So, this discusses UBI and sex work.
A lot of people want to ban sex work due to the coercion element of it. I have to ask, if sex work is so horrible and coercive, why don't we admit that for the rest of labor? it seems like our society functions on the presumption of freedom and agreeing to things in the market, but then we kinda acknowledge sex work as exploitative.
Me, being the progressive libertarian I am, am not opposed to sex work as a concept, but I agree that people should be free to partake or not to partake in it. As the essay points out, a lot of sex workers do it out of desperation, and that really isn't good.
Making it illegal isn't the answer though. It's the same flawed response as the war on drugs. We dislike certain behavior so we ban it. But banning it means that the people we're "protecting" are now treated as criminals for engaging in it. Which is messed up and even worse than just letting them do it. If they're gonna do it anyway, banning it and punishing those who engage in it just make those peoples' lives worse.
And yes, a UBI does address the concerns while preserving liberty. They even reference Van Parijs and his real libertarianism. Honestly, the problem of work and its exploitation lies in its involuntary nature. As I keep saying, I feel like the free market would work a lot better if people were free to choose whether or not to participate in work. Wages would be higher, working conditions would be better. Most of the problems with capitalism IMO aren't due to capitalism by its very nature, it's that capitalism seems to lack this core aspect of its philosophy. It claims to be for freedom, but then doesn't offer it. You need policies like UBI to actually ensure that freedom.
And yes, it depends on the UBI. Vida mentioned that in her essay. Well, the UBI needs to be high enough to give people enough freedom to effectively say no. And the UBI needs to be truly unconditional and not tied to work participation. A lot of people want to push a social duty to work in this book, but honestly, I think that duty is inherently contradictory to actually liberating people. We can either force people to work and deal with the logical consequences of that, including everything wrong that comes from that, or we can free people from this duty and let them choose what they wanna do. As I said in the previous essay, if we cannot achieve a UBI that is powerful enough to guarantee this freedom in real terms, we should push it as far as we can and then have as powerful of a regulatory state as we need. Even with a UBI I could see the need for some worker protections, and this should extend into the sex work industry. We need to make sure the wages are sufficient, the working conditions are sufficient, abuse isn't happening, etc. And that applies to all fields of work as well.
Speaking of sex work vs other kinds of work, I mean, while I can see why some would say sex work is different. I would say sex is, ideally, done in the context of love and the like, but honestly, my progressive libertarian philosophy overrides these concerns for me. I mean, I value people being able to behave voluntarily, and if people want to be paid for sex, and others want to pay for sex, then what's wrong with that? It's just the same as any other form of labor. A lot of physical labor, especially the really hard kind a lot of men do, is also very bad for the body. You could argue sexual labor can lead to STDs, pregnancy, etc, but working in a lot of fields can be hard and dangerous work. many people may be only seconds away from a massive industrial accident at any given time. It's possible to fall off a roof while trying to fix one. Even if you somehow make it to a ripe old age, your "golden years" may be full of chronic pain that came with a lifetime of hard labor. So yeah, let's just say, work sucks. Especially when not done voluntarily.
I also have seen comment sections on places like reddit where there have been AMAs for sex workers where they were asked their opinions on this stuff, and many seem very positive about their sex work. They make bank doing something they enjoy. Some think it's degrading, but I've heard stories from these people saying "real jobs" are worse. That the abuse that they put up with in real jobs is FAR more degrading than sex work. In a lot of sex work jobs, the girls get to choose to do what they're comfortable with, and no more. Whereas in traditional jobs, these same people are screamed at by bosses all day and have no say over what they do, and how they do it. That said, all things considered, is sex work really that bad, assuming it's regulated and people are free to engage in it as they want? We all know sex trafficking, exploitation, and pimps are real too, and yes, those situations should not be tolerated. But it seems like that stuff seems to happen mostly in illicit markets. So another argument against making it illegal. Keep it legal, regulate it, ensure people are treated well, and give people a UBI to say no.
As such, while I am supportive of sex work as a concept, I do understand that, like any other industry, if we wanna ensure that people are treated well, they should have a UBI that allows them to have the freedom as power to say no. I have no issue with this stuff if it's chosen freely, and if it is regulated in the workers' best interests. The problems come when we force people to do things in order to survive.
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