Should brothels be banned?

[Theon {HUNGRY WOLF} Stark]

Haha that's pretty funny. Yeah, she is dumb, but does that matter in a brothel scenario? On a serious note, Emma Watson is actually likable so I think I'd also be much more likely to have a crush on her rather than Megan.

I did not, but legalizing prostitution won't stop illegal prostitution. I don't think giving women legal rights over their own body has anything to do with it. Prostitution is illegal in some of the most liberal and progressive countries.

No, it wont. Only making laws doesn't serve any purpose. Implementation of law does. But making laws is first step in right direction. If there aren't laws, there will be chaos all around.

[Deicida]

Well, I'm not the kind to go into brothels, so it's not really the right question for me. I don't want just sex, but rather a well-rounded relationship to go along with it. So for me, that colors how I find women attractive, even if I am just thinking about a "just sex" scenario like a brothel, which I wouldn't be in anyway.

As far as the legalization stopping illegal prostitution, I agree. Nothing will ever completely stop it. However, legalization would put a significant dent in it.

I completely agree. We were talking about celebrities, so I didn't think that applied since we really don't know much about their personalities.

No, it won't stop illegal prostitution per se, but I think it can make it easier for the criminal system to fight human trafficking, underage prostitution, slavery and the like

No, it wont. Only making laws doesn't serve any purpose. Implementation of law does. But making laws is first step in right direction. If there aren't laws, there will be chaos all around.

I think in the end the effort would be about as effective as the war on drugs.

[Ibbison from Ibben]

No.

Regulate it. Tax it. And make sure the tax revenue goes toward a safety net system so no one is forced into working in a brothel if they don't want to.

[JonSnow4President]

I completely agree. We were talking about celebrities, so I didn't think that applied since we really don't know much about their personalities.

I think in the end the effort would be about as effective as the war on drugs.

That doesn't make sense.

You're saying taking an illegal act that has proven to be impossible to enforce, and making it legal which has shown to allow for taxability and quality control is comparable to the continued illegalizatiion of drugs?

[Deicida]

No.

Regulate it. Tax it. And make sure the tax revenue goes toward a safety net system so no one is forced into working in a brothel if they don't want to.

Would you really be willing to pay more taxes for that?

[JonSnow4President]

Would you really be willing to pay more taxes for that?

You mean like the sin tax smokers pay on cigarettes, or the tax levied on gasoline? A tax that I can avoid by not buying that product? You bet your sweet ass I would.

Edit: Not rendering an opinion on your ass. While I am sure you are quite attached to it, I am unaware of its relative sweetness.

[juanml82]

I think in the end the effort would be about as effective as the war on drugs.

I'm not so sure. Legal prostitution can freely advertise, which would give it a legs up in competing with illegal prostitution (ie, slavery or underage prostitution), whereas illegal drugs can't advertise (well, legally). And since you have advertisement (as well as municipal regulations and authorizations for brothels) law enforcement will have an easier time in locating and inspecting brothels. Imagine policemen, or mere municipal inspectors, entering brothels without needing a warrant, asking all prostitutes to identify themselves and using finger print readers to check their identities against an id database. Should those prostitutes identities check a missing people database or be unidentified (ie, illegal immigrants), the brothel could be forced to pay a hefty fine, even if actual trafficking can't be proved.

I'm not saying this is the absolute, best, invincible, one and only solution for human trafficking, but I think it would help make things a lot easier than banning prostitution and hiding it underground.

[Ferocious Veldt Roarer]

Considering it's in the "A Song of Ice and Fire: The Novels" subforum, not in the "General Chatter", the issue of forced prostitution is marginal: from what we've seen, coercion is an exception rather than the rule. But you guys aren't discussing the books anymore, are you?

[JonSnow4President]

Considering it's in the "A Song of Ice and Fire: The Novels" subforum, not in the "General Chatter", the issue of forced prostitution is marginal: from what we've seen, coercion is an exception rather than the rule. But you guys aren't discussing the books anymore, are you?

Yeah, I suppose that did get off topic.

I think, given the ASOIAF world, it is political suicide to attempt to ban the brothels. Taking them away from Littlefinger could be good though. In all honesty, the brothels don't strike me as the most exploitive mechanism within Westeros.

[Winterfell is Burning]

Yeah, I suppose that did get off topic.

I think, given the ASOIAF world, it is political suicide to attempt to ban the brothels. Taking them away from Littlefinger could be good though. In all honesty, the brothels don't strike me as the most exploitive mechanism within Westeros.

