I am fucking sick and fucking tired of people interfering with the free choice of individuals in any effort to "fix" society and "help" people.
Lawmakers and advocates, have some epistemic humility and acknowledge that your own perspective may be mistaken. Not everything is oppression. Not every activity is injustice. Sometimes, people just fucking disagree.
The goal of the legislation in question is specifically to help individuals that have been coerced, against their free will, into sex trafficking.
It is not about voluntary interactions between consenting adults.
The legislation might be misguided or ineffective--I haven't really looked into it--but it very definitely isn't about restricting the free choice of individuals.
It’s completely limiting free choice and voluntary interactions between consenting adults. A huge personals section just got shut down. Unless you think 100% of personal ads are coerced sex trafficking, which would be rather crazy opinion.
If you truly wanted to curb sex trafficking, you’d legalize prostitution, not drive it farther underground.
But at a certain point, it's reasonable to start objecting that an outcome was so obvious that people claiming they didn't intend it are either dishonest or incompetent, and in either case unfit to make the decision.
In this case, I suspect the answer is a little of each - a lot of anti-trafficking campaigns are run by people who openly oppose voluntary sex work, and also Congress is grossly incompetent at knowing which technology laws will limit free choice.
Given all that - I agree that it's worth knowing whether this was intended, but I worry "not our intent" becomes a shield for Congress to hide behind when they do things with horrible outcomes they were warned about well in advance.
Intent and actual outcome are completely different things until you manage a country. Then you gotta be 1000% goddam sure you’re coercing others for the good reasons, and your responsibility can’t be levied for an “Oops I did it again”.
I feel like one is taken for a fool's ride if you lead discussion on legislation based on legislative intent, rather than function. Where does one find the purpose of voter literacy laws? Or California's Proposition 8? Based on the overt statements of individual legislators?
it's still limiting if you define it to broadly. if i defined a law that said every owner of a home will be punished if somebody in that home smoked weed or did drugs.
Right now prostitution is associated with sex trafficking because it is illegal. There is no legal way to do the world's oldest profession.
If prostitution was legal and well-regulated like it is in many countries, then workers would have to be documented, they'd get workers' rights, etc. There are people willing to do sex work of their own free will, and if you create a normal market for it, then people will not resort to illicit, lower-quality secondary markets dependent on sex trafficking.
Here's the analogy: to reduce drug violence, legalize drugs.
Legal prostitutes can call the police for help from pimps or others trying to abuse or coerce them, without fear of arrest.
Legal prostitutes are incentivized to work with the police to report others being coerced, it’s competition.
Bringing things out into the open helps clean them up. Keeping them in the dark allows evil to multiply. The next time Prohibition helped the people it was trying to protect will also be the first time.
Also, and directly related to your Prohibition comment, and to war on drugs - it's a matter of economics. Supply and demand. There is strong demand that you can't really eliminate. If you keep supply illegal, then supply becomes handled by organized crime, and all proceeds from the sale of goods/services go into growing organized crime.
Thanks for your comment, and the others in the thread too. I think I must be tinted by how it works in Sweden. First of all, the word "trafficking" there is most of all associated with the trade of minors. Also, soliciting sex ("prostitution") is not illegal for adults. Buying the service is. This has some interesting implications. It caters to the "conservative base" who does not want to see fully legalized prostitution. It also protects "workers" who can always go to the police. It also makes it very clear, that unfortunately, there is a market for sex slaves, especially for children. Some will apparantly make an extra effort to pay for abusing a child. Given human nature, I expect these low-lifes must exist in the US too.
Which is why the Prohibition thing rings false with me, especially the alcohol one. Alcohol was pretty much enjoyed by everyone to various degrees. Buying sexual services, while popular, not as much. So it's an analogy, but not the greatest. (Also ignoring that most sexual services are bought by men, while alcohol was/is used to a much larger degree by both sexes.)
Whores don’t go to the police in Norway not because they won’t help with assault and such but because the police will get them evicted from their flats.
Traffickers would be even less likely to operate in Sweden if the penalty was death by crucifixion. Do you also support that?
Forgive me if I’m not especially impressed by the think of the children rhetoric. Drawing a line from Lutherans to modern day Sweden isn’t exactly hard. The judgmental attitude hasn’t changed one iota.
You're missing the fact that virtually no one wants to have sex with slaves. If a legal, regulated industry existed for people to get what they wanted, the illegal market would go away. AFAIK Nevada doesn't have a huge issue with sex slaves.
The goal is immaterial. The effect is an unconscientable abridgement of the rights to free speech and free association, all in the name of dubious and ineffective effort to prevent "harm", where "harm" is apparently defined as acting in a way contrary to utopian social engineers.
It’s not misguided, it’s deliberate. Broad restrictions on prostitution and adult services were wanted by conservatives based on family values, liberals are favoring regulations on speech due to identity politics. I’m sure both groups honestly want to help the trafficked, and they came together to both get what they want, and pat themselves on the back at the same time.
> Broad restrictions on prostitution and adult services were wanted by conservatives
I severely doubt that conservatives want anything of the sort. What they do want is for internet companies to take responsibility for keeping kids off their sites which is not that big of an ask if they would just stop their whining and do it.
Isn't this specifically tailored to address human trafficking concerns?
What makes you think this has something to do with kids on the internet?
I always had the impression that exploiters are rarely kids.
