And all of that was utterly ineffective in getting people to start more families or get interested in burning themself out in the never-ending career competition.
So i stand by "Not that the Chinese policies work at all."
The private and public sector suppression of sexual freedom and freedom of expression is more sinister than you think.
- Thread starter Gergar12
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So i stand by "Not that the Chinese policies work at all."
What do we mean by prostitution?
Prostitution is basically impossible to fully criminalize because, to a certain extent, it's indistinguishable from normal hypergamy. If someone pays a large sum of money to meet an onlyfans model or porn actor and in the course of that meeting sex occurs, we all know what happened but who is ever going to take it to court? What we mean by legalization is how openly the business side of the equation is allowed to operate. The problem which people advocating for legalization often fail to consider is that the industrial/business side of prostitution is often diametrically opposed to the interests of people actually doing it.
When you talk about legalization, are you talking about legalizing the exchange of sex for money (which is basically impossible to criminalize anyway) or are you actually talking about legalizing pimping on an industrial scale?
Yup. That comes with things like taxes, work safety requirements, contracts that can argued in court, pension schemes, insurances, open advertising and so on.
One could say it makes pimping legal because finding clients, making sure a client pays and providing a modicum of safety were traditionally the pimps job. Or one could say it makes pimp superfluous because there are now proper and better legal alternatives for all of that.
Not sure about IOS, because fuck Apple, but you could just download Firefox on Android and install an ad-blocker if you wanted to.
There's enough ad-free porn out there to keep you busy for years to come.
Who wants these things?
Most people who end up doing sex work are extremely private about it. They don't want to be on a database somewhere, they don't want to leave a paper trail, they don't plan on staying in long enough for pension schemes to matter and if they had the money to go to court, they wouldn't be doing sex work.
The problem here is that legalization fundamentally does not change any of the incentives involved. The idea that if you give people a legal way to profit from the sex industry they will not abuse anyone doesn't work if the abuse is still profitable. All you have done, in effect, is create a facade of legality which abusers can use to camouflage their behavior and induced demand which makes the abuse vastly, vastly more profitable, and this is the overwhelming problem that has come up whenever legalization has been attempted.
Because the sad reality is, most people don't want to do it, and those who do often value the ways in which it is different from the usual grind of capitalist exploitation. When it becomes indistinguishable from any other form of capitalist exploitation, when the goal becomes extracting as much work for as little value as possible, who is supposed to do it? Where do you get the constant supply of warm bodies such an industry demands?
Nah, they just have considerably smaller market share as compared to online porn, and are well beneath the notice of major financial institutions who want their pound of flesh. But otherwise, now that we've reached consensus on where we were, shall we have a conversation about the inglorious days of Pornhub, Redtube, and Youporn not even having so much as an "honor system" age verification, not to mention all the various other free porn sites that have popped up and went down over the years, and the days before safe search/age restricted/parental content filter options on major online search engines?
Yes, that is my claim, and I am perfectly aware what decade it is. You see, here's the thing: if a law exists but has no enforcement or consequences for violating it, there's no law. And likewise, if a legislative body passes a law with no teeth, they've not actually passed a law. Which is exactly where we were before FOSTA-SESTA -- sure, certain state governments (most notably, California as opposed to any red state) may have passed regulations, usually targeting the porn industry and distributors opposed to porn consumers. But federally, and in the majority of states? Wild West.
Still is, for the most part in fact. Even accounting for FOSTA-SESTA, which doesn't actually do what it was advertised to do in the first place. Again you see, if a law doesn't do what it's advertised to do, you have to look at what it does do, and who benefits, to figure out what's actually going on. And in FOSTA-SESTA's case, what it does is provide means and justification for multimedia conglomerates which are simultaneously the biggest internet providers (in and of itself a monopolistic conflict of interest), payment processors, and financial institutions with vested interest in both simultaneously (an even bigger monopolistic conflict of interest) a back door to push out would-be porn market competitors.
Need I remind you the "proprietor" of Twitch is in fact Amazon, the fifth-largest corporation (and biggest defense contractor) on the planet and the closest thing we have in the world today to a dystopian cyberpunk megacorp, particularly in the fields of mass data collection and predictive analytics. Rest assured, some floozy's dirty pillows are barely a blip on Amazon's PR radar, compared to third-world sweatshop-level employee relations, uncomfortably close relations to multiple sovereign states' military-intelligence complexes, selling facial recognition and predictive analytics software to law enforcement agencies, global commercial fraud, tax avoidance, just to name a few.
