I don’t know the details, but from reading the article seems to me that “legalization” is this case simply meant saying “okay, it is no longer illegal”, instead of treating it as any other employment.
For example the article mentions prostitutes under 14. Did they have an employment contract? If no, then the whole situation was illegal, even if prostitution per se is legal. Keeping prostitutes locked in the basement; again, would the same situation be legal if the locked “employees” would be e.g. programmers? Etc.
Legalizing prostitution should mean treating the prostitutes as standard employees with standard employee rights (and duties: taxes, insurance), not just ignoring the whole business. The employees should be able to sue their employers, if necessary, and get legal assistance.
Simply the whole situation should be treated exactly the same way as if some organizations would decide that it is cheaper to kidnap programmers and keep them locked in basement, making them write Java code for food, and torturing them if they refuse. We would not have a debate about whether we should make programming illegal, or merely buying Java applications illegal, or any similar frequently proposed “solution”.
Simply the whole situation should be treated exactly the same way
Treating every situation the same way basically means that you want to ignore the empiric reality of how different situations differ from each other. It means not optimizing for the way different situations differ from each other.
Legalizing prostitution should mean treating the prostitutes as standard employees with standard employee rights (and duties: taxes, insurance), not just ignoring the whole business.
The problem is that you have women in the brothels who are under the threat of force and therefore won’t tell the police that their rights are violated.
The employees should be able to sue their employers, if necessary, and get legal assistance.
Of course they can do that, the legal framework gives them the possibility. A person who’s physically abused and afraid to speak out still doesn’t do this in practice.
if some organizations would decide that it is cheaper to kidnap programmers and keep them locked in basement, making them write Java code for food, and torturing them if they refuse.
Programmers can’t work if you drug them in a way from preventing them to think clearly. As a result you simply don’t have reactions where organizations put programmers in a similar state.
But they can work if they are kidnapped, imprisoned, threatened with force, afraid of police, disapproved of by much of the population, etc.; almost none of what’s special about (many) prostitutes’ situation couldn’t happen to software developers. So Viliam’s thought experiment is a good one: what would and should we do if it did?
I’m not sure it’s so obvious that people wouldn’t be calling for criminalization it, say, half of all software was made by imprisoned blackmailed kidnapped slaves. (Note: I have no idea what fraction of prostitutes are actually in such a situation and wouldn’t be surprised if anti-prostitution campaigners exaggerated it on account of disapproval with a different real source.) So I don’t find Viliam’s thought experiment conclusive.
Programming involves a lot of judgment. Enslaving programmers would lead to the programmers programming very inefficiently on purpose, and there would be no way for the slaveowner to punish only the programmers guilty of slacking off. The slaveowner could try to punish all programmers who don’t produce much, but the slaveowner can’t tell the difference between a slacking programmer and a programmer just given a difficult or inappropriate job, so in the long run that wouldn’t work.
Also, the mental activity involved in programming doesn’t work well if the programmer is psychologically stressed by other things, and enslavement and blackmail tends to cause such stress.
I agree that enslaved programmers would probably make worse software, and make it slower, than not-enslaved programmers. Perhaps this is one reason why programmers are not commonly kidnapped and enslaved, or why people who have been kidnapped and enslaved are not usually then compelled to write software. (I can think of others.)
But I’m not sure how this is relevant. We already know that the world of Viliam’s thought experiment is not the real world, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that there are reasons why it isn’t. We can still ask “what would and should happen if somehow it were?”.
If you’re suggesting that Viliam’s hypothetical world is so ridiculous—because obviously slaves would make rotten programmers—that there’s no point asking that question, though, I can’t agree. I don’t think it’s any more obvious that slaves would make rotten programmers than that slaves would make rotten prostitutes, and for quite similar reasons. Sex, like programming, doesn’t work best under conditions of extreme stress.
If you’re suggesting that Viliam’s hypothetical world is so ridiculous—because obviously slaves would make rotten programmers—that there’s no point asking that question, though, I can’t agree.
Yes, slaves would make rotten programmers, barring some kind of society-wide slave system like the Romans had where certain types of slaves could benefit from their skills and even buy themselves out of slavery.
Sex, like programming, doesn’t work best under conditions of extreme stress.
While it doesn’t work best, the fact that it is a physical activity sharply limits how much worse it becomes.
Yes, Viliam made an extremely poor example. No, this doesn’t affect his main point, because he could have made a better example instead. Sweatshops do exist and yet AFAIK nobody’s ever proposed to ban selling clothes for money.
