this volokh conspiracy post (if it doesn't come up, search for "panties") by glen whitman (guest-blogging from agoraphilia) describes the unintended consequences of a ban on the sale of young girls' used underwear -- it's gone underground, so the girls now meet up with the underwear fetishists in dark alleys instead of going through a middleman. it reminds me of a conversation i was having the other day, about the legalization of things like drugs and prostitution. the truth is, as whitman says, "banning a practice you find offensive rarely, if ever, means that the practice will disappear". banning drug use has utterly failed to prevent it, but has just created an entire side market in smuggling and violence. in principle, i believe that victimless crimes should not be crimes; if you want to screw up your life with drugs (or alcohol!) or by selling your body on the street, knock yourself out. if it gets to the part where you harm someone else, then we'll charge you with a crime for that. on the other hand, i also think it's likely that making these things perfectly legal could have some bad effects -- good kids who get hooked on drugs who would otherwise not have tried them, or who throw their lives away as prostitutes instead of staying in school. and i think society has a right and a duty to try and discourage these things. but it's clear simple bans don't really do this (or, at least, force a tradeoff that's ultimately a loser). what we should do is thinking hard about how to minimize the bad effects of such things while allowing adults to make their own choices as much as possible. i think the overall effect would be a decrease in crime and a reduction in danger to most people (whether from drug lords, STDs, or impure drugs).
June 25, 2004 11:33 AMCategories: politics
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