The Paradox of Blackmail

I love subjects like this. Questioning why we have certain laws and norms. Defending and attacking it.
Would love more videos like this. The more controversial the better.

This is a very interesting logical and philosophical conundrum. It makes me want to ask a lawyer whether the following scenarios are legal or not:
1. I’m photographed in a compromising act WITH my knowledge. The photographer puts all these photos into a package and offers the package for sale with a salacious ad but no information about the details, to the highest bidder in an auction (e.g. on eBay). Someone I know purchases them for most of their life savings and I report the incident to the authorities as blackmail. Do I have legally compelling case?
2. I’m photographed in a compromising act WITHOUT my knowledge. The photographer puts all these photos into a package and offers the package for sale with a salacious ad but no information about the details, to the highest bidder in an auction (e.g. on eBay). I purchase them for most of my life savings and report the incident to the authorities as blackmail. Do I have legally compelling case?
3. I’m photographed in a compromising act WITH my knowledge. The photographer puts all these photos into a package and offers the package for sale with a salacious ad but no information about the details, to the highest bidder in an auction (e.g. on eBay). I purchase them for most of my life savings and report the incident to the authorities as blackmail. Do I have a legally compelling case?

I suspect that the answer is “no” in all cases, but all of them are very similar to scenarios in which the answer, I think, would be “yes”; specifically, in each case, if the photographer informed me that the incriminating items would be available for auction to the highest bidder, it seems more likely that I could successfully pursue criminal charges.

Any lawyers want to weigh in?

In ordinary English, at least that I've experienced, if a planned action is unconditional, description of it is not a threat. Conditionality is central to the meaning of the word.

I don't find the argument against blackmail by comparison to drunk driving convincing. In the case of drunk driving, there's a harm—of significant of risk of causing accident—that does not occur on its own when simply driving or drinking separately.

One problem with threat is that it's unjustified coercion. The nature of the threatened response, including its legality, has no bearing on the justification or severity of the coercion. There is no reason to suppose that threatening to do something unlawful is more serious than threatening to do something that's otherwise lawful (or less so). Likewise for all the other problems with threat, as far as I can see.

Nobody is gonna talk about Kane blackmailing his entire audience?

I'm glad you mentioned how legalized blackmail would affect gay people. In blackmail civilization it would be impossible to stay in the closet, go on one date and suddenly you have companies asking for thousands of dollars to not tell your parents. Sounds like a bad time!

I think I disagree with the sentiment that bribery is legal. There may be a few specific situations (such as NDAs) where bribery could be argued to be legally occurring. And there are certainly corrupt systems that have created legalized options that are functionally equivalent to bribery. But in the more general moral landscape people generally consider bribery to be morally improper.

My Answer to this question of whether blackmail should be permissible hinges on the idea that bribery should also be forbidden. Bribery, at its most basic, is paying somebody to do something that is immoral or otherwise forbidden. So paying someone to give you their product isn't bribery, but paying someone to neglect to do a job (that someone else has paid them to do) is bribery and is clearly immoral.
My point is that when you consider any act of blackmail, it can be reduced to a request (or demand) that the blackmailee commit bribery. And if bribery is forbidden then it is reasonable to also forbid people to encourage others to do a forbidden act. And so blackmail definitely should be forbidden.

I promise you it will be the last thing you do :D

Just spitballing: blackmail is an asymmetrical power relation whereby a lowlife can exert power over an otherwise more powerful social elite. Therefore the elites have criminalized it.

Patreon blackmail unclear, donated money to buy mosquito nets.

The fundamental issue with blackmail is that legalized blackmail would monetizes and thus incentivize conflicts of interests and breach of trust.

A journalist who commits blackmail is betraying their duty as a journalist.

A PI that turns double and conceals the facts he is hired to uncover also betraying his duty as a PI.

That's the point IMO. It's not that incompetence is criminal, wilful feigned incompetence for the sake of monetary gain is criminalized to prevent arbitrage of that access to information to the detriment of general society (and most importantly, the corrosive effect on our existing systems of trust-based relationships in commercial and non-commercial settings).

Although there are legal things that can happen to someone that might drive them to crime, it still doesn't make those things right.

