Neo and the Modern University

Modern technology is rendering the brick-and mortar university obsolete says John Uebersax:

Consider the following. For any given subject (e.g., Psychology 101), there are, in any semester, hundreds of lecturers delivering the course worldwide. The quality of the lecturers will vary considerably. Some will be outstanding and inspiring; some will be bland, uninformed, and unintelligible. Exactly one of these courses will be the best; the rest will be inferior.

This is true, although it is a stretch to claim that there is a single, universally best lecture. There may be several lectures that are each best for different student bodies, each of which has different needs, goals, and backgrounds. The examples provided by one lecturer to illustrate a point may resonate strongly with one group and fall flat with another. On top of this, any given course taught at different universities will be structured differently, discuss different topics, and will satisfy different needs for both the major and for general education. Thus there is no canonical course (the Platonic Form of Psych 101) that we can compare across all universities, making it somewhat arbitrary to pick which one is best. Still, none of this goes against the main point of Uebersax’s argument: most university professors are not the best lecturers in their subject, and with modern technology, it is very likely that for most universities there is a better lecturer outside the university walls.

This type of argument is fine as far as it goes, but it draws on the ubiquitous view that teaching is synonymous with lecturing.  Ubersax recognizes other valuable roles for professors, but former students, and even many professors seem to believe in the Neo School of teaching, where learning is a matter of effective (and perhaps charismatic) information transfer:

Unfortunately, it is nearly as unrealistic to expect to learn just by watching a lecture as it is to learn by direct information upload. Learning requires being actively engaged with the material and receiving expert feedback on the mistakes made.  We should view professors not as a lecturers but as coaches, involved in both ground-level, meaningful contact with the students and in high-level strategic planning. At the high level, the faculty has learned to sift through the mounds of historical and contemporary scholarship and to select and distill  information to make it accessible to students. The faculty should also plan appropriate learning activities, which may well include requiring students to watch excellent lectures outside of class. At the ground level, the faculty should give regular, quick, and customized feedback, letting students know when their attempts at understanding the material have fallen short (and hopefully teaching students to eventually make this assessment on their own). Of course, it is clear that most professors do not teach this way.  Exploring the reasons for this is beyond the scope of this article, but the following are possible reasons why the Neo School is so prevalent:

• apathy: lecturing is easy after the first couple times teaching a course,
• time constraints: faculty have insufficient time to plan an effective course,
• tradition: professors’ professors always lectured,
• socialization: the safest way of getting tenure is unquestioningly doing what your senior colleagues are doing,
• lack of training: few professors have ever learned how to teach,
• financial constraints: lecturing is cheaper because it allows for higher student-to-faculty ratios, and
• institutional expectation: the administration expects faculty to lecture for about an hour per week per credit hour.

In summary, this article has reached three conclusions:

1. The traditional mode of teaching via lecturing (the Neo School) is inadequate.
2. Faculty are responsible for creating courses that promote learning.
3. Learning requires real interactions between teachers and learners (and this requires a sensible student-to-faculty ratio).

To be sure, effective teaching and learning requires much more, but these criteria are useful as a minimal litmus tests for proposed reforms in higher education.

In the interest of generating discussion, you are invited to answer the following questions:

• Do you agree with these criteria?
• If you are a student, how do your classes compare to the descriptions in this article?
• How would these criteria apply to online learning?
• How would these criteria apply to Western Governor’s University?
• How do the criteria apply to other educational reforms you may have heard of? Does the litmus test seem to give sensible results?

Related articles

• San Jose State U. Says Replacing Live Lectures With Videos Increased Test Scores (chronicle.com)
• Why Long Lectures Are Ineffective (ideas.time.com)

Hey Crazy Bike Person, Behave Yourself!

Drivers don’t get cyclists. Most people stopped riding bikes as kids, if they ever learned at all, and they never used bikes to do adult stuff like commuting or running errands. Cyclists on the road are the Other – different and incomprehensible.  On top of that they’re blatantly exposed, unlike drivers who are isolated in their air-conditioned, radio-blaring cocoon. Drivers’ reactions to the Other are many: hate, admiration, guilt, lack of judgement, and jumping to conclusions. Any cyclist who has spent any time sharing the road with cars could rant for days (and they often do) on the foul behavior and attitudes of drivers.

