There’s something I think you’re missing here, which is that blackmail-in-practice is often about leveraging the norm enforcement of a different community than the target’s, exploiting differences in norms between groups. A highly prototypical example is taking information about sex or drug use which is acceptable within a local community, and sharing it with an oppressive government which would punish that behavior.
Allowing blackmail within a group weakens that group’s ability to resist outside control, and this is a very big deal. (It’s kind of surprising that, this late in the conversation about blackmail, no one seems to have spotted this.)
blackmail-in-practice is often about leveraging the norm enforcement of a different community than the target’s, exploiting differences in norms between groups
I’m confused about how you would know this—it seems that by nature, most blackmail-in-practice is going to be unobserved by the wider public, leaving only failed blackmail attempts (which I expect to be systematically different than average since they failed) or your own likely-unrepresentative experiences (if you have any at all).
Maybe hypocrisy in the sense that someone acts like they agree with the social consensus in order to avoid persecution, when in fact they don’t and are doing things which don’t conform to it. Legalized blackmail would encourage people to not mind their own business and become morality police or witch hunters even about things which don’t actually hurt them or anybody else.
Consider the effect legalized blackmail would have had on the gay community before widespread acceptance for a particularly brutal and relatively recent example
There’s something I think you’re missing here, which is that blackmail-in-practice is often about leveraging the norm enforcement of a different community than the target’s, exploiting differences in norms between groups. A highly prototypical example is taking information about sex or drug use which is acceptable within a local community, and sharing it with an oppressive government which would punish that behavior.
Allowing blackmail within a group weakens that group’s ability to resist outside control, and this is a very big deal. (It’s kind of surprising that, this late in the conversation about blackmail, no one seems to have spotted this.)
I’m confused about how you would know this—it seems that by nature, most blackmail-in-practice is going to be unobserved by the wider public, leaving only failed blackmail attempts (which I expect to be systematically different than average since they failed) or your own likely-unrepresentative experiences (if you have any at all).
I reject your examples. Sex and drugs are almost always hypocrisy, not one community trying to impose its standard on another.
Maybe hypocrisy in the sense that someone acts like they agree with the social consensus in order to avoid persecution, when in fact they don’t and are doing things which don’t conform to it. Legalized blackmail would encourage people to not mind their own business and become morality police or witch hunters even about things which don’t actually hurt them or anybody else.
Consider the effect legalized blackmail would have had on the gay community before widespread acceptance for a particularly brutal and relatively recent example
The Stonewall Riots were triggered by a police raid that was part of a blackmail operation. Does blackmail by the police count as “legal”?