When The Libertarian Rubber Hits The Road...
Dean
...sometimes it isn't so obviously pretty. I do have a fair libertarian streak, and I usually favor gradualist reforms in government to move toward libertarian ideas (it's why I like much of what I see in President Bush's "Ownership Society" vision). But there can be pitfalls to such thinking.
Here's a thought, for example: let's say that if you're a generally libertarian-minded person, you may think prostitution should be legal. Maybe regulated so it can only be practiced in certain places and under certain circumstances. Maybe you even want to see it licensed and so on. Well those are very interesting ideas. When I was younger I enthusiastically would have embraced such an idea, and not because I use prostitutes' services. (Actually I never have, although I'd be a liar if I said there weren't times, when I was single and lonely, that I didn't think hard about it.) Instinctively I've always thought, "this is private business between consenting adults." The problem is I've seen the lives that many prostitutes live and it's pretty awful. There may be "happy hookers" in this world but they are almost certainly a distinct minority, and the number of 13, 14, 16 year old girls who get trapped in "the life" and are destroyed by it is rather horrifying.
The libertarian response is that if it were regulated and taxed, then law enforcement could spend its time going after abusers who use children, trap women into it, or whatever. Well, fine. But here's an interesting twist: our welfare laws now threaten to pull people off of welfare if they refuse jobs they are qualified to do. So, if prostitution is legal and regulated, could we threaten to pull a woman's Social Security or welfare benefits if she refused work as a prostitute?
Silly example you say? Uhm, no. It's apparently being debated now in Germany.
Hmm. I suppose the ultimate libertarian response is "completely do away with the welfare state and replace it entirely with private insurance." Uh huh. So should it be legal for private disability insurance to make such requirements? Me? I guess I'm enough of a statist to say "I don't think so."
(Via Lovely SondraK.)
Related Posts (on one page):
- Woman Not Force to Work in Brothel
- When The Libertarian Rubber Hits The Road...
2. One wonders how dangerous jobs are handled now. Does it turn out that people who don't want to do them are almost always unqualified?
3. If there's enough public support to ban that sort of requirement in private insurance, there's enough that it will a sufficient competitive edge to not have the requirement to make that choice available.
4. Another solution would be time limits, period, without reference to job seeking.
Talk about "some strings attached".
A realistic solution would be to make exceptions for certain types of jobs, like the one mentioned here. Not a perfect solution, mind you, but I suppose it's better than nothing.
With the government making dough on it, you stand a far better chance of keeping young girls out of the life. I also don't see how one could take their benifits if they wouldn't work. (I'm working to an American idea, not the freaky crap that passes for brains in Europe.) You'd also have to apply it to strippers, jiggilos (sp?), and pron stars and
'escorts'. As I don't see why someone should be forced into sex at any time, I don't see why one should be forced into the sex trade either.
To me, you can have legal prostitution that protects the prostitutes (not just women do it). Some people are naturally more willing to do sex-trade work, just as some are more willing to become lawyers and politicans. Unless every human in the country is subject to being forced to work in a brothel, no one should be under threat for not doing so.
Having a job opening does not mean one is forced to take it. That is the beauty of freedom, just as havig the right to make an 'arrangement' to get sex with another CONSENTING ADULT should be.
"There may be "happy hookers" in this world but they are almost certainly a distinct minority, and the number of 13, 14, 16 year old girls who get trapped in "the life" and are destroyed by it is rather horrifying."
And therefore she should be thrown in jail for it?
Seemed like an easy target, but only because the German beaurocrats decided not to do the work up front.
Come on, Dean, you don't need to manufacture controversy when there's plenty of it to go around. There's an easy out in this case, they just didn't use it.
I've never been to Germany. What am I missing?
I think is much more likely to see the welfare state done away with than say getting rid of prostitution. Its been around since the birth of man and probably will be until our end.
Legalising it is the sensible thing to do, but then again when is government ever sensible?
And prostitution, where it is legal (think, Bunny Ranch in Nevada), isn't that bad.
