This excellent opinion piece appeared in this week's edition of the Economist magazine. Talk about hitting the nail on the head.

Sex is their business
Sep 2nd 2004
From The Economist print edition

Attitudes to commercial sex are hardening. But tougher laws are wrong in both principle and practice


TWO adults enter a room, agree a price, and have sex. Has either committed a crime? Common sense suggests not: sex is not illegal in itself, and the fact that money has changed hands does not turn a private act into a social menace. If both parties consent, it is hard to see how either is a victim. But prostitution has rarely been treated as just another transaction, or even as a run-of-the-mill crime: the oldest profession is also the oldest pretext for outraged moralising and unrealistic lawmaking devised by man.

In recent years, governments have tended to bother with prostitution only when it threatened public order. Most countries (including Britain and America) have well-worn laws against touting on street corners, against the more brazen type of brothel and against pimping. This has never been ideal, partly because sellers of sex feel the force of law more strongly than do buyers, and partly because anti-soliciting statutes create perverse incentives. On some occasions, magistrates who have fined streetwalkers have been asked to wait a few days so that the necessary money can be earned.

So there is perennial discussion of reforming prostitution laws. During the 1990s, the talk was all of liberalisation. Now the wind is blowing the other way. In 1999, Sweden criminalised the buying of sex. France then cracked down on soliciting and outlawed commercial sex with vulnerable women—a category that includes pregnant women. Britain began to enforce new laws against kerb-crawling earlier this year, and is now considering more restrictive legislation (see article). Outside a few pragmatic enclaves, attitudes are hardening. Whereas, ten years ago, the discussion was mostly about how to manage prostitution and make it less harmful, the aim now is to find ways to stamp it out.

The puritans have the whip hand not because they can prove that tough laws will make life better for women, but because they have convinced governments that prostitution is intolerable by its very nature. What has tipped the balance is the globalisation of the sex business.

The white slave trade

It is not surprising that many of the rich world's prostitutes are foreigners. Immigrants have a particularly hard time finding jobs that pay well; local language skills are not prized in the sex trade; prostitutes often prefer to work outside their home town. But the free movement of labour is as controversial in the sex trade as in any other business. Wherever they work, foreign prostitutes are accused of driving down prices, touting “extra” services and consorting with organised criminal pimps who are often foreigners, too. The fact that a very small proportion of women are trafficked—forced into prostitution against their will—has been used to discredit all foreigners in the trade, and by extension (since many sellers of sex are indeed foreign) all prostitutes.

Abolitionists make three arguments. From the right comes the argument that the sex trade is plain wrong, and that, by condoning it, society demeans itself. Liberals (such as this newspaper) who believe that what consenting adults do in private is their own business reject that line.

From the left comes the argument that all prostitutes are victims. Its proponents cite studies that show high rates of sexual abuse and drug taking among employees. To which there are two answers. First, those studies are biased: they tend to be carried out by staff at drop-in centres and by the police, who tend to see the most troubled streetwalkers. Taking their clients as representative of all prostitutes is like assessing the state of marriage by sampling shelters for battered women. Second, the association between prostitution and drug addiction does not mean that one causes the other: drug addicts, like others, may go into prostitution just because it's a good way of making a decent living if you can't think too clearly.

A third, more plausible, argument focuses on the association between prostitution and all sorts of other nastinesses, such as drug addiction, organised crime, trafficking and underage sex. To encourage prostitution, goes the line, is to encourage those other undesirables; to crack down on prostitution is to discourage them.

Brothels with brands

Plausible, but wrong. Criminalisation forces prostitution into the underworld. Legalisation would bring it into the open, where abuses such as trafficking and under-age prostitution can be more easily tackled. Brothels would develop reputations worth protecting. Access to health care would improve—an urgent need, given that so many prostitutes come from diseased parts of the world. Abuses such as child or forced prostitution should be treated as the crimes they are, and not discussed as though they were simply extreme forms of the sex trade, which is how opponents of prostitution and, recently, the governments of Britain and America have described them.

Puritans argue that where laws have been liberalised—in, for instance, the Netherlands, Germany and Australia—the new regimes have not lived up to claims that they would wipe out pimping and sever the links between prostitution and organised crime. Certainly, those links persist; but that's because, thanks to concessions to the opponents of liberalisation, the changes did not go far enough. Prostitutes were made to register, which many understandably didn't want to do. Not surprisingly, illicit brothels continued to thrive.

