Blackmail paradoxes

boing
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Heads-up: first link should go to http://www.futilitycloset.com/2014/12/29/a-second-paradox-of-blackmail/, not http://www.futilitycloset.com/2014/12/05/particulars/

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Really? This is only a paradox if you don’t understand the concept of threat.

We need to get this guy together with the one doing the prostitute study - together they could solve all the world’s problems, if that world is Bizarro world.

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Seriously. Asking for money is not the same as extorting money.

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As everyone else has alluded, whomever did this study had to ask this question is an idiot…

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Study?

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If it’s legal for me to reveal your secret, and it’s legal for me to ask you for money, why is it illegal for me to demand payment to keep your secret?

If it’s legal for me to drive, and it’s legal for me to drink, why is it illegal for me to drink and drive?

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If it’s legal for you to have stuff, and legal for me to have pockets…

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Because bribery enriches and blackmail threatens those with political and economic power - exactly the people who decide our laws.

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“Paradox”?

You keep using that word.

I do not think it means what you think it means.

(-:

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Paying someone to have sex is illegal if you don’t record it for the purpose of commerce. Having sex for money is illegal unless you let someone record it and sell copies of the recording.

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Politicians lie.
Cast iron sinks.
~
Politicians lie in cast iron sinks.

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Laws against blackmail are incoherent as Walter Block has been arguing for a long time: http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/second_paradox.pdf

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Yes, but with blackmail you’re threatening to do something completely legal. Generally something doesn’t magically become illegal just because you threaten to do it.

For example, if I threaten to eat an apple, that doesn’t suddenly become illegal. If I threaten to point and laugh at your haircut, that’s not suddenly illegal either.

So I guess I must not understand the concept of threat either. Care to explain?

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Give it a shot. The judge will explain just fine. Pretending you don’t understand the concept of crime doesn’t get you off. Something tells me you already knew that.

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I mean, I can have kids, and I can have sex, but…

… yea, this actually doesn’t seem very paradoxical to me.

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If you can’t explain it then just admit it. Being patronizing isn’t fooling anyone.

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I get it. Are you one of those guys who thinks it’s cool to dox rape victims? They also pretend that they’ve done no wrong and they don’t understand what a threat is. And if you pretend you don’t know what crime is, then it’s okay! It’s the logic of a sociopath.

So tell me, who are you blackmailing, secure in the knowledge that it’s a fine thing to do?

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That escalated quickly.

And for the record he’s blackmailing my cat (Charlemagne has been hitting the nip pretty hard, and there may be video evidence).

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I think what the answer really comes down to is self-determination. For certain extremist religionists I know, there is no answer to this ‘paradox’. But having a concept that people should have self-determination really solves this problem.

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