I can't believe you got thanked for this load of naivete.
Read this article on what Sweden did about it's prostitution problem. Ok, firstly, they legalized it, but then they decided in 1999, I believe, to criminalize the buyer of the sex (the males), and educate the prostitutes in other areas of employment. According to this article other countries that have legalized it haven't been successful with their legalization. Just read it and see what you think.
Sweden's Prostitution Solution: Why Hasn't Anyone Tried
Interesting article. Allow me to share a few thoughts ...
"In Sweden prostitution is regarded as an aspect of male violence against women and children. It is officially acknowledged as a form of exploitation of women and children and constitutes a significant social problem... gender equality will remain unattainable so long as men buy, sell and exploit women and children by prostituting them."
So paying a woman for a service she is willingly providing is now exploitation? Damn, I better apologize to girl at Subway who made my sandwich, the cashier at Wal-mart who checked me out, the cashier at Speedway that rang up my gas purchase, and the waitress at TGIF who took my order. Apparently I exploited all of them and didn't even know it. I thought I was engaging in commerce. I know you're going to say, "but prostitution is different!" but tell me how. But please tell me how. How does prostitution differ from the service for cash forumla that all jobs are based on?
Seriously this has to be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in a long time. Sex slavery and human trafficing - those are forms of exploitation. They may be linked to prostitution, but are not the same as prostitution.
I know anecdotal evidence isn't the best, but I do think it says something that we have an admitted (and even proud) former prostitute in this thread saying she did not feel even slightly exploited. Clearly not
all prostitution is a form of violence against women, unless you think rivrrat lacks the mental capacity to recognize when she's been violated.
Legalization and/or regulation of prostitution, according to the study, led to:
A dramatic increase in all facets of the sex industry,
So? If its a legal industry, why is there a complaint if it grows? Hardly a negative consequence unless you have a problem with the sex industry as a whole, in which case you have a huge bias in the issue and aren't the best person or organization to study the issue objectively. I don't know anything about the University of London or the people who led this particular study, but listing an increase in the overall sex industry as a negative consequence makes me wonder about their objectivity.
A dramatic increase in the involvement of organized crime in the sex industry,
Curious about this, since its highly counter intuitive that legalizing something would increase criminal involvement. However, even if it is true this can be dealt with through increased enforcement against organized crime. Heck, we could even use all those former vice cops and their funding to do it! :2wave:
A dramatic increase in child prostitution.
Since they keep using the word dramatic, I'm curious how dramatic it is. Still, this like the above outcome can be combated through increased enforcement of existing laws. We could even write new laws with tougher penalties and closing loop holes that may exist.
An explosion in the number of foreign women and girls trafficked into the region.
As with the two points above, increase law enforcement efforts in this area, reform our laws if needed, and deal with the problem. Again though they use colorful if not outright incindiary language like "explosion in number" without giving us the actual numbers. I'd like to see the numbers and actually judge for myself if its a true "explosion".
Indications of an increase in violence against women.
Indications? That's the best they could come up with? Sounds like they couldn't find much hard evidence to verify this claim. Again I can't say for sure without reading the study itself or at least getting a overview of it, but indications is pretty weak language from a sight that seems to use strong language whenever possible.
First off, thank you for presenting an actual argument finally. This is finally something we can actually debate rather than simply saying "I know its wrong". You've argued that legalizing prostitution has externality costs that justify its continued illegal status. However, so far (and I haven't looked at Talloullou's links yet, I guess I'll need to wade through this thread and look at them) I've only seen correlation, not definative causation.
I haven't seen evidence that legalized prostitution is guaranteed to cause these negative consequences. There are plenty of variables that could contribute. For example, just one thing that caught my eye from your own link ...
In the state of Victoria, Australia, where a system of legalized, regulated brothels was established, there was such an explosion in the number of brothels that it immediately overwhelmed the system's ability to regulate them, and just as quickly these brothels became a mire of organized crime, corruption, and related crimes.
The government here was not prepared to adaquetely oversee the increase in prostitution. It was unprepared and underequipped, not surprisingly abuses and corruption took root. If a system had been in place that could've handled the increase and not be overwhelmed to the point of being irrelevant, perhaps it would've been much harder for organized crime to step in.
Another blurb from your link this time talking about the Swedish effort, but still giving an example of an applicable point I'm going to raise ...
They quickly identified, then solved the problem. The hang-up, the place where their best efforts had snagged, was that law enforcement wasn't doing it's part.
The police were not prepared to act on this change in legislation. Without a prepared and educated police force enforcing its policies, the Swedish legislation failed to make any impact. Clearly police preparation and training is a key variable here. Its quite possible, probably even likely that police forces in countries where prostitution was legalized did not recieve training to deal with the potential problems like increase in human trafficing and organized crime involvement. Had the police been trained and prepared to deal with these new developments, perhaps the problems wouldn't have been able to take root.
My basic point is just because legalizing prostitution hasn't gone perfectly smooth in other nations does not mean legalization doesn't work period. We can learn from the examples of other nations to get a feel for what kind of preparation we need to make to make legalization work.
I'm going to drop the rest of my snarky replies to the rest of our counter post because if you're willing to drop the whole "Its immoral/wrong/offensive so it should be illegal argument" and move on to debating if the potential externality costs of prostitution warrant its continued prohibition I would enjoy that debate much more.
However, to gather some information as this isn't a topic I've studied in great depth. Heck, I'd be willing to do a formal REAL debate on it with you or anyone else if you're up for it.
