It’s transparently obvious that blackmail is not a victimless crime given it’s not hard to identify who the victim is in a case of blackmail. Secondly their argument (blackmail comprises two parts each of which is legal on its own and therefore should be legal when done together) is both untrue on its face and fails given there are lots of things which are legal in isolation that are illegal together (eg it’s legal to buy alcohol, it’s legal to be 16, it’s not legal to be 16 and buy alcohol. It’s legal to drink, it’s legal to ride a motorcycle, it’s not legal to ride a motorcycle when you have been drinking etc).
It’s untrue on its face given that the threat part of blackmail may well be illegal on its own and the reveal of the information may be illegal depending on what the information is and how it was obtained..
This is wrong for at least two reasons:
1. The information may not have been released because the secret-holder did not have an incentive to release it, however in a 'blackmail-legal' world there is now a new incentive to threaten to release the information.
2. If blackmail is illegal, it also incentivises others to go and find secrets that they can then exploit for money/sex/other.
Paper even resorts to effectively calling Sam a facist at one point because he is against the free market(!). I think the below excerpt of the paper sums up the papers (radical) free-market views:
> Altman asserts that "charging poison victims who face imminent death more for medication than one would charge less desperate purchasers of the same drug exploits their hardships." [however] he doesn't seem to realize that those societies which allow free enterprise [...] are far more likely to have medicines that will save lives than ones which embrace socialism, regulationism, interventionism and [which represent] the fascist model favored by Altman.
I didn't know the idea that you shouldn't charge someone who is poisoned more for antidote was considered fascist or even particularly socialist!
An antidote-seller (chemist) who was known for charging more when you needed medicine would get wrecked in the market competing with a chemist who just sold stuff to whoever at a known price. Not to mention that anyone could buy from the chemist in the good times and set up shop just outside selling at stable prices arbitraging the scheme away.
A key reason of why free markets are practical is that it isn't effective to try and segment market based on consumers' raw need. The product needs to be genuinely different for that strategy to have a chance (eg, an expedited service - which is probably going to justify extra cost to someone dying of poison).
I can't say I have thought a lot about this but I wouldn't dismiss the author's point that quickly.
Plus, blackmail isn't usually done with just gossip, but with concrete evidence and hard data.
It's like saying the concept of Spaghetti Carbonara is a Paradox because I don't like eating plain spaghetti, and I don't like eating Bechamel Sauce, but I DO like eating those two things combined. Paradox!
Edit to add: here’s the definition of blackmail in the UK for reference https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/60/section/21
More generally, one cannot, in practice, blackmail someone over a harmless fact. This is so even if no one but the victim regards the fact as having any importance.
Presumably it would often be tax fraud, but an intangible assets maybe not so much?
Aren’t intangible assets and ‘horse trading’ the fundamental underpinnings of politics?
It both cases the existence of a crime depends on how closely the two actions are related. If you literally gift something to someone with zero expectation of getting anything in return and later that other person happens to do something which benefits you. It's impossible to prove that is bribery. There has to be a strong connection the money and the action.
There is a similar principle with blackmail. There has to be a strong connection between the money and the inaction.
It's interesting to note that in both cases, a transfer of money usually causes harm to external third parties who are not aware of the transaction. It would be better for society if people did not accept bribes and if people did not yield to blackmail (e.g. if they just went to jail instead of continuing whatever they were doing which made them the target of blackmail in the first place).
Now it's a facilitating payment ;-)
Bob arrives at The Five Corners and has himself and Bart (with his hands and feet bound with duct tape) stand in two of the states at the meeting point. He then tells Bart of his plan to murder him: Bob will stand in one state; reach into a second state and shoot his gun; have the bullet travel through a third state; hit Bart in a fourth state; and Bart will fall dead in the fifth state (although this is not possible, as the bullet would have to curve around to actually hit Bart). Because all portions of the process is legal, he will have immunity from prosecution in all five states so Bob can’t be charged for Bart's murder.
Can't wait to hear this author use the same logic elsewhere.
