Yes, but consider if you have free college but again are unable to afford food because no one will hire you? What do you do? I think the answer is we need a society where it is not required for you to pay to exist.
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I donât know whether itâs automatically a barrier. Where I live (and I imagine a lot of places) there is a college of dental hygenists. There was a school that taught courses to become a dental hygenist not far from where I work years ago. The people hanging around there are lunch werenât rich people. The subway had ads for the school saying, âStuck in a dead end job? Become a dental hygenist!â
The thing is, without being able to be professionally certified, many of the people who became dental hygenists wouldnât have been able to get the job. Having a professional body say, âYes, this person is qualifiedâ takes a lot of heat off the dentist who is employing them. Similarly, you can imagine it being a lot easier to run a brothel if you knew that your employees had to meet standards. So it may actually create opportunities, and those opportunities would come with safe working environments.
I think it might limit opportunities to work in unsafe environments. To some extent thatâs not fair, itâs not fair to intentionally take away the market for a profession of last resort. But a huge part of this discussion is that itâs not really fair to leave people in that profession either. Coercion by the threat of starvation may be preferable on some level to coercion by organized criminals threatening violence, but itâs something we should be trying to stamp out.
And to be clear, I talking about a self-regulating body controlled by people who actually do the work, not some high-handed regulator.
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I mostly agree that it would be beneficial to offer a college and make it as accessible as possible and that we should encourage sex workers to go through that, but
Thatâs⌠not a great take. You are not going to be able to get rid of coercion by organized criminals threatening violence by using coercion by starvation. That is quite literally backwards, and you should try to get rid of the coercion by starvation first in order to get rid of the latter. People are generally smart and doing the best they can - if they are working in unsafe environments then that is probably not because they are choosing to do the wrong thing.
Put another way, we wouldnât say that the solution to child labor is to force children to go through colleges that teach them how to work safely in an industrial environment. Itâs also not to just blanket ban child labor and call it good. It is to fix the broken system thatâs forcing them to have to work when they could be doing so many other things.
Well clearly I expressed myself badly because I agree with everything you say to the contrary. And I certainly donât think it would ever be a good idea to tell people they canât sell sex.
But I recognize that what Iâm proposing might make life harder for some people who are currently selling sex. Itâs like getting a hair cut. Anyone is allowed to do it, but if you put up posters around town saying, âIâll cut your hair for $10â most people who see that poster are going to think, âReally? Iâd rather just go to one of the places that cut hair.â Creating a legitimate, destigmatized market is going to mean competition.
So I donât like the idea of hurting people already in the profession. But what I worry less about is making things worse for people who arenât currently in the profession may want to get into it as a last result option. The current situation there is really bad. It makes me think of unions. Anti-union activists make it sound like having unions makes it harder for people to get jobs. But I think workers rights means a better situation for everyone. I also like consumer protection, even though it creates barriers for new small businesses.
The problem is that even though there is enough to go around, we always feel like we are fighting over scraps. I agree that has to end. I think we end it by dreaming of a better future.
Also, letâs be clear that a self-regulating professional body for sex workers is never, ever going to happen.
I donât like this analogy. The whole reason why child labour is bad is because child arenât supposed to be responsible for themselves. And banning child labour is totally a good idea. Itâs just that a society thatâs used to child labour has to transition out of it.
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Itâs not a bug, itâs a feature.
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