Economic reforms backed by a welfare net further backed by dispassionate application of law can have disastrous social consequences.
Sniggering at old world values and conservative ethics is no doubt fashionable, as it is politically correct to run down morality.
But check out what's happening in Germany, and perhaps you will have second thoughts about blindly chanting the mantra of market defining the way we should live. Out-of-job Germans are eligible for unemployment benefit, but only if there is no available job for the beneficiary which he/she can be forced to take or face a cutback in benefit. That job could be in the sex industry, legalised in Germany in 2002.
Initially, the German Government had considered exempting jobs in brothels "on moral grounds", but decided not to do so because, technically, there is nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry.
Earlier this year, potential employers in the German sex industry were allowed to advertise in job centres that must now, to quote one report, "treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse".
The possibility of women being forced into the sex industry came to light when a 25-year-old unemployed information technology professional was told that she would face cuts in her unemployment benefit for turning down a potential job providing "sexual services" at a brothel in Berlin. If the job centre lets her go unpunished, it will face legal action from the potential employer to whom she said no.
When Germany legalised the sex industry, it argued that this was the best way to stop trafficking in women. Brothel owners are now given a license and they have to pay taxes and employee benefits, which add up to a substantial contribution to the government's coffer.
It is anybody's guess, really, as to whether or not the German Government, by legalising the sex industry in Germany, has been able to put an end to trafficking in women. But what it has definitely achieved, perhaps unwittingly, is to leave women with fewer choices - if the only job going around is that of a prostitute, an unemployed woman would have to take a shot at it or else face punitive cuts in benefit.
There is, of course, no gender discrimination. The same laws that militate against an unemployed woman's right to social benefit in a given situation, also applies to men. If at a job centre the only job on offer by a potential employer in the sex industry requires the services of a male, an unemployed man has no other option but to check it out.
Those who constantly look west-ward for inspiration and passionately argue in favour of an amoral, ruthless, profit-driven society, are unlikely to be moved by the impending collapse of ethics and values in one of the most developed countries whose economic success has often been held up as a textbook example of happy marriage between capital and market.
I wonder how they would have responded if they had been in the place of the 25-year-old Berlin woman who was asked to take up the job of a prostitute. A fiendish friend says, they would have merrily said yes.
Sniggering at old world values and conservative ethics is no doubt fashionable, as it is politically correct to run down morality.
But check out what's happening in Germany, and perhaps you will have second thoughts about blindly chanting the mantra of market defining the way we should live. Out-of-job Germans are eligible for unemployment benefit, but only if there is no available job for the beneficiary which he/she can be forced to take or face a cutback in benefit. That job could be in the sex industry, legalised in Germany in 2002.
Initially, the German Government had considered exempting jobs in brothels "on moral grounds", but decided not to do so because, technically, there is nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry.
Earlier this year, potential employers in the German sex industry were allowed to advertise in job centres that must now, to quote one report, "treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse".
The possibility of women being forced into the sex industry came to light when a 25-year-old unemployed information technology professional was told that she would face cuts in her unemployment benefit for turning down a potential job providing "sexual services" at a brothel in Berlin. If the job centre lets her go unpunished, it will face legal action from the potential employer to whom she said no.
When Germany legalised the sex industry, it argued that this was the best way to stop trafficking in women. Brothel owners are now given a license and they have to pay taxes and employee benefits, which add up to a substantial contribution to the government's coffer.
It is anybody's guess, really, as to whether or not the German Government, by legalising the sex industry in Germany, has been able to put an end to trafficking in women. But what it has definitely achieved, perhaps unwittingly, is to leave women with fewer choices - if the only job going around is that of a prostitute, an unemployed woman would have to take a shot at it or else face punitive cuts in benefit.
There is, of course, no gender discrimination. The same laws that militate against an unemployed woman's right to social benefit in a given situation, also applies to men. If at a job centre the only job on offer by a potential employer in the sex industry requires the services of a male, an unemployed man has no other option but to check it out.
Those who constantly look west-ward for inspiration and passionately argue in favour of an amoral, ruthless, profit-driven society, are unlikely to be moved by the impending collapse of ethics and values in one of the most developed countries whose economic success has often been held up as a textbook example of happy marriage between capital and market.
I wonder how they would have responded if they had been in the place of the 25-year-old Berlin woman who was asked to take up the job of a prostitute. A fiendish friend says, they would have merrily said yes.