> which is not that big of an ask
Giving false credentials during signups is a more common practice than what is believed, especially for digital natives. How can you truly ascertain the age of users without mass surveillance practices?
The goal isn't relevant. Nobody opposes the goal of ending sex trafficking. The issue is passing laws that restrict freedom and seek to regulate the interpersonal behavior of adults at the point of a gun. Laws should be judged and scrutinized based on their actual impact, not the goals and desires of the people who draft them.
I've often thought that legislation that is enacted with a specific outcome in mind should come with an initial expiration date. At that point we could evaluate the effectiveness and unintended consequences and decide if the law should be made permanent.
If they wanted to help victims of sex trafficking, they'd stop arresting and deporting them when they're found. That's the whole reason they can't just go to the police or run away or ask for help from their clients. They don't want to be sent back to where they came from with no money.
> The goal of the legislation in question is specifically to help individuals that have been coerced, against their free will
The key is in the definition of coercion. Was violence threatened? Is a person physically restrained? If so, that's coercion. When the law starts to deal with "psychological coercion" it denies agency to adults.
Do you mean to lead discussion with what legislation intends or what legislation does? Because many things take on a life beyond what authors intend, and it's not like legislature, a contentious body, is one person with a single mind.
And I’m sick and tired of governments doing nothing to restrict the freedoms of companies and individuals to screw over people in order to profit. I guess it’s just different viewpoints.
Some would say that state provided healthcare restricts freedom and choice, I would say that not having to worry about paying for healthcare gives a person a huge amount of freedom.
People have different views of what constitutes freedom, and I certainly don’t see it as a universally good thing in every circumstance. I would say countries like the US are very “free”, and countries like those in Scandinavia, Germany perhaps, possibly less so along many lines, and yet the latter have a much higher quality of life, lower poverty, better education, etc.
> I am fucking sick and fucking tired of people interfering with the free choice of individuals in any effort to "fix" society and "help" people.
What is shocking is that it is the liberals who are now pushing for more censorship, more control and less individual freedom.
Growing up, it was usually the conservatives/religious who wanted rap, violent video games, blasphemy, etc banned and censored. And their argument was to "protect children, women and society". Now, the push for censorship and control is being spearheaded by the liberals. And just like with the conservatives, it is to "protect children, women and society".
What a sorry state of affairs we are in right now. So disappointing.
> Growing up, it was usually the conservatives/religious who wanted rap, violent video games, blasphemy, etc banned and censored.
You weren't paying attention—except for blasphemy, those things were from across the spectrum: the most prominent figure for censorship of music (including rap) was Tipper Gore, who was only “conservative” in the sense that the dominant faction of the Democratic Party is center-right. Similarly, the Clinton Administration was active in promoting online censorship in law.
> Now, the push for censorship and control is being spearheaded by the liberals.
It wasn't a liberal Congress that just passed the bill that has is discussing censorship, so I think again you are falsely attributing something they exists across the political spectrum tomone side, just making the error in the opposite direction.
> You weren't paying attention—except for blasphemy, those things were from across the spectrum:
I didn't say it was only the conservatives/religious. I said it was usually them. Sure, tipper gore was against rap, but it was also the liberals who defended rap music.
> It wasn't a liberal Congress that just passed the bill that has is discussing censorship, so I think again you are falsely attributing something they exists across the political spectrum tomone side, just making the error in the opposite direction.
Once again. I didn't say only liberals are censoring now. I said the liberals are the ones spearheading the push for censorship.
The conservatives/religious have always been for censorship. Now the liberals have joined them. Even more, they are the ones spearheading censorship in much of the internet, etc. I'm sure the conservatives/religious are more than happy to follow along.
Just because I said liberals are bad doesn't mean that I think conservatives are good. Liberals seem to always think that because they live in a black and white world. Liberals and conservatives can both be bad.
What we don't look at is how prostitution is tied to the financialization of higher education. We could end a lot more prostitution by forgiving student loan debt rather than using the police to intercede in between sexual partners to try to deduce their motives. If we make higher education free and forgive student loans the motivation to get money no matter what it takes will go away. There are escorts who got into the business to pay for medical school. We have driven the cost of education so high that students are willing to take amazing risks to avoid lifelong debt.
Governments have regulated human relationships for as long as there have been governments. Sex was under ecclesiastical law in medieval and early modern Europe, and adultery and prostitution have been criminalised and/or regulated from the early days of the American colonies.
"Big" government is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history; this long predates it.
On that note, I wonder how many people might disagree with the bill's heavy-handedness but don't want to be seen as "opponents" to something like FOSTA.
In several states adultery is still illegal, though I believe a misdemeanor in most, in some (Idaho, for one), it's a felony.
Regardless of how few people have been sanctioned criminally recently (and fun fact, in some of those states adultery is a crime only a woman can commit...), very very few politicians want to be the one to formally repeal laws against "the sanctity of marriage", however antique they may be.
They should stop enforcing laws about driving while intoxicating. It really cramps the style of some people I know. They should also stop regulating messaging and advertising on pharmaceuticals, because freedom of speech.... right?
I get that you complaining about encroachment upon libertarian ideals, but sometimes the complaints are just extreme baseless absurdities.
Maybe I am just having trouble empathizing since I don't go online shopping for sexual encounters.
Lawmakers and advocates, have some epistemic humility and acknowledge that your own perspective may be mistaken. Not everything is oppression. Not every activity is injustice. Sometimes, people just fucking disagree.