THIS MUST BE THE FIRST PRO CASUAL SEX ARTICLE FROM AN 'AIDS' AND CONDOM
BELIEVER.

As 'AIDS' is a myth and CLEARLY not an std, this article is only of
interest as a interesting twist on the usual anti sex propaganda.

Extract: -

More Sex Is Safer Sex

The economic case for promiscuity.
By Steven E. Landsburg

That's why increased activity by sexual conservatives can slow down the
rate of infection and reduce the prevalence of AIDS. In fact, according to
Professor Michael Kremer of MIT's economics department, the spread of AIDS
in England could plausibly be retarded if everyone with fewer than about
2.25 partners per year were to take additional partners more frequently.
That covers three-quarters of British heterosexuals between the ages of 18
and 45. (Much of this column is inspired by Professor Kremer's research.

If multiple partnerships save lives, then monogamy can be deadly. Imagine
a country where almost all women are monogamous, while all men demand two
female partners per year. Under those conditions, a few prostitutes end up
servicing all the men. Before long, the prostitutes are infected; they
pass the disease to the men; and the men bring it home to their monogamous
wives.

But if each of those monogamous wives was willing to take on one
extramarital partner, the market for prostitution would die out, and the
virus, unable to spread fast enough to maintain itself, might die out
along with it.

Or consider Joan, who attended a party where she ought to have met the
charming and healthy Martin. Unfortunately Fate, through its agents at the
Centers for Disease Control, intervened. The morning of the party, Martin
ran across one of those CDC-sponsored subway ads touting the virtues of
abstinence. Chastened, he decided to stay home. In Martin's absence, Joan
hooked up with the equally charming but considerably less prudent
Maxwell--and Joan got AIDS.

Abstinence can be even deadlier than monogamy.

If those subway ads are more effective against the cautious Martins than
against the reckless Maxwells, then they are a threat to the hapless
Joans. This is especially so when they displace Calvin Klein ads, which
might have put Martin in a more socially beneficent mood.
You might object that even if Martin had dallied with Joan, he would only
have freed Maxwell to prey on another equally innocent victim. To this
there are two replies.

First, we don't know that Maxwell would have found another partner:
Without Joan, he might have struck out that night. Second, reducing the
rate of HIV transmission is in any event not the only social goal worth
pursuing: If it were, we'd outlaw sex entirely.

What we really want is to minimize the number of infections resulting from
any given number of sexual encounters; the flip side of this observation
is that it is desirable to maximize the number of (consensual) sexual
encounters leading up to any given number of infections. Even if Martin
had failed to deny Maxwell a conquest that evening, and thus failed to
slow the epidemic, he could at least have made someone happy.
To an economist, it's clear why people with limited sexual pasts choose to
supply too little sex in the present:

Their services are underpriced. If sexual conservatives could effectively
advertise their histories, HIV-conscious suitors would compete to lavish
them with attention. But that doesn't happen, because such conservatives
are hard to identify.

Insufficiently rewarded for relaxing their standards, they relax their
standards insufficiently.

So a socially valuable service is under-rewarded and therefore
under-supplied.

This is a problem we've experienced before. We face it whenever a producer
fails to safeguard the environment.

Extrapolating from their usual response to environmental issues, I assume
that liberals will want to attack the problem of excessive sexual
restraint through coercive regulation. As a devotee of the price system,
I'd prefer to encourage good behavior through an appropriate system of
subsidies.

The question is: How do we subsidize Martin's sexual awakening without
simultaneously subsidizing Maxwell's ongoing predations? Just paying
people to have sex won't work--not with Maxwell around to reap the bulk of
the rewards.

The key is to subsidize something that is used in conjunction with sex and
that Martin values more than Maxwell.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2033/