Prostitution 2.0 vs Prostitution 3.0: Law Professor vs Economist
I found this very interesting article by our favorite Professor about our favorite service industry.
Professor Scott Cunningham of the Economics Department at Baylor University, with Todd Kendall, also a PhD but not a professor conducted a survey of 700 sex workers in 2008 that is probably still the best source of actual information about the experience of women here in Commercial Sex World. A number of local ladies took the survey and some spoke to Dr. Cunningham and were apparently favorably impressed.
The lead article Cunningham and Kendall wrote was called “Prostitution 2.0” and argued, in part, that the Internet had changed the nature of sex work for those able to make use of it to, among other things, cut out the pimp middleman, build reputations as being honest and disease free (and skillful, sexy, sexual, good looking etc, etc) and to gain some information about which potential clients were OK to see and which were too dangerous, crazy, diseased etc, etc to risk. It drew a sharp distinction between “indoors" sex work (what nearly all of us prefer) to “outdoor” sex work: pimp-ridden, dangerous, few precautions against STD transmission, negative impact on neighborhoods and businesses.
Now comes Professor of Law Scott R. Peppet of the University of Colorado with an article entitled “Prostitution 3.0” available here:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...act_id=2196917. Per the abstract:
“It introduces into the legal literature empirical evidence from the economics and sociology of sex work showing that new, Internet-enabled, indoor forms of prostitution may be healthier, less violent, and more rewarding than traditional street prostitution. At the same time, it argues that these existing “Prostitution 2.0” innovations have not yet improved sex markets sufficiently to warrant legalization. Instead, to create a new “Prostitution 3.0” that solves the remaining problems of disease, violence, and coercion in prostitution markets would require removing legal barriers to ongoing technological innovation in this context, such as state laws criminalizing technologies that “advance prostitution.” This was in the Iowa Law Review Bulletin, you publish where you can.
So “P. 3.0” is a shot at “P. 2.0” and now Drs Cunningham and Kendall fire back. Fight!! I thought there were some interesting things in the reply, such as:
“
most of the social problems associated with prostitution are not inherent to the industry, but they are the logical result of the prohibition itself, a conclusion supported by the fact that other, similar, markets not subject to a prohibition experience few of the problems associated with prostitution. Therefore, we see prostitution 2.0’s value not so much in the specific technologies, but in the de facto partial legalization of prostitution those technologies created, in the sense that they made it much more difficult for the government to find and arrest prostitution market participants.”
And
“We argue that the proper conclusion to be drawn from the fact that violence, exploitation, and robbery still exist in the market is not that we need more or different types of technology (“prostitution 3.0”), but instead it simply reflects that the de facto legalization associated with prostitution 2.0 was only a partial, limited legalization, not a full de jure legalization.”
And
“we are also concerned that a proposal that would exempt from prosecution particular types of prostitution-facilitating technology, while proscribing others, presumes too much foresight into the future development of the prostitution market, and too much wisdom on the part of lawmakers and industry regulators… Therefore, we think some skepticism is warranted regarding our elected officials’ ability to adopt the right technologies. (This is know as “Industrial Policy” or “picking winners” in Economics at large and is out of favor. Cunningham is an economist, Peppet is a lawyer.) Experimentation with broader forms of liberalization would allow technology in the prostitution industry to develop more organically, taking advantage of the creativity and wisdom of the full set of entrepreneurs and market participants." (That is to say, our lovely ladies and the website people who support them.)
Another salient point, IMHO:
“Violent offenders in the prostitution market know that it is unlikely for a victim to file a police report because in order to file a police report, one must admit to the police an involvement in an illegal activity.Thus, it is arguably the prohibition that generates this negative externality (violence), and it is the de facto partial legalization associated with prostitution 2.0 technologies that has diminished to some degree these externalities.
It is the marketplace that civilizes man, and prohibitions on the marketplace that make life nasty, brutish, and short.” (!!!)