But of course these things like rent increase, job loss, denial of housing have complex causes that might even have something to do with the individual, as much as they should improve themselves, there should ideally be more people in society who recognize the social responsibility of owning a business etc than just seeing it as a mechanical thing that generates profit as its only reason for existence. This isn't true. A business, housing etc relies on a stable society to exist, and in adding long term value and stability (instead of maximizing profits), it can go on existing in a harmony most people at the end of the day want.

Yes blackmail should be legalized. You should not criminalize non agressive acts

Here's a theory, blackmail is illegal because those in power don't want to be blackmailed.

great video. I remember vividly when I first learned that blackmail is illegal... I literally couldn't believe it. still doesn't make any sense to me.

As for having a legally sanctioned contract for blackmail - either the blackmailee thinks it's worth paying the fee, or they don't. If they don't want to reveal their activities, they can pay the fee. If the fee is too much and they don't want to pay, then they don't have to.

At first I thought the paradox was going to be: The government that is making blackmail illegal is actually blackmailing their own citizens under threat of jailing if they do not perform certain societal duties. Eh?

Anyone else have this thought??

This was pretty interesting. I feel like maybe your materialist analysis of what might drive people to petty property crime might be well suited to the rest of your arguments. For example, maybe a victim of blackmail is really the person who was never asked if they would like to know the information, instead of the person who was asked of the information should be concealed

You can't be serious, you can't see a problem with bribery and corruption. The problem is that so much bribery and corruption is legal, they just call it something else, like lobbying

So what if i walk up to a complete stranger and say " give me 50 dollars or else i will eat this can of beans!"

Maybe this person really dont want to see me chug a can of beans. Maybe they are worried about me choking. Maybe they think beans are gross. It doesnt sound illegal but if they really dont want me to eat it then would it not be blackmail? 🤔

Do nepotism next

A person is alive yet each atom that makes up that person isn't. Seems like we aren't alive 🤔

I’d be curious what the original justification for blackmail laws were when they were first introduced around the world.

at least in my little head the relations of domination argument is pretty convincing - we have laws against monopolization etc. (at least to some part) to stop these kinds of hard bargains. ultimately, it kind of comes down to the amount of harm to me? like if A will suffer large consequences from B doing something, i can definitely understand arguments to make B performing that action illegal whether or not that something is releasing information. the economic examples also bring to mind monopolies which we have regulated at least partially to stop those kinds of extortion-like relations. just my $.5 tho!

Crazy how this is released just when i got blackmailed out of £2000 last week

The morality of blackmail is better compared to the morality of a white hat hacker vs black hat hacker: both are seeking to discover vulnerabilities in a system that could cause massive harm, but one does it under a contractual agreement to fully disclose the issue and ensure that it is fixed. A black hat hacker has no such contract. Furthermore, the problems discovered are shared with the one who has the issue, not with the broader public. This would be like the “blackmailer” threatening the politician with the desired goal of getting him to stop cheating, not simply to get the money. Social protests have similar higher order goals (reform) that distinguish them from blackmail.

The discord bit made me chuckle.

What about my neighbor's mail?

Thanks!

There is a slippery slope element to black/white dichotomies of social goods and harms. The medium (mail) is the message (interpretation). So interpretation of marketing a cigarette brand a few decades ago was permitted but not now in most nation states. So the slippery slope might be in a scarcity world all marketing is a social harm by token of 'if you don't get this stuff you're going to suffer an organic pain or social harm as in you will be a boring person and subject to being ostracised by an in-group. So a white harm may be over consumption to a degree that it could correlate to civilisational collapse due to the great funnel hypothesis.

Blackmailing someone who has done something truly illegal like murder would definitely make you an accessory to murder due to you withholding evidence.

Hi Dr. Baker!
About the two problems posed against the relations-of-domination argument:

For 1: I don't think distinguishing blackmail from hard-bargaining in this regard is an issue. Hard-bargaining over crucial resources like water, food, territories to acquire crucial resources, etc. has been observed to create relations of domination in many societies. Moreover, in anthropology and social science, a major hypotheses for the creation of social hierarchies is the ability for individuals and groups to leverage material bargaining power over other individuals and groups. So I think that this urge to draw a distinction between blackmail and hard-bargaining is odd because Blackmail can be understood as special case of hard-bargaining, rather than something different from it.