The solution, to me, seems that any business that would write the disability insurance contract in such a way as to be able to deny payment because you are qualified to be a prostitute (Qualification = presence of an orafice?) would quickly go out of business for a lack of clients. To hide such a clause in the contract could be considered fraud. While the company may be free to insert such a clause in the contract, the market will effectively prevent implementation.
As I understand things, there are 2 types of disability insurance, Total and Occupational. Total Disability often will try to deny payment to a person who lost both hands because, well, you could screw on lugnuts with your lips.
Occupational Disability, insures that you can still function in your current career regardless of your ability to perform another job. You can guess which one I like.
Also, legalizing/regulating prostitution would allow us to more easily find underage girls and get them some help, so they can get out of the life if they want to. The "underground" nature of the business makes it much tougher to reach out to women who may want to live another way (not to mention slow the spread of disease, or minimize the exploitation of pimps).
There are stable women with stable lives who work as call girls, or put in some time at massage parlors. The lives of streetwalkers are not representative of the trade in general.
I'd rather jail pimps, most of whom are truly evil human beings, but that's even harder to acomplish. Thus we have the status quo: cops harass the industry and keep it curtailed. It's not perfect but I don't know what "perfect" is.
Even if we legalized and regulated prostitution, we'd still be arresting people who violated the rules. Hate to say it but I'm at least conservative enough to say that if a streetwalker wants to troll my neighborhood I want her arrested as I don't want my kids seeing that kind of stuff. Selfish and reactionary of me I know. Restrict it to designated times and places and I can live with it a little better, which is at least what the status quo gives us.
I'm not sure that I'm okay with "a night in jail and a fine" for someone who lives that close to the margins. Why are we taking money away from people who have next to nothing?
That protistutes often lead lives of very poor quality ignores a few things:
1. That is under a system where there occupation is illegal and therfore they deal in a black market. The only way to settle disputes in a black market is through violence or threats of violence. One would think the mere act of making their profession legale would improve their lives on a whole by at least some measure.
2. The causation arrows are likely reversed to some extent. To some extent it's not (Prostitution -> Poor Quality of Life), but rather (Poor Quality of Life -> Prostitution). The set of circumstances likely to lead someone to a life of street corner prostitution are likely the main drivers for the person's low quality of life, with prostitution simply being a sympton of a bigger problem in that person's life.
3. Whether someone has a crappy life because they do a particular job shouldn't prevent someone who does the same job and doesn't have a crappy life continue in her line of work. If an adult wants to be a prostitute, how is it fair to prevent that person from pursuing that line of work?
4. Since when is making things illegal, if they are somewhat bad for us but don't directly affect others around us, a neogtiable issue? As an adult, I should be able to have a double cheeseburger, do a line, screw a prostitue and then have a cigarette and none of it should be any business of the state. Yet two of those things are perfectly legal for me to do and two are not.
5. It's a scofflaw where the state routinely practices selective prosecution to achieve some other end. There's no reason why one adult is allowed to do something and another adult doing the exact same thing gets arrested because the arrest serves some secondary purpose.
Anyway, as for 16 year olds and Welfare benefits, there are very few laws (including murder) that don't have provisions to account for extenuating circumstances (such as self defense). I don't see a reason why legalizing prostitution, means we can't apply common sense to certain instances of these extenuating circumstances.
No HUMAN would have any trouble telling the difference, but a legal system based on strictly worded sentences might have trouble.
"Even if we legalized and regulated prostitution, we'd still be arresting people who violated the rules. Hate to say it but I'm at least conservative enough to say that if a streetwalker wants to troll my neighborhood I want her arrested as I don't want my kids seeing that kind of stuff. Selfish and reactionary of me I know. Restrict it to designated times and places and I can live with it a little better, which is at least what the status quo gives us."
Selfish and reactionary is good! I love selfish and reactionary. Have you ever seen me use either of those as pejoratives?
I have no problem whatever with restricting open solicitation to certain times and places. I have no problem whatever with time, place, and manner restrictions on the sale and display of erotic, obscene, or pornographic materials. All of that is consistent with liberal, libertarian, or individualist principles as far as I can see. Ayn Rand would have that perfectly proper.
I'm against censorship of content unless there is a clear and present danger. I'm against any laws regulating what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes. That's where I draw the line.