The simple paradigm about prostitution is that first of all, irresponsible sex is legal, as long as the participants are adults and no physical coercion is involved. The second thing is that the irresponsible exchange of money is also legal, and happens all the time.
So here is prostitution in a nutshell. Two legal acts that become illegal solely because not enough time has elapsed between the two.
On the surface that seems to make no sense, but dig deeper, and it makes even less sense.
Prostitution, in one sense, happens wherever sex happens. Not just among the poor, but with the middle class and wealthy as well. Even marriage is not a good dividing line, between “sex for the sake of sex” and prostitution, because marriage is no longer legally or socially enforced.
But to say that prostitution is unlawful solely because the middle class and wealthy abhor the poor having sex, or because poor prostitutes feel enticed much more by receiving money than would middle class prostitutes misses the boat.
Likewise it is nonsensical to reject prostitution because it is sometimes used by its participants in the furtherance of other bad habits, like drinking and drugs. As someone once remarked, “Were it not for alcohol, the human race would have long ago become extinct.”
So more than anything else, prostitution is illegal *solely* because the participants are too stupid to separate the sex and the money by enough distance for it to not be prostitution, but legal sex for legal money.
That’s a pretty fair way to sum it up.