Craigslist to Ban Prostitution Ads

The Internet has been good for the prostitution business. It's driven women in droves from streets and college dorms into the market for commercial sex work where because of the Internet they can sell commercial sex while simultaneously reducing the chances they're killed or arrested - all thanks to the Internet. One thing that is gong to be different going forward is the particular websites where men meet these women. Craigslist looks like it's going to be effectively shuttering its doors, for instance. Soon, it will require women who post to the erotic section (which is basically the want ads for prostitutes) to submit credit card information. The price elasticity of supply to a website is pretty high. Craigslist was attractive to prostitutes in part because the ads were free. But not only will they not be technically free; they'll also have a higher risk of arrest and detection. Thus, expect the to scatter to one of the other 5 dozen sites like craigslist.

Prostitution imposes costs on society in different ways. The most obvious is through higher health risks as prostitutes help facilitate the spread of sexually transmitted infections in the network. But one way they imposes costs is by being seen. Consistently, it is shown that prostitution laws are enforced in large part because voting citizens hate to see it. Seeing prostitutes on street corners or seeing the traffic going in and out of massage parlors is itself an externality to many voters, and so they put pressure on police to enforce these laws so that the efforts can be pushed further underground. The movement online had already relaxed some of that, but I think craigslist was itself a public square and the erotic section not so far away that it bothered people. Plus, I think craigslist as a firm probably was annoyed that their site was consistently the focus of police sting operations. Now, prostitutes will scatter to other sites - there are literally dozens of these kinds of clearinghouse sites - where the chances that a non-client sees them is even slimmer.

From the perspective of society, there'll be fewer public nuisance externalities if it does move even further into the shadows. But, to the degree it's never enforced, never pursued, then the "price" of being a prostitute or soliciting a prostitute falls, and thus we get more of the prostitution services in equilibrium. Makes you wonder just what our goals really are or should be. Is it to reduce the visibility? Or is it to reduce the actual act itself? Are we trying to discourage women from working as prostitutes, or just doing so where we can see them?