But this post is not about bad drivers but about bad cyclists.  Before continuing, let’s make one thing perfectly clear: drivers, you’re directing multi-ton death monsters around the road. Whatever opinions you may have about cyclists, you don’t want to explain to the judge or a family member why you cleaned the hood of your car with a soon-to-be corpse. Nothing in this article should make you forget this. Be safe and be polite.  Period.

On to cyclists, who in this author’s experience, are actually much more annoying than drivers. Other than a guy who successfully proved that cars can push bikes off the road, bored teens yelling “hey!” out their window, or fashion consultants recommending that spandex makes one look like a “fag”, drivers have been, if anything, too polite.  (“Please go! You have the right of way. I was a half block back when you got to the 4-way stop! You didn’t have to wait for me.”).

One type of annoying cyclist is the proud-to-be-an-asshole asshole, like the author of a Slate article on the car-bike battle. This person just likes being an asshole on the bike, in a car, or on foot.  A second type is the unskilled cyclist. It’s not a trivial matter to get on a road with Death Monsters. It really isn’t. There are a good many skills that can keep one safe on the road and it’s scary to see people putting themselves needlessly in danger. It’s amazing how skill can transform an experience from a petrifying death dance to a pleasant stroll. Now, this type of cyclist should be commended if trying to improve, but becomes annoying when they misinterpret their lack of skill as hateful driving, and even more so when they act out on that impression.

Lastly, there’s the self-righteous asshole. This is the person who thinks “I am morally superior to you because [enter reason here]. I’m on a bike so I can run a red, ride the wrong way, race down sidewalks, ride too fast, hate cars, etc. I know there are rules, but they don’t apply to me.” One personal anecdote serves to illustrate: on one occasion I observed Critical Mass first surround a mini-van and then pound on its roof incessantly. Inside was a frightened, crying boy. They saw him crying, but didn’t stop. Clearly, these people were more extreme than most, but they are no different in quality than someone who runs a red because, for whatever reason, the rules don’t apply to them.

This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list and it certainly isn’t supposed to be a rant against cyclists (although it got dangerously close). Rather, it’s ultimately a plea to those who want safer, more pleasant streets for bikes. If we want better bike infrastructure, we need widespread support. We need drivers to buy into the plan, at least a bit. Flipping the bird may make you feel good, but it ain’t solvin’ nothin’. As cyclists we are all ambassadors for cycling. Drivers are just other people, probably tired from work and ready to be home. Sure they do stupid things sometimes; but we all do. Don’t retaliate against their transgressions. Do ride safely even if this means slowing traffic. Do take political actions that increase the visibility of bikes and the viability of bike traffic. But also keep your cool and definitely don’t give the finger. Every finger you give makes one more bike-hating driver.

Full disclosure: The author (i) typically commutes by bike three days out of five, drives on one, and works from home one, (ii) used to race extensively, so probably has better than average bike handling skills, (iii) recently got involved in a local bike coalition, (iv) thankfully hasn’t been hit by a car, and (v) ain’t no saint: the author has given the finger and yelled at drivers, frequently rolls stop signs if safe, and has a regular commute route with a block of sidewalk leading to an illegal right turn.

Related articles

• Signalling an end to cyclists’ camaraderie (metronews.ca)
• 6 things drivers can do to improve relations with cyclists (cyclingsydney.wordpress.com)

Deconstructing Freedom

“Freedom” is meaningless.  It’s up there with “terrorism” and “democracy” – words that have a high emotional impact and, when we look deeply, are like the emperor’s clothes – not really there in substance.  Most of us probably agree that we want freedom, and that more of it is generally better.  That’s where the commonality ends.  Immediately we start to restrict freedom, e.g., our freedom can’t infringe on somebody else’s freedom (no murder, no yelling “fire” in a crowded theater).  It’s in these restrictions where it all falls apart.  The ways in which we decide to limit freedom depend on our whole value structure.  “Freedom” as a term that drives action in the real world can differ drastically from person to person.

But enough of semantics.  Let’s not let a pedantic point pause a pleasant parley.  For now, let’s move on with the understanding that “freedom”, even if imperfect, is something we can understand, albeit in a vague way.  Two seemingly unrelated situations help inform our understanding of freedom.  The first is board games.  Imagine a Monopoly game, where one player starts with a monopoly on orange, red, yellow, and green.  All players are completely free within the rules of the game to make decisions about how to play in their best interest.  Then again, some players are less free than others to move around the board safely.  Also seemingly unrelated is traffic flow.  As an example, dense urban areas have at freeway entrances meter lights that allow limited numbers of cars onto the freeways.  The net result is that traffic flows better in the whole system and even the cars that had to wait at the meter light ultimately get home sooner.  Without the meter lights, traffic would flow more slowly and everyone would take longer.  With meter lights restriction of freedom results in a better outcome, even for those whose freedom was restricted.  Without meter lights, allowing everyone to act freely in their self-interest results in an overall worse outcome.

