Selling your own organs is definitely a victimless crime. Arguably the baby you are selling is the victim of a baby-selling scheme. The victim of a price-fixing conspiracy is the consumer (though every member of the conspiracy has an incentive to defect and sell at a lower price, so presumably the individual members of the conspiracy are also in some ways victims of the scheme, to the extent that the scheme is actually enforced upon them somehow).
In a society in which a hefty part of the male population thinks that buying a woman drinks or even dinner entitles them to have a happy ending, this statement is very cynical.
Au contraire, I think that allowing people to pay for sex might actually de-blur some lines here. If you want quick sex for money go to a prostitute. If you want companionship that at some point get intimate enough to end in sex, date someone. If you buy someone dinner do that because you want to and not with an implicit expectation of getting something in return. Jeez.
I didn't come up with that but I do feel comfortable quoting it.
There's a significant difference between buying someone dinner and expecting sex, and paying them money for sex. The former is a favor that is done as a form of signaling and courtship. The latter is a monetary transaction that formalizes the objectification of one party.
“You’re not inviting me in? But I bought you dinner!”
I find that sort of logic and thinking very disturbing.
Here's an interesting question for you: is the public entitled to make prostitution illegal,[1] on the basis that they don't like the sociological implications of selling sex becoming an alternative to getting a minimum wage job? I think they are quite entitled to do that.
[1] Though I prefer how Sweden does it: to make buy sex illegal, but not selling it.
That's a useless tautology.
But prostitution doesn't do this. A commodity has full or near full fungibility, i.e. "one sex" is (almost) substitutable by any other "one sex". Obviously this isn't true for sex.
If I was to sell one of my organs, it would A. have an immediate detrimental effect on my health and B. be permanent. Further, the state has a very high probability of paying for some or all of my medical care post-op.
If I sell a baby, I am selling something that is not my property. If I am the parent, I have some claim to the baby, but not one of direct ownership. So in truth I am selling something that is not mine. In reality, what you would be selling is your lack of action in defense of your paternal rights. That is, in fact, a victimless crime. However, the administration of those rights is not yours alone, but also your community's. You can't sell that, so you'd be lying to whoever you gave the child to if you implied that you could.
Lots of decisions and transactions are only technically voluntary and are driven by economic duress more than anything else. Working a dead end job, working a dangerous job, being a roofer or garbage man or flagger. Joining the military. Being a lumberjack. Hell, being a fisherman in many cases.
A lot of these jobs are dangerous. They're accepted, though. If I work as a lumberjack, it's not because I have a choice. It's because otherwise I would be homeless and this is a skill I can employ to feed and house myself.
Plus, in many countries there is a compulsory term of service.
> As 'tedks points out below, turning sex into a commodity has real implications for the status of women in society as a whole.
The real implications would be that prostitutes would most likely be safer and more wealthy.
> Moreover, as with selling organs or selling babies, there's a strong belief that such transactions are usually only technically voluntary, and are driven by economic duress more than anything else.
A choice made out of economic interest is still "voluntary" under the definition used in this context. Your claim seems to be that if the only two choices are selling your kidney or starving to death, then selling the kidney is not "voluntary." But if those were really the only two choices, and you ban selling the kidney, then the only scenario remaining is that the person starves to death.
I don't think there is anything wrong with making illegal, as unconscionable, transactions in which the poor give up their most basic human capital. It's "the rich get richer, the poor get poorer" at the most vulgar level.
> A choice made out of economic interest is still "voluntary" under the definition used in this context.
I think that's a very impoverished definition of "voluntary."
Are you suggesting that it's not voluntary if the choice makes the person better off? So is an action only voluntary if it makes the person worse off? That doesn't make much sense to me.
But if the person's only options are 1) starve to death or 2) become a prostitute, then prohibiting the second option means the person will starve to death. If there's a third option, like 3) work as a cook at a restaurant, then the person can choose between options 2 and 3, and if they choose 2, then it must not have been economic coercion like you suggest.
This is a pretty benighted attitude. Where you're choosing between a comfortable life and a more comfortable life, why does picking the second option indicate coercion?
Obviously there's no clean line as to how the alternative courses of action have to be before it counts as duress. But we don't have to draw the line clearly in order to be able to make the distinction.
You seem to be arguing that women who do sex work are under "economic duress" because the alternatives are so awful, therefore we should make it illegal, forcing them into back those awful alternatives. That seems backwards to me. Surely we should be banning the shitty, coercive minimum wage jobs, not the sex work women are choosing in preference to them?
It sounds to me like your distinction is that if any person makes less money than any other person, then the first person is under economic duress and thus is incapable of making any voluntary choices.
Sex is not like every other human interaction. If you forced someone to answer phones for eight hours, it is unlikely they would be traumatized in the same way as if you raped them for eight hours. Its different.
Not every transaction between people in unequal economic circumstances is suspect, but we're not talking about every transaction. We're talking about something much more intimate and emotional. Such transactions are far more suspicious.
You're moving goalposts.
What you are saying is absolute nonsense in light of decision theory.
Few would work if they didn't have to.
Money is an artifact of scarcity.
From each according their desires, to each according to an equitable resource distribution heuristic prioritised on a Maslovian basis.
Let the machines labor so that humanity may be free.
facetiousness factor: 0.5 < n < 0.95
Only in the same sense as selling organs or babies (or conspiring to fix prices) is a victimless crime. There are instances where society legitimately chooses to make certain consensual interactions illegal because of the implications that conduct has for everyone else. As 'tedks points out below, turning sex into a commodity has real implications for the status of women in society as a whole. Moreover, as with selling organs or selling babies, there's a strong belief that such transactions are usually only technically voluntary, and are driven by economic duress more than anything else.