The wonderful world of the internet in Sweden does provide TONS of opportunities for casual sex hook-ups all kinds of prerefences catered to. It's just not supposed to be any money changing hands. Now, that might in the final instance turn out to be something negotiable, depending on the individuals involved. And clearly the rest of us will never know.
This is true not only of Sweden. Sex has become increasingly "easier to get", and that has reflected both on the number and on the earnings of prostitutes.
Specifically to the situation you describe, that prohibition on brothels can keep people away from what is generally a safer and more preferred environment for inexperienced sex workers. It means the choice is to either go independent without being ready to, or to submit oneself to worthing in a legal grey zone or outright illicit environment.
It's the sort of needless restriction sex worker organisations tend to agitate against precisely because it remains a detriment to safety and security and to accessing social services.
I
strongly dispute that. How exactly do you thing it goes for an inexperienced sex worker? You would wish there were some "nice" guys or gals saying "Here now, this is a normal way to make money, come and prostitute yourself. It's really nice to be our collaborator! And if you're inexperienced don't work, we'll break you in to all kinds of sex for pay."? It is abhorrent. It is also sad when they do it on their own, for self-employed prostitutes do have to start some way. Usually the first time is not a rational decision but an act of despair due to some pressing need. Not meant to be the beginning of a "career" but... it was easy money and that person starts doing it more and more often, until it becomes a career.
My point is that (most of) these beginners won't go to a brothel anyway, because they don't intend to employ themselves as prostitutes initially. The "employment" phase comes later, and at that point they
believe they know very well how to handle things on their own. A brothel will only be eating into their income and forcing onerous regulations on them.
Furthermore, self-employed prostitutes can also always say no to any prospective client they strongly dislike. Prostitutes working in a brothel will be fired for that eventually, and find themselves blacklisted, never mind what kind of legislation you draft.
Frankly, my opinion is that prostitution is an evil. More often than not it screws up people's lives and you can't legislate that away. You cannot also "ban" the high risk of STDs either: even inf they don't get the nastier but more easily prevented HIV or HepC, they will get successive infections from syphilis, gonorrhea, etc in any society where these diseases are not eradicated. Which, in our globalized world where tourists and immigrants make up a high proportion of their costumers, just cannot be assured.
As for customers, well... they get what they kind of deserve, often prostitutes that do carry STD and hide it so as to not harm income or have to leave the profession altogether. That harm you could mitigate, with government-run brothels and compulsory controls on prostitutes. Not for the sake of the prostitutes (though you could give them a state subsidy for their pains when they were forced to retire - it'd have to be subsidized by the state, there's not enough profit in the job to pay for that, sex is cheap) but for the sake of the customers and "public health". That, as I've said previously, is going back to the medieval attitude towards prostitution: a lesser evil to be regulated. Funny that modern liberals would align so closely with medieval theologists - make of that what you will. The move to regulate prostitution and force prostitutes into monitored brothels may be in the public interest, but it is most definitely not in the interest of the prostitutes themselves. In corrupt countries they'd be exploited there, the regulations rendered ineffective. And in orderly countries they can already call on the services of the state (police, hospitals, etc) as self-employed persons and need not the dubious protection of a brothel.
I do not favor using the state to repress people who are too clueless to recognize that it usually becomes a terribly losing game for them, because I know they'd do it anyway even if it were forbidden. But I'm also not willing to support having people legally entice others to do it, and profiting from doing that. And yes, that means I'd support banning any and all further production of commercial porn also. As we all know, we don't need "paid professionals" to produce porn, people do it and post in on the net for free now. Much less am I willing to support having
the state itself assuming the role of pimp to "protect" the very people that the states' social security, anti-fraud agencies, housing programmes, etc has failed to help. Because this, at least in my country and I believe in others also, are the main (though not the only, granted) causes of people becoming prostitutes.
