Tuesday, January 19, 2021

so, then do we allow prostitution? slavery?

listen, my opposition to prostitution is not moral and it's really only subject to the existing economic realities. i'm absolutely convinced that if you tried to legalize prostitution in the existing reality of hypercapitalism what you'd end up with is mcbrothels where sex workers get paid minimum wage to work in terrible conditions, and nobody wants that.

i actually honestly, legitimately think that the black market is a safer way for sex workers who truly want to be sex workers (that is, who aren't forced into it due to economic realities) to exist. i'll accept that i might be wrong, but i want to have a statistical argument about best approaches, not a moral argument about the permissiveness of the state. this is an argument about economics, not an argument about right and wrong.

further, i realize that the vast majority of actual prostitutes (not rich girls with webcams in their parents' basement or strippers with trust funds looking for a good time, but actual prostitutes out there in the real world) are not doing it out of real choice but out of a lack of real options. so, if what you're concerned about is actual agency, any changes to the laws need to be constructed to actually ensure actual agency by giving unwilling actors a way out. 

i have no patience at all for this "sex work is work" argument, as it normalizes wage slavery and upholds the marketization of everything. it's a neoliberal argument, through and through. to the extent that it is true, we need to abolish all forms of non-consensual labour, not give up and accept slavery as a fact of life.

so, yes - you want to get rid of prostitution laws, in the long run. that's not something the state should be regulating, at the end of the day. but, that's the kind of thing you do in an advanced, communist society, not in the primitive capitalist society that we currently find ourselves in; if we were to legalize prostitution tomorrow, i am convinced that the actual economic forces at play would produce the exact opposite outcome that proponents claim it would.

....because i reject market theory, and they worship it.