[maxbond]

This is pretty silly, prohibition has been an obvious failure in both drugs and sex work.

Firstly, it's a human rights issue, people ought to be able to engage in the commerce of their choosing with only reasonable restrictions. Prohibition is an unreasonable restriction, enforced according to a set of puritan morals that are no longer even popularly held. After all, alcohol is more addictive and more harmful than many schedule 1 drugs. We're not enforcing any kind of consistent moral principle here, we're hewing to the arbitrary views of people who are long dead. I personally do not find prostitution compatible with my moral sensibilities (I'm a prude, I'm just a libertarian prude), so I don't engage with it, but I'm not interested in prosecuting those that do any more than I'm interested in criminalizing pineapple on pizza.

Secondly, that study doesn't show that it made trafficking worse. It showed that it increased inflows of trafficking. Of course traffickers will prefer open markets to closed ones, that doesn't establish a causal relationship whereby increased openness lead to more net trafficking. What this shows is that prohibition makes trafficking happen in someone else's back yard.

Thirdly, you're linking to a 2014 article about a 2012 study, which is ancient as far as an academic paper goes. Is there really no more recent study? Browsing Google Scholar is evident that this is an active area off research.

Here's a 2021 one I skimmed to cherrypick an article that finds decriminalization more effective ("Although it seems that partial decriminalization has greater benefits with fewer disadvantages, it is not without defects."): https://brieflands.com/articles/ijhrba-106741.html

Why should I find your article more authoritative? (I'm looking for a survey article on the subject presently.)

Fourth, once you've prohibited something, it's next to impossible to intervene to make that market safer. If we want to find the traffickers, we're going to have an easier time in a lit market then a dark one.

Lastly, I'm just more inclined to listen to sex workers and trafficking victims about what they would help than to look at descriptive statistics. Statistics are cool and useful, but predictive mental models and lives experience is a better source of policy. Statistics is better able to tell us that something isn't working than what that something is, why it isn't working, and what should be done about it.

[themitigating]

Thirdly, you're linking to a 2014 article about a 2012 study, which is ancient as far as an academic paper goes

Has there been some new release of prostitution, like a 2.0 where they updated the security to prevent abuse?

Stupid joke but nothing has really changed in that realm of things where a study that isn't that old would be invalid.

[maxbond]

> Has there been some new release of prostitution, like a 2.0 where they updated the security to prevent abuse?

This is the wrong question. A better one is, "has the way prostitution and sex trafficking relate to the internet changed?", but the correct one is "does a 2012 article reflect the current understanding in this field of research?"

[themitigating]

2012 isn't really pre internet though, right?

[rayiner]

> Firstly, it's a human rights issue, people ought to be able to engage in the commerce of their choosing with only reasonable restrictions

You’re starting with a libertarian premise most people don’t accept. The vast majority of the world accepts that it’s proper to restrict individual freedom even to protect people from themselves. Society has a role to play to help people make good choices and to make it hard for them to make bad or dangerous choices.

Also, you’re incorrect about the prevalent morals. Even in the US, women—who bear the lion’s share of the cost of prostitution—oppose legalizing by a large margin (50% to 30%): https://www.vox.com/2016/3/11/11203740/prostitution-legal-me.... And of course the overwhelming majority would still say it’s a bad or immoral choice, even if they agree someone should be allowed to make that choice.

[maxbond]

> The vast majority of the world accepts that it’s proper to restrict individual freedom even to protect people from themselves.

As do I, and I said as much (I'm not a capital-L Libertarian, I meant it as an adjective). I argued this exceeded reasonable bounds.

I'm surprised to learn it's that unpopular, but I am comfortable arguing an unpopular position.

[clipsy]

> women—who bear the lion’s share of the cost of prostitution

Prostitutes bear the lion's share of the cost of prostitution.

[thaumasiotes]

> Even in the US, women — who bear the lion’s share of the cost of prostitution — oppose legalizing by a large margin

That's not a surprise. Amazon bears the cost of Wal-mart's operations and would probably like to outlaw Wal-mart too.

[rayiner]

I think a fairer analogy is worker protection laws. Workers understand how other workers can be coerced into accepting unsafe working conditions and think it’s okay to limit individual freedom to take that pressure off the table for all.

[AnthonyMouse]

That analogy would only fit if the workers suffering from the unsafe working conditions had the same views as the ones who don't, whereas it's suburban middle class women who favor prohibition and sex workers who favor legalization.

It's like saying "men, who bear the lion's share of the cost of the death penalty, support it more than women do." It's not the ones on death row who support it.

[rayiner]

If there was no minimum wage and no OSHA, would you look at the opinion of all workers or just the people who agreed to work for a low wage or in an unsafe condition? Obviously the former, because all workers are subject to coercion to agree to work for low wages and in unsafe conditions, and the point is to protect all workers from that pressure.

Similarly, sex workers don’t start out that way. All women are subject to the coercion and social pressure that pushes some into sex work. The daughter of that middle class suburban woman could be pressured into sex work by an abusive boyfriend, for example. They all have a stake in the situation.

[AnthonyMouse]

> If there was no minimum wage and no OSHA, would you look at the opinion of all workers or just the people who agreed to work for a low wage or in an unsafe condition? Obviously the former, because all workers are subject to coercion to agree to work for low wages and in unsafe conditions, and the point is to protect all workers from that pressure.

Obviously the latter, because the former includes a majority of people who aren't subject to such coercion, e.g. because they perform skilled labor and have negotiating power. But who may be in favor of such rules for perfidious and selfish reasons (e.g. because they're in a position to benefit from destroying smaller competitors) or because they're so separated from the lives of the people actually affected by the rules that they support them out of ignorance.