Accepting this is only a 'problem' insofar as it encourages us to rethink other economic relations. But to me it seems that many of the issues with our economic system are a result of this ability to establish relations of domination via material bargaining power. So I am all for trying to establish alternatives.

For 2: Here, the example given assumes that a relation-of-domination entails a break-of-contract. However, this needn't be the case. Realistically, if blackmail contracts are legalized, the blackmailers would opt for some type of recurring payment structure, and write their contracts with this in mind. Furthermore, contracts can stipulate payment increases over time. Thus, a relation of domination is maintained because there exists an indefinite unconditional threat to release compromising information for money. If this is legal it may encourage more blackmail and lead to far more relations of domination in society, which is worse than criminalizing it. If blackmail is legalized only for one-time-payment contracts, then it is this relation of domination that is being criminalized, not the blackmail itself, so the argument stands. Criminalizing blackmail outright may be practically easier than regulating a weird limited blackmail market while also dealing with the unregulated blackmail blackmarket.

I haven't finished the video yet but I want to write down my two arguments before I forget them lmao

1) is that it wouldn't be fair that one side is concealing their cards and the other has to play with their deck in the open

And 2) if the content of the blackmail is of public interest, then the public wouldn't want the blackmailee? to be able to hide it while if it's not of public interest, then it's only being created to coerce someone and that's the world you would see more of. Creating new coercive methods that have no upsides. Besides that the person doing the blackmail has nothing to lose so they can ask as much as the blackmailee can pay.

"Hard bargaining" can become profiteering which can be a crime even in capitalism, and"hard bargaining certainly would be a crime in socialism.

seems to me that blackmail is illegal because it's something that gives power to powerless people are takes power away from powerful people. a homeless guy can't be blackmailed, who's going to find out huh? but a politician or government official is very vulnerable to it

Not very far in, but I reject the framing that having more options always increases your freedom. If you work at a gas station, having the code to the money safe increases your options but also makes you a target for robbery. I think blackmail is arguably similar to this for a few reasons. Take the case you gave in the beginning. It may be that the money you give up makes you worse off than if you’d let the information come out. It may be that you pay up and then the information is released anyways. And even if you refuse to pay, you’ll now be wracked with the sense that you could have prevented it.
Moreover, I think that the legality of blackmail would give people an incentive to do harmful things that don’t necessarily involve other parties. Imagine your wife’s boss tells you that, unless you pay him, he’s going to fire your wife. It’s not illegal to fire someone generally, and it’s also not illegal to ask for money, so we have a case of blackmail and not extortion. This situation would likely not have arisen in a world where blackmail is illegal though, because the boss would have no incentive to fire your wife unless there was some greater benefit to be gained, and blackmail creates that greater benefit.

It’s a law that discourages a financial incentive to target the powerful. There is no paradox if you believe protection of the powerful is the point of law and the state. The paradox only arises when you claim/believe (rather than merely prefer/aspire/profess) that the powerful primarily serve the people/commonwealth, rather than serving their position.

I don’t find the “hard bargaining” argument against the claim that blackmail is wrong because it is coercive to be wholly convincing. What’s described here as “hard bargaining” could very easily be called “price gouging” which is often illegal (depending on jurisdiction) and clearly wrong. If we can outlaw price gouging in an attempt to prevent just such behavior, there’s no reason not to treat blackmail similarly.

Yooo Kane B mate your discord server link is expired, I wanna get back in to fight back against all the Hegel slander going on there

Kane, you better keep releasing videos or I will press the unsubscribe button.

libertarian morals are so weird bro

seems like a lame "paradox". Classic composition fallacy...

Thanks!

There are sometimes videos you post where I adjust my priors down, but this is actually one of the few that legitimately, decisively changed my mind.

Which is to say, I used to think that blackmail should be legal, and I wasn't cognizant of the "blackmailees are especially positioned to be disadvantaged in licit taking of loans" argument, and now that I've heard it, it's very persuasive to me. Thanks.

Sheeeeeeesh, i guess legal acts are not closed under addition 😢

🔵

Anyone know what app and mic he uses for his videos? Thank you!