Subtitled The Business of Sex, it is a recent book, which the author encouraged me to review. He profiles the contemporary prostitution industry and offers his views on the best policy for dealing with it. One of his suggestions is for a walled-garden approach, in which there are some areas where prostitution is at least de facto legal while there are other areas where laws against prostitution are enforced.

He offers some simple theoretical hypotheses, e.g. that better birth control technology shifts the supply curve to the right and that desirable mates will prefer marriage to prostitution, so that the median prostitute will not be a desirable mate. He offers some back-of-the-envelope estimates of various sorts of prostitution activity. Although the estimates are not based on any formal research by the author, they seem to offer useful, reasonable bounds on the true numbers.

I read the book on part of a plane ride, and I found it breezy and worth my time. However, the content is heavily weighted toward the author’s opinions, which I often found unpersuasive. The passage that stuck with me the most was this:

The obvious thing is that both prostitutes and their customers are notorious liars. Prostitutes are paid to lie. Their job is to flatter the customer and play any role he wants them to play…On one level it’s all about showbiz, and, in that context, there is nothing wrong with it.

I find myself reacting mostly to the “notorious liars” phrase, which is a complete turn-off for me. It probably explains why I do not share the author’s positive outlook on prostitution. The “showbiz” phrase suggests that one could be entertained by it, just as one can be entertained by going to a play or movie where you know that people are just acting. But when you go to a play you remain separate from what takes place on stage. When I interact with other people, I have a strong preference for authenticity.

Related: Scott Sumner discusses the daughter test, and the author takes the position that he would be ok with it. I would not.