After a few minutes, the woman came back and quickly sat down at her typewriter again. "You can continue," she said quietly.

The man had temporarily adopted a rather relaxed posture, but now he sat up straight again.

Marah put her cup down and opened her file back up.

"There's one thing I overlooked earlier. In addition to food and beverages, sexual services will also be exempt from sales tax. It's best if you bring that forward and include it at the beginning of the conversation. It will certainly be easier to follow for the reader if it's all together."

"That's probably true... Why should the sales tax for sexual services be exempt?"

"The industry has had a recruitment problem in recent years, which would increase prices in the long term. As a precautionary measure, I would like to remove the sales tax for such services in order to give brothel owners the opportunity to keep the prices low and attract more women and men back into the profession through higher wages. I have already negotiated this in advance with the owners of the large chains and this is what will happen."

"At the end of last year, you acquired a property in Goldlaub-Allee. The building was previously a brothel. May I ask for what purpose this property was acquired?"

"I'm sure you mean the building at Goldlauballe 13. The brothel had closed in fall and was to be torn down. I thought that was a shame, because it's a beautiful building with columns and a loggia and one of the nicest in Rosenberg, which is why I bought it. I will probably sell it on to Rosa or Liefer and they will then use it for offices. Due to the trip to Ceramare and then the trip to Jena for the birth of my niece and all the usual work, I simply haven't had time to take care of it yet."

"Your first company was Rosa. You founded it at the age of 12 as a state company. When you were 14, you handed over the role of managing director to your representative, Ms. Sucher. The public perception is that you are close friends with her. This month, Ms Sucher registered a business called Purpur, which will probably be active in the sex industry. First Rosa, then Blau, is Purpur their next business and will it be a brothel in the building you have acquired?"

"No, but that's almost accurate. I am surprised. Nothing can be kept from you, I realize. I'm not going to sell the building to Rosa, but to Mrs. Sucher herself. Unfortunately, she will soon be leaving her position as Rosa's manager and opening a nightclub called Purpur in the building in the summer. I thought that was supposed to remain a secret, but if Ms. Sucher has already registered it, I think she will have already registered the name as a trademark as well."

"You say nightclub, but it will be a brothel, I presume?"

"I suspect it will be a combination of both, but I'm not that involved in Ms. Sucher's plans. I only laid out the purchase amount of the building for her because we worked together for a long time and she asked me to do it. I consider Ms. Sucher to be competent enough to run a company successfully, which is why I gave her the role of managing director of Rosa back then and why I personally granted her a loan."

"Even if your relationship with Ms. Sucher is rather distant, it is widely known that you are very good friends with at least one of the owners of one of the large brothel chains. One could therefore accuse you that the removal of sales tax on sexual services has something to do with your friendships."

"I am very good friends with the owners of businesses from many sectors. It's hard to avoid that and I could always be accused of that. Brothels are important. Sex is a basic need. Sex promotes physical and mental health. No other country in the world prescribes as few antidepressants as we do, even though no other country in the world has as many people undergoing therapeutic treatment as we do. In Jena, for example, the suicide rate is consistently 18 times higher. They don't go to the doctor. They take pills or suffer until they kill themselves. Drug abuse, alcoholism, depression, burnout, suicide, everything is always higher everywhere. The rest of the world is insane and doesn't realize it. Old people are lonely in nursing homes and nobody wants to or can look after them because the jobs are underpaid and understaffed. That's sad. In our country, pensioners happily squander their pensions in brothels. A relationship that you pay for is better than no relationship at all, which is why life expectancy is so many years higher here. Brothels are then also important for the vacation sector and also a mandatory requirement for the low crime rates in the area of sexual offenses. If the legal business becomes expensive again, the illegal business would be more worthwhile and you can imagine why that would not be desirable."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"Do you really think the latter is true? Abroad, other points are always brought up when it comes to the low crime rates, but the strong presence of brothels is never really mentioned. Instead, rather arguments are put forward as to why the many brothels either have a negative impact or no impact at all."

"What points and arguments would that be?"

"Doctor Albert Schoppe, Minister of Justice in Jena, had recently said something along these lines in a press release. If I remember incorrectly, you can correct your answer later, but he said roughly that the low crime rates in Baele were due to the dense population of the cities, the high number of shelters, the good emergency systems, a high degree of civil courage, the fundamentally different mentality and all this in connection with very high punishments."

