Hookah's and Hookers

For most westernized societies, apart from the US, it comes as no grand revelation that prostitution has been legalized, supervised and taxed for years. Whether the country is a constitutional monarchy, a democratic federation or a secular electorate democracy, the fact that prostitution is neither vilified nor aggrandized but tolerated is not a topic for immediate debate. It is an exemplar of Voltaire's infamous summation of what the Enlightenment saw as intrinsic democracy. Paraphrased his statement reads; “I may not agree with what your are saying but I will fight to the death for your right to say it”.

This is the cornerstone of democracy and the implicit pledge to tolerate actions and ideas which are not physically harmful to others. Libertarian pundits in the western world adhere to this ideological tenet on this social issue but are coyly dismissive when the same rhetoric is used in fiscal governance. Nevertheless, if one explores Europe, especially Norther Europe, prostitution is not only a visceral manifestation of this social ideal; it's tangible; it's on the government's radar. Prostitution is not only legal, it's also highly regulated in most Europe countries (mandatory health screenings and copious documentation). Additionally, there are also several localized labor unions devoted to the woman of the night.

Throughout the short but dense American history prostitution has nestled itself in the American psyche encompassing all social milieux. Consider the brothels and street walkers of America's oldest metropolitan areas; places like New York City, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, to name but a few documented cities. But a gritter and subtler form of prostitution could be found on the advancing frontier of the American west. It is an almost ubiquitous scene in any film which subscribes to the Wild West format. This paradigm is not relegated to the big screen. Television shows like Gun Smoke employed a leading character, Miss Kitty, a brothel madam. To illustrate how ingrained and banal the archetypical brothel madam was; her character was the love interest of another lead character; Marshall Dylan: a governmental enforcer of the law. This tradition has continued to flourish in America, albeit under the radar and somewhat clandestine. The proud state of Nevada is one of the last American bastions of prostitution in the modern age. And they won't change a thing.

If this analogy seems anachronistic or esoteric, then consider the modern pornography industry. This business model thrives. It thrives because of the same mechanisms which are infused in Colorado weed legalization and Nevada prostitution legalization. The news outlet, CNBC, conducted a study of the profitability of legalization of marijuana and came to several staggering conclusions. They based their conclusions on data from research groups like NORML (National Organization for the Repeal of Marijuana Laws) and US Health and Human Services. Although the numbers differ greatly, an aggregate of all revenue delivers an estimate of taxes to be collected and overall savings in law enforcement equalling $20 billion. That's an estimate before the burgeoning cannabis cafe revolution in the US. What are the numbers then for prostitution?

According to an ABC PrimeTime report; $10 billion a year is generated through the various distribution channels of the porn industry. Even more astonishing is that large multi-national corporation realize the innate cash cow that is pornography; “Companies like General Motors, AOL Time Warner and Marriott earn revenue by piping adult movies into Americans' homes and hotel rooms, but you won't see anything about it in their company reports”. It appears that sex, as a commodity, is trading with relative impunity as a blue chip stock in the US. Why not prostitution?

Many people, it appears, don't take much umbrage to pornography, if it is tightly scrutinized and adequate foresight is maintained. Things like age requirements for performers and consumers as well as legal consent without duress for performers, are probably the chief concerns for those who have a laissez-faire or libertarian view towards the industry. But what is the fundamental difference? None really if one considers that the aforementioned criteria are met. Both prostitution and pornography as well as marijuana consumption are victimless if these criteria are adhered to under the law.

Let's do the numbers. Tracey Pierce Sonntag, in an article entitled “Case for Legalization ofProstitution” illustrates the financial feasibility of prostitution we can utilize the data collected on one Nevada brothel. Her findings reveal that an employee at the brothel earns $100,000 taxable income a year. This is if the employee is only working on week per month! What's more remarkable, on a financial-tax scale, is that there are an approximately 1 million, on a conservative estimate, prostitutes in the US which could yield a whopping $20 billion or more a year in taxes.

Much like the crusades being waged through America to decriminalize and ultimately legalize marijuana, so too should America embrace her prostitution past and decriminalize and ultimately legalize prostitution.

Journalism and Democracy and Getting Information that Matters

Tedx Poynter: The Future of Journalism

(story originally ran in Creative Loafing Tampa)

The future of journalism was the connecting theme of a version of the popular online Ted Talks series last Friday at the Poynter Institute in downtown Saint Petersburg. A crowd of mostly media insiders listened to topics ranging from copyright issues and viral media to fact checking and the role of new media.

