Prostitution and Artwork

A hat tip to Remus over at Woodpile Report for this item:

None Dare Call it Prostitution (Takimagazine.com)

Indeed, there is an intellectual debate over the moral status of prostitution. In Germany there has been an attempt officially to treat it as just one way of earning a living like any other, but this has rather odd consequences, at least in a welfare state where people receive state benefits when they are unemployed. For if we really believed that prostitution were the same as hospital cleaning or serving in a shop, those who were unemployed could justifiably be forced into prostitution if an opening for a prostitute became available. There was allegedly such a case not long ago in which the social-security system demanded that an unemployed woman take up prostitution, and even if it turned out to be an urban myth the case pointed to the logical consequences of the belief that no moral reprobation attaches to prostitution: not to the prostitutes themselves, not to their customers, and not to the pimps who help bring supplier and customer together.

I read this aloud to Belladonna and her reaction was:  "The underlying implication is that my body belongs to the State if the State can force me into prostitution.  I guess that is another vote for prostitution being 'anti-woman'".

Artwork

The stock market shows many signs of being a bubble.  The "smart" money is becoming desperate to diversify their portfolios in case/when the market pukes. Other money is simply spilling over into alternative markets.

The stock market is popular for several reasons.

1. The S.E.C. provides some degree of oversight and uniformity in reporting/documentation
2. The market is liquid.  If you want to sell your assets today, they will get sold today with little or no haircut.  You cannot say that about your house.
3. The market is HUGE.  In ordinary times, individual buyers cannot drive the market up with buying or cause it to tank when they sell.

One of the assets that is benefiting from money's flight from traditional assets is artwork.  The art market has none of the advantages listed above.

Prices bid for artwork (some of dubious merit) have become astronomical.

My belief is that people who always fight human nature end up getting punched in the nose.  Therefore, I am going to flow with this trend.

Therefore, I am granting my readership first-bid on some primitive folk art:  A banner that functions as a road sign to compel drivers to "slow down".

Three minutes of work, a paper lunch bag, two round dots of reflex tape and 24 inches of baling twine.  It ought to be worth $12,500 in today's market.