
Fall of the Brothel Industry - jimsojim
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/10/the-decline-of-the-american-brothel/411682/?single_page=true
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jensen123
I find it strange that prostitution is illegal in much of the world. Many
people basically seem to be like this: if they don't like something, then they
want to ban it. They don't seem to think much further than that. Alcohol
prohibition is probably the best example of what happens when you ban
something: it doesn't go away, but you get lots of crime etc.

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A_COMPUTER
People noticed that crime happened around certain types of establishments.

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sobkas
And then ignored what they noticed and implemented their
prejudices/aversion/"moral values" as laws.

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A_COMPUTER
It's funny how pragmatic decisions you keep having to make turn into social
norms after a while, and then you don't have to keep making them.

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chaostheory
The internet is not the main culprit for the decline of both the brothel and
prostitution; it's only helping to accelerate it. The main reason is probably
due to the Sexual Revolution, as well as the lowered importance of marriage in
modern society. It's no longer taboo to engage in sex outside of marriage and
divorce is commonplace and no longer a scandal.

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zzalpha
_It 's no longer taboo to engage in sex outside of marriage_

Oo

I don't know what planet you live on, but I'm fairly sure, side from open
marriages where the couple mutually agrees to this, sex outside marriage isn't
so much taboo as explicitly ruled out by definition.

And while divorce may not be a "scandal" per se, its certainly not considered
desireable.

In short, you seem to have a bizarre view of marriage in the modern world.

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bblough
It sounds like you're taking "sex outside marriage" to mean "sex with outside
partners, while married."

I think the intended meaning here is "sex without being married" (or at least
that's how I interpret it).

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zzalpha
Doh... You're absolutely right...

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ZoeZoeBee
It's time we legalize prostitution to bring it out of the shadow's. Its naive
to pretend it does not exist, the illegality of it only hurts those who engage
in it for a living whether they are doing so willingly or not. Keeping it
illegal on moral high grounds leads to unintended consequences like sex
trafficking and criminal charges the effects which last a lifetime.

Path2Freedom is trying to raise money for a $20 million dollar 100 acre
refuge/community for victims of sex trafficking

[http://www.path2freedom.org/](http://www.path2freedom.org/)

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gilgoomesh
Brothels are legal where I live (Australia). It's always a bit strange to see
U.S. TV shows where prostitution is a crime.

That said, just because legal brothels exist, doesn't mean illegal
prostitution stops. Pay attention to the news for a few years and you'll still
periodically hear about arrests for illegal types of prostitution (sex
slavery, underage prostitution, etc).

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derefr
True, but in places (like Australia, or Amsterdam) where you go all the way
and _unionize_ prostitution, it's much, much easier to catch the illegal
types: you just raid anything that looks like an unregistered/unlicensed
prostitution operation.

The main problem with catching sex trafficking and other sexual exploitaton,
usually, is that there's so much "grey market" prostitution that isn't really
hurting anybody, that law-enforcement tends to just ignore the whole mass as
something they don't have the resources to confront or enough information to
prioritize. Creating a whitelist and getting all the voluntary sex workers on
it gives you a manageably-smaller set of non-whitelisted cases to investigate.

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lexcorvus
_It has one star on Yelp._

At the time of writing, there are only two reviews total, one of them
obviously post-Odom.

 _just 12 of the state’s 16 counties_

Just? 12/16 = 75%. That's not "just."

Who is editing this stuff?

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stickfigure
Why isn't this the top rated post? No matter what you think of the subject
matter, the newspeak is running bold and thick in this piece. It's like the
dihydrogen monoxide scare without the irony.

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gfody
> Las Vegas, the Times Square of America

isn't Times Square the Times Square of America?

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mbrameld
Times Square is the Times Square of NYC. One small part of a larger whole with
lots of flashing lights.

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barkingcat
The was a Conservative attack ad in the recent Canadian election that says in
Chinese that the Liberals will make brothels open in Canadian neighborhoods.

Obviously this was a really stupid move. Good thing the Conservatives lost.

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logicchains
I find this ironic, as I've lived in a few cities in mainland China and it was
almost impossible to walk more than a couple blocks without seeing a "massage
parlour" or the like. In spite of it being nominally illegal there, China
seems a lot more tolerant of prostitution than the average US/Canadian city,
so I don't imagine an ad like this would have much effect.

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beachstartup
this is not ironic at all.

do you know why people immigrate from places like china to places like canada?
maybe the fact that there's a brothel every 2 blocks in china has something to
do with it.

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logicchains
>do you know why people immigrate from places like china to places like
canada? maybe the fact that there's a brothel every 2 blocks in china has
something to do with it.

None of the Chinese I know here in Australia came here for that reason, and I
certainly can't see them changing their votes based on a party's attitude
towards brothels. Although I suppose prostitution being legal here may have
something to do with that; the ones who were hated it enough to migrate away
from it obviously wouldn't migrate to a country where it's legal.

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a3voices
But what about the rise of Backpage prostitution?

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chaostheory
Well there's the question of how much of it is being provided by sex slaves.
Still, prostitution is not as wide spread as it was in the US before the
1960's.

