By any chance, is that advice based on a recent encounter where you found yourself boxed into a bad argument and forced to say something absurd?

If so, I’m glad you drained the experience of its most valuable lesson.

How can Peter’s comment at #54 possibly explain the didactic crusade you began at comment #29?

Also, I don’t think you know what “explicit” means. When Peter says that sex slavery may be a notch above the misery of life as a Moldovan peasant, that’s not a defense of sex slavery, it’s just a really vicious indictment of Moldovan country life. Explicit would be someone saying: ‘I am a defender of slavery’ or ‘slavery is good’ or ‘slavery is not bad’. Anything less than that would be what you call ‘implicit’.

Peter’s comment merely said ‘sex slavery is a very bad thing, but for some of these girls, it’s evidently not even the worst thing going.’ That is NEITHER an explicit nor an implicit defense of sex slavery.

But it still wouldn’t matter because he didn’t even say THAT until this thread was 54 comments old.

‘To quote one Moldovan provider I knew in Skopje who was bought for US$1000 (literally as in bought at a auction) “Better a whore in FYROM that a peasant’s wife in Moldavia. Either way I’m being fucked, drunk, and miserable. At least in FYROM I have regular electricity, can occasionally go out, get beat less, one day will pay off my debt/get too old/find some john to marry (and buy me out). Basically here I at least have hope.’

Defences of slavery don’t get any more explicit than that. Some people can only get into a better material situation if someone kidnaps them, brutalizes them, sells them off like an animal, dehumanizes them and exploits them. Plenty of people made exactly the same argument in the American South circa 1858. In fact, the Romans probably said much the same thing in 58 BCE. But those arguments contradict everything libertarians claim to believe.

So let’s just recap. You seem to have abandoned any attempt to suggest my calls for vigorous enforcement of the basic criminal laws add up to some sinister “back hand” effort to impose some unspecified legal restrictions on legalized commercial sex. In fact, you’ll find nothing in what I wrote calling for any new restrictions on commercial sex (except in your own interpretation). As for my call for vigorous enforcement of the laws against crimes against people: basic criminal laws underpin any free and functional market-based society. You now want to make some vague claim about me putting myself up as “holier than thou”, as though every sane and decent person doesn’t oppose murder rape and slavery. A little reading would have shown your claim that nobody has defended slavery here as grossly optimistic. Do you want to walk your position back now? Or even ask yourself why you insisted on reading so much into my call for basic law enforcement? If some advocates of legalizing the sex trade won’t even recognize a defence of slavery when somebody makes one in so many words, shouldn’t that worry me? Shouldn’t it worry every libertarian?

That was a campaign commercial asking me to elect John Spragge to the status of holier than thou, but since you seem so comfortably self-appointed to that position, I’m not sure why you need my vote.

No one here is soft on slavery. No one here is tolerant of rape. No one here has defended either of those things. You are grandly posturing against something that no one says or thinks, and you haven’t even tried to quote a passage that proves otherwise.

The only questions you can answer are the ones you’ve posed rhetorically, to prompt your next round of speech making.

For the most part, the result is merely silly. But there is one thing that rises to the level of offensive, and that is how you claim the right to perform hygienic services on behalf on the libertarian movement.

You pretend to police this discussion so that it doesn’t drift toward advocacy of rape and slavery. It was never in danger of that. You pretend to know exactly how the libertarian movement should present itself, what it should say to put its best face forward, what it should not say for fear of alienating its enemies, and what it should loudly shout to calm the fears of potential converts.

And in the name of protecting libertarianism against the false accusation that it turns a blind eye to rape and slavery, you have decided to do…what? To falsely accuse a few libertarians of advocating rape and slavery.

That nonsense was no part of this discussion until you invented it.

Do I believe enforcing the laws against murder, rape, enslavement, and aggravated assault? You bet. Do I believe in enforcing them vigorously and vigilantly? Absolutely. Do I believe that to maintain a free society, everyone has a responsibility to reject coercion and violence, to not accept even one instance of it as just the way things happen or even a better outcome for some victims? No question. If you don’t like the phrase “one is too many”, how many mulligans does the state get? How many people do corrupt police officers get to send to jail for “contempt of cop”? If using terms like vigorously and vigilantly to defend our freedom bothers you, what terms would you prefer?