Prostitution has an unusual feature: for a given level of need for money, the ratio of “how much would most people who have X have to get paid in order to be willing to sell X” to “how much money would X get if sold on the market” is extremely large, compared to a similar ratio for, say, selling one’s labor as a janitor. The dynamics of things with large ratios of this type lead to slavery and mistreatment much more often than the dynamics of things with smaller ratios of this type.
That doesn’t mean that people in other jobs can’t be mistreated; obviously, sweatshops do exist. But it does mean that mistreatment is less central for those other jobs, and is less relevant to banning them.
The dynamics of things with large ratios of this type lead to slavery and mistreatment much more often than the dynamics of things with smaller ratios of this type.
I don’t see why this is so.
Note that in your setup there is a market and that market, presumably, clears. This means that at the prevailing price point the supply and the demand are balanced. The observation that there could be a lot more supply at a much higher price seems irrelevant to me.
In my setup the market “clears” by there being no sales by most of the people who have X, because they are not willing to sell X at its market price. As the need for money increases, the price at which people are willing to sell X goes down, but on the average, janitorial work (for instance) reaches the point where sales happen long before prostitution does.
In my setup the market “clears” by there being no sales by most of the people who have X
Any particular reason for the quotes around “clears”? The market does clear, it’s not a metaphor or anything.
Besides, consider e.g. long-range truck drivers. Most people can be one (there is no high barrier to entry) and yet very few people actually want to be one and/or work as one.
In economics terms you are talking about supply elasticity and pointing out that the supply of sex in exchange for money is locally inelastic, that is, the supply does not increase much in response to non-huge changes in price. Yeah, sure, so what? I still don’t see how you get from here to enslavement and mistreatment.
Any particular reason for the quotes around “clears”?
Yes, a market clearing by there not being any sales is a very non-central example of clearing.
Besides, consider e.g. long-range truck drivers. Most people can be one (there is no high barrier to entry) and yet very few people actually want to be one and/or work as one.
Most people’s loathing of being a truck driver is much less than their loathing of being a prostitute.
Except that there are sales. Are you saying prostitution does not exist??
There are no sales for most of the people who have it.
Most people’s loathing of being a truck driver is much less than their loathing of being a prostitute.
I’m not sure how this is relevant to your argument.
The ratio I described is a way of formalizing “people loathe selling X, compared to Y”. If, at a given level of need for money, the ratio between the asking price for X and the market price is large for X compared to Y, then people loathe selling X compared to Y.
Not all mosts are the same. “Most of the people” won’t sell sex is a much stronger “most” than “most of the people won’t sell janitorial work”, for the reason I stated.
I don’t know the details, but from reading the article seems to me that “legalization” is this case simply meant saying “okay, it is no longer illegal”, instead of treating it as any other employment.
For example the article mentions prostitutes under 14. Did they have an employment contract? If no, then the whole situation was illegal, even if prostitution per se is legal. Keeping prostitutes locked in the basement; again, would the same situation be legal if the locked “employees” would be e.g. programmers? Etc.
Legalizing prostitution should mean treating the prostitutes as standard employees with standard employee rights (and duties: taxes, insurance), not just ignoring the whole business. The employees should be able to sue their employers, if necessary, and get legal assistance.
Simply the whole situation should be treated exactly the same way as if some organizations would decide that it is cheaper to kidnap programmers and keep them locked in basement, making them write Java code for food, and torturing them if they refuse. We would not have a debate about whether we should make programming illegal, or merely buying Java applications illegal, or any similar frequently proposed “solution”.
Treating every situation the same way basically means that you want to ignore the empiric reality of how different situations differ from each other. It means not optimizing for the way different situations differ from each other.
The problem is that you have women in the brothels who are under the threat of force and therefore won’t tell the police that their rights are violated.
Of course they can do that, the legal framework gives them the possibility. A person who’s physically abused and afraid to speak out still doesn’t do this in practice.
Programmers can’t work if you drug them in a way from preventing them to think clearly. As a result you simply don’t have reactions where organizations put programmers in a similar state.
But they can work if they are kidnapped, imprisoned, threatened with force, afraid of police, disapproved of by much of the population, etc.; almost none of what’s special about (many) prostitutes’ situation couldn’t happen to software developers. So Viliam’s thought experiment is a good one: what would and should we do if it did?
