Redstate

In both places sex trafficing is either legal or effectively legal (el mordida). Sex slavery is common in both places. And then there's every jurisdiction where the UN Peace Keeping Forces operate.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

C'mon. Anything is legal in Mexico, or for that matter the UN, with the right bribe.

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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

Prostitution is agaist the law in Clark County. And don't kid yourself about Nevada. The bunny ranches are just the tip of the ice berg.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

Can you show me any evidence of sexual slavery in the parts of Nevada where sex for money is legal? No, just in Clark County where it's illegal. And that's my exact point. Thank you.

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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

In the face of difficulties of enforcement.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

You have discovered how to eliminate all crime. Simply legalize it!

How did nobody ever think of this before in all of human history?

If enough things are made illegal, then everyone is a criminal, and the government can pick and choose who to prosecute based on political and other factors, resulting in less justice and respect for laws.

Some laws don't work, like the old nat'l 55mph speed limit, and we're better off without them.

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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

We had a measurable drop in highway deaths and the people that ignore the current laws ignored it as well.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

Traffic deaths were going down before 55mph became the law, and didn't go down any faster after it became the law-- improvements in car design and highway design get the major credit for saving lives. Likewise, there was no increase in traffic deaths when 55 was repealed and many states raised their speed limits. I don't have the stats at my fingertips but I can look it up if you insist.

However, the 55mph speed limit WAS a serious boon for small communities that get a large part of their funding from speeding tickets, plus it helped the radar detection industry, which probably wasn't the benefits desired.

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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

Are you saying the people didn't have the right to decide what was acceptable behavior on the highways ?
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

Are you saying the people didn't have the right to decide what was acceptable behavior

Sure, we have the right to decide what's acceptable behavior, but we don't have the ability, short of enacting totalitarian enforcement, to translate what "the people" decide into results.
Laws that enact prohibition of pretty much anything (guns, drugs, prostitution, speeding) tend to drive that behavior underground, and often create unintended (often adverse) consequences, some of which may be worse than the problems they seek to correct.

...in other words, "the people" can decide what's acceptable, but that's not the end of the story. After all, the people decided that prohibition of alcohol was a good idea- and it was a complete failure. Not only did the policy fail to deliver any of its promised benefits, it swiftly became the funding racket of choice for organized crime, which flourished under prohibition.

towards keeping society together.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

While the population has grown in a few areas, it's a joke compared to Las Vegas. The larger the population, the more garbage it attracts.

You're better than this. C'mon.

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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!

While it may be "agaist the law" in Clark County, it's not like the law is enforced.

And no, I don't have cites from "legal" counties. All I know is that where there is sex trade, there is slavery or it's equivalent. Look at the legal porn industry. People may not be held in basements at gunpoint, but the are held in front of cameras at meth point.

Sorry, Finrod, on this issue there isn't one drop of Libertarian blood in my body. I've done too much prison ministry and drug and alcohol counseling for the last 25 years to buy the "legal" line of BS on this issue.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

I don't apologize for standing up for freedom. There is a 92-year-old grandmother here in Atlanta that would still be alive today if it wasn't for the War on Drugs, and she's just a drop in the bucket. Your laws have side effects that you either don't realize, don't accept as being the fault of the law, or just plain ignore, and the truly innocent are the ones who usually suffer as a result.

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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

That's not a good place to be in.

Every law has consequences and costs. Every inaction has consequences and costs. Libertarians have as many blind spots where their version of freedom is concerned as anyone else has.

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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!

You forget the economics.

First there is the whole "Asian fantasy" thing making this attractive. You make it legal and you're just going to have the pimps and johns keeping all the money without having to worry about police raids.

There'll still be sex trafficking. You're delusional to think that by making prostitution legal you won't have sex slaves.

Let's draw your attention to the Netherlands. It fits your profile: legal prostitution and a criminal justice regime to stamp out slavery.

In 2003, 148 individuals were arrested for trafficking in human sex slaves. 21 of the arrested individuals owned multiple sex shops.

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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

Do you have any comparisons to how much trafficking there is in a similar place where prostitution is illegal?

People in this thread keep beating on the strawman 'legalizing prostitution won't make illegal prostitution go away!', which has never been a claim that I made. I have claimed from the beginning that illegal prostitution would be reduced considerably if legal prostitution was available as an alternative, and replies I've gotten keep going back to that same strawman over and over again. I've gotten insults to my intelligence and sneers about the free market (which is something I'd expect more on Kos than here) for my trouble.

RedState, I know you're better than this. I just haven't seen it today in this article's comments.

