> [economic coercion] can be any situation which a significant differential in economic resources is involved

This is a pretty benighted attitude. Where you're choosing between a comfortable life and a more comfortable life, why does picking the second option indicate coercion?

I didn't mean to imply that imminent starvation is the only example of a desperate economic situation. I was just using that as an extreme example.

You implied that just because someone could be a "cook at a restaurant" means there isn't any economic duress. But that's not true. Thanks to modern demand scheduling, many of these service jobs are both extremely poorly-paying as well as physically unpleasant. Taking advantage of someone in that position is taking advantage of economic duress.

Obviously there's no clean line as to how the alternative courses of action have to be before it counts as duress. But we don't have to draw the line clearly in order to be able to make the distinction.

I'm not sure I grasp your argument here. Jobs at places like restaurants are themselves "extremely poorly-paying" and "physically unpleasant" because of economic coercion and the power imbalance between employee and employer; the employees know that if they complain or refuse to come in on short notice, their hours will be given to someone else and they won't be able to pay the bills. Many women actually say they prefer sex work because it doesn't have these coercive power dynamics and they have more control.

You seem to be arguing that women who do sex work are under "economic duress" because the alternatives are so awful, therefore we should make it illegal, forcing them into back those awful alternatives. That seems backwards to me. Surely we should be banning the shitty, coercive minimum wage jobs, not the sex work women are choosing in preference to them?

> Taking advantage of someone in that position is taking advantage of economic duress. Obviously there's no clean line as to how the alternative courses of action have to be before it counts as duress.

It sounds to me like your distinction is that if any person makes less money than any other person, then the first person is under economic duress and thus is incapable of making any voluntary choices.

You're vastly oversimplifying my argument, and reducing complex human interactions to economic platitudes.

Sex is not like every other human interaction. If you forced someone to answer phones for eight hours, it is unlikely they would be traumatized in the same way as if you raped them for eight hours. Its different.

Not every transaction between people in unequal economic circumstances is suspect, but we're not talking about every transaction. We're talking about something much more intimate and emotional. Such transactions are far more suspicious.

We're not talking about rape here. So that's a non-sequitur.

You're moving goalposts.

Ironically, it sounds like he has in essence devised a clever way of stripping poor people of their autonomy.

I don't think there's any dishonesty behind those arguments, but just economic misunderstanding.