Libertarian town hall and ticket

[terminalg92]

This is a red herring. I'm talking about prostitution, i.e., making women a receptacle for men's bodily fluids and deeming it OK.

Your implied logic sure seemed to be "prostitution objectifies women, objectifying women doesn't contribute to women's societal well-being, things that don't contribute to women's societal well-being should be illegal, therefore prostitution should be illegal". If that wasn't your intent then how was your statement about "societal well-being" meant to support your argument against legal prostitution, if at all?

This statement is all about just judging others: "making women a receptacle for men's bodily fluids and deeming it OK".

(For starters, about 20% of prostitutes are male--of course I assume those 20% make you even madder than the 80% women. )

But if a woman wants to have consensual sex with a man or a man wants to have sex with a woman, yeah, that's OK. If a man wants to date two women and he sometimes has consensual sex with each of them, yeah, that's his choice. If an 80-year old billionaire buys cars and houses for a 22-year old woman and she has sex with him, yeah, that's her choice. If a 30-year old escort wants to have sex with a few high class clients a day at a $1,000 a pop, that's their moral choice (even if it's not their legal choice). You judge her as a "bodily fluid receptacle" while she calls herself an entrepreneur. My question is why do you get to override what she thinks is best for herself? Maybe she doesn't like some of the decisions you're making even though they don't affect her, because they don't fit her morals...you OK with her having some "control" in what you do too? Just curious if this goes both ways or not.

 

[qazplm]

It sounds like you agree that sex workers are mostly victims, right? (e.g. reportedly 1.5M in the U.S. alone were trafficked here) Yet your policy response is to throw these victims into jail?? Every year in the U.S. alone about 80,000 of these "victims" are incarcerated. This is about as disturbing as it gets--the typical case is a teenage woman who gets coerced into prostitution by a pimp with guns, she gets raped by him and his friends and then pimped out to "customers", all the while getting almost none of the money and consistently getting beat to $hit...and then when the government finds out, they throw her in jail. If we can't at least agree that the girl in this scenario needs help not prison time, then I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this topic.

Squarely on my side in this debate for either full-on legalization or at least not jailing the sex worker are the ACLU, Amnesty International, the World Health Organization, and the UN Human Rights Council, among others. Doesn't mean I'm right, but just pointing out that my view is also taken by many of the largest civil rights and health organizations. Unsurprisingly, the bulk of opposition to liberalizing prostitution in America is from the religious right and the Catholic Church.

I have no idea if they are "mostly" victims, but there are a significant number who are victims that it makes the entire enterprise difficult to sanction. You conflate the terms sex worker with "trafficked" so I don't know what you mean since those are two different things albeit related (someone can be a sex worker but not "trafficked" while someone can be trafficked but not a sex worker in the traditional sense or can be a sex worker).

I'm fine for not incarcerating the woman and only penalizing the man if that's your suggestion. And incarcerating the pimp/handler. That would be akin to making drug use decriminalized (or legal) but making drug trafficking a crime (ignoring low level dealing).

 

[TOKenBoiler]

My question is why do you get to override what she thinks is best for herself?

Because we're not countries unto ourselves. We live in a society. And individual choices have societal impacts, some good, some benign and some bad. I don't see that there is any good to legalized prostitution that outweighs the bad. You disagree. So be it.

 

[qazplm]

"Don't like slavery, don't own one" is a red herring in the context of this conversation.

Regarding "not certain how objectifying women contributes to their societal well-being", so let's assume that's true for the sake of argument. So following this lead why not make modeling illegal, as well as porn, strip clubs, beauty pageants, and probably 50% of today's advertising? Not to mention greasy foods, horror movies, alcohol, etc.

If it's not good for society, let's outlaw it. Yay government, help us save us from ourselves!!

Not really (on the red herring), not as it pertains to libertarianism. It certainly captures the zeitgeist of the philosophy even if in this instance because of the "freedom" value it isn't accurate.

As for the last sentence, depends on what isn't good for society. Murder, rape, fraud, a whole lot of things aren't "good for society." Allowing companies to sell tainted food isn't good for society. I'm quite happy that there are law requiring minimum sanitation at restaurants. I'm quite happy that I can travel from Atlanta to New York or Boston to Bloomington (well never happy to go there) and know that odds are pretty good that the laws there help keep the food I eat safe and I don't have to rely on word of mouth or a private organization to tell me whether or not the food should or shouldn't be eaten.

Again, your philosophy only work sometimes. And it isn't just society "saving us from ourselves" it is a recognition that we are not humanly capable of identifying, processing, and using all of the information we need in a complex world and having an ostensibly unbiased entity whose job it is to help us is not a bad thing, even if that entity has flaws, as no doubt you will point out.

