The argument against blackmail that rings most true for me is that if you want transparency and accountability for politicians, blackmail should remain illegal.
In a society where blackmail is fully legal, the incentive for journalists, politicians and corporations align fully against the public.
Consider: A politician is corrupt. He's shady and gaining huge personal wealth through corruption. Or a corporation is doing business practices in secret that would probably cause widespread concern among the public. In a society where blackmail is illegal, a journalist that discovers this is fully incentivized to publish the information. If he tries to blackmail the politician or corporation, then he will if be prosecuted if it's discovered.
OTOH, lets say blackmail is legal. Now the journalist has to balance serving the public interest through publishing with the now fully safe and legal option of simply threatening the politician or corporation to cut them in if they keep quiet, knowing also that since this is legal even if it's discovered they are off scott free.
In other words, legal blackmail means it's fully legal to "cut in" someone who discovers a shady practice on part of the proceeds.
I don't see any way in which legal blackmail doesn't keep the public less informed and more in the dark. The incentives for keeping secrets from the public are far higher in a world where blackmail is legal.
> In other words, legal blackmail means it's fully legal to "cut in" someone who discovers a shady practice on part of the proceeds.
This isn't true. Cutting someone in is something that the hypothetical corrupt politician does. Blackmail is something the hypothetical journalist does. Either can be criminalized without regard to the legal treatment of the other.
And in fact, blackmail is a crime right now, and paying blackmail isn't a crime right now. There's no reason you couldn't reverse those two statuses.
> I don't see any way in which legal blackmail doesn't keep the public less informed and more in the dark.
Scott Sumner has been writing recently about how the criminalization of blackmail is good because, if blackmail were legal, the public would be kept more informed and less in the dark. (And blackmail usually involves things like homosexual or adulterous behavior that he feels the public shouldn't know about.) I tend to agree with you on this point; blackmail is an act of concealment and legalizing it should produce more, not less, concealment.
What do you mean "instead"? More concealment (via blackmail) obviously means more coercion (in the sense relevant to blackmail), because the concealment only occurs if the coercion is acceded to. They can only go up or down together. But I was commenting on an implicit debate between someone who believes that legal blackmail will lead to more concealment, and someone else who believes blackmail will lead to less concealment.
This is a good argument, but isn't privacy all about keeping secrets from the public?
Incentives are tricky and I'm not sure we can clearly distinguish between "good" privacy and "bad" privacy. There are clear-cut cases but also a lot of grey.
But I guess that's why it's better to avoid incentives and hope for good judgement.
> But I guess that's why it's better to avoid incentives and hope for good judgement.
You don’t like incentives because they’re too grey, yet relying on “good judgement” is clear cut? I have to disagree. Even if incentives are murky, untangling them is way easier to get consensus on than “good judgement”.
On second thought, I'm not sure they're opposing alternatives. "How will this look in court" is a combination of incentives and judgement. It seems hard to simplify.
I'm more wary of automatic incentives that are more easily gamed.
In a society where blackmail is fully legal, the incentive for journalists, politicians and corporations align fully against the public.
Consider: A politician is corrupt. He's shady and gaining huge personal wealth through corruption. Or a corporation is doing business practices in secret that would probably cause widespread concern among the public. In a society where blackmail is illegal, a journalist that discovers this is fully incentivized to publish the information. If he tries to blackmail the politician or corporation, then he will if be prosecuted if it's discovered.
OTOH, lets say blackmail is legal. Now the journalist has to balance serving the public interest through publishing with the now fully safe and legal option of simply threatening the politician or corporation to cut them in if they keep quiet, knowing also that since this is legal even if it's discovered they are off scott free.
In other words, legal blackmail means it's fully legal to "cut in" someone who discovers a shady practice on part of the proceeds.
I don't see any way in which legal blackmail doesn't keep the public less informed and more in the dark. The incentives for keeping secrets from the public are far higher in a world where blackmail is legal.