The traffic example leads to the idea of a systems view of the world.  In a systems view, individual parts (e.g., people) are connected to each other by relationships (e.g., market, professional, family, etc.).  Each part is connected to other parts, forming a web or a network.  This network can exhibit behavior that no single part exhibits (this is called an emergent property).  For example, traffic is an emergent property of a road network.  No single car has traffic; traffic has to do with how the cars come together.

Back to freedom.  On one view of freedom, the focus is simply on the connection between two individuals.  People who are of this opinion are satisfied as long as nobody directly limits the ability of the two individuals to act (for example, nobody tells a person in the rigged Monopoly game not to charge rent on a certain property).  People who take this view are understandably bothered when other issues are brought into the mix.  To give a real life example, we can consider the relation between a person and their employer (see diagram below).  Under this view, what matters is that the person be able to leave the job at will and that the employer be able to stop employing the person at will.  That’s it.  Any claim that the relationship between the two is unfair is silly, especially from the point of view of the employer, who has nothing to do with the personal situation the person is in, who has plenty of other problems to deal with, and who is paying the person a fair market level salary for the work done.

Simple view of employee-employer relationship

Under a systems view, this picture is complicated by circumstances (see diagram below). Say the employee was raising a family on two incomes.  The family was fiscally conservative, so they didn’t buy a house they couldn’t afford and they purchased health insurance when their employers didn’t provide any.  Unfortunately, the spouse got seriously ill and can no longer work.  The lifetime limit of health benefits has run out and the medical bills are piling up.  They have had to take money out of retirement and college funds, but that money is starting to run low.  The employer is not free of problems, of course, and some of these problems are increasing workplace stress for the employee, who really wishes to change jobs.  Unfortunately, it’s a time of high unemployment and there are many job seekers for few jobs, so the chances of getting a job from another employer are small.  The risks involved with being without a job are much too high.

Systems view of employer-employee relationship

Viewed at this level, the person’s position in the employee-employer relationship is less free.  Simply put, the person cannot leave the job.  The game of life was rigged for this person like the unfair Monopoly game.  In a laissez-faire world, the employer has great freedom to hire and fire, the landlord to evict, the hospitals to charge exorbitantly, and the creditors to collect.  This leads to a sub-optimal result at the system level.  All people are afraid, tense, and constantly watching their backs.  As in the case of traffic metering, some limits to freedom can actually raise the freedom of all actors.  Some of these limits are already well-recognized and enacted (e.g., unemployment benefits, some rental protections, and union representation).  On the whole, these limits to freedom enhance the overall ability of the individual actors to consider all options, instead of the single option they’ve been forced into.  They can actually be free to consider a new job or the time to retrain for a new career.  This might allow them the freedom to focus on growing as human beings instead of rote survival.

One can quibble with the details, whether or not this or that social policy is actually useful, or how the diagram was drawn.  This is fine.  The example is intentionally simple and has surely left out many relevant details.  The point is to argue that our conception of “freedom” is nowhere near as simple and obvious as we would like. Sometimes, limiting freedom between individuals can increase freedom for all.  Our pre-exisitng value structures decide on the limits that we impose and the types of freedom we value.  All this goes to say that a commonly held opinion that “more freedom tends to produce better human outcomes” adds little in the way of figuring out this crazy little world we live in.

You’re Not Wrong Walter…

The rationaloptimist blog is written by Frank Robinson, an intelligent individual with views that differ significantly from this author’s.  His posts at the same time spark thought and induce ire (both are appreciated).  A recent post was no exception.  Of particular interest were the following words (pertaining to the buying and selling of kidneys):

“But that ignores the fundamental logic, and virtue, of all free market transactions: people buy and sell to each other only when it makes both better off. You can argue that the impoverished kidney seller is not really a free agent in the transaction because his poverty leaves him little choice. Perhaps so. But this is condescending elitism of the worst sort.

