Tuesday, June 9, 2009

A Brothel On Every Corner

I know very little about the prevalence of prostitution in society. That being said, I'm wondering if we are approaching the point where the oldest profession is permanently shuttered.

In the last couple of weeks, I've seen television advertisements for two different online services whose sole market is people looking for sex. One of them was specifically targeted at married people looking to have an affair. In other words, I'm not talking about Cupid or EHarmony. In fact, one ad actually made the point that such services are inferior because they set up dates rather than sexual encounters.

This leaves me to wonder what the economic incentives are for prostitution these days. If there is an internet whoremonger who can arrange a liaison for free, why not just pay your "brokerage fee" or whatever and then hump away? You have to figure that these places are doing well or they wouldn't be in a position to pimp themselves on TV.

It's a pretty tragic thing that we can realistically (I think, at least) ponder a world where sexual license has reached such epidemic proportions that brothels could be shut down due to the widespread availability of free fornication.

2 comments:

Turgonian said...

Whew! Scary thought.

Your style is worthy of imitation, though. I like the sentence that starts 'If there's an internet whoremonger'... It made me smile.

Philip said...

I can say with all certainty that the market for prostitution is still alive and well. I run into prostitutes about three times a week in my neighborhood.

My guess is that prostitution might go away amongst certain classes of people. People with internet access, people with sexually "open" social circles. But for fella who wants to save up $25 each week for a hooker, there's still a strong market.