Insider trading, a victimless crime
Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
11–20 of 102 posts
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#12insider trading, a victimless crime
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#13Drinking is legal, driving is legal, so it should be legal to combine them. trabant00, professor emeritus of mental gymnastics. Plz give money for study and paper.
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.
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#14Doesn't the same thing apply to bribery? I can gift you something, and I can ask you to do something. But if I do the first conditioned on the second it's bribery.
The illegal thing about bribery is that you give money to an individual for them to do something on behalf of an organisation. Paying someone to do something isn't illegal, but you're harming the organisation by encouraging the individual to act differently than in the best interests of the organisation.
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#15Should add 1998 to the title.
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#16I find the argument quite ridiculous, but worse, the premise seems flawed. Contrary to the authors claim, publishing humiliating information would probably fall under defamation, which is illegal. At least in my country.
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#17Writing nonsense is not a crime.
Being a paid academic is not a crime.
Writing nonsense as a paid academic should be a crime.
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#18Drinking is legal, driving is legal, so it should be legal to combine them. trabant00, professor emeritus of mental gymnastics. Plz give money for study and paper. 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…
The thing is that in other cases you are allowed to threaten with legal actions. For example if I have permission to build on some land that would block your view, then I can ask you to pay to prevent me from doing this.
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#19Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#20There's a very simple explanation:
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.