And I can tell you from being on the inside of that shitmonster, once you get to the middle-management salaried level it's a cult of personality dedicated to de facto worship of a man who envisions himself a modern-day Alexander the Great. They absolutely see themselves as stewards of global societal change.
Yeah, the idea of participating in some global conspiracy to spike first-world birthrates is a little farfetched. Especially since the likes of Amazon is far more interested in trafficking labor from third-world countries, to suppress first-world wage growth and bust labor organization. But, the rest is far more accurate than you may realize.
...Can we just take a step back for a minute and examine the underlying thought process here for a minute?
You're looking at the fact that Bethesda is making yet another re-release of their cash cow, presumably - if precedence is anything to go off of - tweaked just enough to justify to platforms like Steam that it can be sold as a separate product sold at full price again rather than treated as a renewed promotion of the same product (that consequentially would be treated as something already in a given user's Digital Library). From that, you have concluded that - based on a basic understanding of the work required in porting a mod to a new game version - the real reason must be a passive aggressive effort to drive modders away.
From that premise you then conclude that this presumed malicious motive must have a more direct target, which you assume to the be modders who created sex-related content and therefore, treating all those assumptions as a given, you further assume that this must have been done at the behest of Microsoft whom you in turn assume was told to do so by the government.
To say this is flimsy logic honestly gives it too much credit. There's no real logic behind any of it, nor any substantive evidence suggesting it. It just a literal conspiracy theory ('the government must be responsible'), built on a conspiracy theory ('Microsoft must be demanding it of Bethesda'), which is built on another conspiracy theory ('clearly there must be a secret nefarious motive behind this re-release, and that motive must be that Bethesda wants to drive out certain mods'). That's not reasoned logic, that's just a cavalcade of grandiose speculations about motive that are ultimately rooted in little more than you not wanting to see this as a simple business decision of repackaging an old product so Bethesda can put it back on the market again and inspire a repeat purchase of it (which is to say, the typical reason for a remaster or re-release).
But it actually goes further than that, because you go on to interpret that as an attack against you and those of similar situations because, in abstract terms, it reduces your comfort and you treat that reduction as the ultimate purpose on the grounds that "a comfortable man or woman or non-binary is potentially a thinker, and that's a no-no for America." You went from "Bethesda is re-releasing their best selling game again" (something they have been repeatedly criticized for over the years as reflecting the company's perceived creative stagnancy), straight to "Wake up, sheeple! The government must be responsible and they must be doing it in order to suppress free-thinkers like myself who enjoy the community-made content that I'm worried won't be ported to the re-release".
I'll be blunt here, at best it reads like the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, and at worst it sounds like paranoid delusion.
You're looking at the fact that Bethesda is making yet another re-release of their cash cow, presumably - if precedence is anything to go off of - tweaked just enough to justify to platforms like Steam that it can be sold as a separate product sold at full price again rather than treated as a renewed promotion of the same product (that consequentially would be treated as something already in a given user's Digital Library). From that, you have concluded that - based on a basic understanding of the work required in porting a mod to a new game version - the real reason must be a passive aggressive effort to drive modders away.
From that premise you then conclude that this presumed malicious motive must have a more direct target, which you assume to the be modders who created sex-related content and therefore, treating all those assumptions as a given, you further assume that this must have been done at the behest of Microsoft whom you in turn assume was told to do so by the government.
To say this is flimsy logic honestly gives it too much credit. There's no real logic behind any of it, nor any substantive evidence suggesting it. It just a literal conspiracy theory ('the government must be responsible'), built on a conspiracy theory ('Microsoft must be demanding it of Bethesda'), which is built on another conspiracy theory ('clearly there must be a secret nefarious motive behind this re-release, and that motive must be that Bethesda wants to drive out certain mods'). That's not reasoned logic, that's just a cavalcade of grandiose speculations about motive that are ultimately rooted in little more than you not wanting to see this as a simple business decision of repackaging an old product so Bethesda can put it back on the market again and inspire a repeat purchase of it (which is to say, the typical reason for a remaster or re-release).
