[RD] Prostitution

[Arwon]

Anyone else want to have a go with that one?

 

[red_elk]

But it must be illegal to prevent deterioration and really bad things to take its place.

I'm not sure what kind of deterioration you are talking about. In Russia it's practically legal, though officially it's not recognized and remains unregulated. There's only serious punishment for pimping, but just a small fine for prostitution and no punishment at all for the clients.

 

[warpus]

What, tell me, do you believe leads someone to turn to prostitution "on their own free will"?

I don't know any prostitutes so I couldn't tell you. You could ask this question about any other profession, really.

What, tell me, do you believe leads someone to turn to COBOL programming "on their own free will" ?

The money. Yes. I think the money is the answer in this case.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I don't know any prostitutes so I couldn't tell you. You could ask this question about any other profession, really.

What, tell me, do you believe leads someone to turn to COBOL programming "on their own free will" ?

The money. Yes. I think the money is the answer in this case.

That's what I would assume, too. What leads someone to become a janitor or a garbage collector? A commitment to cleanliness?

As an aside, garbage collectors in New York City make an average of around $85,000 a year after 5 years. The city gets something like 90,000 applications for about 500 open positions each year. Their acceptance rate is lower than Harvard University's.

 

[warpus]

I would guess that a small number of people do their jobs out of a passion for what they're doing. Most people are doing what they have to do to put food on the table, whether it's A2A on some stranger's dining room table or spaghetti coding for a major bank.

 

[red_elk]

I'm ok with all kinds of professions, but COBOL programming is disgusting and should be outlawed.

 

[Kozmos]

Yeah, job happiness is relatively rare and a recent invention if I am not mistaken.

EDIT: old COBOL programmers are being brought out of retirement and companies are paying people to retrain them for it, simply because there are so many legacy systems to maintain.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I would guess that a small number of people do their jobs out of a passion for what they're doing. Most people are doing what they have to do to put food on the table, whether it's A2A on some stranger's dining room table or spaghetti coding for a major bank.

I think so too. I've never had the displeasure, but I've heard that working for a big bank can be a soul-crushing experience. I remember the poor woman who had to tell me that my bank was charging me a fee for having gotten laid off during the Great Recession. She looked embarrassed but, being a cog in the money-vacuuming machine, there was nothing she could do (other than quit, I suppose).

 

[warpus]

I did an 8 month long internship at a major Canadian financial institution. They put me on their COBOL floor. One entire floor of COBOL programmers, as far as I could tell. It was the most depressing and sad work environment I have ever worked in. Nobody ever smiled, you wouldn't hear any chatter by the watercooler, nobody ever seemed to have anything positive to say, it was basically just a bunch of old quiet reclusive types who keep to themselves and go through the depressing motions, day by day, sit down at their desk, code for a couple hours, then check out. So you go into work in the morning, it's quiet all around, which is fine, but the entire atmosphere is just.. dark and depressing. Whenever I looked into the eyes of my coworkers it was as if their souls had been sucked out years ago.

I knew that I could get paid a lot doing that sort of work, but it just didn't seem worth it at all. I did not want to end up like them.

 

[red_elk]

Whenever I looked into the eyes of my coworkers it was as if their souls had been sucked out years ago.

I knew that I could get paid a lot doing that sort of work, but it just didn't seem worth it at all. I did not want to end up like them.

Sad story. May be they were forced to do it when they were young.

 

[Traitorfish]

I'd never heard of COBOL, but according to Wikipedia, it's

A weak, verbose, and flabby language used by code grinders to do boring mindless things on dinosaur mainframes. [...] Its very name is seldom uttered without ritual expressions of disgust or horror.

So I guess my crappy call centre jobs don't seem so bad.

Prostitution is a necessity and one of the pillars of the modern society which keeps it calm and everything. But it must be illegal to prevent deterioration and really bad things to take its place. People always test bounderies and cross them, so the bounderies should be tighter leaving some safe or needed things outside.

That's something out of Nineteen Eighty-Four. And I don't mean that it's like something out of Nineteen Eighty-Four, I mean there's literally a bit in book where Winston Smith explains the party's tolerance of pornography and prostitution among the Proles using pretty much that same rationale.

 

[Kozmos]

S&M Porn, the ties that bind society together.

 

[Martin Alvito]

EDIT: old COBOL programmers are being brought out of retirement and companies are paying people to retrain them for it, simply because there are so many legacy systems to maintain.