So you wrote all those comments just to remind everyone that you are against rape and slavery? More against it than they are? But who here ever said one word in defense of those things? And if that is really all you meant to say, who were you arguing against?
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Try a little experiment with me. I’ve assembled a list of statements you made over the course of this thread. If you read them in order I think you’ll notice something.

Way back in comment #29 you spoke of: “the pressing need for effective measures against real slavers and knowing collaborators.”

In comment #42 you said: “one underage sex trade worker is too many.”

In comment #48: “these crimes really justify a harsh response. Legalizing the sex trade for consenting adult workers and customers will help…but the law and police need to take active steps to deter, expose, and punish these crimes.”

In comment #54: “Precisely what combination of denunciation (naming and shaming) and disabling (imprisonment) works best we can discuss”

In comment #56: “Given the evidence sex slavery happens in connection with the sex trade, on what conceivable grounds do you oppose measures to prevent it from happening in connection with legalization?”

In comment #58: “I don’t share the superstitious belief that magic words like deregulate, decriminalize and legalize instantly produce ethical behaviour.”

Finally, in comment #58, you said this: “Nope. I never called for the enactment of any laws.”

All antagonism aside, John…can you not see how a person of good will might read those words and conclude that you’re calling for new or specially enhanced legal instruments to regulate the sex trade, after prohibition?

You say there is a “pressing need for effective measures” because one victim is “too many” and these crimes demand a “harsh response” with “active steps to deter, expose and enforce”, and although you are open to discuss “precisely what combination” should be used, you can’t understand why anyone would “oppose measure to prevent” sex slavery “in connection with legalization” because you certainly “don’t share the superstitious belief” that “deregulate, decriminalize and legalize” are “magic words”.

Can you really not understand why someone reading those comments would get the idea that you intend to do something other the simply to “deregulate, decriminalize and legalize” the market in sex.

What usually happens when the police say “one victim is too many”? What do we usually get when someone reminds us that “legalize” is not a magic word? How many people use the words “pressing need for effective measures” to indicate that they like the law just as it is?

Just answer me that one question: can you read back your comments and still honestly claim that you have been clear and consistent throughout this thread, with no change in your position since the discussion began?

1) We need to prevent crimes against persons, both in the context of legalizing prostitution and otherwise. If you don’t consider slavery, rape and murder anti-freedom, I don’t recognize your brand of “libertarianism”.

2) Actually, if you’ll read what I wrote, I responded to people who tried to minimize or even defend the kind of abuses that happen in the Balkans, former USSR, and elsewhere. I don’t share the superstitious belief that magic words like deregulate, decriminalize and legalize instantly produce ethical behaviour. It doesn’t work that way. Legalizing prostitution will make it easier for prostitutes to speak out and organize against exploitation and violence, and I support it for that reason among others. But the rest of society, including the libertarians now calling for legalization, have an obligation to support them in that work.

3) Nope. I never called for the enactment of any laws. I have called for the vigorous and vigilant enforcement of the laws we have now against crimes against people. Nothing more, nothing less.

4) I’ve always said that setting the market free for consenting adult participants doesn’t require us to condone either slavery or the exploitation of children or adolescents. In fact, a free market by definition requires free participants, and it requires participants legally competent to enter into contracts, so I want a genuinely free market, one where We can repeal the laws against offering, facilitating, and performing sex work while keeping laws to protect children and laws against slavery, rape and murder in full force.

My arguments have no contradictions. I support a free market with free participants. I haven’t condoned or minimized slavery in this discussion, others, most notably the person who posts as “Peter” have done that. If you want me to back down, you’ll have to actually find a flaw in my logic.

Here is your argument in its simplest form:

“1) We need be very careful about how we legalize prostitution, to limit the risks of rape and slavery among participants in the sex market.

2) For proof of this, just look how bad things are for sex workers in the Balkans and the former USSR, two otherwise jacked-up places WHERE PROSTITUTION IS STILL ILLEGAL.

3) Therefore, we need to make sure legalized prostitution is accompanied by a system of special laws with strict enforcement.

