San Francisco – moral sinkhole

San Francisco is about to do something one once read about only in science fiction. A Supervisor proposes to create a classic “red light district” and even “supervised drug sites” across the city. San Francisco has enough trouble as it is, and has seriously fallen from grace over the last few years. This proposal proves what CNAV said yesterday – that morality has a hard logic to it. Furthermore, governments legislate it all the time, sound or unsound – so they might as well legislate the sound kind.

What does San Francisco think it’s doing?

Leighton Woodhouse and Mike Shellenberger of the “Public” account on Substack, have the scoop. Supervisor Hillary Ronen made the proposal a week ago, as the San Francisco Chronicle reports. She would like to have a supervised district for sex work in or near the Mission District. But because prostitution is not yet legal in California, she is drafting a resolution to urge the State Congress to make it legal. When someone asked her why, she said:

I do feel that society’s acceptance and (ability) to get away from the morality issues is growing.

That’s the problem. Society started “accepting” immoral practices, and “getting away from the morality issues,” during the Roaring Twenties. Today, decriminalization of prostitution, drug use/sale, and similar “crimes without victims” is a staple of libertarian politics. It has also become a staple of progressive politics – though Progressivism in the decade 1910-19 gave us Prohibition.

Why is San Francisco even thinking this way? Because they don’t have enough police anymore. This is due to two causes: San Francisco supervisors don’t even like their police, and with so many employers moving out, they can’t afford as many of them.

Yesterday Woodhouse and Shellenberger posted a detailed treatment on their “Public Substack.” They also dropped a Twitter thread having links to their article and to other articles backing their contention. Which is: if San Francisco does this, they’ll create a worse problem with sex trafficking, in addition to driving even more people to leave.

The thread

The thread has thirteen tweets. Herewith the odd numbers:

That last tweet showed the tragedy that accompanies any decriminalization of prostitution.

This drew a mixed reaction – and one can take instruction from examining that mixture. On the “pro” side of actually legalizing prostitution, one user replied:

Her “logic” escapes CNAV, for reasons we will list below. Another user made this prediction:

Someone else pointed out that this sort of thing is rife at the border:

This user said something interesting:

Of course it won’t be “done right.” Libertarian philosophy does not even recognize the concept minor (as opposed to adult)andwill not even allow such “checking.”

Yet another user dared Supervisor Ronen to cite her “red light district” on the street where she lives.

In direct response to the tweet about Woodhouse and Shellenberger’s 14-year-old witness, two users had this to say:

Another user connected the “left-libertarian activism” in San Francisco to childlessness.

Analysis

Again, this goes to show how important morality is to legislation. One can easily make fun of those who want to keep prostitution, and drug use and abuse, illegal. One can do this, that is, when one cannot see the full effects of such legalization. San Francisco residents are starting to see enough of an effect that they wish to leave. Supervisor Ronen’s proposal would bring in the full effect.

This illustrates the flaw of libertarian philosophy: lack of respect for morality. In fact, libertarians have made a moral judgment. They consider only the immediate effects of certain acts, in deciding to call them right or wrong. And as long as any one transaction between and among “consenting adults” brings no immediate harm, it should be legal. So say libertarians.

Laying aside that libertarians too often treat children as “little adults,” this ignores the secondary effects of bad acts. Many libertarians do not recognize them as bad effects. Others say that one cannot legislate on the basis of bad secondary effects, for the same reason one does not punish people for offenses they might commit in future.

Predictable effects – and why San Francisco is going down the wrong road

But one can predict those bad effects as readily as one can predict a fire hazard. That is the value of a scientific and logical approach to morality. It tells you that passing laws against certain “consensual” transactions is good public policy – not only because some of us find the acts themselves repugnant, but also – and more important – because allowing such acts creates a climate for acts that do bring immediate harm.

San Francisco already has a problem with trafficking, as Woodhouse and Shellenberger make clear. So the problems go beyond threatening the integrity of marriage and family, though that in itself is bad enough. Real people are coming to real harm already, from the lax enforcement of existing law. Repealing those laws, as San Francisco asks the State to do, would make that problem worse. Woodhouse and Shellenberger have illustrated that brilliantly and irrefutably.

Morality is about more than personal preference. This San Francisco supervisor is proposing an equivalent of Rupert Cadell (Rope by Patrick Hamilton) proposing to make murder legal. At least Rupert Cadell realizes the absurdity of his proposal. Hillary Ronen might never realize it. But that’s the endgame of regarding certain “moral” issues as personal preferences. What San Francisco now proposes, no city should emulate.