This is called the Swedish model. There’s a (fairly acrimonious & unproductive) debate about whether it’s preferable, from the point of view of sex workers, to complete decriminalization (or legalization) of both sides of the transaction. As a practical political matter, the Swedish approach might be easier to enact in most places.

Are their lives not hard enough already?

If anyone should go in the clink, it ought to be the john.

And I’d rather just put their photos on the web! So I won’t accidentally date one.

But geez…

http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/relationship-issues/articles/bunny-ranch-cathouse-hbo-brooke-taylor?click=main_sr

She’s not an escort — she mostly works on-site.

I have read accounts of high end prostitutes in places where it is legal, like Nevada. I read the account of a woman who chucked her early education career and moved to Nevada when she was around 24. She had worked as a prostitute for about five years and told the magazine that she really wanted to get out within a year or two, notwithstanding that she was dating the owner of the brothel. She had saved money and was considering opening some kind of business, where, presumably, she would work a lot harder (though I think they understate the time commitment involved, because you are at the mercy of other people’s schdules and therefore, not the master of your own).

Even if the stigma of being a sex worker were to magically lift, what does it say to prospective employers that being a sex worker was the best use of your skills?

I’ve read the linked article now. (New rule: read first, comment after.) It’s even worse than I’d gathered. The economic analysis is trifling & almost beside the point: incomes decline when other women give it away for free, it helps to be able to spot & charge more for a chump w/ money, it’s rational to be wary of nuts who won’t wear condoms, a high-end prostitute is like “the ideal wife” [!], etc. Their main interest is plainly nonanalytical, in encouraging a certain kind of positive evaluation of (high-end) sex work & of the circumstances of (high-end) sex workers. To this end, the prose has all the insight of an advertising brochure. (For example, Allie rarely just speaks; she speaks “with a laugh” or “with a smile.”) It really is hard to sustain a charitable interpretation of all this, even – or especially – if you think attitudes toward sex workers need to change. They do, but these nullities aren’t the ones to make it happen.

Supply-side economics says if you bring it they will come.

BTW, do they not mention the other great conservative benefit of being able to easily hide income and avoid taxes?

High-class prostitution: The long-term family prospects of a nun, but without the virginity and a lot better paying.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/13213779/Superfreakonomics

While we’re on the general subject, I’d add that there a lot of women in prostitution who have crummy lives, & need help & solidarity, not glib libertarian just-so stories.

Me, I think Dub/Lev once again are being good provocateurs, and really terrible at their actual day jobs as journalist/economist. My onetime neighbors left their fine profession quickly (with one notable exception; I won’t bore you with the details, but you’ve seen her current paramour’s films) because for a profession that ends at a very young age it pays terribly: worse than baseball, worse than boxing, worse than the NFL.

But thinking of that wouldn’t be very provocateur-y, so it didn’t happen here.

Is there a word in English for “outrageous unintended pun”?

The danger, even of the higher-scale courtesan, is I suspect one reason that more women (and maybe men, subject to the demand, as noted above) don’t go into that line of work. The yuck factor, or even a certain morality, might also be relevant.