The Myth of Choice_ Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits - Kent Greenfield [87]
So let me articulate three big, but general, ideas of how we might make it possible for more people, more of the time, to make good choices.
First, we should work to ensure that economic need is not a source of coercion. As we think about the range of bad choices people are forced into—to work for an employer who puts employees at risk, to sell sex for money, or to buy cheap, fatty food—many of the most problematic choices are brought about by simple economic need. Remember Henry Lamson from the first chapter, he of the ax-in-the-head case. He knew the risk of injury in his job but stayed anyway. Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., said that Lamson should not be able to sue his employer, since he “stayed, and took the risk.” The reason Lamson’s decision does not sound like a real choice to modern readers is that we assume, I think reasonably, that he did not have a lot of other employment options and he had to provide for his family. A safety net for employees who lose their jobs not only would give those employees the choice to leave dangerous jobs but would incentivize employers to offer better jobs in the first place.
By similar reasoning, we could do much to alleviate the coercive aspects of the sex industry. As I mentioned early in the book, reasonable people across the political spectrum disagree about the nature of sex work and whether it can and should be a realm of choice and agency for women. Some see it as inherently coercive; others argue that, given the right circumstances, it can be a legitimate line of work.
By my lights, there is nothing inherently different between selling one’s sexual services (and being willing to suffer the risks of those activities) and selling one’s expertise in mining coal, driving a cab, or butchering meat (and suffering the risks thereof). But most women involved in the sex industry around the world are doing it from coercion rather than by choice. The coercion in sex slavery and trafficking is easy to see.14 A slightly less obvious coercion inheres in the fact that, as a matter of economics and culture, many women in the sex industry have few other ways to provide for themselves and their dependents. I would be more willing to entertain the notion that the sex industry should be more broadly destigmatized if there were more indicia of real choice among the women involved. One of the ways to build such choice is to make sure that no one is driven into the industry by economic coercion.
I recognize that it is extremely difficult to draw a clear line between choice and coercion when it comes to evaluating a decision to sell one’s body for sex. But some things are certain. The less sex and gender equality in a culture, the less likely such a decision is a real choice. The fewer employment alternatives, the less likely such a decision is a real choice. The more such jobs are occupied by people at the lower rungs of the social, economic, and cultural power structures, the more we can presume the decision comes about as a result of powerlessness rather than autonomy. When these situations create the context of the decisions made, then we can have a great deal of certainty that efforts to expand economic, social, and cultural choice will be worth the effort.
A second way to build choice as a matter of public policy is to encourage political and cultural dissent and diversity. One of the things known to build capacity for choice is exposure to new ways of thinking and acting. Groups that contain a critical mass of dissenters—or at least those who question the prevailing wisdom—tend to make better decisions over time.15 As noted in