I wrote a post on respecting Chesterton-Schelling fences that seems relevant. Specifically, by removing the guardrail of “paying rent with sex is illegal” or “selling kidneys is illegal” without a careful analysis of why the guardrail is there in the first place, and what kind of a slippery slope lies beyond the fence is likely to cause unintended harm. For example, people might get pressured to sell organs, or to supplement rent with sexual favors, because it become legal. This is not just “removing a bad option”, it is entrenching a different bad option. There are definitely ways to improve the situation, such as working on minimum wage laws, subsidized rent, free and stigma-free food and medication, and maybe even UBI. But there is no clear, simple and obviously good solution in any of your examples, as I can see. There are some more obvious cases, like removing overcomplicated zoning and building restrictions in California, but even there one must be careful to consider the consequences.
I wrote a post on respecting Chesterton-Schelling fences that seems relevant. Specifically, by removing the guardrail of “paying rent with sex is illegal” or “selling kidneys is illegal” without a careful analysis of why the guardrail is there in the first place, and what kind of a slippery slope lies beyond the fence is likely to cause unintended harm. For example, people might get pressured to sell organs, or to supplement rent with sexual favors, because it become legal. This is not just “removing a bad option”, it is entrenching a different bad option. There are definitely ways to improve the situation, such as working on minimum wage laws, subsidized rent, free and stigma-free food and medication, and maybe even UBI. But there is no clear, simple and obviously good solution in any of your examples, as I can see. There are some more obvious cases, like removing overcomplicated zoning and building restrictions in California, but even there one must be careful to consider the consequences.