Legalizing business sex

Another sting operation by an over-ambitious TV channel brought about some old memories of a somewhat heated discussion regarding managed legalization of porn I had with some friends long time back. I call it the Organic Barter System. A pretty, young aspiring actress. A middle aged producer. "Give me sex, and I'll give you your fame". I think there have been numerous social concoctions of this age old barter system where sex and ambition almost always seem to shake hands in order to reach a decisive conclusion benefitting both the merchant and the client.

As expected most societies label such transactions as bad, un-ethical, immoral and many times criminal . Inspite of so many negative adornments, this eco-system continues to go on un-abated, flourishing mostly under the wraps of secrecy and powered by the fuel of atomic human desires. So is it really that "bad"? The debate of ethical vs un-ethical, in this case, would be quite an interesting one, and might follow the same trends when discussing legalization of prostitution.

So what's the deal? Roughly, primarily two basic inferences can be drawn:

1. Yay Live and let live: what two people are doing privately should not be anyone concern as long as they are not adversely affecting other lives.

2. Nay Un-ethical: Social wolves will only rise and continue mis-using the naive if business sex is not prohibhited. Also almost all religions consider pre-marital sexual acitivites a taboo making it all the more un-ethical if it is practiced outside the society-set boundaries.

Now the Darwin's theory of natural selection says that systems tend to "auto-organize" themselves towards stability without any external influences, which implies that inherent human desires (both sexual and asexual) are primarily driven and organized automatically towards stability. And when sex is the driving force, the interaction is mostly asymmetric, which means "sex for money" and "sex for fame" are the common combinations. Rarely does the "sex-for-sex" barter happens (no matter how much the male Homo Sapiens may want it!). That is why "business-sex" is a true barter system (imagine someone bartering wheat-for-wheat!). And when sex is an instrument or rather an active barter ingredient, then it is hard to get the social approval stamp considering how un-orthodox most relgious societies are. Hence the secrecy associated with such transactions in-advertantly label them as "un-ethical", even when it happens between two mature willing adults. And this is what brings bad name to this organic barter system, as we might see it as a social misuse by the powerful of the weak, only that the weak here is not really that weak considering the willingful nature of most such transactions.

So is it possible to manage business-sex, or prostitution, so that it remains within the realms of willingness and ethics and becomes more acceptable in the society? The simple answer is no for most conservative societies, as most decision makers sitting at the top levels would fear losing political grounds favoring such decisions, and also there are just too many variables at work when it comes to managing sex as a business, and almost all of them acting non-linearly. That is why most social set-ups have done the next simple thing: ban it completely, because they do not have time or resources to manage such activities in order to legalize them. But still the business sex continues from the earliest times known to the modern man, and will never stop, and can only grow with time, mutating into different forms as the social structure changes. Afterall it is the world's oldest most profitable profession not without a reason.