"I'm happy to agree with Doctor Schoppe that all that plays into it, but of course most importantly are the brothels. Whenever a drunk gets turned down in a bar somewhere, two seconds later he has a sex worker's hand on his shoulder. Is that the high level of civil courage he's talking about? How can you tell me that this has no effect? Especially when you always deliver such embarrassing results yourself? I think there were 18 cases of rape per 100,000 inhabitants in Jena last year? That's just the bright field, in other words the known cases. They don't even include most of them. What were the arguments against sex work?"

"The last arguments I read came from an association for women's rights, also from Jena. It was claimed that sex workers had to be used as substitute victims. They were people whose own sexuality was being suppressed so that others could live out their sexuality. The assumption that sex workers could reduce the rape rate is based on the false assumption that sex workers themselves cannot be raped. On the contrary, sex workers are actually the group of people who are the most frequent victims of sexual assault. Customers are not interested in sex itself, but rather in having power over women and oppressing women. All the arguments were mainly about women. A ban was also advocated to prevent the exploitation of women in sex work."

"I think it shows a very distorted view of sexuality to assume that one person's sexuality must automatically be suppressed so that another person can live out their sexuality. What kind of crude idea is that, where two people can never find each other? Of course I know where that comes from. It's because women generally don't want to have sex. That's what's behind this statement. Women don't want to have sex and therefore there can't be any women who would do this work of their own free will. That is simply sexism. Every second customer of a sexual service in Baele is a woman and on average they spend more money on it than men. Overall, 65% of all adult citizens visit a brothel at least once a year. That is the case here because we have a healthy approach to sexuality. There are sex workers in Baele because it's a nice profession. You can choose your working hours, place of work, colleagues and customers, you get gifts from regular customers, you have free access to nightclubs, you don't have to pay for your meals on site, you may be provided with luxury accommodation, you meet lots of different people from all social classes and, ideally, you do something you enjoy and get paid well for it. You also have many opportunities for advancement in terms of salary and can easily switch to other trades, such as the porn industry or the modeling business. These are all advantages that you have as a career starter. As a hairdresser, you earn an average of 14 S-Mark an hour and it will never be much more. As a trainee at one of the chains, you earn at least 24 S-Mark an hour and, depending on the contract, you can even earn that in your sleep." Marah took a satisfied sip from her cup and exhaled with pleasure. "The next thing was that men aren't interested in sex, but in having power over a woman. Unfortunately, that's only half-knowledge. In fact, for some men sex is really about having power over a woman, but for other men it's about a woman having power over them. This is called sadomasochism. They should look that up first before trying to talk about a topic that they obviously have little to do with otherwise. Other than that, it's mainly about having fun and connecting with people with similar interests." She put her cup down again. It was empty by now. "If someone feels compelled to do this work because it is the easiest and quickest way to earn money, then that speaks for this profession and not against it. But it also shows a failure of the government in other areas, because nobody should feel forced to do any kind of work. Perhaps they should look at reducing the causes of that. Such causes are often the lack of health insurance, social security services or insolvency systems. Instead, people want to ban the most lucrative work, which cannot prevent exploitation. If these people are exploited on a plantation instead, then all is right with the world again? It's not as if that doesn't happen. An 80-hour week and minimum wage is also the standard in Jena. In other countries, young women sometimes have their wombs removed to make them even better field workers. But normal exploitation is not relevant in this context because it contradicts the narrative of sex work as the culprit. These are always just bogus arguments to spread their own misogynistic morality. It doesn't even have any logic in itself. You want to prevent the exploitation of women in sex work and therefore ban the profession? You have to think about it, there are women being raped, beaten and forced to work and the brilliant solution is to ban them from working? Ahahaha... A ban on sexual services hasn't worked once in the entire history of the world, yet some idiots keep propagating it. The resistance to learn is really alarming. There are many things that can be discussed morally. This is not one of them. The facts are very clear here. Anyone who seriously proposes something like this is at worst anti-constitutional and at best mentally challenged. In both cases, a state authority should deal with this person."

.../ End Part