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But even if we accept the argument that the Government should not intervene in private morality, legalized prostitution inevitably has social and aesthetic consequences. If there are no restraints on streetwalkers, they may swarm through the cities, accosting strangers and creating an atmosphere of general corruption. The compromise, as in London, permits prostitution to exist but not to organize; there can be no pimping and no open solicitation. There is much hypocrisy in this solution—the hypocrisy of looking away from what we find unpleasant—but it has the virtue, at least, of compelling private behavior to remain private.
Some day, it has been said, this problem will partly solve itself because more and more people will find it increasingly easy to obtain their pleasure without paying for it. Now that we have the Pill, the coed dorm and the commune, what need is there for the streetwalker, much less the bordello? So far, though, these predictions have not come true; even in societies that have long been considerably more libertarian than ours, somehow the appeal of prostitution stubbornly remains. In emancipated Sweden, where premarital sex is considered a civil right, there are very few streetwalkers nowadays, but Stockholm still has hundreds of massage parlors, modeling studios and other such institutions.
Besides, universal promiscuity hardly seems a perfect solution, for we would just be changing our rules and definitions for the act we now call prostitution. In fact, there is no perfect solution to the disparity between needs and satisfactions. Even under the best of circumstances, random sexual encounters will inevitably contain elements of squalor and violence. But it is reasonable to conclude that the sale of sex in America is not so much an immoral business as a sad and shabby one, and that legal permission plus a measure of supervision would be a genuine improvement.