Block doesn’t give me the warm-fuzzies. For example, his most notable book Defending the Undefendable clearly misses the mark when it upholds people like pimps as not only good businessmen but suggesting they should be viewed as oppressed and heroic. I respect the right of pimps or other peddlers of vices to do business. But, at the same time, I recognize their existence as reflective of a corrosive or unhealthy element within society.
Throughout history, prostitution has always been officially forbidden while unofficially tolerated. I think there is a good reason for this duplicity, namely, that the casual promotion of prostituion as if it were just another brand of bubble gum would have a corrosive and unhealthy effect on the social order. I think people sense this and I think that this explains why advertising prostitution has always been difficult even where its existence is unofficially tolerated.
Nevertheless, I think that the unofficial toleration of prostitution plays a crucial role in the “balance of power” between the sexes in the marital union. The woman holds all the power in the bedroom and, as ugly as the reality of it is, the ever-present threat of defection to a lover or a prostitute is the necessary check on the abuse of that power. In the absence of that check, the woman’s power in the monogamous relationship becomes overwhelming.This is why the “pro-choice” feminists become suddenly and paradoxically anti-choice when it comes to prostitution. They understand that there is a causal relationship in operation here.
But - like all central-planning measures - this one, too, fails. Instead of the desired outcome (women holding absolute sway in monogamous relationships), what you get is an explosion in the divorce rate as men flee the shackles of such emotionally and sexually unbalanced relationships and the marriage rate sharply drops. In combination with our frenetic divorce law, I think this is the root cause of the increase in the divorce rate and decline in the marriage rate. Why would any man in his right mind willingly sign up for a situation in which the woman holds all the cards: legal, economic, sexual, emotional? Women are finding that they have an extremely difficult time attracting decent men into such a relationship with them but this shouldn’t be surprising.
Anyway, I got side-tracked - the issue is that while prostitution certainly plays a role in the social order, this role has always been relegated to the shadows and I think it is the height of hubris to throw out millenia of human attitudes regarding the proper place of prostitution in society (the shadows) and, instead, trumpet its peddlers as some kind of virtuous, heroic defenders of free markets and human rights. I think Block can be a bit of a one-string banjo sometimes.
Clayton -