"It's legal to wish for someone's death, and legal to hand over briefcases full of cash. In this paper I will demonstrate how hiring a hitman is, in fact, ..."
or
"It's well-known that hydrogen is an explosive gas, and oxygen is an explosive gas, Q.E.D., the author maintains that the chemical H2O should in fact, also be considered an explosive gas."
It doesn’t look pretty - he has written a book with the same logic about how discrimination based on sex, race and sexuality is totally fine.
It basically says "In this essay we will use the economic theories of Adam Smith to show why something should be ethically ok from a philosophy of law perspective".
Unless they are deliberately creating environments where multiple people would be susceptible to being blackmailed. Jeffrey had plenty of security cameras.
Being a paid academic is not a crime.
Writing nonsense as a paid academic should be a crime.
https://cdn.mises.org/The%20Case%20for%20Discrimination%20Wa...
A few soundbites from that book which show that this guy is pretty disgusting:
> When women enter in the military in any great numbers, it will be a threat to the entire human race.
> Today, we consider the silver lining involved in term limits: it reduces the percentage of female politicians.
> It is eminently reasonable to bet that some black kid can dunk the basketball and some Oriental kid with thick glasses can solve the quadratic equation. If this be racism, well, so much the worse for me; it is just common sense applied to a sensitive issue. Here is another example Walter Williams offers. Suppose you go into a room and you see a tiger sitting on a couch. What do you do? You have two courses of action. One, you could be prejudiced against tigers and close the door (laughter) and sort of hold the door there and call the cops or the animal control people. Or you can be unprejudiced, don’t pre-judge tigers, don’t profile this tiger on the basis of previous tiger behavior. Here, you go up to the tiger, and say “Hey, what’s happenin’ tiger?” (laughter) “How’s it shakin’?” and you try to give him a high-five. Or, you ask him “Are you vicious?” You are open-minded: just because every other tiger you’ve ever met will bite, you stay open to the possibility that maybe this tiger won’t. If this is racism (or species-ism), make the most of it. This sort of thinking is just behaving on the basis of empirical evidence. Or, to get back to what I was talking about, the same applies to making the claim that blacks have a lower productivity than whites, on average. There are various theories as to why this should be. People on the left say, This is due to racism, or a vestige of slavery. In the view of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, it is based on IQ. But I am not interested in why this is the case. I am only interested in the conclusion: on average, blacks have lower productivity. That’s why they have lower wages, not because of prejudice and discrimination
Yeah, I think I will get my ethical views from someone else.
> "When women..." - This was in the context of describing how precious women are because they are the ones who bear our future children. Not because they are lesser people in any way. [Chapter 11 - page 32]
> "Today, we..." - Again, if you actually read the thing, here's the point from that section: "Second, apart from considerations of this sort, there is no intrinsic reason to favor male over female politicians.". The silver lining point was made in relation to a description of females leaning towards social welfare schemes, which of course is the opposite, of the goal of the author, in his cause for a stateless society.
> "It is eminently..." I think it's your own wishes coloring this section, so there's no point in going through it. Try to read it again - where is he saying something you find racist?
There's plenty of things that are legal except if done in a certain way, at a certain time, with certain persons, circumstances, etc. In fact I would argue most things are legal in a limited scope than things that are legal in any circumstance.
And in the case of blackmail there's not just the two, unless you ignore the mother freaking THREAT. You are threatening somebody, that alone makes them a victim.
In your example you aren't asking for money not to hurt them, like with blackmail. You are asking for money to give up your legal right to do something. Intent also counts in law.
Surely, everyone is naked at times, still when secretly captured on camera, you can become a victim.
(Edit: this was supposed to be a root comment)
Rules are created to optimize outcomes, not to be logically consistent.
That's it. People who think everything flows from a small set of elegant axioms are wrong. Such systems never survive contact with reality, because reality is messy and not mathematically elegant. Rules are also created by multiple parties, in multiple circumstances, and with various compromises, tradeoffs, subjectivity and intentional and accidental omissions built in, which require later inelegant patches.
