That's the war on drugs all over again: the violence and exploitation is mostly a consequence of the illegality, not of the profession itself.

But, I have a such a convenient solution, hear me out! We can just delude ourselves into thinking the world already works the way we think it should. We won't have to acknowledge the misery we perpetuate AND we can get our rocks off in the most awesomest way.

One of the things I love HN community for is the overall interest in collecting and representing reliable statistical information.

The reason I am questioning "vast majority" is that when something is illegal, it's very hard to derive accurate statistics on. When something is illegal your primary sources of information is law enforcement, people who have exited, and what a few people involved in the activity will volunteer. Since the activity is illegal, few people who are actively involved will volunteer information for the fear of having it used against them. Add to that the stigma that sexual services carries with it (regardless if they were cohered or not), and people REALLY do not want to divulge information about their activities in sexual services even after they have exited.

Because of this any metrics derived will be very law-enforcement biased, or from a vastly small sample of the overall community. Neither of these are reliable sources of information. Just looking at how the FBI in recent years /reduced/ the number of statistics available on their sexual-service stings is a great example of this. It makes it impossible for anyone to derive reliable or trend-able information from the statistics they have released.

Here's a great article that explains a lot of what I'm saying with links to verifiable references

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/04/...

If you paying for a fast food burger or for an iPhone, assume you're in the slave trade.