Maybe I should rethink what I'm doing, as someone that's old enough to program stone-age systems and young enough to be attractive to said companies.

OT: Prostitution tends to fit neatly into the "broken windows" theory in Western countries from a cultural standpoint, which becomes a problem for arguing for its legalization. So long as there's a perceived negative externality for such transactions, it's hard to argue that we should ask the comparatively blighted neighborhoods where such transactions flourish to bear the externality.

In an idealized world, we might prefer legalization to the present state of affairs. But you'd have to observe/implement both support structures that aren't there and the removal of associated social stigma before legalization becomes realistically anything more than another burden on the currently underprivileged.

It's worth noting that the nations that have had success with comparative legalization also tend to be the countries where the associated social stigmas are low.

 

[EgonSpengler]

In an idealized world, we might prefer legalization to the present state of affairs. But you'd have to observe/implement both support structures that aren't there and the removal of associated social stigma before legalization becomes realistically anything more than another burden on the currently underprivileged.

Legalization is intended to enable those support structures. It's the support structures that are the goal, decriminalization/legalization is only the first step. Also, your post seems to suggest that illegal prostitution is not a burden on the underprivileged.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Legalization is intended to enable those support structures. It's the support structures that are the goal, decriminalization/legalization is only the first step. Also, your post seems to suggest that illegal prostitution is not a burden on the underprivileged.

The logic isn't explicit in the post, but the expectation would be that legalization would lead to more of the behavior, and therefore a larger externality than currently exists.

As far as the support structures go, I get that it's not possible to fully develop them without legalization. But I'd argue that the process has to be removing the social stigma while turning a blind legal eye to the early stages of the development of such structures, followed by legalization.

 

[Arwon]

The logic isn't explicit in the post, but the expectation would be that legalization would lead to more of the behavior, and therefore a larger externality than currently exists.

There's not really any evidence of that.

 

[Martin Alvito]

There's not really any evidence of that.

You have to do better than "there isn't any evidence" when you're arguing against very basic economic theory. You have to show, with evidence, that in places where legalization occurred there was no increase in the behavior. If you can cite studies that you believe support your claim, I'm certainly willing to look at them. I strongly suspect that such studies are going to have severe problems in the dataset, but clever ways to address such problems do exist and I'd be interested to see how such a study tries to do that.

In the absence of such evidence, I'm going to go right on thinking that there's a risk term (getting caught) currently priced into individuals' decisions over whether or not to engage in the behavior, and that if that risk term is removed through legalization then we'll observe more of the behavior as a result.

 

[Old Hippy]

In the absence of such evidence, I'm going to go right on thinking that there's a risk term (getting caught) currently priced into individuals' decisions over whether or not to engage in the behavior, and that if that risk term is removed through legalization then we'll observe more of the behavior as a result.

you would also have to assume that risk term (getting caught) was part of the draw/buzz/thrill to using the services of prostitutes as well which could result in slightly less of the behaviour

 

[Vectors]

The logic isn't explicit in the post, but the expectation would be that legalization would lead to more of the behavior, and therefore a larger externality than currently exists.

As far as the support structures go, I get that it's not possible to fully develop them without legalization. But I'd argue that the process has to be removing the social stigma while turning a blind legal eye to the early stages of the development of such structures, followed by legalization.

Said structures can't really be built while prostitution is illegal. Cops will also arrest and charge women of colour who are walking in the evening if they have multiple condoms on them and in the wrong neighbourhood, they don't have to be doing anything else.

You have to do better than "there isn't any evidence" when you're arguing against very basic economic theory. You have to show, with evidence, that in places where legalization occurred there was no increase in the behavior. If you can cite studies that you believe support your claim, I'm certainly willing to look at them. I strongly suspect that such studies are going to have severe problems in the dataset, but clever ways to address such problems do exist and I'd be interested to see how such a study tries to do that.

In the absence of such evidence, I'm going to go right on thinking that there's a risk term (getting caught) currently priced into individuals' decisions over whether or not to engage in the behavior, and that if that risk term is removed through legalization then we'll observe more of the behavior as a result.

Will it increase that much and what exactly are the externalities that are associated with it?

 

[Traitorfish]

You have to do better than "there isn't any evidence" when you're arguing against very basic economic theory.

So are you saying that there is evidence, or that the absence of evidence doesn't matter?