Underground Economy: Hidden Sex Work, Black Markets, and the History of Unregulated Desire

When we talk about the underground economy, a system of economic activity that operates outside official regulation and taxation. Also known as the informal economy, it includes everything from unlicensed street vendors to digital sex work platforms that bypass payment processors and legal oversight. This isn’t just about crime—it’s about survival, autonomy, and the long history of people turning to sex, trade, and intimacy when formal systems fail them.

The sex work, the exchange of sexual services for money, goods, or favors. Also known as commercialized sexuality, it has existed in every major civilization—from temple priestesses in ancient Mesopotamia to the brothels of Victorian London and today’s OnlyFans creators. Governments have tried to ban it, shame it, and control it, but it keeps coming back because demand never disappears. The black market, a network of illegal trade that thrives when legal options are restricted or too expensive. Also known as informal trade, it doesn’t just move drugs or weapons—it moves pleasure, companionship, and sometimes, dignity. Think of the underground economy as the shadow twin of the legal economy: where people get what they need when the system won’t give it to them.

What ties all these threads together? Power. Who gets to decide what’s legal? Who gets punished for selling sex? Who gets erased from history because their work doesn’t fit into polite narratives? The articles below dig into how the underground economy shaped—and was shaped by—gender, law, and culture. You’ll find stories of Victorian women using vibrators to escape hysteria diagnoses, Etruscan tombs where sex and death were sacred, and how police raids on gay bars were really about controlling who could love openly. These aren’t just historical footnotes—they’re living systems still running today, under new names and digital masks.

What you’ll find here isn’t theory. It’s real people—women, queer folks, sex workers, and pioneers—who built networks, defied laws, and claimed space in a world that wanted them silent. Their stories reveal how the underground economy isn’t something we can eliminate. It’s something we must understand.