4) In other words, we need to make sure the sex market isn’t actually set free.”

Now, tell me: are you genuinely unable to spot the gap in that logic, or do you just hate backing down?

“Insisting on a clear bright line avoids weaseling in either direction; a single standard serves to protect most people.”

Dead wrong. Insisting on a “clear bright line” leads to people being prosecuted as child pornographers in federal court for taking cell phone pics of their 17-year old girlfriends. You can read about a bunch of cases like that right here.

Also, a “single standard” doesn’t do anything to protect “most people”, it just ignores the fact that people have individual differences. The call for a single standard is what got us those lovely minimum sentencing laws, along with a whole host of other government programs that squeeze people into one size fits all arrangements. Mixing single standards with sexual consent is a recipe for tragedy – and not the colloquial kind either, the real Shakespearean sort of tragedy.
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You also wrote: “In almost all common law jurisdictions, a person over the age of majority…”

Look, we’re having a speculative conversation about what would happen if sex work were somehow legalized here in Puritanica. Since we’re just making the law up as we go, with no chance of anything we say here being implemented, I think we can happily dispense with the fiction that common law has anything to do with it.

More generally, I recommend you dispense with the fiction that common law is anything other than a series of made-up traditions designed to guarantee the endless repetition mistakes, as if repetition itself was some sort of virtue.
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Finally, everyone now knows you take a bold stand against slavery and rape. Your speechifying on that point has left no doubters in the house. In fact, you’re so dead set against these gruesome evils that you’re prepared to fight them even where they may not exist.

What you have failed to show, is any reason why sexual slavery and rape would do anything but vanish even further into the margins of a post-prohibition sex market.

That, after all, is the point at issue. And you haven’t spoken to that point. Your whole argument amounts to saying: “You know all those laws and cops and prosecutors who currently torment sex workers and fail utterly to protect them in any way? We’re going to need them more than ever if sex work ever becomes legal.”

@Other Sean: Millions can disagree about the age of majority, but in legal terms, that would make them wrong. In almost all common law jurisdictions, a person over the age of majority (usually their eighteenth birthday) has the right to make binding contracts, vote, and do other adult functions. A person under that age does not. Insisting on a clear bright line avoids weaseling in either direction; a single standard serves to protect most people. Unless, as I said earlier, you really think the State of Pennsylvania has no complaint against Jerry Sandusky, the age of consent really matters because it really protects children.

Which brings me to the other point: I don’t consider coercing unwilling individuals into prostitution or selling or buying the sexual services of children a “black market” offence in the sense of dealing in forbidden or rationed commodities. I view it as a crime against a person: specifically as a form of rape. And yes, I believe that effective sanctions against crimes of violence, specifically exposing the crime, denouncing the crime, making the offender unable to repeat the offence for a period of time, and deterring other people from making the same mistake; that works. Precisely what combination of denunciation (naming and shaming) and disabling (imprisonment) works best we can discuss, but that effective sanctions can reduce crimes against people: that I do believe.

@Peter: I don’t actually care about what you call “secondary impacts”, because I include freedom as one of my core values. If I really thought that legalization would mean slave markets for sex workers, I would fully support the current situation, john schools and all. I could take your argument apart, but even if I believed every word of it, it would make no difference to me. A proponent of the war on drugs could probably argue that some drug users have a better, safer and more productive life in prison than they would have outside it, or that ending the war on drugs would produce significant unemployment. Based on the same value of personal freedom, I would expect such arguments to get short shrift on this blog.

I would also observe that Peter and “Other Sean” have made as effective an argument against legalizing prostitution as I have ever seen. If an anti-prostitution Feminist organization finds your posts and distributes them, they can thank you for firing their supporters up with new energy and talking points.

To everybody else, remember this isn’t a one way street. While not as common and definitely not as media sexy (nobody cries about “Johns”) plenty of “johns” are hurt by these laws also as it drives up cost (which is money that could be used elsewhere), puts their health at additional risk (and also that of their unknowing family if cases where they have one), and gives them little to no recourse against being robbed or defrauded (a very common situation).

