COMMENT: Marty:
Your blog on prostitution has created quite a stir. I agree with you while I would prefer the profession did not exist, making it an underground affair makes it worse. I watched the movie Taken several years ago, a truly heartbreaking movie.
What I really enjoyed was the graph of homicide with government initiatives implemented at the bottom of the cycle.
L
RESPONSE: I agree it would be nice if girls did not even voluntarily enter the sex-trade. But we have to be practical and understand like markets, they cannot only go up. There is always two sides to a coin. But the correlations are interesting. If you legalized drugs, you would cut off the funding of gangs and then perhaps “some” will find it more profitable to get a job.
I spoke at length with two old Mafia guys. They told me as kids, they looked up to the Mafia during World War I, which was like a Robin Hood making sure the people had enough food. They were looked up to in the neighborhood and the two young boys wanted to be respected like them. It was Prohibition that funded the Mafia. It is interesting, but no matter what you do, you make it illegal, and you suddenly create a profitable industry and it will grow. If something is legal, then competition enters and drives down the price. This is why the unions that began over working conditions then winning that battle, converted themselves into confrontational organizations demanding evermore money for the same work and they then created their own demise..
It is getting bad in Southern Europe with abductions. I was shocked at the marrying of girls and then selling them into the sex-trade that was becoming widespread in the Balkans. But the correlations cannot be denied. If the sex-trade was not so profitable, then it would fade into history, Look at gambling. They are now legalizing it in many places because the STATE can make a profit replacing the Mafia. It is always just follow the money.
It certainly seems from the data we review of all countries, the same trend emerges. Making something illegal attached a TAX-FREE status to it and makes it profitable. As crazy as it sounds, make prostitution legal, which will drive the price down, make the profession less attractive, and you will end the abduction trade. The numbers are the numbers. At least then it will be reduced to voluntary, which we will never stop any more than some women will marry just for money or status or men will marry to get a trophy wife..A politician selling his vote to the highest bidder is still a form of prostitution regardless of the field.