 

[terminalg92]

I'm fine for not incarcerating the woman and only penalizing the man if that's your suggestion. And incarcerating the pimp/handler. That would be akin to making drug use decriminalized (or legal) but making drug trafficking a crime (ignoring low level dealing).

Agreed. On the surface this policy feels like a good middle ground, and this policy has been implemented in enough Western countries by now that we don't have to be the guinea pigs.

 

[terminalg92]

Because we're not countries unto ourselves. We live in a society. And individual choices have societal impacts, some good, some benign and some bad. I don't see that there is any good to legalized prostitution that outweighs the bad. You disagree. So be it.

With this belief system, even if I believed in it, where would one EVER draw the line from a policy perspective???

I'm sure you could put together a cogent argument that dozens of "societal ills" such as divorce, smoking, alcohol, porn, heavy metal music, etc. are contributing to the decline of western civilization. How do you define where to draw the line legally, when for example I know on the wrong side of your line is consensual sex between adults???

 

[terminalg92]

Not really (on the red herring), not as it pertains to libertarianism. It certainly captures the zeitgeist of the philosophy even if in this instance because of the "freedom" value it isn't accurate.

As for the last sentence, depends on what isn't good for society. Murder, rape, fraud, a whole lot of things aren't "good for society." Allowing companies to sell tainted food isn't good for society. I'm quite happy that there are law requiring minimum sanitation at restaurants. I'm quite happy that I can travel from Atlanta to New York or Boston to Bloomington (well never happy to go there) and know that odds are pretty good that the laws there help keep the food I eat safe and I don't have to rely on word of mouth or a private organization to tell me whether or not the food should or shouldn't be eaten.

Again, your philosophy only work sometimes. And it isn't just society "saving us from ourselves" it is a recognition that we are not humanly capable of identifying, processing, and using all of the information we need in a complex world and having an ostensibly unbiased entity whose job it is to help us is not a bad thing, even if that entity has flaws, as no doubt you will point out.

His slavery reference was a complete, textbook red herring. In fact it appears to have succeeded in that it even distracted you. It is a red herring because slavery involves coercion whereas consensual sex by definition does not. Keep in mind ToKenBoiler is not making a "utilitarian side effect" argument against prostitution like you are, he's making a straight-up morality argument against it. Slavery is a textbook red herring in that context.

"My philosophy only works sometimes"...does that imply that your philosophy works all of the time? I never claimed my philosophy was perfect, is that the bar I'm trying to clear here? If you have a perfect or even just "really great almost perfect" philosophy, I'd love to hear it. If your philosophy aligns closely with the Democratic party then allow me a few pages of where that party's results (as well as the Republican party's) have failed us over the many decades, much of which I suspect you'd agree with.

Even politically I think democracy is highly flawed, even if it's the "best we've got". Economically, capitalism is highly flawed as well. The United States' current incarnation of both democracy as well as capitalism is struggling right now IMO. It is being held back by 2-party gridlock and contention, as well as crony capitalism, as well as an unaccountable central bank, by a relatively uninformed and uninterested electorate, and by globalization (hurts the incumbent), etc. Lots of things to try and improve IMO.

 

[qazplm]

His slavery reference was a complete, textbook red herring. In fact it appears to have succeeded in that it even distracted you. It is a red herring because slavery involves coercion whereas consensual sex by definition does not. Keep in mind ToKenBoiler is not making a "utilitarian side effect" argument against prostitution like you are, he's making a straight-up morality argument against it. Slavery is a textbook red herring in that context.

"My philosophy only works sometimes"...does that imply that your philosophy works all of the time? I never claimed my philosophy was perfect, is that the bar I'm trying to clear here? If you have a perfect or even just "really great almost perfect" philosophy, I'd love to hear it. If your philosophy aligns closely with the Democratic party then allow me a few pages of where that party's results (as well as the Republican party's) have failed us over the many decades, much of which I suspect you'd agree with.

Even politically I think democracy is highly flawed, even if it's the "best we've got". Economically, capitalism is highly flawed as well. The United States' current incarnation of both democracy as well as capitalism is struggling right now IMO. It is being held back by 2-party gridlock and contention, as well as crony capitalism, as well as an unaccountable central bank, by a relatively uninformed and uninterested electorate, and by globalization (hurts the incumbent), etc. Lots of things to try and improve IMO.

I already addressed that. I said except for the freedom part. It captures the spirit of libertarian thought though I think.

I think the liberal philosophy is absolutely "workable." That there are plenty of examples where it doesn't is the fact that humans be humans and we can often make workable philosophies less so. Heck, even conservative philosophy is "workable." Both value more than one important human value, just to differing degrees.

I think the libertarian philosophy is much much less "workable." It is not a flaw of humans, it is a flaw in the philosophy because it is too narrowly focused on one important value to the exclusion of all others.