“Nobody is ever totally free; everything we do or choose is constrained by a myriad of factors – economic, social, cultural, psychological, physical. Poverty is just one such constraint. Still we try to do what improves our circumstances. Thus the kidney peddler may be constrained by dire poverty, but given that reality, he judges that selling the kidney will improve his situation. He needs the money more than the kidney. Where does philosopher Sandel get off telling him he shouldn’t be allowed to make that choice for himself?” [second and third emphasis added]

We both agree that there is no such thing as absolute freedom, that the kidney seller in question is more free than someone with a gun to their head, and that this person is a sound individual able to make responsible decisions.  (We are also similar in not having actually read Sandel’s book.)

Having established this let us examine some mistakes in the quoted argument.  First, whether or not all free market transactions leave both participants better off should be open to empirical proof or refutation.  It is not correct to use it as an a-priori assumption unless one really believes in a world that places efficient market transactions above all for their own sake.  In the case of the kidney seller, if we accept notions of good and bad that go beyond financial remuneration, there is ample room to doubt whether the kidney seller is really better off.

Second, the claim of elitism is a bit of an ad–hominem attack.  (Or perhaps Sandel actually is elitist, in which case, the claim is a bit of a straw-man attack.)  Arguments against kidney selling are not aimed at telling the seller what to do.  They have to do with wanting a different world where nobody has a need to sell a kidney to make ends meet, where asymmetrical power relations are not swept under the rug by the supposed equality of all market participants, where there still exist meaningful aspects of life that are not just market transactions, and where market transactions have no weight in arguments of morality.  Some of us want to tell the kidney seller, “Do what you have to do.  Sell the kidney if you have to.  I know I can’t help you.  I’m sorry you have to make this decision, and I’m sorry I can’t do anything for you. I do think the whole situation is wrong and I at the very least can argue against people who think otherwise.”  Framed like this, the argument is not elitist, but just a different desire for what the world should be.

What we have then is a simple case of disagreeing on the basic axioms of an argument.  While neither side is demonstrably right or wrong, the disagreement bears a resemblance to a scene from The Big Lebowski.  Walter, taking here the pro-market position, is arguing with The Dude.

Walter: Am I wrong?
The Dude: No you’re not wrong.
Walter: Am I wrong?
The Dude: You’re not wrong Walter. You’re just an asshole.
Walter: All right then.

The breast in the workplace

A university professor recently became involved in a controversy over breast-feeding her child in class (click here for story).  Was it right for her to do so?  The prudish answer is a clear “no”; a breast in public is simply inappropriate.  More interestingly, what conclusion should be reached by those who do not mind breast-feeding in public?  Some clarifying details are in order.  The professor had some special circumstances with which to deal.  The child was sick, daycare wouldn’t take the child with a fever, and it was the first day of class, which she did not want to miss.  However, as mentioned in comments to the story, the professor surely has friends with flexible schedules who could take the child.   Failing this, the professor has the financial resources to hire a baby sitter for the time she was in class.  It is also perfectly acceptable to cancel the first day of class for an emergency.  The professor had options.  She was not forced to  take the child to class, but exercised a choice to do so, and this choice definitely lacked certain decorum.  There are a number of acts that are generally acceptable in public but impolite to do in class, e.g., eating and answering the cell phone.  Surely breast-feeding falls in this category.

Even though the action was arguably impolite, there are larger issues to consider.  Nobody would have cared enough to turn eating in class into a controversy.  Nobody would have cared enough to turn answering a cell phone into a controversy.  Even passing gas due to illness, although unpleasant, would not have become a controversy.  Breast feeding, however, did become a controversy.  It is interesting to think whether this would have been the case if women had created the rules of acceptable social behavior.  Probably in such a world breast-feeding would be as normal as is sipping a cup of coffee.  It is impossible to know the answer, but the thought experiment illustrates that current rules of decorum in a professional setting are heavily influenced by the needs and desires of men.  Women must conform to a world that was not created for them.

The proper answer in this case is perhaps to disagree with the professor, for she did violate rules of decorum, but to realize that the transgression was as minor as eating in class.  To the extent that the transgression is made to seem more serious than that, one must recognize that the professor has been maneuvered into a difficult choice that is a product of a male-dominated society.  Men and women both should recognize these social pressures and work together as equals to rework the rules for the benefit of all.

