So who are these big corporations, did they show up anywhere R0bert?

I thought hookers would earn heaps or maybe I just figured they should earn heaps. No idea why I think that way if everyone is so happy with it being such a simple service without official qualifications required or unpleasant let alone dangerous aspects to the industry. And if the girls enjoy it so much you’d think there would be plenty of customers that get freebies or discounts for a decent two way exchange of fun that would decrease earnings.

James:“Must continually produce work that portrays the negative aspects of male female relationships. Extrapolating and exaggerating and esculating the hyperbole.”

Which causes the mens groups to come back in similar fashion. It’s going to go on forever isn’t it.

Jewely
While ever you or CATW fail to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary transactions, you are just talking moral and economic gibberish.

So prostitutes get $400 for working 40 hours; or $10 an hour?

Oh and the evil brothels dare to charge for the accommodation, lighting, heating, beds, water, insurance, employees, ads, mortgage, tax, tax and more tax? How exploitative!

The fact that people make profit from something doesn’t prove exploitation you fool, it proves that they’re providing a service that many other people *value more* than the money they *voluntarily* hand over to get the service.

Of course returns decline with increased competition! Welcome to the real world! The feminist and patriarchal argument is the same: women should have a special legal privilege, backed by force, to receive above the market rate for sexual services!

Big companies are only able to “control” an industry if and because consumers prefer their services to others’. There is *nothing* stopping consumers from preferring corner stores to supermarkets, or freelancing prostitutes to big brothels. The fact they don’t, proves superior service, not exploitation.

So what if businesses are traded on the stock exchange? I suppose that’s should be illegal too?

Trafficking and underage sex are already illegal. Other problems associated with the illegal trade are entirely the fault of those in favour of illegalizing it – like you!

Your confused argument equally proves that the clients of prostitutes are exploited by having to pay money.

What makes you think women aren’t giving out freebies and discounts?


Pelican
I don’t agree with penalizing anyone for prostitution. I’m pro-choice on everything, except aggression. So that ends any question of my hypocrisy.

But not yours.

Tristan
People, including sex workers and their clients, do not hold their liberties on condition that officious meddlers might be satisfied that they might not be hurting themselves. Therefore your point does not stand. But if it did, there’s no reason why the state should not arbitrarily criminalise any other aspect of sexuality such as homosexuality for exactly the same reason.

(cont.)
If merely feeling lonely is to be subject to “emotional violence”, and this justifies *physical* coercion as a mean to remedy it, then obviously men’s unsatisfied sexual desire qualifies as being subject to emotional violence and unjust exclusion, for which, by your logic, such victims are entitled to use physical coercion against others as a means to obtain remedial satisfaction. So you are hoist with your own petard.

Rape, assault, fraud, false imprisonment, extortion, kidnapping, these are all illegal and that’s as it should be. Adding unprovoked physical coercion makes thing worse not better.

The rest of your argument is so deep in fallacies that space does not permit their refutation in full which would also would be off-topic.

However in short:
• Two wrongs don’t make a right. Wrongful use of state coercion somewhere else is no argument for more of it here. It’s an argument for abolishing it.
• Poverty is the original universal human condition and caused by natural scarcity. Wealth comes from social co-operation, not armed robbery by whomever and however called.
• You might as well argue that the CEOs of major banks are being exploited and violated by their employers, because without employment they would face “destitution”. It’s not true for the same reason that Australian workers don’t have to outcompete their Chinese competition by working for $1 a day – because they don’t have to! In reality, the choice is not between destitution and exploitation, but between preferring a higher wage to a lower.
• Minimum wage laws don’t require employers to pay a higher wage. They make it illegal to employ at the market rate. Thus they actively cause unemployment where the market rate is below the dictated minimum.
• (If they don’t cause unemployment, then why not make the minimum wage $100 an hour, and see what happens?)
• It’s a mystery why you think a person is better off involuntarily unemployed on a lower income, than gainfully working learning skills on a higher income. There are dozens of other government interventions, that you are in favour of,

(cont.)