If those quasi-liberal experiments have not lived up to their proponents' expectations, they have also failed to fulfil their detractors' greatest fears. They do not seem to have led to outbreaks of disease or under-age sex, nor to a proliferation of street prostitution, nor to a wider collapse in local morals.

Which brings us back to that discreet transaction between two people in private. If there's no evidence that it harms others, then the state should let them get on with it. People should be allowed to buy and sell whatever they like, including their own bodies. Prostitution may be a grubby business, but it's not the government's.

As I've said before, I'm for liberal prostitution laws, at conservative prices.

Right, DG. This would be the result of the libertarian position expounded above.

Give out talent visa to foreign prostitutes. That is the way how the mafia's hold on prostitution could be broken

Personally, I can offer to sample and test them, as part of the Visa application process. They should get only 1-2 year visa, there is plenty of new talent around.


Germany totally legalized prostitution. But the prostitutes do not want to pay social security. And the government labor office does not want to procure prostitutes, an attitude that caused an uproar in parlament (we have millions of jobless people and the government does not want to help them to find legitimate (prostitute) jobs placement)

Which is why I would encourage every Hombre to vote for Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian candidate . He is certainly better than the other two, and would support the isue most important to members of this board.

[duplicate post erased]

(Message edited by LAguy on September 11, 2004)

Robewarrior: The problem is Badnarik as president is not going to support the issue most important to members of this board because the chances of him getting elected are less than zero (in contrast to Nader in 2000 who at least had a zero chance of winning). Accepting for the sake of argument your position that mongering is the issue most important to members of this board, the only realistic question is who between Bush and Kerry is going to do more damage to the world-wide mongering scene.

Along these lines, if elected President in 2004 I would be very supportive of mongering opportunities, and might even support a constitutional amendment banning heterosexual marriage. However, I, like Badnarik, have less than a zero percent chance of being elected President, and therefore I must firmly request my multitude of supporters (which number almost as many as Badnarik's) not to waste their votes on me, but vote instead for Kerry, if for no other reason than to get rid of Bush.

(Message edited by LAguy on September 11, 2004)

Robewarrior, I'm as libertarian-minded as you. One of my favorite quotes is from Thoreau - "That government is best which governs least." But like Laguy says, the libertarian candidate won't be winning, no matter what you do. Since voting for that candidate is a futile gesture, the only question you're left with is, do you want Bush in office for the next four years, or do you want to vote for someone who might have a chance of defeating him?

Who say's there is no profit in prostitution.

Prostitution at two massage parlors admitted





Owner is guilty; sentence to follow
By Onell R. Soto
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
January 19, 2005

A La Jolla woman pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax fraud charges yesterday after admitting she and two workers at San Diego massage parlors she owned accepted money for sex.


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Suk Hi Ring, 57, admitted in San Diego federal court she ran a prostitution operation out of the Royal Spa on Kearny Mesa and the Royal Palace Massage in Rolando.

She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in prostitution and launder money, and to underreporting income to the Internal Revenue Service in 1998 and 1999. In corporate and individual tax forms, she claimed income of $574,000 when she took in $1.1 million, according to court records.

A judge is scheduled to decide her sentence and the amount of money and property she will have to forfeit at a hearing April 11.

The judge's decisions will hinge, in part, on determining how much of the money that flowed through the business was for legitimate rather than criminal services, said defense lawyer Douglas Brown.

Suspect credit card transactions detailed in a 73-count indictment ranged from $55 to $75.

In the indictment, prosecutors sought to have Ring forfeit $1 million, including her La Jolla home and the businesses.

Ring's plea was not negotiated with prosecutors, who now have to decide whether to continue to press forward with the remaining 70 counts.

Brown said the plea was made, in part, because of a Supreme Court decision last week that gave judges greater flexibility during sentencing.

The two women who Ring said worked as prostitutes and a man who was a business partner are scheduled to go to trial next month

She under reported about half a million, and I bet the working girls did not report the "tip's"

If the cities were to legalize this type of prostitution it would go a long way to bail out city government.

Sounds like you found the way to fix the deficit dude, heh, heh ;-)