I heard an interesting discussion on the radio.  A commentator was saying we should legalize prostitution, drugs, and gambling.  He felt that the general public would support this.  However, he said what keeps it from happening is the mafia.  He said they make too much money tax free to allow this to happen.  Not that they are putting horse heads in beds, but they are making large donations to certain politicians.

Some cops called in and agreed.  They said they don't want to go after gambling and prostitution and don't do a good job of it.

Interesting theory.  What do you think?

I would say that the moral majority of up-right (and uptight) citizens is to blame.
We, who feel otherwise, need to organize and take back the night.

In the spirit of free markets, entrepreneurism and de-regulation! It is time for us to unite on this common goal!

For me, I am not sure I want it Legalized. Im for  decriminilization.
There are lotsa working women that do not want to go down to the Bureau of Prostitution and get their fingerprints and pictures taken, then put on a license to make love.
We all know how those data bases can become public. There will still be illegals working if that happens. The ones that work part time or only when they need money or ones that are just paying their way through school.
This is a private act between consenting adults and I would prefer it still having the possibility of privacy, that legalization and the need for a license would negate.
tyvm,P.T.

do not want paper trails that can be dug up later. Legalization brings with it issues such as licensing, quality control and an assortment of other beauracracy that discerning hobbyists and more likely, providers, would rather not have to deal with.

I think I've found my dream job!

Something else to consider,,, If it becomes "Legal", There will be Fees to pay, std testing costs will go up because they will be "mandated", union dues, taxes of all kinds, and a 1000% increase in competition!! Many women only stay out of this business because of the legal risk, or the "implyed wrong doing" of it being against the law...
 So when it finally does become legal, expect the average appointment fee to drop from $300 down to about $150 and then expect about 70% of that to be gobbled up by taxes and fees!
 As with any type of business, the very few extremely beautiful and extremely talented will rise to the top and be able to charge even more due to supply and demand, but the women that average 7/7 or below will lose out BIG TIME!

With a market flooded by would be's and other nameless, brainless types, you'd run the real working ladies off. Can you imagine very mechanical sessions with cameras on your every move? Well that's what happens when governments get involved. Long before the internet, there were quality whorehouses (many still exist) that all the judges, attorneys and cops knew about. They ran under the radar giving their cut and nobody got hurt. I predict a rise in such places, because men have egos, and garden variety play is for peasants and pissants.

-- Modified on 2/12/2006 8:57:42 AM

Individual entrepreneurial spirit is a malignant evil and nowhere is that spirit more pure than in the world’s oldest profession. A standard business has many forms of inherent anchoring and visibility that make it all too easy to regulate, control and extort through licensing, taxation and community political pressure. Prostitution poses an infinitely less constrainable enterprise where the capital was given by nature, the demand by biology and it’s growth proportional by population. Practitioners of the craft are free thinkers by nature who inherently avoid all societal and governmental mandates that could or would interfere with their profit line making registration, licensing and taxation a futile effort. Although our exalted and venal leaders commonly impugn themselves in hypocrisy by patronizing the profession; their numbers are few and inconsequential too the populace en-mass offering no threat to the overall quest of engineering of an obedient society.  

No offense to anyone here, but it's the religious right. They want to control everything that you do, and since they deem providing as immoral, they will never legalize it.

When the question of legalization comes up, everyone jumps to the conclusion that it's the morally up tight religious people who keep it illegle.  Now, there is some truth in that, certainly morally up tight religious people do not want it to be legal.  But, there is a much larger group of people that wish it to remain illegal.  

Just who is this larger group you ask?  It's women.  That is, women who themselves are not involved in the trade.  (Or at least the vast majority of the women not involved in the trade.) Women who may or may not be religious will still agree that it shouln't be legal.

Why you ask?  Think about it.  Does the "average" woman want her husband (or boyfriend) regularly patronizing providers?  Most women will not want the husband/boyfriend "screwing around" (i.e., cheating) and (especially the married women) will not want him to spend financial resources (that after all, belong to the family) on providers.         It's that simple.

I'm sure alot of women reading this post will disagree with me.  However, we'll never get a true sample of women responding to it because women that are not (or have not been) involved in this business do not read this board.

There was a documentary a couple of years back on the history of prostitution in the United States.

Apparently the women's suffrage movement is what finally killed it. Once women got the right to vote, the organized and made it a political issues. Prior to that pockets of resistance would sprout up but the world's oldest profession was largely legal up until the 1920's.

The documentary concluded that married women resented the fact that they lost control of where their husband's penises were finding companionship.

...It's not just women who want it kept illegal.  The general population (Men & Women) want it kept illegal.  Why?  B/c we know it's wrong to legalize it.  And, I'm not talking about uptight religious types either.  I'm married with kids, and I see prostitutes and I gamble.  I tell myself that they're escorts and that I'm hobbying.  I rationalize my gambling by saying that it's just a friendly game of poker (which it is).  My wife and kids know about my poker, but obviously not of my "hobby".  I don't support legalizing either (hell I don't even support the state lottery).  Does this make me a hippocrit?  Maybe in some eyes, but not in mine.  Why?  B/c I can do these illegal activities without them getting out of control.  BTW, I've never done drugs and I don't support the legalization of marijuana for the same reason.  If you legalize these things , what little control our society has maintained would be lost for good.  Spare me with your rhetoric, that "gambling is legal in ABCvile" and/or "prostitution is allowed in XYZ country" and that they have less crime as a result.  Those arguments are weak.

. . . find a therapist.

Too much coffee is not good for you; perhaps we should control it as well.

...I agree too much control by others is not good.  However, WE ALL want control.  Control of own lives.  BTW, I don't drink coffee or use tobacco so they could be "controlled" and it wouldn't bother me one bit, lol.

The institution of marriage is a stinking piece of puke and most of the world's problem stem from frustrated men wanting to destroy anything remotely decent because if they can't be satisfied, then no one will.  Freud actually had it right, sort of.
Of course we can all ignore these facts and continue to watch FOX.

The history of our own West cofirms your premise.  Prostitution was legal throughout the West for a long time, and thousands of women from the East headed west just for that purpose.

It was only when the so-called "respectable" women showed up that the pressure was placed on state and local governments to make prostitution illegal.  Most resisted for decades but eventually sucumbed to the pressure (probably the pressure in their balls when their wives wouldn't have sex with them).  

The deal that was struck over a century ago was that we would make prostitution officially illegal, but for the most part look the other way.  Every now and again LE has to look like they're doing something so they make some high-profile busts.  But most of the time it's tolerated, if not condoned, in a sort of uneasy stand-off.

The reasons for this are simple, as some have alluded to already.  Its all about control, but its the control of the marriage and control of men by their wives that is the issue.  Women quickly figured out that they lost all their power as wives if their husbands had the opportunity to step out whenever they wanted to get laid.  

Like it or not, then as now, the source of female power is sex, whereas the source of male power has always been wealth.  Legalizing prostituion, therefore, gives men the power, whereas keeping it illegal gives women the power.  

The fact is, it isn't just church types either- this is the one issue that cuts across all political boundaries because women see it as fundamental for them to maintain the balance of power with men.  Nothing makes a so-called left-wing "liberal" women turn conservative faster than the subject of legalizing prostitution and the thought of giving men what they want.

-- Modified on 2/13/2006 10:20:14 AM