I got an email from JJM the other day, describing a PA proposal to tax the entrance fees to strip clubs, and use at least some of the proceeds to help fund programs for sexually abused kids. Obviously, any tax will be opposed by the people on whom it is levied, but the argument the opposition is using is interesting: that it's a violation of the strip clubs' 1st amendment free speech rights.
Now, I can't imagine that argument holding up in court; it's not as if anyone is being prevented from going into the strip club, and if a court were to allow the argument to stand, then everyone would be arguing that every tax they pay is some kind of infringement of their rights. But thinking about this particular issue inspired a new thread of blog posts, which I'll call "Stirring the Pot", in which I will throw out there my most controversial positions on issues, and see what (if anything) happens.
So, I'll kick off this thread of discussion with the topic of prostitution. Here's my position on prostitution: legalize it. Legalize it everywhere, and then tax and regulate the living crap out of it. I'm talking big government style taxation and regulation, the kind that makes movement conservatives wake up screaming at 4 a.m., nauseous and in a cold sweat. Off the top of my head, here are some examples of the regulations I would require:
- zoning: obviously, you don't want bordellos anywhere close to schools. I'm sure there are many other zoning issues to consider
- regular inspections of the facilities, at most monthly, by inspectors who would work in pairs, which would be regularly changed up, and who would rotate through areas, to minimize the probability of inspector misbehavior
- regular health checkups for all workers
- mandated levels of internal security to protect workers from any violence
- heavy taxation of bordello revenue, with the additional stipulation that tax revenues from bordellos can only go to fund programs that promote things like women's health. You don't want government to be in the position of funding its infrastructure budgets or law enforcement budgets out of bordello revenue, because then the incentive is for government to encourage bordello patronage.
- mandated training for any workers, including education on toll-free hotlines to report any employer non-compliance.
- strong privacy safeguards for both workers and patrons. Although prostitution is something that as a society we should try to minimize, attacking individuals isn't the way to do it; rather, a long-term shift in values is required.
That's what jumps to mind immediately, though I'm sure that an afternoon of pondering the issue more would generate a lot more.
But why, you ask. Why make it legal? Doesn't that do the opposite of minimizing prostitution?
In my mind, there are a number of reasons to do this. The most abstract argument, I think, is that if two adults wish to conduct a sex-for-money transaction, that does not in the abstract pose any obvious immediate harm to them or anyone else, and so in a free society they should be allowed to conduct that transaction. And, although this is a much more cynical position, it nevertheless remains true that a whole lot of human relationships are just a very small step away from that anyway. Further, sex-for-money is not even close to being the most socially detrimental kind of transaction that people conduct.
On a much more pragmatic level, no society in history, no matter how totalitarian, is known to have ever managed to eliminate prostitution. Prostitution exists, has existed, and will exist, until some day in the far future when we've either all given up bodies in order to merge our consciousnesses in cyberspace, or we've managed to instill a completely different social value set than the one we have. Either way, that world is a long way off from the world we live in, and in the world we live there is going to be prostitution, whether any individual one of us likes it or not. The only question is, will we control it or not?
Legalizing prostitution, I argue, is the most effective way of controlling it, and will yield many ancillary benefits. First, it will severely damage the black market for prostitution, which will greatly lower the number of women trafficked in this country. The trafficking of women in this world is a problem that doesn't get nearly enough attention. It will also lower the probability that a woman working as a prostitute suffers violence.
Second, it will allow us to make a sizable dent in the public health impact of prostitution. Since legal bordellos can have regular health inspections, it will reduce the spread of STD's. The third world in particular has suffered mightily from this aspect of prostitution, though it does affect us here in America as well.
Third, it will generate tax revenue to fund women's health initiatives. Again, transactions are going to happen whether we like it or not; we might as well tax them and put the money to a good use, which will at least partially offset the negative social impact of having prostitution at all.
Bob Herbert wrote a good editorial in the New York Times about the legal prostitution business in Nevada, in which he exposed a lot of crappy conditions and behavior, and then from that concluded that legalized prostitution was by its nature an assault on women. I understand and sympathize with his point, but ultimately disagree. The Nevada situation to me represents a total failure to regulate properly. I think the mindset out there is "pretty much anything goes", not "let's try to contain a problem we can't eliminate, and along the way try to limit the negative effects on people." Legalized prostitution of the kind I'm describing above has not yet been tried, at least in this country.
So there you have it. Obviously, this is going to be a tough position to have taken if I ever run for President, but then again, I wouldn't want to be President if it meant having to cave on tough issues. Not that it's going to come up- I don't have good enough hair.
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