(cont.)
• which actively cause unemployment. You have no right to criticize unemployment until you oppose them all.
• Anyway, since you think employment is intrinsically exploitative (employer supposedly wrongfully expropriates surplus value) therefore you contradict yourself in valuing employment. To be consistent, you should advocate abolishing all employment.
• Even if it were true that destitution forces people into employment, it would not be true that the employer is guilty of exploiting them. On the contrary the employer, more than anyone else in the world, relieves their distress by advancing present goods – money - now, against future goods that might never be completed or sold, and the risk of which is on the employer, not the employee.
• The employer obtains no more benefit of the worker’s labour above the market rate than you do, and is no more responsible for the original fact of natural scarcity or the worker’s want of money than you are.

Result: you not established that employees, by the fact of employment, face any kind of “violence” or “exploitation”.

You have not established any justification for forcing people into economic relations, any more than into sexual relations.

So answer please: if “we” are justified in forcing people into economic relations, why aren’t we justified in forcing people into sexual relations?

But if one is unjustified, why not the other?

Personal and economic freedom provides the best solution to any of these original problems; and your theory adds only further arbitrary power that makes things worse not better.

The fallacy of your assumption that the state represents a “social contract” is exploded here: http://economics.org.au/2010/08/no-social-contract/

The fallacy of the common assumption that government represents “society” is exploded here: http://economics.org.au/2010/08/unrepresentative-government/

The difference between you and me is that I can
a) understand,
b) accurately represent to your satisfaction, and
c) refute
all your socialist theories; but you can’t do any of that to any of my theory.

* * *

The end result is that no-one has justified violating the freedom of prostitutes or their clients but by pious hypocrisy.

Peter - you write:

"If merely feeling lonely is to be subject to “emotional violence”, and this justifies *physical* coercion as a mean to remedy it, then obviously men’s unsatisfied sexual desire qualifies as being subject to emotional violence and unjust exclusion, for which, by your logic, such victims are entitled to use physical coercion against others as a means to obtain remedial satisfaction. So you are hoist with your own petard."

So the crux of what you're getting at seems to be that you think progressive tax and welfare are on a comparable level to rape...

If that's not what you're getting at I think you need to be more careful with your choice of words.

All civilisations involve a degree of co-ercion. It's really only communism that supposes you can do away with the state and its functions in the end once and for all.

We have courts, judiciary, the army and the police to enforce our laws and our constitution. On the final anaylsis this rests on force - and violence if you will. (both in terms of funding the state apparatus, and enforcing the law)

I have a right to physical safety, and accept I must pay tax and reciprocally observe any reasonable laws as the precondition for the civilisation I live in. But how is a person's health, their access to nutrition and shelter - of a 'lesser degree' to the funding and operation of the state apparatus in enforcing the law, territorial integrity, and protecting citizens from physical violence? Why is one instance of force justified but not the other?

Regarding emotional violence I suggest readers consider the recent campaign against bullying - supported on a bipartisan basis - as due recognition that violence needs not be direct and physical in order to cause harm.

“While ever you or CATW fail to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary transactions, you are just talking moral and economic gibberish.”

Wasn’t me talking it was Wiki, which I think I mentioned. Peter your knickers are well twisted over this one. Thank goodness R0bert went and worked out who they were and associated with because I’d never heard of them.

“What makes you think women aren’t giving out freebies and discounts?”

Yes I know women do, no matter what trade they are in. I'm considering if prostitutes may have set a benchmark for women and the services they have provided they could go back and charge for or if a prostitute would have a legal case against a slut for affecting business.

“Your confused argument equally proves that the clients of prostitutes are exploited by having to pay money.”

We were arguing? And I proved clients of prostitutes are exploited, wonder what consumer protection they have.

“So what if businesses are traded on the stock exchange? I suppose that’s should be illegal too?”

I’m amazed at how much you read into what my post was saying. I think you need a cup of tea and a nice lady to talk to.