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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

there will be less illegal prostitution. That argument works for any currently illegal activity. Wanna take a crack at reducing the number of illegal bank robberies? Or child molestations?
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

it is somewhat of a victimless crime

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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!

I'd hurl a few four letter words your way, but I'd have to ban myself.

The point of this post is that 17,000 women were forced into slavery last year in the United States.

The evidence is that it goes on even in countries where prostitution is legal.

Instead of dealing with the point of the post, you've hijacked to advocate legal prostitution, which, as we see in the Netherlands, Thailand, etc. doesn't solve the problem.

However, instead of embracing prostitution, many states are forcing regulations on Asian Spas that put them out of business. That should be our focus.

And while you may be an advocate of legal prostitution, I am not, nor are most Americans, because your victimless crime is my crime that destroys families, loosens morals, and breaks down societal norms.

Let me say at the start here that I think that human trafficking and slavery is a horrible crime and that it should be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and I have no pity and would give no quarter to those engaged in this despicable practice.

That said, it's still my opinion that illegal prostitution would be amelioriated if there was a legal alternative, which doesn't exist in 49.1 states. You think legalized prostitution is just as bad as illegal prostitution; I don't. In the interest of peace and ending this line of discussion here, I'll move this discussion to a blog entry and those that wish can continue things there.

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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

Were you engaged in a massive threadjack -- in which case I withdraw my comments as not wishing to perpetrate a threadjack -- or were you suggesting that legalized prostitution would significantly impact the sex slave trade?

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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!

No, yes, and I've started this blog to move this discussion there.

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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

There are plenty of legal citizens available right now to pluck and slaughter chickens; why, then, do employers overwhelmingly hire illegals to do it except that illegals are cheaper?

C'mon now.

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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!

Of course, prostitution is legal de facto, if not de jure in much of the former Soviet Union, and the entire region is a hotbed of flesh smugglers and slavers. Two of my wife's old - and not so bright - friends from the Crimea almost found themselves sucked into that black void of human nothingness, lured by promises of remunerative employment.

Bah. Evil attracts evil. Period. Consent and other libertarian fictions are the lies we tell ourselves so that we can look away and sleep soundly.

My harp is turned to mourning, and my organ shall speak with the voice of them that weep. Spare me, O Lord, for my days are truly as nothing.

See my comment above about Mexico.

Can you explain why it makes sense for it to be legal to give a service away, but illegal to be compensated for it, without resorting to non-legal terms like 'evil'? Some people think Playboy is evil, after all.

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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

Come on, you can't possibly believe that making prostitution legal will solve these problems. Whether it is legal or not, there are still enormous amounts of money to be made, and this slavery problem will still exist.

What I am saying is that if there was legal prostitution, there would be less demand for illegal prostitution, and thus illegal prostitution would be less of a problem. That's simple Econ 101 supply and demand.

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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

History suggests otherwise.

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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!

You are actually going to claim that if prostitution was legalized, that there would be a significant chance that illegal prostitution would *not decrease*?

That makes no sense at all. If drugs were legalized, how many people would continue to buy, say, cannabis from a drug dealer than from their local pharmacy? Did consumption from illegal stills stay the same or go up when the 21st Amendment passed?

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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

You are actually going to claim that if prostitution was legalized, that there would be a significant chance that illegal prostitution would *not decrease*?

Sure I am, but in the context of this thread, not in general. You assume that legal prostitution would consume a significant percentage of what is now illegal prostitution. Well, duh. What we're talking about is whether legal prostitution would squeeze out slave prostitution, and given that all sorts of legal industries use slaves or illegal immigrants or otherwise break the law to make a better profit, you have not a drop of empirical evidence to suggest that discriminating johns will rise up and demand to see a valid WC-4 (more likely a 1099, but I quibble).

Further, you assume that the demand for sex slaves itself is highly elastic. Again, this is your assertion. So far, with plenty of opportunities for nominally willing women to use as sex workers, these nice folks have gone and gotten slaves.

Finally, you assume that the demand for extramarital sex is at least somewhat elastic. I'm not remotely convinced of this.

By the way:

Did consumption from illegal stills stay the same or go up when the 21st Amendment passed?

Depends on where you were. My family hails from non-dry Parishes in Louisiana, and my great-uncle ran a series of covert stills that cranked out shine (and blew up) 24/7, to try to keep up with demand.

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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!

How is the buyer going to know ?
If they did know would it actually discourage them ?

You're not thinking it through. There would be an upsurge in demand for things that could only be done with someone that can't complain.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

supply line. And that's where the slavery trafficers come in. "Legal" prostitution tends to be be a fairly high end business. There are lots of customers out there who can't afford "legal" vices. That too is Econ 101.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

Please read what I wrote. I said demand would drop, not that it would go to zero. If you can't address what I'm saying, why are you even replying in this thread?

