If you kill someone I care about, I will want to see you punished. So many people agree with this that we have laws saying you can't kill people or else you'll be punished. But if you pay someone to have sex with them, so what? If both parties consent to everything, then who is harmed? Some people get mad because they think it's immoral, but not everyone.
This is begging the question (assuming morality must be based on harm or consent). Not everyone agrees on the morality of all sorts of things. Human sacrifice has been licit in various times and places. Lending someone a high-interest payday loan is a consensual transaction but morally suspect according to many, and so on.
> Not everyone agrees on the morality of all sorts of things.
Well yeah, of course. My point is that the overwhelming majority of people agree that murder is bad and should be illegal. That's not the case with sex work, which is why people argue about it online all the time. When I asked who is harmed by sex work, I didn't mean to imply that no one is harmed, I just meant that the answer to that question varies a lot more than the answer to who is harmed by murder.
What I find interesting is that everyone critiquing my critique completely ignores the swipe I took at banks. It appears to be utterly banal and beneath concern that banks subvert legal and moral efforts against multinational drug cartels and abusive authoritarian regimes.
I guess even with morals, people don't care about murder.
