The law has been set to prevent children from being taken advantage of by adults. Being capable of making the decision and being able to make the decision properly are two different things - the law is there to protect you even when you don't think you need it. At 17 I didn't think a lot of things were good for me. It would have been easy for someone to trick me into doing something I shouldn't - that benefits them way more than it does me. What you are suggesting is that we should be okay with this. The law, precedent, and public opinion all disagree with you.
> What you are suggesting is that we should be okay with this.
Anyone who can read my comment above can see clearly that you are putting words in my mouth.
> The law, precedent, and public opinion all disagree with you.
Except for all the places where law, precedent, and public opinion agree with an age of consent of 17?
The whole point is that there is not one single hard and fast rule that defines the boundaries of ethics in prostitution. So many of the comments here (including yours) portray a complicated situation as clearly black and white. Of course it doesn't help that in this particular case many folks are talking past each other because we're all intermingling various interrelated topics:
* Stallman's remarks and forced resignation
* The age of consent
* The specific case of Epstein's island
* Prostitution
I suspect that if we were to explicitly comment specifically on one point or the other that we'd all find we agree much more that we appear to.
Anytime sex with children comes up there are dozens of HN accounts who'll post mind-boggling shit. "But is abuse really that harmful?", "consensual paedophilia isn't so bad", "prostitution is the same as a burger flipping job but better paid", "well, okay, this child was kidnapped, drugged, and raped and then sold via small ads for further rape, and everyone involved knew that, but do we really want to stop those ads? Isn't that the start of a slippery slope?".
