So, I discovered today that the NPR iPod app gives me access to recordings of many recent Intelligence Squared debates, so I spent a good chunk of the day listening to a few of them. Quite a few of them were really interesting and entertaining, and if you haven’t already, I would definitely recommend them. One in particular drew my attention, though not because it was particularly good, but because I felt like the debaters dropped the ball on a key point. The question was “Is it wrong to pay for sex?”
The debate broke down along fairly obvious lines. On the one hand you had people saying that prostitution is the worst thing ever, and on the other hand people saying “Ehh, maybe not.” Predictably, Tyler Cowen (some of whose thoughts on the subject you can see here) argued that prostitution was maybe sometimes good, and maybe sometimes bad, but most of the real harm either stems from, or is exacerbated by, ineffective or unjust enforcement. That was about as interesting as the discussion got, which I thought was really too bad.
Anyway, I think the failure of the discussion stemmed from its starting point. Of course prostitution is wrong; that’s boring. The real question is, if we assume that prostitution is both inevitable (debate that point if you must, but it’s called the world oldest profession for a reason) and wrong, then what is the proper ethical response for the government to take? Do you legalize prostitution and try to reduce the harm caused by prostitution that way? Or do you decide that prostitution is too evil to condone and do your best reduce its frequency by putting steep mandatory minimums on purchasing sex? Or some other clever solution?
At any rate, I think we can all agree that the current situation, whereby we call prostitution illegal, don’t enforce it much, if at all, and focus what little enforcement we do have on prostitutes, is the worst possible policy response from an ethical standpoint.
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