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While I agree with your argument that prohibition has seldom made anything better, the problem with prostitution is that it often does not happen voluntarily. While the transaction itself might still appear to be, in the background there are dire lives and more often than not human trafficking and extortion.
Germany has tried establishing sex work as “real” and regulated work for voluntary self-employed persons, including healthcare and consulting services. In the end this lead mostly to a steep increase in effectively illegal prostitution, as pimps used cover-constructs. Consequently forced prostitution esp. from eastern Europe flooded the marked with dirt-cheap offerings.
There is no easy solution for this. I believe that as with everything that happens within isolated milieus the only way to effectively tackle this problem is to reach out directly to the affected persons on a broad basis. But this is laborious and costly…
You raise some very good points, I don't want to pretend to have all answers.
Sex work is vulnerable work, and much depends on all parties involved earnestly waning to make and keep it safe.
As I was typing this, I thought that since we can't trust the private sector with this, what about forming a government agency to deal with licensing and care of sex workers.
But I quickly realized that the organizational issues are just part of the issues, there have been many, many examples of administrators abusing their position.
There is no quick fix for this, the one thing I can think of is a cultural shift to raise the status of the work, then it could be a way forward, but this takes time.
While I generally agree with your way of thinking, one problem I see is that higher status sex work (i.e. escort services) are not the issue but are already very expensive. The issues get more severe the closer you get to the lower end of the spectrum. And there it gets difficult in judging or controlling what really is voluntary and equal exchange of values.
More governmental control might be a solution worth exploring. This could also be realised by legalising sex work exclusively in controlled establishments. However that again leads to higher cost on all ends.
Sweden has banned buying sex but not offering it, so only the Johns are punished if caught. But that is no real solution imo and I am keen on seeing the long term effects of this.