Not more than force thousand of levies to their deaths in wars they quite often don't understand the reasons for happening.

[Dorian Martell]

I'd rather have this (Jennifer Aniston, age 45) than tMegan Fox, age 28. I'm 23.

Edit: *Assuming a situation where I'm in a brothel, and they are both willing potential suppliers. Link borderline NSFW.

I would hit that like Tyrion hit Joffery after the kings landing riots

Also, football (whether it's what the US calls football or what the rest of the world does) and basketball players, as well as most athletes, are essentially done in their careers at 35-40 years old, some even earlier due to injuries, and no one calls those professions degrading or that they should be banned.

I am of the opinion that athletes make way too much money

I know they are not everyone's, but they are the majority's.

Sure that only makes sense, but everyone makes some assumptions about people based on their appearance, occupation, etc. before getting to know them on a personal level. I think most people would prefer to get to know a surgeon rather than a janitor.

Shallow people yes. The presupposition that an interaction with a surgeon is some how "better" than an interaction with a custodian is elitist drivel. Folks are welcome to it but it it what it is.

[JonSnow4President]

I would hit that like Tyrion hit Joffery after the kings landing riots

I am of the opinion that athletes make way too much money

Shallow people yes. The presupposition that an interaction with a surgeon is some how "better" than an interaction with a custodian is elitist drivel. Folks are welcome to it but it it what it is.

Thanks for the backup. Second best scene in the movie (behind this [if you haven't seen the movie, they're a bunch of loosely associated strangers pretending to be a family to smuggle some drugs). I wouldn't watch it if your boss is right behind you, but it's not too risque.

[Deicida]

That doesn't make sense.

You're saying taking an illegal act that has proven to be impossible to enforce, and making it legal which has shown to allow for taxability and quality control is comparable to the continued illegalizatiion of drugs?

I was making a comparison along the lines of 'as useful as nipples on a breastplate' without drawing any other parallels.

You mean like the sin tax smokers pay on cigarettes, or the tax levied on gasoline? A tax that I can avoid by not buying that product? You bet your sweet ass I would.

Edit: Not rendering an opinion on your ass. While I am sure you are quite attached to it, I am unaware of its relative sweetness.

I think the cost of enforcing a law like this could easily exceed the amount of taxes you could collect that way.

lol I assure you my ass is pretty sweet.

I'm not so sure. Legal prostitution can freely advertise, which would give it a legs up in competing with illegal prostitution (ie, slavery or underage prostitution), whereas illegal drugs can't advertise (well, legally). And since you have advertisement (as well as municipal regulations and authorizations for brothels) law enforcement will have an easier time in locating and inspecting brothels. Imagine policemen, or mere municipal inspectors, entering brothels without needing a warrant, asking all prostitutes to identify themselves and using finger print readers to check their identities against an id database. Should those prostitutes identities check a missing people database or be unidentified (ie, illegal immigrants), the brothel could be forced to pay a hefty fine, even if actual trafficking can't be proved.

I'm not saying this is the absolute, best, invincible, one and only solution for human trafficking, but I think it would help make things a lot easier than banning prostitution and hiding it underground.

Valid points, but I still don't think it would be able to compete with illegal prostitution, even with advertisement. First of all, the price. Illegal prostitutes are almost guaranteed to be cheaper, due to being paid very little as well as taxes. Anonymity is also an issue - I think most people would prefer to be as discreet as possible when hiring an escort. Any law attempting to legalize prostitution would make that difficult. I can imagine a lot of clients would also value their ability to whatever they want to/with the person they hired. Slavery makes that a lot easier than legal prostitution.

I don't doubt that what you're proposing would have some positive effect on the industry where human rights and public health are concerned, I just don't think it would be very significant.

I would hit that like Tyrion hit Joffery after the kings landing riots

I am of the opinion that athletes make way too much money

Shallow people yes. The presupposition that an interaction with a surgeon is some how "better" than an interaction with a custodian is elitist drivel. Folks are welcome to it but it it what it is.

I'm not shallow. Shallow means considering looks more important than personality. If I know nothing about someone's personality, I have to go by what I do know about them. The rest is statistics.

Randomly select a person from Haiti and one from the US. Chances are the American is wealthier - I suppose you would call me racist for making that assumption. That's the same concept. It may be elitist, but it is certainly not drivel.

[Dorian Martell]

I'm not shallow. Shallow means considering looks more important than personality. If I know nothing about someone's personality, I have to go by what I do know about them. The rest is statistics.