Emptiness of the Deceptive Experience

What is the point of fake tea lights in restaurants? For those who have not yet noticed, fake tea lights are battery-powered lights with cylindrical bases and flame-shaped tops. They are cleverly designed to flicker, seemingly randomly, just as if they were flame-based candles. Restaurants, even expensive ones, often drop them into ordinary candle holders and most guests are none the wiser.

Fake tea light

Without a doubt, warm mood lighting is pleasant at dinner, and a well-designed battery-powered light can provide just that. Even so, there is clearly an effort to conceal the electronic nature of the light – a considerable effort went into designing the randomish flickering of the fake flame. The whole candle is disingenuous. Using these candles may make sense from the restaurant’s point of view (there is no messy wax to clean up, the candles last longer, no smoke to offend a sensitive patron, and there is less risk of fire), but why pass off mood lighting as if it were a candle? Why not just use beautiful, pleasant lights without a fake flame? The disagreeable nature of these candles is the same as in perfectly green plastic lawns, gas-powered fireplaces with fake logs, artificial flowers, and silicone breasts: an intent to deceive.

Not everything artificial or new is disagreeable; the world changes in radical ways and we are best advised to adjust to change. Think, for example, back to a time before recorded music, when all music required a live person to produce it. Imagine how fake recorded music must have seemed to somebody from that time. Still, while being as artificial as the candle, recorded music is not nearly as disagreeable. The difference is that nobody believes that they can pass off a recording as an actual performance by live people. There is no intent to deceive in recorded music. Although radically different from live music, it is an authentic experience, to be enjoyed for its own sake. Back to the candle, it is not its lack of a burning flame that offends, but the presence of an electronic flame, whose only function is to deceptively mimic the burning flame.

This author unable to express clearly why a deceptive experience should be so disagreeable. One suspicion is that its only value is the pleasure it brings when the deception is successful. Those of us who wish for the world to be more than just a stream of pleasurable experiences find ourselves wishing for something more and feel cheated from it when we feel deceived (and wonder how many attempts have been successful without our knowing).

Hot Science

It’s another scorching, summer day. Your friend, wiping off a bead of sweat, sighs and says, “Global warming!”

Not exactly. The temperature on any single day proves nothing. Hot days occurred in the past and hot days occur today. Experiencing just a single hot day does not tell us if it is a normal hot day or a hotter than normal hot day. This is the issue that James Hansen, a notable climate researcher, and his colleagues set out to address in their recent paper.

The authors analyzed global temperature data from 1951 to 2010. They focused on summer months and grouped the measurements by decade. For each decade they calculated the average (mean) and a measure of how much individual measurements varied from the average (standard deviation). They then plotted the relative frequency of occurrence for each temperature.

Temperature distribution by decade (clipped directly from the referenced article)

To create the plot, the authors used the mean and standard deviation of a reference period from 1951 to 1980.  The horizontal axis indicates the number of reference standard deviations away from the reference mean (for example, 0 is exactly at the reference mean, 4 is 4 standard deviations above the reference mean, and -1 is one standard deviation below the reference mean).

To give an idea of what standard deviation means, for a bell-shaped curve like the black one, there is over a 30% chance of experiencing a temperature more than 1 standard deviation from the mean, less than 5% for temperatures beyond 2 standard deviations, and less than 0.3% for temperatures beyond 3 standard deviations.

What the plot shows is that as the decades advance, the mean temperature, which is near the peak of each curve, gets larger (temperatures are hotter).  As decades advance, the standard deviation, related to how fat the curves are) gets larger as well (temperature is also more variable). Cold days have only reduced slightly in frequency, but hot days have gotten much more common. For example, looking at values three standard deviations away from the reference mean (a cutoff for extreme hot days), a temperature that for 1951-1960 had close to 0% chance of occurrence had about a 6% chance of occurrence in between 2001 and 2011.

Same figure showing the range for extreme hot days and the corresponding probability in the last decade

This work shows, in clear and explicit terms, that in the aggregate, our hot days are getting hotter.  Moreover, temperature has not only increased, but also become more variable, leading to much more frequent, excessively hot days with no real change in the number of cold days.

While the conclusion is obvious -significant action is needed to stall this trend- this, as we know all too well, is much easier said than done.

I only beat my spouse on weekends

There is a strong difference between beating your spouse only on weekends, and not beating your spouse at all. Sure, in a quantitative sense they’re both less bad than beating your spouse every day, but in a qualitative sense one is bad (you beat your spouse) and the other is at least neutral (you don’t beat your spouse at all). The important distinction here is binary: either you beat your spouse or you do not. It is not a matter of degree.