This paraphrase of the Seventeenth Century John Locke’s very famous phrase is the most striking thing about the whole article and argument. Locke said “In a state of Nature Life is nasty, brutish and short.” That was in the The Leviathan, 1651. Locke thought people instituted Government (in the form of Kings) to reduce the nastiness, moderate the brutishness and length the span of life. Economist Cunningham thinks that it is the Market that has done so. An unregulated free market presumably. And presumably he reveals himself as an old fashion Libertarian. I say old fashion since it was once the central tenant of Libertarianism to “Legalize Freedom” by repealing as many restrictive laws against what you could drink, smoke, inhale, swallow or inject, who you could have consensual sex with,in what manner, what you could own,where you could go or live and how, as possible. In the decades during which some of the economic ideas of libertarianism were partially adopted by Republicans everything fell away except the right of the rich to get richer, possibly because they were funding the “thinkers” and politicians. But here is Dr Cunningham still willing to think about the non-rich and non-financial transactions like it is Nineteen Sixty something. I like it.
I liked this bit too:
“With respect to the limited opportunities faced by street prostitutes, we fail to see how making illegal one of the few opportunities these unfortunates have to support themselves is obviously helpful.”
“Commodification” is also discussed (the Law Professor deplores the alleged commodification of women in sex work. His solution is to continue to attempt to put them in jail. Oddly that doesn’t sound like a good solution.) The Economist seems to take rather a lot of satisfaction from the 61.8% of the surveyed internet-based sex workers who kiss their clients and imagines that commodification is thereby reduced. I suppose I have been lucky in that of the 30+ ladies whose company I have had the pleasure of experiencing only one did not kiss at all. A few were rather pro forma about it but many more were enthusiastic (always use mouthwash and a tongue scraper too).
However I am not at all sure what the question is to which “kissing” is the answer.
Cunningham and Kendall conclude with: “
the key social problems traditionally associated with prostitution may in fact be the result of the legal prohibition on prostitution, rather than anything inherent to the provision of prostitution services itself. In our view, the partial amelioration of these problems after the introduction of the internet and other technologies does not reflect anything special about those technologies, but instead reflects the de facto partial liberalization from the prohibition they brought with them. While we do not believe the available evidence is sufficient to warrant sweeping conclusions as to appropriate policies, we think the weight of the evidence suggests greater value in continued experimentation with further de jure liberalizations, rather than in support for continued prohibition on most forms of sex work, as proposed by Peppet.” De Jure means “in law” of course.
They point to a “natural experiment” in Rhode Island when a court “found the state’s criminal statutes prohibited street solicitation, but not commercial sex exchange more generally. While prostitution increased following the decision, surprisingly there was no observable deterioration in public health or violence towards women. On the contrary, the expansion of indoor sex work following the 2003 decision was followed by historically large declines in both reported rapes against females and gonorrhea incidence among males and females, with no substantial change in other crimes.” Well!! I think that State re-prohibited sex work as soon as the Legislature got around to it so as to prevent unemployed vice cops from roaming the streets attacking citizens.
Final note: Law Professor Peppet suggested that “prostitution would only be permitted if participants passed four separate tests:
(1) identification of any sexually transmitted infections;
(2) verification of criminal history;
(3) verification that the sex worker was not coerced or “trafficked”; and
(4) biometric identity verification.”
All to be provided by Technological advances to be named later. Reading that I thought that portable technology that could determine whether a person was suffering from a STI seemed unlikely but that very afternoon I came across a group that claims to be working on a field test for STI that would use a hand held device into which a smart phone would be docked to read the results of a test run by a miniaturized lab set in the dock. I do not remember where the article was but Googling indicates several groups are working on several such portable med test kits. The one working on an STI test intends to field test it elsewhere in the world given the FDA’s hostility to innovation.
Prostitution 2.0 vs Prostitution 3.0: Law Professor vs Economist
I am (happy? intrigued?) to see these socioeconomic studies of sex work inching closer toward accuracy. In my experience this "culture" is a labyrinth of nooks and foxholes where strange and stranger participants find refuge. I can't think of a single stereotype that adequately identifies this "hobby". Moreover, each region of the US bears its own personality. Texas, for example, dominates the ECCIE forum and it is here that this Internet "community" shapes the public (or not so public) image of escorts. Even that assumption is somewhat inaccurate, ECCIE is just the tip of the iceberg! 