You can see this because people will answer polling questions like "do you support a rule that improves worker safety even if it increases production costs" without asking a single question about the details, like how much it improves safety and how much it increases costs. Even though it's obvious that rules with a poor cost/benefit ratio hurt everyone by making things cost more, and hurt the people nearest to the cost increase most because it comes out of the revenue the business uses to pay their wages.

Which is how we get "worker protections" that harm workers. Because prohibiting lead and asbestos are good rules, but there are also bad rules that people with cushy jobs nevertheless support because they sound good and the negative consequences don't affect them personally. Why should we put weight on their misaligned and uninformed views?

[dragonwriter]

> women—who bear the lion’s share of the cost of prostitution

What “cost of prostitution” do women who are not prostitutes bear?

The cost of criminalization of prostitution is clearly born primarily by prostitutes who are disproportionately women, but the vast majority of women are not prostitutes.

[rayiner]

Being coerced and pressured into prostitution. Most women aren’t prostitution, but any woman can be the victim of efforts to coerce her into prostitution, often as a result of earlier sexual abuse: https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/11907/

[dragonwriter]

> Being coerced and pressured into prostitution.

That is not a cost borne by women who are not prostitutes, but by a subset of those who are.

(It is a risk that other women might be exposed to, but being exposed to a risk and bearing a cost are different things, the former of which is often much less palpable than the latter.)

> https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/11907/

That’s a very weird link to attach to your comment, since the story in that article does not refer to anything related to prostitution, coerced or otherwise, on its face. Certain people (Dworkin among them) might describe all prostitution as rape, but inverting that to turn a rape narrative that the victim who is also the only witness relating it does not attribute to prostitution of any kind into an illustration of a claim about forced prostitution is bizarre.

[AnthonyMouse]

> You’re starting with a libertarian premise most people don’t accept. The vast majority of the world accepts that it’s proper to restrict individual freedom even to protect people from themselves.

Do they? The argument I always see is that it's to protect society from them e.g. imposing costs on the healthcare system.

[vorpalhex]

Well I quoted a Harvard review of a Swedish study, and yours is an Iranian study that seems to have no peer review. Also your metastudy uh, agrees with mine:

> The last critics would be that full decriminalization has not resulted in reduced trafficking victimization, but led to growth trafficking inflows

> Lastly, I'm just more inclined to listen to sex workers and trafficking victims about what they would help than to look at descriptive statistics.

Have you.. talked to any trafficking victims? Any sex workers? And, why do you think a sex worker has the ability to write prescriptive legal policy? Drug addicts would like drugs to be legal, oil barons would like there to be no natural protection laws, prostitutes would like prostitution to be legal.

And what do you think has changed about sex trafficking and prostitution in 11 years?

> Fourth, once you've prohibited something, it's next to impossible to intervene to make that market safer.

Right because you squash the market. Decriminalization of drugs failed because the count of addicts soared and so did ODs. You have less sex trafficking when it is riskier to engage in any prostitution. This isn't rocket science. Arguing your trafficking victims should get better health care is worse than just having meaningfully less trafficking victims.

[maxbond]

> [Y]ours is an Iranian study that seems to have no peer review.

Fair enough. (I intend to find a good & recent survey paper still but chores have come up, so it'll have to wait a few hours.)

> Have you.. talked to any trafficking victims? Any sex workers?

Not personally no, I only know what I've learned of their positions through articles I've read and documentaries I've seen. Why, have you?

> Drug addicts would like drugs to be legal, oil barons would like there to be no natural protection laws, prostitutes would like prostitution to be legal.

Why are you equating prostitutes with oil barons of all things? This seems like a list of people whom are often viewed poorly, and I can only infer the rhetorical function here is to tar prostitutes through association. Which makes me doubt the sincerity of your concern.

> And what do you think has changed about sex trafficking and prostitution in 11 years?

I'm sure the state of those things as they relate to the internet has shifted, but not importantly what I was suggesting was the understanding of this field of research has probably changed dramatically in 11 years.

> Right because you squash the market.

What market has ever been squashed by prohibition? Alcohol wasn't. Drugs haven't been. Prostitution hasn't been.

> Arguing your trafficking victims should get better health care is worse than just having meaningfully less trafficking victims.

There won't be fewer trafficking victims, or other sex workers who are victims of abuse, we'll just have disclaimed responsibility for them by declaring that it's illegal and excluding them from polite society. The abuse we'll continue, and the comfortable can pretend it doesn't exist because it's been brushed under the rug.

Additionally, it absolutely does matter if we can provide services. For the example of drug use, the appropriate healthcare (eg Narcan, needle exchanges, treatment for addiction) can make a night and day difference for survival. Sex workers would be safer if they weren't stigmatized and so more likely to be believed if they ask for help, if they were able to operate in the open with hired security and vetting processes, etc.

[vorpalhex]

Good high quality research repeatedly says that cracking down on prostitution reduces sex trafficking.

Sex workers are not safer if they are less stigmatized, they are more likely to have bad outcomes. You can't make a soldier safer by hugging them, you can't remove intrinsic risk by saying nice things to someone.

And yes, the drug market did get smaller under prohibition, as did alcohol under prohibition, as does prositution. That prohibition is not fully effective doesn't mean the inverse is effective.

Oregon tried decriminalization and their OD rate has grown 4x more than everyone elses. 4x more people have died because someone didn't want to follow research.