The same distinction applies to “sustainability”, or whatever other related term one might wish to use. We are either able to maintain a reasonable way of life into the forseeable future, or we are not. Speaking of an action being “more sustainable” or “less sustainable” makes no sense.

This consideration is important for examining individual actions (e.g., recycling, to installing a low-flow toilet, or buying a hybrid car). How meaningful are individual actions? Clearly, individual actions in isolation are too trivial to solve global problems (climate change, for example).  However, meaningful change can result from a coordinated collection of individual acts.  The test, then, for individual action is whether it inspires further action that can eventually scale up to make a meaningful dent in a problem that really needs solving.

This article proposes no answer to the question of recycling, toilets, or hybrids. Rather, the suggestion is that brutal honesty is called for when examining our actions. How bad do we really think things are? If we think they are pretty bad, do our actions really lead to large-scale changes or do they lead to meaningless incremental changes that are only good for alleviating our guilt and improving our self-image?

This author suspects that most of our actions (the author’s included) are of the meaningless type.  We beat our spouse, but we feel better about ourselves because we only do it on weekends.

Letter to an Army Officer

I don’t agree with the projection of U.S. force abroad. I believe I can be safe without it. I never asked for a world “kept safe” by the U.S. military, and as such, I don’t feel the need to thank anybody for it. I don’t feel compelled to “support our troops” since at the end of the day, I disagree with the policies the troops are enforcing.

I’m sure you disagree in the strongest possible terms with everything I’ve said.

In the week I was able to spend with you I learned much about the military and about you. I saw how effective military organization can be. Civilian life is inferior in many ways and we have much we should learn about discipline, duty, sacrifice, and honor.  More importantly, I came to see you as a person. I quickly came to respect you as one of the most professional, courteous, capable, and helpful people I have met. You are a loving father. You have suffered loss and heartache on the battlefield; I can’t imagine what that is like. I respect you, wish you a long, fulfilling life, and hope you stay out of harm’s way.

I do disagree with the politics of what you do, but I’m realizing it’s important to see the humanity in everyone (even those you may have to kill on the battlefield). If these ideas seem half-baked it’s because they are. This experience has made me see the world from an eye-opening perspective; I’m still trying to make sense of it all.

Best of luck to you and yours.

We’re All Prostitutes

Why do we make such a big deal about prostitution? Certainly, good arguments can be made about the exploitation that accompanies prostitution. To quote a recent article, “Many girls are forced into prostitution to repay sums ranging from €5,000 ($6,100) to €50,000 charged by traffickers bringing them to France,” and “Manuel Valls, the interior minister, calls [prostitution] a ‘new slavery’. In 2010 France dismantled 39 international prostitution rings, most of them run from eastern Europe and the Balkans.”  While these are valid and of serious concern, they are not arguments against prostitution per se, but rather against indentured servitude.

Imagine, for a moment, an arrangement whereby a prostitute is offered money by a client in exchange for a bit of sex. The prostitute, although considering the job perhaps a bit distasteful, agrees to it, performs the work, and both parties go on their way. There is no exploitation, at least not in the form of slavery. The prostitute is free to perform the work or not. Why do many people still have a problem with this? Perhaps because there is something especially wrong with selling access to one’s body, especially when socio-economic conditions make it so that the prostitute really has no choice.

Imagine now, for a moment, an arrangement whereby a worker is offered money by an employer in exchange for a bit of labor. The worker, although considering the job perhaps a bit distasteful, agrees to it, performs the work, and both parties go on their way. There is no exploitation, at least not in the form of slavery. The worker is free to perform the work or not. Why do many people not have a problem with this? Is it any different to sell access to one’s body as opposed to one’s mental or manual labor (never minding that manual labor involves selling access to one’s body)? Why do we seldom talk about the socio-economic conditions that make it so that workers (and even self-employed business owners) really have no choice whether or not to sell themselves?

Perhaps the distaste for prostitution comes from a latent realization that the prostitute is really no different than any of us. Except for a few powerful individuals, we all live in a society that forces us to sell ourselves – a fact we hate but cannot easily discuss. The prostitute, who just happens to deal in the most taboo subjects, provides a convenient target onto which we displace our hatred. But prostitution is not the problem. Or rather, prostitution is exactly the problem, so long as we realize that we are all prostitutes.