But it actually goes further than that, because you go on to interpret that as an attack against you and those of similar situations because, in abstract terms, it reduces your comfort and you treat that reduction as the ultimate purpose on the grounds that "a comfortable man or woman or non-binary is potentially a thinker, and that's a no-no for America." You went from "Bethesda is re-releasing their best selling game again" (something they have been repeatedly criticized for over the years as reflecting the company's perceived creative stagnancy), straight to "Wake up, sheeple! The government must be responsible and they must be doing it in order to suppress free-thinkers like myself who enjoy the community-made content that I'm worried won't be ported to the re-release".
I'll be blunt here, at best it reads like the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, and at worst it sounds like paranoid delusion.
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It's not just Skyrim porn that is a possible aspect of it, and besides all of this is guesswork. I don't know what's in Joe Biden or Larry Fink's head. There are no studies on US bureaucratic political opinions. I am not in Project 2025's policy team. And there won't be any paperwork if this does happen because it would be unpopular. It literally could be groupthink, indirect policy, or even a policy outcome. And yes this topic may seem obscure. Gergar12 is talking about Skyrim Porn or AI Porn. But it's part of a crackdown on freedom of expression, read the title. Republicans(officials, and influencers) are attacking sex workers, abortion, porn, and the ESGs, and Democrats and companies being Republican-lite will likely follow through with aspects of republican policy as they do with border policy.
Could I be wrong yes, but banning abortion, financial bans on porn, and so fore have consequences. If you want evidence here's evidence.
Republicans Are Coming to Take Your Porn (Again)
Republican state laws mandating age verification on porn sites give them the power to censor sexual speech and information across the internet.
www.rollingstone.com
Decriminalize Sex Work
Decriminalize Sex Work—DSW—is a national organization with a state-by-state strategy to end the prohibition of consensual adult prostitution
decriminalizesex.work
US hard-right policy group condemned for ‘dehumanising’ anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric
Project 2025, which seeks to ‘march into office’ with conservative ‘army’, accused of ‘far-right desire to turn America back to the 20s’
www.theguardian.com
PS: I edited your post because Grammarly throw so many errors at me.
Yes, that is indeed something countries that legalized prostitution did struggle with a lot. Pimps obviously never wanted it. Illegal immigrants obviously couldn't register a sex worker business. Minors still couldn't do it legally but they were always a part of the prostitution scene. And no one ever likes to pay taxes and other mandated expenses, especially if any benefit like pension is in the far future.
How much paper trails and privacy are issues, vastly depends on how society treats sex (and also how they treat privacy). There are huge differences between e.g. the US and central Europe.
You could say the same thing for every other kind of illegal off-the-book work. "Different from usual grind of capitalist exploitation" is not what is actually happening because everyone involved still lives in a capitalist society and is bound by its constraints. Evading regulation does not make employees less exploited, it makes them more exploited because no oversight, no safety regulation, no legal protection and the power disparity between employers and workers lead to exactly that. This is not just the case with sex workers, you can see the same thing in construction and farming and everywhere else where black work is common. It is basically never to the benefit of those doing the actual work, it makes them just easier to exploit.
As for independent sex workers, i would say that also easier to do legally via the various small-business and self-employed rules. You could even have associations like in the vocational trades. Yes, that means extra work and taxes, but i really don't see why there should be an exemption here
In (I think it was Western Australia), there was a push for legal sex workers who worked from home to have to put big signs on their houses saying that a sex worker lives there. Now, can't remember if that went through, but you can see the problem.
Now that is stupid and pure harassment. Sounds like people butt-hurt about the legalization trying to sabotage it.
Well, as something of a sweeping generalisation, people making laws about sex work don't know or care about the lives of sex workers, who are after all a small demographic the rest of the population often likes looking down upon. Even those nominally trying to help sex workers often don't bother talking to them too much.
What does an "employer" actually contribute to this arrangement?
Here's the thing. In the UK, prostitution is legal. I know a few people who have done it and I even considered trying to do it myself at some point, because it is an attractive option. But the big reason why it is an attractive option is that sex workers are, by law, essentially self-employed. There are extremely strict laws about financially benefitting from someone else working in prostitution. While this isn't a perfect arrangement (it makes it theoretically illegal to rent property to someone who intends to use it for sex work) it generally works out pretty well. Everyone I know who went down that route was able to live a very easy life for a time.