The reason why blackmail is illegal though the components of it are fine is because we've seen that it leads to very suboptimal outcomes. It allows one to wield far more power than one would legitimately wield. If you reveal something embarrassing or illegal about your boss, your boss may be replaced with someone else. If you try to make an agreement with your boss without blackmail material you usually get a "fair" negotiation and outcome. The combination of both allows you to wield power you never could otherwise.
And in general a situation where people who do stuff like installing spyware or digging through somebody else's garbage manage to usurp authority isn't a good one.
Historically, even law could not stop this if the blackmail material was damaging enough and the targets powerful enough.
A stabbing consists of someone's torso and someone's knife occupying the same space at the same time. Each is fine on its own, though!
Talk about being a straw man!
So they think free enterprise includes unchecked exploitation of vulnerable people. That sounds like a lot of tech companies, from raising drug prices 20x, to Uber and DoorDash, data collection, right to repair issues, most SaaS, centralized "pricing software", DRM, heated seats as a service, etc...
They should keep writing this stuff and get the message out to the public. People will start voting in favor of "free enterprise" for sure.
Freedom to exploit others is a perversion of the word freedom.
It reminds me of "Affirmative conclusion from a negative premise" (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Affirmative_conclusion_from_a_...) or an inverse "two wrongs don't make a right" (two rights do not make a wrong?)
The legal theory of blackmail is the veritable puzzle surrounded by a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Consider. Blackmail consists of two things, each indisputably legal on their own; yet, when combined in a single act, the result is considered a crime. What are the two things? First, there is either a threat or an offer. In the former case, it is, typically, to publicize an embarrassing secret; in the latter, it is to remain silent about this information. Second, there is a demand or a request for funds or other valuable considerations. When put together, there is a threat that unless paid off, the secret will be told.
Either of these things, standing alone, is perfectly legal. To tell an embarrassing secret is to do no more than gossip; no one has ever been incarcerated for that. To ask for money is likewise a legitimate activity, as everyone from Bill Clinton to the beggar to the fund raiser for the local charity can attest. Yet when combined, the result is called blackmail and it is widely seen as a crime.
But that is just the puzzle. The mystery is that over a dozen attempts to account for this puzzle have been written, and not a one of them agrees to any great extent with any other. It is as if there are a plethora of witnesses to a motor vehicle accident, each not only disagreeing with all the others, but each telling a completely different story. The enigma is that with the exception of a corporal's guard of commentators, no one has seen fit to assert the contrary: that two legal "whites" cannot make an illegal "black."
This is precisely the point of the present paper. The authors maintain that since it is legal to gossip, it should therefore not be against the law to threaten to gossip, unless paid off not to do so. In a word, blackmail is a victimless crime, and must be legalized, if justice is to be attained. The authors also reply to a paper written by Scott Altman, who takes a different position.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/98032702.pdf?abstr...
… but I feel the concept of “criminal coercion” is a powerful potential fix to a lot of modern problems. If one party has sufficient power via any means that they can coerce and control their other party, at some point (the hard part is deciding where this point is) the coercive nature switches from being “normal life in a capitalist society under the rule of law” (a phrase I’m using to try and cover all the forms of coercion that we kind of have to live with, eg cops and the law) to being “criminal coercion”.
There’s obviously a massive argument as to what the cut off should be, but the concept is simple and feels morally justified which is a good start. It’s not perfect but it’s a good start at least, unlike the “let’s just make blackmail legal because… etc..” attitude that keeps coming up in the paper.
… but I feel the concept of “criminal coercion” is a powerful potential fix to a lot of modern problems. If one party has sufficient power via any means that they can coerce and control their other party, at some point (the hard part is deciding where this point is) the coercive nature switches from being “normal life in a capitalist society under the rule of law” (a phrase I’m using to try and cover all the forms of coercion that we kind of have to live with, eg cops and the law) to being “criminal coercion”.
There’s obviously a massive argument as to what the cut off should be, but the concept is simple and feels morally justified which is a good start.
