awful lot of women out there I would never pay to have sex with. As well as your inabilty to understand sociology and anthropology, you're failing pretty badly at basic economics here.

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I understand that it would get a whole lot more professional, but I also think that young people from rural areas might come to see prostitution as their only option.

I go to school in a rural part of Mass which used to be an industrial metropolis. Today, the unemployment rate is 15%; the industries have all been moving away, but the population keeps growing. Many of the high school graduates have almost no prospects of going to college or technical school. From my familiarity with this community, I can see prostitution, in which a young person can make lots of money very quickly, becoming virtually the only profession any of these teens would want.

I think that legalizing prostitution can help lift some people out of poverty as well as solve some of the other problems you guys have brought up. On the other hand, I see this poverty as being inflicted from extra-personal forces, and I don't think prostitution is the solution every time. With the $50,000 a person our GDP offers, no one needs to be entering prostitution unless they truly desire it.

Communism never works in groups of more than about 5 people. Your idea of a utopian society where everyone shares out all their money and poor people get all the training and support they need to get good jobs and nobody ever needs to pay for sex again is deeply flawed and just a silly pipe dream.

For starters, you're never going to persuade people who make a lot of money because they're well educated and they work hard to give a load of that money to train poor people because then there'd be more competition for their own jobs and the saturated labour market would mean they'd earn less, plus, fuck poor people, I worked hard for this money and it's mine goddammit.

Secondly, there are a lot of ugly people who can't get laid without paying for it. Why do you think no government in the history of anything has ever been able to completely stamp out prostitution? Because people like to get laid more than anything and a lot of people can't manage that on looks or personality alone so have to pay for it, simple as that.

It's all well and good sitting there going on about how instead of legalising prostitution we should invest in better education for paupers but you're flat out ignoring the fact that there will always be a market for hookers and that some people actually want to be prostitutes and you're still only offering as a reason why a legalised system of prostitution would be a bad thing "It'd mean more people would be prostitutes" and completely failing to explain why this is so bad, other than you personally think it's a bit icky.

You need to grow up a bit really. Probably losing your virginity would help too. If only there was a shop you could go to to sort that out...

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Tamburlaine

When did I ever argue for communism? All I said is each US Citizen is entitled to $50,000 worth of services. If that money was better invested, then some people would not have to resort to being prostitutes.

Whether or not you want to be able to walk into a building and decide you want to fuck some asian or black woman up the ass if your own god damn problem.

I know it's really cool to be a fucking cynic on the internet but maybe if you read more carefully you might do better. You know, for the millions of people out there jerking off over how funny your comments are.

Good job at completely ignoring what I wrote there.

You were arguing for communism when you suggested that the USA having a GDP per person of $50,000 meant that every person was entitled to $50,000 of help. This might not have been exactly what you meant but that's what you said.

I don't see what me wanting to fuck black or asian women up the arse has to do with anything really. I said that people pay for sex and people do. If you want to tell me they don't or that somehow in your magical world of sunshine and fairy dust that you'll completely eliminate the market for paid-for sex then you're not just misinformed, you're completely deluded. People have been paying for sex since the advent of trade, it's called the oldest profession for a reason and no amount of moral crusading by ignorant kids like you is going to change the fact that people pay for sex.

I'm not being cynical, I'm being realistic. I'm suggesting that as a market exists and there's exactly nothing you can do to stop that, it makes a lot of fucking sense to regulate that market and bring it out in to the open so that conditions for people involved in the trade will be improved and the whole thing can be made safer and the government can tax it and make money from it, rather than just funding criminals. What you're saying is that you want to impose your system of morality onto other people, simply because it's right in your eyes and by doing so you plan on wiping out a trade that has existed as long as people have actually had a notion of trade.

You've moved beyond the realms of reasoned debate into flights of pure, childish fantasy. Your inability to form reasoned arguments or understand basic concepts about how the world around you works is just making you look stupid now. Either actually answer some of the very basic questions people here, including myself have posed about your tenuous moral standpoint or shut up. Simply throwing around childish insults and ignoring what people are saying is doing you no favours.

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Frank, comments like that are likely to cause a self-feeding paradox resulting in a rift in the very fabric of space and time, ultimately destroying the universe.

Please don't say things like that again.

FELIPE NO