Corner Cases Example

[andrewducker]

Here's a perfect one:
1)German employment law states that if you've been unemployed for over a year then you must take any job offered to you.
2)In a bid to cut down on the trade in women and other mistreatment of prostitutes, Germany has legalised brothels.

Can you guess what the end result of this is?

Read about it here.

I'm looking forward to reading your responses to this one :->

Comments

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

Most people don't want to work at any of the jobs that are available to them, and would prefer not to work if they had the option of doing so and surviving. I still fail to see what makes it OK to force someone to spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for most of their life doing a job they don't want to be doing, but automatically not OK if the job involves sex.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

One good reason is a balance of the consequences. If forcing that sex act has a very bad psychological effect on that person then that is a good reason not to force them to do that. Mainly because I'd rather live in a society where people are not oppressed and forced into prostitution (for reasons that hopefully you don't want explained?) but also the cost to society of supporting people so affected would massively outweigh any financial gain of them taking such a job.

In my opinion this would not just apply to sex, quite how broadly I'd define the rules and so on I'm not sure.

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

Until there is data on whether people who work in the sex industry are more likely to later need psychological help than anyone else, I won't assume that sex work is more psychologically damaging than any other of the possibly-demeaning jobs people work at in industrialized society. If we're to avoid forcing anyone to work at any job that is psychologically harmful, we'd have a few professors, researchers, and artists, lots of people receiving public assistance, and nobody to clean toilets or write Visual Basic code.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I wonder why it is that the view you have of the psychological impact of forced sex work differs so greatly from that held by the majority of other people.

Perhaps your experience of peoples feelings in this area is just randomly not representative of the whole and so your viewpoint is very skewed, perhaps mine is.

Do you not recognise that the emotional and psychological impact of just talking about these kinds of things, nevermind actually being forced to do them has had a significant effect on the majority of us posting?

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

Most people haven't done sex work, so I'm not sure why my opinion of it should be any less valid than the opinions of 10 million people who also haven't done sex work.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Your opinion should be less valid because you are making statements about how it would not be all that bad for people, when there is massive evidence of the damage done to people involved in the sexual trafficking industry, and when it flies in the face of what the majority of people believe, and indeed know to be true. I have never had my head stuck in a vice, but I know that such a thing would be pretty bad - how do I know this? Well one way is that I've experienced similar bad things in my life and its easy and obvious to extrapolate out.

Perhaps you would have no problem working in the sex industry, fair enough - but that is not the case for the majority of people.

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

Oh, really? Can you point me to the studies that show how people working in the sex industry in a country where the industry is legal are less psychologically healthy than the average?

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

I'd like to see that too.

In fact, I think I'm with catamorphism all the way through (barring the rape/power remark).

Personally, I'd probably rather work in a legal brothel than a fish factory (which I have done) or for a few of my former employers.

Any crap job can be very psychologically damaging, (though no-one takes you seriously if it's well-paid, indoors and not physically dangerous). You can get to the point of wanting to (and sometimes do) start crying in sheer misery as you get up to the office door. Of course in that situation, what you do is get another job.

I'm not sure I have any sympathy for someone so useless as to not be able to get any other job than prostitution, but who nevertheless objects to the idea.

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to see your and catamorphism's point here, but I gotta object to that last paragraph. In a bad job market, it is not only "useless" people who have a hard time getting jobs.

[andrewducker]

Hey - I _like_ Visual Basic.

And I've known several people who were raped who said that raping someone was worse than killing them. Indicating that the mental effects are significantly worse than, say, working in an office job.

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

And I've known several people who were raped who said that raping someone was worse than killing them.

A person who has just had an extremely traumatic experience is entitled to say this, but it's pretty insulting for anyone else to accept it at face value -- I think you might remember a discussion on this in kimberly_a's journal a while back.

Working as a prostitute because when the other option is not receiving unemployment compensation from the government is the same as being raped. If the idea of being a prostitute is so offensive to a person, they can panhandle for change, sponge off friends and family, eat out of dumpsters, or do any number of other things. If you say that these things would be worse than being a prostitute, you've just contradicted your earlier statements. Saying "if you don't consider this option, you won't get a monthly check from the government" is the same as saying "do this or I'll kill you".

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

pervert!