When I was younger, I supported full legalisation of sex work because I thought that to disallow it would be to remove the agency of sex workers who had chosen that path as their profession.
Then I got older and read accounts of sex workers trafficked to European countries where prostitution is legal I realised that some (but not all) sex workers are actually participating in "legal" transactions under duress. In my mind that invalidates the necessary consent required when the activity involves sex work of some kind, making it unethical from the buyer to acquire such a service despite it being legal locally. While trafficking is of course still illegal, I am unclear about the laws protecting trafficking victims from their "buyers" in non-consenting transactions.
Since it is practically impossible to confirm if a given sex worker is participating under duress or not, especially when it occurs "remotely" as in this OnlyFans situation, I would say it is always unethical to purchase such services.
In addition, what I would consider "under duress" is fairly broad, not only under threat of violence from traffickers, but also including economic duress where an individual feels that it is the only way to earn an income to put food on the table. In this vein, I would consider sex tourism to poorer countries a form of exploitation and thus unethical, even though one could argue the individuals from the poorer countries selling such services do so "willingly".
This article writes that one of these women feels that she must engage in sex work through OnlyFans because it is "the only way she can support her family...". It leaves a bad taste as I would not consider that she is participating in the transaction without duress, and thus actually consenting in the transaction. Would you be okay with it if you knew that the woman you were buying lingerie pictures "had" to do it? How would that not be a form of exploitation?
However, one can extend this argument to any type of work. "She says her _____ work is the only way she can support her family...", replace with an arbitrary line of work and activity (woodcutting/marketing/basketweaving). Is there any thing that makes sex work special (apart from some puritanical opinion which are not actually applicable), that would make such a transaction inherently more unethical than say being forced to work at McDonalds because it's the only way to make ends meet? Why would the latter more "ethical" than the former, when an individual is still "forced" to sell their labor to survive, what ever form that labor is?
> also including economic duress where an individual feels that it is the only way to earn an income to put food on the table
Doesn't that mean pretty much all labor then?
I think my biggest counter argument to your otherwise excellent post is that I am not convinced that prohibition actually fixes the problem you're talking about. We all agree that alcoholism is bad, but making it illegal didn't actually do anything to stop it.
> Since it is practically impossible to confirm if a given sex worker is participating under duress or not, especially when it occurs "remotely" as in this OnlyFans situation, I would say it is always unethical to purchase such services.
Applying this kind of blanket rule leads to all sorts of ridiculous conclusions. Can you verify that the people assembling the very device you wrote this post on aren't under similar amounts of duress as you clutch your pearls over in this comment?
This really highlights the underlying problem. People don't have an unhealthy attachment to sex. Who cares if Chinese children are being over worked and under paid to make your iPhone, but God forbid there be even one sex worker who is possibly working in unethical conditions. Let's just kill the entire platform and livelihoods of every other sex worker!
I feel like the comment you responded to acknowledges all sides of the argument. How is being coerced to work at McDonalds worse than being forced to sell nude pics, other than the puritanical sensibility?
I must have misunderstood you. What's the point you are making here?
> Since it is practically impossible to confirm if a given sex worker is participating under duress or not, especially when it occurs "remotely" as in this OnlyFans situation, I would say it is always unethical to purchase such services
I agree that ethics and law do not coincide in all circumstances, and sometimes what is lawful may not necessarily be ethical. However, in the situation you described, prudence is what you should aim at, and understanding where and how trafficking can arise in your area or community should be your priority. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater by demonizing sex work entirely because of its susceptibility to trafficking is not only extreme, but risks sacrificing people's freedom to choose their work based on events that they cannot possibly control.
This topic is much more complex than that, but that's one side of it at least.
The last paragraph brushes up to the problem but doesn't quite get there. Truth is that ethics are only useful in certain times and places. If you try to generalize them to encompass everything, you start reaching ridiculous conclusions.
I would have thought the exact opposite. Wouldn't the current elite rather believe that they are on top because they worked hard and earned their place? That way they can look down on the rest in good conscience while gutting welfare systems that only benefit those who "didn't" earn their own way.
Arguments that the successful are morally superior will also find an eager audience. In contrast, arguments that successful are inherently inferior in any way are a hard sell.
True, you could let the market dictate their salaries, but then you run into the issue of paying one gender more money for the same amount of work, a practice outlawed under the Equality Pay Act of 1963.
The lawsuit in that article is about a dispute over Google providing employee contact information to support a Labor Dept audit, not about alleged pay discrimination.
Educational outreach is an important part of what NASA does. For the low cost of a letter they most likely encouraged a kid to have a career in the sciences. In my mind that is peak efficiency.
In fact, probably the only reason NASA still exists is its significant effort at educational outreach - just sticking their head down and working on their projects without communicating with the population that funds them would result in the "NASA does nothing relevant today" meme overshadowing the work it does.
One of the points of Bitcoin is that you become your own bank. But a lot of people ignored that and stored their coins on exchanges like Mt. Gox. The loss of funds to the collapse of Mt. Gox is a constant reminder not to do that.
