Where do you stand on the following?

I got the following information from one of the forums:

'IF YOU DON'T TAKE A JOB AS A PROSTITUTE, WE CAN STOP YOUR BENEFITS' By Clare Chapman 12:01AM GMT 30 Jan 2005 A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year. Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners – who must pay tax and employee health insurance – were granted access to official databases of jobseekers. The Telegraph

Where ro you stand on the issue this German waitress is facing and why?

I think that the job was a prostitute is irrelevant, if someone tried to force her to be a beer taster against her will, I'd be on her side. We have a word for forced labour, that's slavery and apparently there are more slaves in the world now than there has ever been at any other time in history, if a state like Germany that not long ago abolished slavery moves back towards it, it's only in line with the global trend.

-- Updated April 25th, 2012, 4:43 am to add the following --

On further investigation

http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/brothel.asp

Apparently, it was a hypothetical assumption of what might be. Following is a link that explains it:

http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/brothel.asp

Thanks

[Scott]

Actually, the specific occupation of prostitution aside for the reasons Grendel wisely points out, this hypothetical seems to raise a question in the philosophy of politics that I bet might be quite disagreeable: Shall the state only provide conditional welfare and financial aid to non-employed or underemployed people under the condition that they actively seek work (if they are able to work) and accept the best job available to them? The quality of being "unemployed" is -- at least in the USA -- defined as being able to work and actively seeking work, which is why I used the broader term 'non-employed' to refer to anyone who happens to not have a paying job for whatever reason. For that reason, presumably 'the payout from unemployment insurance to unemployed people' whether under a government mandated and/or single payer system or a private unemployment insurance company would only by definition be provided to people actively seeking work. But it seems to me that the quality of 'actively seeking work' does not have to mean any. For example, shall a laid off bus driver be considered ineligible for the status of 'unemployed' i.e. 'actively seeking work' if he declines to take a job as a coal miner when there are no bus driving jobs open? In other words, shall 'actively seeking work' mean 'actively seeking any work' or 'actively seeking work in one's field' particularly one the work available out of one's original, preferred field may be dangerous or disgusting or despised in the opinion of the unemployed person as may be the case especially certain occupations like those involving performing what many consider vices such as non-martial or public sex acts, beer drinking, or military or violent work or those involving danger such as military work again or coal mining or even working the graveyard shift in a taxi or gas station. Once we agree on what it means to be unemployed, there is still the question on which I think there will much disagreement of whether or not the state shall provide alternative benefits like welfare and such to non-employed people who are able to work, i.e. people who do not have a job but are not considered to be 'actively seeking work' whatever that means since they are by definition ineligible for the benefits of unemployment insurance paid to unemployed people i.e. those actively seeking work. For my part, I don't anyone starving to death on the streets or otherwise suffering in poverty who lacks the ability through a reasonable effort of their own to get out of the situation. So however its done, my ideal society would be one in which the disabled i.e. those unable to work and by extension the very young and the elderly to have some kind of income on which to live not in poverty. I also think unemployment insurance needs to be universal so that anyone who is able to work and actively seeking work has an income in the interim. However, making taxpayers provide welfare or such to someone who is not disabled and not unemployed i.e. someone who is able to work but NOT actively seeking any work seems completely intolerable to me; in fact I think it would contribute to poverty by pushing taxpayers and those who depend on taxpayers (e.g. the children of a taxpaying parent who could have had the money in their college fund) closer to poverty. One might argue that the person who declines to work any and all paying jobs and then does not get benefits is in poverty; but since it seems the person has chosen that state and is able to get out I would not describe them as being in poverty anymore than I would describe anorexia as an instance of world hunger. One might also argue that such a person who must choose to work to not be in poverty is a slave, but philosophically speaking that is not true and can only be made to be the case by extenuating circumstances. (Incidentally, overall in Western society and the global society I believe there are extenuating circumstances that effectively make the working class slaves.) Putting a gun to someone's head and threatening to shoot them if they do not perform labor is an instance of slavery; telling someone you won't give them charity if they do not do something is not slavery. Nonetheless, for the same reason I want the disabled and elderly and unemployed cared for and not starving in the streets, I want poverty-eliminating benefits of some kind or another provided to those who are actively seeking certain kinds of work, i.e. safe work that suits them and their unique skills, but not willing to just take any work, namely refusing work they find particularly degrading, dangerous or out of line with their personal convictions which might include jobs such as being a sex worker, military worker, paid preacher at religion other than their own, or overnight taxi driver regardless of whether such people are technically unemployed or simply non-employed.

'Hate a bang the social contract argument yet again. But the contract is that people observe private property and land ownerships laws in return that the owners don't leave them to starve and provide for them.

There is no clause that I know of that in order to receive that provision people must work for wealthy owners for under the going rate to generate surplus value and further enrich them.

Way I see it if no provision is given the social contract is breached and the person not in receipt of welfare no longer within the contract. so is in no way covered by private property and land laws anymore, he take what he wants and go where he pleases.

[Scott]

Yes, I think the example of welfare to lazy non-workers refutes the argument that there exists some kind of social contract -- the wording and clauses of which I have never seen at all nor ever appended my signature.

Although in the post I am referring specifically to consent of macro-taxation, I explain the reasons I do not believe any idea of a so-called 'social contract' can be used to validly claim that anyone has consented to anything in my topic: Is macro-taxation under the threat of prison consensual?

Of course, there will be conflicts if one group is claiming to own natural resources like land and threatening to use violence to keep others from it who do "take what they want and go where they please." Anyone who would have cared had there been a social contract seems to feel as feel that the consent of would-be victims matters and that there political philosophy like mine is fundamentally concerned with the initiation of non-consensual interactions, i.e. non-defensive violence and coercion. I address these issues together in my topic: Property Rights and the Initiation of Violence