Kristian

That this is still where elite American intellectual discourse lives, is itself a data point about how maladaptive America's institutional structures have become. When your smartest people are still fighting over which version of a falsified model should prevail, that's a society in serious trouble

P. S. He embarrassingly romanticizes the pre-1964 constitutional order as though "freedom of association" wasn't itself a euphemism for a racist patriarchal caste system enforced through violence. The old constitution continues to fail because it cannot solve its own cooperation problem.

What he never considers is the possibility that the reason America needed such an aggressive legal apparatus is that it lacked the institutional infrastructure that Nordic societies use to achieve similar outcomes through different means. 2/2

Caldwell presents his simplistic perspective as a binary — either you have the old constitution with freedom of association, or you have the civil rights regime with its expanding definitions of discrimination. 1/2

Voters are probably there.

Ambitious people running for office are NOT there. We are NOT telling the right stories and whole STATES are Puritanical-rooted-church-captured.

LOTS of cultural pockets in America where being gay is considered MORE horrifying than shooting animals in the face for fun.

You nail it. Democratic Party was taken over by lawyers and academics. We need masters of teaching stories!

Agreed. The "Nordic: model does that. The current political environment in Scandinavia is in conflict with the Nordic Model institutional structure; that's where the criminalization of sex, drugs etc comes in.

Your view is that there are not enough voters that are attracted to truly functional structural reforms and policies right here and now? Even if a political party stands firm and promotes the crap out of such policies and reforms?

The most powerful 'lever' isn't operant conditioning — it's removing the structural coercion that turns intimacy into a survival strategy. And that's why American Democrats must stand on structural solutions based on knowledge and science, not individual or group solutions based on ideology. 4/4

Universal healthcare that includes mental health, comprehensive sex education, housing security, and economic autonomy create the conditions where people can form genuine intimate connections from a position of strength rather than need. 3/

The "Nordic" model does this, not through professionalizing sex work, but through eliminating the structural deprivation that distorts human sexuality in the first place. 2/

I hear you. You're right that a truly ethical society would take human sexuality and psychological wellbeing seriously as interconnected. But consider: the Nordic countries already achieve dramatically better outcomes in sexual health, relationship satisfaction, and psychological wellbeing. 1/

The countries with the most comprehensive social safety nets — universal healthcare, free education, robust housing policy, generous parental leave, active labor market programs — have the smallest sex industries regardless of the specific legal framework around sex work itself.

You are having an argument with someone out there for sure...

bsky.app/profile/kltb...

I am Swedish...the countries with the most comprehensive social safety nets — universal healthcare, free education, robust housing policy, generous parental leave, active labor market programs — have the smallest sex industries regardless of the specific legal framework around sex work itself.

Even the English Collective of Prostitutes, which opposes the Nordic Model law, acknowledges that prostitution has always been connected to women's poverty, which is why most sex workers (88%) are women.

Data submitted to the UK Parliament showed that a much smaller proportion of the population is involved in prostitution under the Nordic Model in Sweden, Norway, and France than under legalization and full decriminalization in Germany, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.

bsky.app/profile/kltb...

bsky.app/profile/kltb...

Kind people question their assumptions about other people

It asks: what institutional structure would have to exist for this person to have genuine alternatives? And then it builds that structure. Countries that have done this see dramatically different outcomes — not because people are different, but because the choice architecture is different. 3/3

When someone is born into poverty, without access to healthcare or education, in a society with no safety net — the 'choices' available to them are pre-constrained by institutional design. The Nordic Model doesn't moralize about individual decisions. 2/

Regardless of where anyone stands on sex work regulation specifically, a society where people have genuine economic security and alternatives produces fundamentally different outcomes than one where millions live one crisis away from desperation. 1/

You live in France under the Patriarchal Imperial model.

Dems must focus on becoming better at education and communication. "Border security" is Far-Right terminology used right along with "Civilizational Erasure" and "Great Replacement".

Teach people that border security has nothing to do with immigration policy.

The Nordic Model eliminates the precarity and deprivation that pushes vulnerable individuals into sex work, exploitative jobs, drug dealing, and crime. It sanctions the customers and provides vulnerable individuals the necessary resources to build psychological and financial autonomy.

Not much that can be done for willfully ignorant people

No better example of why American problems are not about Trump, but about a badly designed institutional structure.

In patriarchal systems such as the American one:

Trust is treated as a moral reward for obedience.

In adaptive systems:

Trust is treated as a public good deliberately engineered by institutional design.

The Nordic Model has answers; force Capital to operate on a level playing field with Labor.