But when people talk about legalization, this isn't what they mean. Heck, we still have the debate about legalization despite the fact prostitution is already legal, because that debate is not driven by people who want to be escorts, it's driven by people who want to run brothels. It's driven by people who see the sex industry not as a form of self-employment or a way to live a more independent existence, but as a way to extract as much money as possible from other people doing the work. At that point, what is the incentive? Where are the benefits of working in this industry? What are you getting in exchange for the massive psychological and social risks you're subjecting yourself to?
This is why legalization inevitably makes trafficking worse, not better. It creates a situation where you need a constant, reliable supply of people to do a job very few people want to do but which makes a lot of money for people who don't have to do it. What do you think is going to happen?
I don't think that is generally true.
But the greater the stigma of sex workers and the more taboo the whole stuff is, the more likely are politicians to cave in to certain voter groups and make such annoying or penalizing laws.
But i also think, legalized and open sex work does help to reduce this stigma and taboo over time.
As for legal sex work, most commonly a brothel.
Not everyone wants to take clients home and a brothel also takes care of the "finding clients" part.
But yes, most countries that legalize sex work don't want to legalize pimping. But it is incredibly hard to write laws for that that forbid the unwanted parts but still allow sex workers legal access to various services. (And yes, i know that usually leads to strange constructions where on paper none of the sex workers in brothels are employees. But i am not sure that makes their position better legally. It costs them all the employee rights like paid sick leave and makes them responsible for all the business risks and obligations.)
Most legal sex workers are just self-employed and like it that way. And this will always be the majority of cases. When i am talking about legalization i am talking about taking that away, about crimminalizing all those independend sex workers.
Money. Like in every other industry in capitalist society. Less people wanting to do it means higher prices.
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I fear you miss my point. I'm not asking that you evidence that a given political party is anti-porn. I'm saying you haven't even established probable cause to treat that as even correlative with Bethesda's decision to re-release Skyrim, much less the causative role you ascribe to it.It's not just Skyrim porn that is a possible aspect of it, and besides all of this is guesswork. I don't know what's in Joe Biden or Larry Fink's head. There are no studies on US bureaucratic political opinions. I am not in Project 2025's policy team. And there won't be any paperwork if this does happen because it would be unpopular. It literally could be groupthink, indirect policy, or even a policy outcome. And yes this topic may seem obscure. Gergar12 is talking about Skyrim Porn or AI Porn. But it's part of a crackdown on freedom of expression, read the title. Republicans(officials, and influencers) are attacking sex workers, abortion, porn, and the ESGs, and Democrats and companies being Republican-lite will likely follow through with aspects of republican policy as they do with border policy.
Could I be wrong yes, but banning abortion, financial bans on porn, and so fore have consequences. If you want evidence here's evidence.
Republicans Are Coming to Take Your Porn (Again)
Republican state laws mandating age verification on porn sites give them the power to censor sexual speech and information across the internet.
Decriminalize Sex Work
Decriminalize Sex Work—DSW—is a national organization with a state-by-state strategy to end the prohibition of consensual adult prostitution
US hard-right policy group condemned for ‘dehumanising’ anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric
Project 2025, which seeks to ‘march into office’ with conservative ‘army’, accused of ‘far-right desire to turn America back to the 20s’
PS: I edited your post because Grammarly throw so many errors at me.
Your position that Bethesda is re-releasing Skyrim with the goal of hampering its modding community is already a poorly reasoned stretch in itself, and the idea that it's hampering the modding community with the aim of passive aggressively driving away the modders who created sex-related content is even moreso. My point is that even that is just the premise of your conspiracy theory that uses it to extrapolate that the re-release of Skyrim must be a sinister act of the government suppressing sexual freedom.
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I actually remember a news article a while ago about sex workers who did FIFO in sync with the mining company staff rotations in, I wanna say the Pilbara in WA, and made the same level of money relative to their industry doing that as the miners did mining. The a year later there was another one about independent escorts and brothel owners complaining about Tinder/Grindr et al enabling cost free hook ups at their expense.
Then explain why Microsoft won’t just release creation kit 2 early for starfield, work on elders scroll 6, etc. Either would being in boatloads of money.