[Sumaso]

"Members of the human rights group in Norway and Sweden resigned en masse, saying the organization’s goal should be to end demand for prostitution, not condone it."

How would you ever set about trying to remove the demand for prostitution?

[makomk]

By making it as difficult and dangerous as possible for everyone involved. For example, Sweden - which is generally used as the model example of this approach by those who support it - criminalized people who paid for sex and landlords who knowingly continued to rent to women who had sex for money, amongst others. One of the consequences of this is that sex workers in Sweden who've been raped by a client and reported it to the police have been evicted as a result; the police have gone to their landlords and told them that unless they evict those women, they could go to prison. I believe this was a big reason Amnesty took the position they did. The response of the "end prostitution" campaigners was basically to lie, claiming that Amnesty were making the issue in question up because Sweden hadn't criminalized the sex workers. (Which was half-true but irrelevant because Sweden had criminalized their landlords instead.)

[marvin]

The effect of the pimping laws making it illegal to rent apartments to sex workers in Oslo has in fact made life a lot more difficult for sex workers.

The Oslo police has had a long-running operation called "Operation Houseless" (official name), where the police threaten landlords with prosecution unless they evict suspected sex workers from their home.

Just thought I'd share that tidbit - the left's rhetoric has the sex worker laws painted as protecting women from exploitation, but the enforcement of the law doesn't support this goal at all. (Not to mention that enforcement of these laws when the sex workers are male, is non-existent). My skeptic view is that the criminalization of the purchase of sexual services came about mostly because there were a lot of Nigerian prostitutes in the main street outside of Parliament in 2008, and that the politicians needed a palatable legal excuse for getting rid of what seemed like a disgraceful situation.

[vacri]

I think you're underestimating humanity's sex drive. It's called "the oldest profession" for a reason. Making something so inherent to us "as difficult and dangerous as possible" demonstrably does not stop prostitution, which continues even in places where there are harsh physical penalties for it.

Here in Melbourne, I think they've got the right answer. Brothels are perfectly legal and get government inspectors, but street prostitution is illegal. Basically it's a regulated industry, and the form of prostitution that's subject to the bulk of the problems is the banned one. It's a bit like the War on Drugs, where almost everyone agrees that legalisation and regulation is a better answer to the ills of drugs than blanket bans.

[gozur88]

>By making it as difficult and dangerous as possible for everyone involved.

This ends up causing more problems than the prostitution caused.

[anonymfus]

Make sex abundant by changing culture.

One proposal in Russian feminism movement in the beginning of XX century was "glass of water theory" (https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Теория_стакана_воды , sadly there is no good English source) that stated that providing sex must be as easy as providing a glass of water to somebody who asks for one, and concepts of love/relationships/family/jealousy/cheating (which were viewed as related to interpretation of marriage as a sort of slavery) must be deprecated for this.

Other interesting proposal made by Eliezer Yudkowsky in the "Three Worlds Collide" novella was legalising rape.

[econner]

> Other interesting proposal by Eliezer Yudkowsky made in "Three Worlds Collide" novella was legalising rape.

Ohhh. It is satire. You had me ಠ_ಠ for a moment.

[jessaustin]

Many readers want it to be satire. That doesn't mean that it is.

[thrownear]

>concepts of love/relationships/family/jealousy/cheating

I share a similar view,

But our current set up won't allow for something like that.

When you take out those concepts, you will see a human being suddenly has a lot less potential disasters/sufferings hanging over his head, which makes him harder to control and exploit, which is all living in todays world is about. Being exploited nicely.

Give a man a family or put him in a 'romantic' relationship. You will see that he get reduced to pulp, Easily controllable and mouldable into anything as required by the state and similar establishments...

They won't let that change happen.

[Shivetya]

Well many municipalities go after the johns, with fines, jail time, and publicly shaming them. Just step up the pressure but it just goes underground.

While there are severe issues with underage involuntary prostitution I think that legalizing prostitution with a proper legal framework and such to insure the safety of said workers would actually reduce the occurrences of underage prostitution. It is one industry that would need to regulation, basically medical certification that they have no communicable diseases, know how to protect themselves from the same, and are not being forced into the industry by a pimp. If anything I can see having pimps sidelined by professional management groups.

The simple fact is, it does not harm any adult who voluntarily engage is such activity and therefor has no reason to be illegal.

[intopieces]

>The simple fact is, it does not harm any adult who voluntarily engages in such activity and therefore has no reason to be illegal.