Also I can tell from many of the folk on here arguing over this that you have zero to no experience with the women in this field nor thought about secondary impacts in the some way shutting down sweatshops, for the most part, is worse for those being “exploited” than leaving it open. To quote one Moldovan provider I knew in Skopje who was bought for US$1000 (literally as in bought at a auction) “Better a whore in FYROM that a peasant’s wife in Moldavia. Either way I’m being fucked, drunk, and miserable. At least in FYROM I have regular electricity, can occasionally go out, get beat less, one day will pay off my debt/get too old/find some john to marry (and buy me out). Basically here I at least have hope. You Americans kill me, the rest of us live in reality”. I have also met US providers (over eighteen) who started an early age (12 in some case) and have heard many similar stories about “better this than getting raped by my father and his friends daily. At least my pimp hurt me less and I got paid”. The problem here is the old avenue for escape (go find an older man and marry him at thirteen basically agreeing to fuck for stability) is frowned upon socially today and often illegal. The movie Traffic isn’t real for the most part.

“It wasn’t until the Victorian Era that prostitution in general was first described as ‘slavery’.” If memory serves from my limited reading on the subject, the argument went like this:

A) No white Christian woman would sell her body for sex.
B) Some white Christian woman are selling their bodies for sex.
C) Ergo, nefarious villains must be forcing them to do it.

And as I noted earlier, this same template can be easily modified for feminist use by starting: “No woman with authentic gender consciousness would sell her body for sex…” Mix in a bit of general leftist suspicion that “hiring labor = exploitation”, and you’ve got everything you need to crusade against organized sex work without appeals to religious morality.

You said: “Forcing unwilling participants into the sex trade, or selling or buying sexual services from minors…these crimes really justify a harsh response…the law and police need to take active steps to deter, expose, and punish these crimes”

1) To the (still debatable) extent such things exist, they are already against the law. As they have in every other case, special laws targeted at this particular moral panic can only lead to prosecutorial adventurism and excess.

2) Whatever definition you have for minor, there will be millions who disagree. (E.g., who is in a better position to control her choices: an attractive 16 year old with an IQ of 120…or a 27 year old single mother who dropped out of high school and has a marginal labor product below the minimum wage?) Age limits are always arbitrary, and it’s always an outrage to let them be strictly enforced.

3) When has anything ever worked out, that started with a call for the police to take “harsh”, “active steps”, to “deter” and “punish” a black market? When?

Just for fun, I googled ‘prostitution “human trafficking”‘ and got “About 3,280,000 results”. Then I googled ‘prostitution slavery’ and got “About 6,390,000 results”. Whether we like it or not, a huge number of people, going back a long long long way conflate prostitution with slavery. A multitude of credible reports and investigations, with enough credibility to get at least one US contractor in the Balkans into hot water, claim that after the fall of the USSR, human trafficking for the purposes of prostitution, at least in Southern Europe, took on all the features of an actual slave trade, from violence and coercion to actually auctioning women like cattle. In a larger perspective, a number of sources estimate the number of people held in bondage by violence exceeds the number of slaves in the world at the height of American slavery. Despite the statistical manipulation at the heart of that claim, whether you accept or deny all or some reports of trafficking for prostitution, you must in principle deal with the problems they present.

No law should prohibit or unduly restrict the sale and purchase of sexual services between consenting adults. You have all given valid reasons, and others exist: laws criminalizing prostitution feed an ugly and lethal stereotype, one that does particular harm to racialized women. Laws against the sex trade inevitably devalue the workers, which leads to a disregard for their lives. That disregard for the safety and lives of prostitutes has played a role in the success of past serial killers, and we have disturbing evidence that one or more serial killers continue to operate, protected by an unwillingness by the police to put effort into investigating the murder of women they consider prostitutes and therefore unworthy of protection. For the reasons you have given, to reduce the harm done by class and racial stereotypes, legislatures should eliminate the laws against transactions involving sex between consenting adults.

Forcing unwilling participants into the sex trade, or selling or buying sexual services from minors, on the other hand: offences against the person do not get much graver, and these crimes really justify a harsh response. Legalizing the sex trade for consenting adult workers and customers will help workers look out for each other, and help victims of coercion come forward, but the law and police need to take active steps to deter, expose, and punish these crimes.