The Poynter Institute is borrowing a style of discourse from the successful Ted Talks which focus on disseminating new ideas on three varied subject matters; Technology, Entertainment Design. The TedX formats are independently organized but are conducting within the Ted Talks structure. The Poynter Institute is a non-profit school of journalism, which teaches through traditional class room settings as well as online webinars. Elynn Angelotti is a social media faculty member at the Poynter Institute. She said the blueprint used by Ted Talks is a good fit for Poynter’s third Ted X event.

“What they’ve done is provide us with a framework to create powerful engaging; much briefer talks than we typically do here at Poynter. So, it’s a deferent tempo. It’s a different style. But it’s an engaging platform that helps us invite the Tampa Bay community and the larger journalism community into an event where we can realty learn from innovative thinkers.”

One of the overarching topics discussed during the event by several of the speakers was the role of professional journalism. Since the second dot com boom which was fueled by the near hegemonic emergence of social media, news and scholarly media have experienced a decline in hardcopy circulation. This decline brought with it a steady decline in revenue from advertising. In order to compensate some traditional media outlets have adopted a new business model called “paywall”. A “paywall” is an online business model which restricts access to webpage content without a paid subscription to news or academic publications. Paywalls come in two varieties either “hard” where no or limited viewing is permitted or “soft” where the content is less rigidly controlled.

One staff member who focuses on ethics in the media, Kelly McBride said in an interview after the talk, a well informed citizenry is a cornerstone to democracy. The direction of journalism McBride sees, however, is a move towards unprofessionalism: citizens with a passion, spokes people; marketeers. She says we are still tumbling down the rabbit hole with no clear indication where will it end. According to McBride democracy needs at least a small cadre of journalist in order to function. A la carte journalism works for some models, like Side Boob Reports, but doesn't work for investigative journalism. She said that not many people are willing to pay for investigative stories.

That would seem to be the case with stories like the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists who divulged the path to the center of the money maze that stems from lucrative offshore banking. However, paywalls are beginning to work for the New York Times and other major newspapers, like Gannett Publishing but the future is murky for small town newspapers where it's largely untested whether people will pay at all.

Transmitting and receiving news and information outside the conventional written word is a viable means of ensuring professionalism and reliability. Pat Aufderheide is a professor and director of the Center for Social Media at American University and also a film critic. Aufderheide said documentaries are an important and significant medium for reporting on culture.

”Homes across America through public broadcasting these films are being seen by millions and millions of people; which is at least two or three orders of magnitude larger than anything that will happen to a documentary on theatrical screens. So although they are not necessarily sexy in movie media they are terrifically important in being part of our media mix for a democracy.”

A Ted Talks veteran, Eli Pariser, spoke about the misconceptions of viral media. Pariser’s most recent project is upworthy.com but he cut his internet teeth with the moveon.org website. Pariser said the way information is filtered today is a challenge because we have little control over how it is filtered, what is filtered or the methodology behind the filtering. I order to achieve what he calls a “nourishing diet of information” filters need to be smarter.

“FaceBook for example, could have an important button to go along with the like button and that would actually have a significant effect. Right? Because it’s hard to click like on war in Afghanistan continues for twelfth year. But you would say that’ important; I want people to pay attention to that. So there are ways without being prescriptive about what’s important and what’s not that you could allow people to elevate that kind of content.”

When asked about the emerging trends in social media as it pertains to news and information gathering, Pariser sees an increased fragmentation as the overall trend over the next five years. He said we “...are all increasingly speaking these different informational languages.” Will these internet fragments eventually be integrated? Maybe not Pariser thinks. He doesn't foresee these information Goliaths being slain by any upstart dot com Davids.

Facebook, Twitter and Google as well as Instagram and Tumblr are not only veritable blue chip companies but they are the forums and platforms on which disparate niches of society have come to rely as a primary mode of communication. It's been said that President Obama's social media “gladhanding” was in large part the element which tipped the scales in his favor during the 2012 presidential election much like the role social media played as an instrument in nurturing the Arab Spring into a regional phenomenon.

Other media experts at the Ted X Poynter event also talked about the changing tides of journalism as a result of expanding technology. There aren't any mystic Oracles to consult on the future of journalism but one thing is certain, the medium is becoming the message. It's the duel responsibility of the consumer and the producer to make sure the message remains meaningful despite the medium.