This is not accurate. There are many adults who voluntarily engage in prostitution and are harmed. They are assaulted, robbed, raped and have little legal recourse. The fact that sex workers are harmed regularly is precisely why it should be legal.

[johnchristopher]

The problem is not so much to remove the demand for prostitution but to remove the human trafficking, exploitation and extortion that is rampant in this business.

edit: the country I live in tolerate prostitution and neither prostitutes, neither customers are committing crimes. But there is still a lot of criminal activities related to prostitution.

[WWKong]

By enabling social harmony, high quality of life, formation of families, jobs etc. Won't eliminate demand but maybe significantly reduce it.

[maaku]

I think you (or the people you are describing) are bringing a lot of unjustified assumptions to the table regarding why people make use of prostitution.

[WWKong]

Why do they make use of it?

[maaku]

LOTS of different reasons.

[atmosx]

You would be amazed if you knew the amount of people who consider a high quality standard the existence of prostitutes both high and low profile.

Also, this weird notion that prostitutes clientele are not family men... Where did this came from?! I would say that it's predominantly married, family-men (whatever that is).

As another commentator said, you're making too many, extremely naive assumptions about a complex topic.

[WWKong]

I didn't hear a solution from you. Or are you implying that it is impossible to reduce demand for prostitution? Which would imply that demand is the same in all types of societies, cultures, regions. If that is not true, what makes demand higher/lower in certain societies? You are convinced that the parameters I shared are not the right ones. Let's go with that. What parameters are you proposing? Or are we just going to say, "too complex" and leave it at that?

[atmosx]

> I didn't hear a solution from you.

IMHO the solution is to take a way the excitement by legalising the activity in question and create healthy, tightly state-controlled places where prostitutes are protected and taken care of.

> Or are you implying that it is impossible to reduce demand for prostitution?

Without creating an illegal market and/or violent reactions, hardly. Socrates would argue that selling your soul (e.g. being a teacher at Stanford) is equal or worst with selling your body, because sharing your knowledge and "Eureka" moments makes sense only when if/when you enjoy a stimulating conversation. So as far as prostitution goes, I could easily argue that every teacher who gets paid to teach is a soul-prostitute. The fact that you, me and others don't perceive it as a prostitutions has more to do with culture (religion, society, etc.) than anything else.

> Which would imply that demand is the same in all types of societies, cultures, regions. If that is not true, what makes demand higher/lower in certain societies? You are convinced that the parameters I shared are not the right ones.

I disagree with your views on a different levels. I also believe that demand alone doesn't say much. I would prefer a correlation of demand vs violence study on legal vs illegal prostitution countries.

> You are convinced that the parameters I shared are not the right ones. Let's go with that. What parameters are you proposing? Or are we just going to say, "too complex" and leave it at that?

For what kind of parameter are we looking for?! I'm confused :-)

Yes it is complex and sure as hell I don't have a definitive answer and I'm open to suggestions. That doesn't mean that I can't dismiss a simplistic approach that AFAIK never works (prostitutes, drugs, etc.).

[WWKong]

There is nothing at all in your post that I disagree with. I'm in support for making it legal and thus safe. But that is a different topic.

The parent asked "how will you reduce demand?". I mentioned some ideas (rather a combination of many factors). There could be many many more ideas. But you called my assumptions naive while coming up with your solution on the lines of, "things that are legal and openly traded have a lot less market than things that are illegally traded". Now many might argue the soundness of such an assumption and call it naive and simplistic.

You say you are open to suggestions. I'm sorry, but it seems more like you are open to suggestions that agree with your views.

[atmosx]

> You say you are open to suggestions. I'm sorry, but it seems more like you are open to suggestions that agree with your views.

Doesn't everybody? :-)

Jokes apart, being open to suggestions means that I can entertain an idea without accepting it or dismissing it completely. So here you go: Your approach might work in a country like Switzerland, North Korea, China, etc. where people are prone to order fearfully (N.Korea, China) or otherwise (Switzerland). But I have strong doubts it would work in other countries (US, UK, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Turkey, etc.), I strongly believe that will have the exact opposite effect, so yes I still consider your approach rather naive: If a legislation could solve something like this, so easily without creating havoc, it would have been applied long time ago in pseudo-puritan societies like the US IMHO.

[Mtinie]

"Happy" and economically well-off patrons will disagree with your assessment.