Hookernomics

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Subtitled The Business of Sex, it is a recent book, which the author encouraged me to review. He profiles the contemporary prostitution industry and offers his views on the best policy for dealing with it. One of his suggestions is for a walled-garden approach, in which there are some areas where prostitution is at least de facto legal while there are other areas where laws against prostitution are enforced.

He offers some simple theoretical hypotheses, e.g. that better birth control technology shifts the supply curve to the right and that desirable mates will prefer marriage to prostitution, so that the median prostitute will not be a desirable mate. He offers some back-of-the-envelope estimates of various sorts of prostitution activity. Although the estimates are not based on any formal research by the author, they seem to offer useful, reasonable bounds on the true numbers.

I read the book on part of a plane ride, and I found it breezy and worth my time. However, the content is heavily weighted toward the author’s opinions, which I often found unpersuasive. The passage that stuck with me the most was this:

The obvious thing is that both prostitutes and their customers are notorious liars. Prostitutes are paid to lie. Their job is to flatter the customer and play any role he wants them to play…On one level it’s all about showbiz, and, in that context, there is nothing wrong with it.

I find myself reacting mostly to the “notorious liars” phrase, which is a complete turn-off for me. It probably explains why I do not share the author’s positive outlook on prostitution. The “showbiz” phrase suggests that one could be entertained by it, just as one can be entertained by going to a play or movie where you know that people are just acting. But when you go to a play you remain separate from what takes place on stage. When I interact with other people, I have a strong preference for authenticity.

Related: Scott Sumner discusses the daughter test, and the author takes the position that he would be ok with it. I would not.

8 thoughts on “Hookernomics”

  1. >When I interact with other people, I have a strong preference for authenticity.<

    Which likely means prostitution (and similar types of entertainment) are not for you.

  2. The fallacy of the “daughter” test is that it seems to ignore what other opportunities might exist, and the realities in which the daughter lives. Would I rather she be a prostitute than starve to death? Be married to some horribly abusive man? Be a bank robber? Be a terrorist? Live in horrible crushing poverty I was somehow powerless to prevent?

    And what about the “son” test? Who wants to think about their sons paying for sex? But again, if the reality is being stuck in an awful relationship, or boiling over with passion that can never be expressed, etc, then what?

    And why, pray tell, would a legal safe fully understood transaction be worse than a son or grandson going on a “date” in which there was no formal “money for sex” but somehow the lavish dinner, shopping side trip, and so forth added up to the same, and there was always an intimate ending, any better? How is the daughter who from one or several men extracts a higher lifestyle in exchange for sex (implicitly, on subtle terms) “better” than one who simply presents a bill? Anybody who doesn’t see a great many kinds of subtle and not-so-subtle implicit exchange in many relationships isn’t looking very hard. (And has probably never been around college fraternities…) Anyone who doesn’t realize there are a great many “kept women” and for that matter “kept men” in the world isn’t looking.

    The alternative universe that everybody always seems to have in mind is that their offspring, of both sexes, live in stable harmonious nuclear famalies that produce offspring. One may suppose that natural selection selects for this in some way. Various traditional arrangements, including things like arranged marriages, religious demands that one accept children, etc. are clearly more or less aligned with this.

    But it’s not the reality for everybody.

  3. Part II – what about all of the women who are NOT my daughter, but end up in prostitution? I would I prefer that this be safe/legal with a path out, or would I prefer they be under the control of pimps or otherwise enslaved?

    Would I rather that my daughter be a free woman making real money as a prostitute, or perfer that see be enslaved by a pimp or brothel and prevented from making real money?

    What society on Earth does NOT have prostitution? Given the world reality, why do we continue to think we can “ban” it? [Probably related to the idea that the war on people who use drugs will actually prevent drug abuse issues….]

  4. …better birth control technology shifts the supply curve to the right and that desirable mates will prefer marriage to prostitution, so that the median prostitute will not be a desirable mate.

    Here are some images of mug shots of Montreal prostitutes from the 1940’s.

  5. Psychopaths, incidentally ( because I am on a psychopath kick if late as a kind of “empathy knockout” model) count their inability to be authentic as a strength. OTOH, they also seem to have an inability to not count everything of theirs as a strength.

  6. “It probably explains why I do not share the author’s positive outlook on prostitution.”

    As a libertarian, I’m assuming this doesn’t mean you don’t support legalization. I don’t see how any libertarian could oppose the right of two people to freely enter into a contract.

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