(NOTE: Yes, storing coins on your own was certainly not easy. It's a tad easier now with hardware wallets, but there's a lot more to do. But everyone managing their own funds with their own private keys is still ultimately goal of Bitcoin.)
The collapse of Mt. Gox was one of the first, huge financial scandals in the Bitcoin ecosystem. It has made users more critical of trading platforms, which is always a good thing.
It was also a nice shock to the system for naive investors who weren't aware of the true risks of investing in volatile assets like Bitcoin.
Of course, Mt. Gox was also incredibly destructive to the Bitcoin ecosystem. So it's a bit like arguing that the Great Depression was the greatest thing to happen to the American economy.
> everyone managing their own funds with their own private keys is still ultimately goal of Bitcoin
No it isn't. The goal is to enable financial freedom, so that the people who want that level of control over their money can have it, but those who see benefits from having their money cared for, can do that too.
If I think I'll probably lose my bitcoin trying to store them myself, and that they're probably safer on Bitcoin Service X, I should be able to keep them there. I should also be aware of the tradeoffs.
Remember all those stories of people losing millions of dollars because they kept their crypto on hard drives? I know it's easier now, but it's still a lot of work. You can manage that work. Many people can't.
IMO the philosophy of Bitcoin is not "you should do things this way," but "it's important that people be able to do things this way, if they want to."
But the Mt Gox event did help make it clear that people should be selective about how they store their money.
> No it isn't. The goal is to enable financial freedom, so that the people who want that level of control over their money can have it, but those who see benefits from having their money cared for, can do that too.
Sorry, bad phrasing on my part. Perhaps it's better said as "Enabling people to be their own bank is one of the goals of Bitcoin."
Of course, financial freedom is the umbrella goal of Bitcoin, you're right. Part of that is making it possible to be your own bank. Importantly, that means making it _easy_ to be your own bank. We want it to be as easy for the average person to manage their coins themselves, as it is to manage USD at a bank. That way, even though users are free to use centralized services, there should be no reason to.
It was once the defacto exchange and wallet manager for bitcoin. I believe the statistics were that 90% of all transactions happened on the exchange. In fact, once they pulled the server for maintenance, the price of bitcoin plummeted.
After it's collapse, a void was created for other exchanges to rise. A more balanced system ensued.
That's the thing though, they don't. And why would they? These cabbies made a bet that the medallion would not lose value until they sold it, and they lost that bet. How is this different from any other small-time business going bankrupt?
Sure. Next thing, the Treasury immediately stops honoring $20 bills. Hey, what chumps we were, accepting cash!
The analogy holds: A city government had a system where a good had artificial scarcity and intrinsic value from stable government policy. Then, it suddenly changed. I'm all for ride-hailing changing our public transit dynamic, but I can't fault the players of the old system too much for saying "What the hell about my retirement, my end of life?"
I don't think the city stopped honoring anything or changed any rules. The medallion buyers were just speculating and didn't see the future well. No different from people who buy property for retirement then there's a recession and the surrounding population declines and it becomes worthless. Investment is gambling. Everyone knows that. You're supposed to diversify. Humble wage earners don't have that problem. Drivers who rent medallions don't have that problem. Only the risk taking ones who took loans for something that might lose value do.
Then I got older and read accounts of sex workers trafficked to European countries where prostitution is legal I realised that some (but not all) sex workers are actually participating in "legal" transactions under duress. In my mind that invalidates the necessary consent required when the activity involves sex work of some kind, making it unethical from the buyer to acquire such a service despite it being legal locally. While trafficking is of course still illegal, I am unclear about the laws protecting trafficking victims from their "buyers" in non-consenting transactions.
Since it is practically impossible to confirm if a given sex worker is participating under duress or not, especially when it occurs "remotely" as in this OnlyFans situation, I would say it is always unethical to purchase such services.
In addition, what I would consider "under duress" is fairly broad, not only under threat of violence from traffickers, but also including economic duress where an individual feels that it is the only way to earn an income to put food on the table. In this vein, I would consider sex tourism to poorer countries a form of exploitation and thus unethical, even though one could argue the individuals from the poorer countries selling such services do so "willingly".
This article writes that one of these women feels that she must engage in sex work through OnlyFans because it is "the only way she can support her family...". It leaves a bad taste as I would not consider that she is participating in the transaction without duress, and thus actually consenting in the transaction. Would you be okay with it if you knew that the woman you were buying lingerie pictures "had" to do it? How would that not be a form of exploitation?
However, one can extend this argument to any type of work. "She says her _____ work is the only way she can support her family...", replace with an arbitrary line of work and activity (woodcutting/marketing/basketweaving). Is there any thing that makes sex work special (apart from some puritanical opinion which are not actually applicable), that would make such a transaction inherently more unethical than say being forced to work at McDonalds because it's the only way to make ends meet? Why would the latter more "ethical" than the former, when an individual is still "forced" to sell their labor to survive, what ever form that labor is?