Randomly select a person from Haiti and one from the US. Chances are the American is wealthier - I suppose you would call me racist for making that assumption. That's the same concept. It may be elitist, but it is certainly not drivel.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shallow

Check out definition 3

A person is not a statistic. As for the Haitian/American thing, that is not racist, that's economics and it is not the same concept as Elitist Drivel

[WhitewolfStark]

I tend to go with the opinion that history has shown us that legislating morality (Prohibition in the United States for instance, the Drug War in the United States as well) only makes the problem worse, not better.

Given those examples, I come from the opinion that exploitation should be stopped, but outright banning it wouldn't be the thing that solved the problem. At most, banning it is only attacking the symptom and not underlying problems at the stem.

Why are these girls selling their bodies? What put these girls into that position that made them think it would be a good thing? etc. These are questions that should be asked first and foremost. Before banning prostitution, I think one should know the prostitute--really know the prostitute (get your mind out of the gutter)--and get a good idea of what makes such a line of work their choice of occupation.

Lastly, OP, the way the prostitutes are depicted in the show is a fossilized archetype that is divorced from its source material. That original view of prostitutes as "fun loving" and "in charge" was how most pre-20th Century people saw prostitutes. And it goes back actually to a critique of Capitalism that became popular in the mid-18th Century during the early days of what we'd call "modern capitalism". The critique of Capitalism hinged on the argument:

Capitalism makes a whore of us all.

It comes from the mid-18th Century play: The London Merchant, which is about an Elizabethan era merchant who is seduced by a scheming prostitute (who acts like a Devil or a Vice from a Medieval morality play) into doing the most horrible thing an early Capitalist could imagine: stealing from your employer! The play is melodramatic--but it was popular for over 50 years because employers would hire actors to perform the play for their employees as a kind of early "employee training video" which they saw as being all about the evils that come when employees steal from their employers.

An underlying current though in the play is that the prostitute is the better capitalist than anyone else in the play, manipulating and scheming and ultimately getting what she wants (even if she gets caught in the end--no matter she did all she wanted to accomplish anyway). That association of prostitution with capitalism sat uneasy with audiences at the time and the play answers the way to keep the "prostitute" side of capitalism at bay by people restraining themselves through this new moral theory called Sentimentalism. The argument being that we wouldn't let capitalism make a whore of us if we just managed to maintain a set of moral codes that we all agreed to. At the end of the play, the protagonist is redeemed into the new moral Sentimental code before he's sentenced to die (because along the way the prostitute convinced him to kill his uncle), while the prostitute cackles unrepentantly as she's hung. That conversion is important narratively as it then postulates that the protagonist then got to go to heaven, despite his crimes, because he repented and accepted the moral code.

But it's not really that far of an evolution to see how the prostitute portrayed in that play was how most people viewed prostitutes for a long time: "in control", "manipulative", "fun and tempting", etc. It's an old old way of viewing things--mayhaps as old as the profession itself.

[Deicida]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shallow

Check out definition 3

A person is not a statistic. As for the Haitian/American thing, that is not racist, that's economics and it is not the same concept as Elitist Drivel

Everyone is a statistic. Is this "elitist drivel" to you?

[alayne-stone-cold-fox]

Banning brothels would be a great way to neuter Littlefinger financially, assuming you were aware of his ambitions and you were able to enact the edict well before he could gain any significant capital from it.

i think at this point he has enough connection and savvy to continue a prostituion business on the downlow.

Everyone in kings landing knows what he does, so all the lords and rich clients he had before would just be like 'ah yeah sure stannis of course, no whore anymore, not for us. nope. totally illegal' and then just hit up LF on the downlow for their old regular.

You know. Like modern politicians.

[Deicida]

<no reply>

So how about a formal surrender and we shake hands?

[Dorian Martell]

Everyone is a statistic. Is this "elitist drivel" to you?

Academic achievement and the bell curve for grading it is one thing. leaving out all of the folks that are highly skilled yet do not thrive in an academic environment and assigning value to a person based on their academic proficiency or career is Elitist Drivel.

So how about a formal surrender and we shake hands?

I accept your surrender and will call for my Maester to tend to your wounds after I will slowly remove the dagger from your neck and watch you lick the blade clean. Then we will shake hands.

[Suzanna Stormborn]

When you criminalize something that is in demand, then criminals take it over, but it definitely does not stop.

Outlawing anything that is in demand is stupid as it will still be sold and done. Only difference is, instead of the government getting their cut, the criminals in charge keep all the profit.

So Stannis was very wrong in this idea.