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A comment on Rhode Island unintentionally decriminalized indoor prostitution in 2003. Parent comment

Re:Rhode Island unintentionally decriminalized indoor prosti... by jiggy2011 on Friday July 18, 2014 @04:38PM (#8055485)
Doesn't that depend on how you define economic duress? If we are talking about voluntary prostitution in a country with a welfare state then does it count as coercion if the person chooses prostitution over a minimum wage job because it pays better?
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Re:Rhode Island unintentionally decriminalized indoor prosti... by rayiner on Friday July 18, 2014 @04:40PM (#8055499)
> If we are talking about voluntary prostitution in a country with a welfare state then does it count as coercion if the person chooses prostitution over a minimum wage job because it pays better?

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.

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Re:Rhode Island unintentionally decriminalized indoor prosti... by jiggy2011 on Friday July 18, 2014 @04:45PM (#8055537)
That really depends on how libertarian you are and whether you believe that by definition selling sexual services for money will always make somebody worse off than being poor.
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Re:Rhode Island unintentionally decriminalized indoor prosti... by rayiner on Friday July 18, 2014 @04:48PM (#8055547)
It doesn't have to make the prostitute always worse off, or worse off at all. Many other people might be impacted as a result of the changes in social dynamic from turning sex into a commodity.
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Re:Rhode Island unintentionally decriminalized indoor prosti... by icebraining on Friday July 18, 2014 @05:30PM (#8055742)
That would be a good argument if criminalizing prostitution made it go away, but only a very foolish person would believe this to be the case.
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Re:Rhode Island unintentionally decriminalized indoor prosti... by jiggy2011 on Friday July 18, 2014 @04:56PM (#8055581)
Would it necessarily have any impact outside of the people engaging in it? It won't turn all sex into a commodity.
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Re:Rhode Island unintentionally decriminalized indoor prosti... by heylefty on Friday July 18, 2014 @08:05PM (#8056192)
Everything in the universe is impacted by everything else that happens.

That's a useless tautology.

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Re:Rhode Island unintentionally decriminalized indoor prosti... by baddox on Friday July 18, 2014 @04:51PM (#8055563)
Even if there is no welfare state or any form of social safety net, it's still better to have the choice between prostitution and starving to death than for starving to death to be the only possible outcome.
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