I’m not sure it’s so obvious that people wouldn’t be calling for criminalization it, say, half of all software was made by imprisoned blackmailed kidnapped slaves. (Note: I have no idea what fraction of prostitutes are actually in such a situation and wouldn’t be surprised if anti-prostitution campaigners exaggerated it on account of disapproval with a different real source.) So I don’t find Viliam’s thought experiment conclusive.
Programming involves a lot of judgment. Enslaving programmers would lead to the programmers programming very inefficiently on purpose, and there would be no way for the slaveowner to punish only the programmers guilty of slacking off. The slaveowner could try to punish all programmers who don’t produce much, but the slaveowner can’t tell the difference between a slacking programmer and a programmer just given a difficult or inappropriate job, so in the long run that wouldn’t work.
Also, the mental activity involved in programming doesn’t work well if the programmer is psychologically stressed by other things, and enslavement and blackmail tends to cause such stress.
I agree that enslaved programmers would probably make worse software, and make it slower, than not-enslaved programmers. Perhaps this is one reason why programmers are not commonly kidnapped and enslaved, or why people who have been kidnapped and enslaved are not usually then compelled to write software. (I can think of others.)
But I’m not sure how this is relevant. We already know that the world of Viliam’s thought experiment is not the real world, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that there are reasons why it isn’t. We can still ask “what would and should happen if somehow it were?”.
If you’re suggesting that Viliam’s hypothetical world is so ridiculous—because obviously slaves would make rotten programmers—that there’s no point asking that question, though, I can’t agree. I don’t think it’s any more obvious that slaves would make rotten programmers than that slaves would make rotten prostitutes, and for quite similar reasons. Sex, like programming, doesn’t work best under conditions of extreme stress.
Yes, slaves would make rotten programmers, barring some kind of society-wide slave system like the Romans had where certain types of slaves could benefit from their skills and even buy themselves out of slavery.
While it doesn’t work best, the fact that it is a physical activity sharply limits how much worse it becomes.
Yes, Viliam made an extremely poor example. No, this doesn’t affect his main point, because he could have made a better example instead. Sweatshops do exist and yet AFAIK nobody’s ever proposed to ban selling clothes for money.
Prostitution has an unusual feature: for a given level of need for money, the ratio of “how much would most people who have X have to get paid in order to be willing to sell X” to “how much money would X get if sold on the market” is extremely large, compared to a similar ratio for, say, selling one’s labor as a janitor. The dynamics of things with large ratios of this type lead to slavery and mistreatment much more often than the dynamics of things with smaller ratios of this type.
That doesn’t mean that people in other jobs can’t be mistreated; obviously, sweatshops do exist. But it does mean that mistreatment is less central for those other jobs, and is less relevant to banning them.
I don’t see why this is so.
Note that in your setup there is a market and that market, presumably, clears. This means that at the prevailing price point the supply and the demand are balanced. The observation that there could be a lot more supply at a much higher price seems irrelevant to me.
In my setup the market “clears” by there being no sales by most of the people who have X, because they are not willing to sell X at its market price. As the need for money increases, the price at which people are willing to sell X goes down, but on the average, janitorial work (for instance) reaches the point where sales happen long before prostitution does.
Any particular reason for the quotes around “clears”? The market does clear, it’s not a metaphor or anything.
Besides, consider e.g. long-range truck drivers. Most people can be one (there is no high barrier to entry) and yet very few people actually want to be one and/or work as one.
In economics terms you are talking about supply elasticity and pointing out that the supply of sex in exchange for money is locally inelastic, that is, the supply does not increase much in response to non-huge changes in price. Yeah, sure, so what? I still don’t see how you get from here to enslavement and mistreatment.
Yes, a market clearing by there not being any sales is a very non-central example of clearing.
Most people’s loathing of being a truck driver is much less than their loathing of being a prostitute.
Except that there are sales. Are you saying prostitution does not exist??
I’m not sure how this is relevant to your argument.
There are no sales for most of the people who have it.
The ratio I described is a way of formalizing “people loathe selling X, compared to Y”. If, at a given level of need for money, the ratio between the asking price for X and the market price is large for X compared to Y, then people loathe selling X compared to Y.
This is getting stupid.
Tap.
This is true for most things most of the time, and in itself hardly seems reason for the scare-quotes around “clears”.
Not all mosts are the same. “Most of the people” won’t sell sex is a much stronger “most” than “most of the people won’t sell janitorial work”, for the reason I stated.