toddjh said:
Hmm? I think "it can't possibly get any worse" is one of the best arguments for making changes. It means you have nothing to lose.
It's a very bad argument. It sounds as if you don't know what you're doing, you don't know if your solution is going to work, but you might as well try to do
something, since "it can't possibly get any worse".
I don't know where you get that from. You're saying you don't think the presence of legal prostitution would reduce the presence of illegal prostitution at all? I can't agree with that. I think a great many customers would prefer to go the legal route, even if it is more expensive.
No, that's not what I'm saying. Maybe it would. Maybe it would even bring more customers, those who didn't want to go to an illegal prostitute. In that case it wouldn't reduce illegal prostitution, it would increase the number of johns instead.
And you do tend to take the point of view of the consumer, don't you?
The title of the article is, "Why are many people in developing countries poor?" It does not attempt to address the question of poverty generally, it attempts to address the question of why developing countries have so many more poor than elsewhere. Frankly, I don't think it does a very good job with that. It then attempts to link that issue to the distribution of wealth within developed countries,
Thank you! There it was!
by telling us that politicians say things I've never heard them say. Perhaps it's just the U.S., but I've never heard anyone say wages are too high. In fact, in the last presidential election, I heard both candidates say they thought the minimum wage ought to be raised.
Politicians and employers in Europe say it all the time. (BTW, did Bush then raise the minimum wages after the election?)
quote:
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As "technology improves" a lot of people are made redundant. Technological improvement in a market economy does not better the situation of poor people, sorry!
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This is demonstrably untrue. Poor people today are much better off than they were a couple hundred years ago. Almost unbelievably so. Pretty much no one in the United States is starving. Even among the very poor, most have electricity, clean water (hot and cold), adequate heating, refrigerators, televisions, and even computers. They cannot be turned down for medical treatment, if required. I imagine the situation is much the same in Europe.
No, it is demonstrably true! It depends: When a company introduces new technology to turn out more goods using fewer workers, it may simply lay off the rest - or it may become more competitive and hire more people (again). Or it may move to Mexico. Or ... In Denmark many slaughterhouses are moving to Poland. My point was: technological improvement in a market economy doesn't take place because the workers are going to benefit from it. And very often they don't!
One of the apparent contradictions in a capitalist economy is that when you make things easier to produce, people lose their jobs, i.e. their way of earning a living. (Didn't the article cover this?)
If one considered your article from some web site to be the inerrant truth, that might be a problem. But like I said, all you have to do is look at the real world to see that that simply isn't the case.
Apparently you've never heard about people in the real world being laid off as a result of industrial rationalization. OK, then you haven't.
Okay, I now understand your position, but I hope you can understand why people are confused about what you're saying.
No, I can't, but I can understand why you would be confused at the point where I confused
abolish with
forbid. (And I was confused because I had to make sense of too many opponents simultaneously). The rest of the things I've written are very consistent.
You said repeatedly that you're not in favor of abolishing prostitution (meaning one thing), and then you turn around and say you are (meaning something different). It's hard to follow exactly what you're talking about when the context doesn't make it clear which synonym you mean.
No, don't pretend that I suddenly "turn around". From the very beginning I've tried to drive the point home that poverty is what makes people choose prostitution for a living. And along the way I was accused of wanting to forbid prostitution. In one, only one, paragraph I used the word
abolish incorrectly (instead of
forbid). As soon as you made me aware of that, I made it clear. At that one point it wasn't just "hard to follow exactly what you're (= I'm) talking about", it was impossible. But after the clarification it should no longer be a problem. (And, by the way, it wasn't a "synonym". And, no, I won't hold it against you from now on.)
Step 1: Steal underwear.
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Eliminate poverty.
I don't know what underwear and stealing has to do with this.
Again, why do you focus on prostitution exclusively?
I don't.
Would you say you are also in favor of abolishing waiting tables, or working at the cash register at Wal-Mart?
I'm not in favour of the circumstances that force these alternatives on people.
Those are also jobs that people would only take when they need money.
Let me, with no irony, assure you that I'm very glad that you write "also"!
What's the difference, except that you find prostitution more distasteful personally? I'd really like an answer to this.
I have answered that question a million times by now. You and everybody else
are well aware of the differences between a waiter and a prostitute: One has to wait tables, but not sleep with the customers, for the other it's the other way round.
I DO NOT SAY: PROSTITUTION BAD, WAITRESSING GOOD!!!
OK?! Please don't confuse me with the people who do!
