tisonlyi

The illegality of prostitution, drugs, anti-social behaviour, etc, etc, are positions of morality where a section of society has tried and utterly failed to convince the mass of the population that they shouldn't engage in a certain kind of behaviour.

The illegality doesn't stop the behaviour, in fact it can and does act contrary to the interests of those who instantiated the laws as a means of social control. See the drug laws as an example; illegality creates a vastly overpriced marketplace with enormous profits to be gained solely because of the laws and their enforcement. The laws against drug use thus directly lead to MORE involvement in the drug trade by individuals who wish to enrich themselves no matter the risk - especially in those societies which exalt those who take risks to gain material wealth.

You can't really expect people not to break patronising, moralising, high-handed laws and cash in on such a situation when the rewards for doing so can be enormous.

Prurient sex laws create an atmosphere of fetishism which stimulates demand for the object of the fetish/prurience. See porn in the UK as a prime example of this (UK: number one consumers of internet pornography per browser)

What a person wants to do with their body, how they want sell it, what they want to put in it and in what manner should always be regulated in the _basic_ interest of rationalising harm to society but they should never be made illegal.

Laws stop no crimes from being committed, and make criminals of only those unfortunate enough to be caught while without sufficient opportunity or resources to cheat the system of enforcement.

maybe i should have said 'game' instead of 'cheat'.

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"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." - Winston Churchill, 1937 --{ORLY?}--