A Theory of Prostitution

I quite like Skidelsky's writing-the bits I've read at least. Some chapters on Keynes and his book, How Much is Enough? Thoughtful and well-written. But stumbled across his latest article and was taken aback by just how poor it was. Two statements give a flavour of the casual thinking: 

Ultimately, all arguments against prostitution based on notions of inequality and coercion are superficial. This is incredibly pig-headed, especially when so much prostitution depends on co-ercion and inequalities.

The view of those who seek to ban the purchase of sex is as constricted as that of the economists. As St. Augustine put it, "If you do away with harlots, the world will be convulsed with lust."

Really?

In the article there is reference to a certain Lena Edlund (associate professor at Columbia). In her article (co-written with Evelyn Korn) she states:

"The key to the puzzle is that a woman cannot be both a prostitute and a wife."

"Combine this with the fact that marriage can be an important source of income for women, and it follows that prostitution must pay better than other jobs to compensate for the opportunity cost of foregone marriage market earnings."   

"But a prostitute cannot simply be a woman who sells her body since that is done every day by women who become wives in order to gain a home and a livelihood."

Then this nugget: "Humans not only mate but marry." So insightful!

"The Economist reported that Arabic women could make $2,000 a night.."

Arabic?

~

Where to start? Do economists even realize how pathetic they sound to ordinary human beings? 

It is a mistake, you think, to believe that poets or academics or intellectuals have any great understanding of life. On the part of those who cannot be bothered to live a life of their own there is a kind of reverence for all kinds of experts. But, in reality, it is forgotten that theoria is not a theory of everything, but of higher 'objects'. The theoretic impulse, when separated from ordinary life and the common sense of other people, can become a monstrous force that serves the powerful. There are various kinds of prostitution.  

A science that does not take the scale of human understanding and perception seriously, a mode of thinking that consigns religion and the soul to the category of fiction, and a form of knowledge that pretends to be timeless is not, when all has been said and done, worth that much. 

In the grand scheme of things the history of human beings clearly indicates that we managed to live meaningful lives without so much theory and abstraction. It is worth reminding ourselves that a formal kind of intelligence is quite consistent with all sorts of aberrations of the soul.