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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

go to zero?

My point is simple. Right now it seems that slavery props up the low end trade in the sex market. I think a couple of fair assumptions would be that 1) the low end won't go away if the trade is legalized; and 2) folks who pay for the low end aren't likely to make more money so they can afford the high end. Given even a reasonable veracity of those two assumptions, I don't see where legalizing the sex trade would have much impact on the slavery portion of it.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

Increasingly, no.

Here is a discussion of a similar problem in Minnesota, via Powerline. As we see more and more often, law enforcement is reluctant to enforce the law.

You know not whereof you speak. In the first place, if there were no rule of law at all, the FSU would look like Afghanistan, or would be Boris Berezhovsky's playground. In the second place, my mother-in-law is party to an ongoing legal case, as it happens, in the FSU; I can assure you that, despite irregularities, there is a rule of law.

As for the rest, I suspect that it would be above your pay grade. I'd like you to justify whoredom without analogizing human beings to commodities with cheap references to supply and demand, without invoking spurious rights-claims, and without the implication that two horny high-schoolers on the couch when the parents are away are engaged in acts of the same sort as pimps.

My harp is turned to mourning, and my organ shall speak with the voice of them that weep. Spare me, O Lord, for my days are truly as nothing.

I didn't say that the former USSR was devoid of law, rather that there is not a strong rule of law. Would you say that the FSU is closer to the United States, or to Mexico, in the quality of its legal system? From what I know, the answer to that question is 'Mexico' without a doubt.

And as for my pay grade, I doubt you can afford me. You'd put the legal brothels in Nevada into the same bin as the most violent pimp, simply because you cannot conceive of the concept that everyone might be better off overall if something that you morally oppose was legal and regulated instead of illegal; or to put it another way, it's like putting the worst and most violent kind of drug dealer on the same moral plane as a small shop in Amsterdam where cannabis is sold.

I'm not comfortable with that magnitude of moral equivalence.

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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

Actually, the word you employed was "effective"; to which I responded, essentially, that the FSU does in fact have effective rule of law. No, it isn't up to our standards - though these are surely declining, as evidenced by the sordid little bit about Minneapolis elsewhere in this thread - but it is a stability punctuated by irregularities.

And, no, in point of fact, I did not put the legal whorehouses into the same bin with the illegal, slave-trafficking ones; I merely noted that we are dealing with what are vices or evils, and that like attracts like (note: this is a way of saying that things are alike in some respect, not in all respects), meaning that the presence of one creates the shadows within which the others will operate - a claim borne out by experience the world over. You might call it the "broken windows" theory of sexual vices, here applied in reverse.

My harp is turned to mourning, and my organ shall speak with the voice of them that weep. Spare me, O Lord, for my days are truly as nothing.

Irretrievably, the rule of law is entangled with morality. The notion that the rule of law exists without purpose is nonsense.

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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

Whatever.

OK, I'll grant that the incentives for illegal sex workers goes down ASSUMING fixed demand and assuming elastic pricing.

Neither of those are known, though there are hints that don't look good.

In fact, I believe your proposal has been implemented in Germany, and they have a worse sex trafficking problem than we do.

Germany may be the result of proximity to supply. There may be other factors as well.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

However, it does suggest that the demand is high for low priced prostitution. As far as other factors, a lot of those suggest its not a good idea to go down a moral relativism path.

They say a conservative is a liberal mugged by reality. Holds true for libertarian also.

I'm generally on the libertarian side regarding the war on drugs.

when you prove them wrong.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

It's that Vegas is where the vast majority of people live and the overwhelming majority of business is transacted. The problem would be pretty much the same if prostitution was legal in Clark County.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

The problem would be pretty much the same if prostitution was legal in Clark County.

You can continue to make statements like this all you want, but if you don't have any justification for it, it's nothing more than your assertion, which I don't accept.

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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

You want to respond to Erick's post about the Netherlands? It's not assertion.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

Anybody who thinks paying for sex isn't legal hasn't been coerced into buying jewelry for their significant others.

certainly has been one Helluva lot more expensive for me than any of the outright paying for it I've ever done!

In Vino Veritas

Who knows what the real connection is, but somebody already "legally" in the US sponsors a "family member." They get thrown into an immigrant communitiy, often into a communal house, and are at the mercy of that sponsor. It is the old Patron - Client thing; the patron owns the client until whatever obligation is discharged, and those obligations tend to be very hard to discharge. The Filipino "dons" here act for all the world like mafia dons in a bad movie and within the community have pretty much the same power.

In Vino Veritas