There’s a pretty simple economic argument for why blackmail is bad: it involves a negative-sum threat rather than a positive-sum deal. I was surprised to not see this argument in the econbloggers’ discussion; good to see it come up here. To lay it out succinctly and separate from other arguments:
Ordinarily, when two people make a deal we can conclude that it’s win-win because both of them chose to make the deal rather than just not interacting with each other. By default Alice would just act on her own preferences and completely ignore Bob’s preferences, and the mirror image for Bob, but sometimes they find a deal where they each give up something in return for the other person doing something that they value even more. With some simplifying assumptions, the worst case scenario is that they don’t reach a deal and they both break even (compared to if they hadn’t interacted), and if they do reach a deal then they both wind up better off.
With a threat, Alice has an alternative course of action available which is somewhat worse for Alice than her default action but much worse for Bob, and Alice tells Bob that she will do the alternative action unless Bob does something for Alice. With some simplifying assumptions, if Bob agrees to give in then their interaction is zero-sum (Alice gets a transfer from Bob), if Bob refuses and Alice carries out her threat then it is negative sum (Bob loses a lot and Alice loses something too), and if Bob refuses and Alice backs down then it’s zero sum (both take the default action).
Ordinary deals add value to the world and threats subtract value from the world, and blackmail is a type of threat.
If we remove some simplifying assumptions (e.g. no transaction costs, one-shot interaction) then things get more complicated, but mostly in ways that make ordinary deals better and threats worse. In the long run deals bring people together as they seek more interactions which could lead to win-win deals, deals encourage people to invest in abilities that will make them more useful to other people so that they’ll have more/better opportunities to make deals, and the benefits of deals must outweigh the transaction costs & risks involved at least in expectation (otherwise people would just opt out of trying to make those deals). Whereas threats push people apart as they seek to avoid negative sum interactions, threats encourage people to invest in abilities that make them more able to harm other people, and transaction costs increase the badness of threats (turning zero sum interactions into negative sum) but don’t prevent those interactions unless they drive the threatmaker’s returns down far enough.
After discussing this offline, I think the main argument that I laid out does not hold up well in the case of blackmail (though it works better for many other kinds of threats). They key bit is here:
if Bob refuses and Alice carries out her threat then it is negative sum (Bob loses a lot and Alice loses something too)
This only looks at the effects on Alice and on Bob, as a simplification. But with blackmail “carrying out the threat” means telling other people information about Bob, and that is often useful for those other people. If Alice tells Casey something bad about Bob, that will often be bad for Bob but good for Casey. So it’s not obviously negative sum for the whole world.
This only looks at the effects on Alice and on Bob, as a simplification. But with blackmail “carrying out the threat” means telling other people information about Bob, and that is often useful for those other people.
When the public interest motivates the release of private info, it’s called ‘whistleblowing’ and is* legally protected and considered far more moral than blackmail. I think that contrast is helpful to understanding why that’s not enough to make blackmail moral.
*in some jurisdictions, restrictions may apply, see your local legal code for a full list of terms & conditions.
I think you’re right that it’s not trivially negative sum because it can have positive outcomes for third parties. Still expect a world of legal blackmail to be worse.
As a means of disclosing information about wrongdoing, blackmail has no advantage over whistle-blowing, and also no advantage over journalism. Journalists have to disclose information, whereas it doesn’t get disclosed in successful blackmail, and journalists need a public interest defense,whereas it’s perfectly possible to blackmail someone over private behaviour.
I think there’s a greater distinction in the public eye: if you offer to not whistleblow in exchange for money, that’s not whistleblowing, that’s blackmail.
But if the blackmail information is a good thing to publish, then blackmailing is still immoral, because it should be published and people should be incentivized to publish it, not to not publish it. We, as a society, should ensure that if, say, someone routinely engage in kidnapping children to harvest their organs, and someone knows this information, then she should be incentivized to send this information to the relevant authorities and not to keep this information to herself, for reasons that are I hope obvious.
You’ve assumed here that the default is for Alice not to share, while it might seem positive if the default was for her to share. So in practise, it’ll depend on how many new shares it incentivises (including people who only went to the effort to discover the information since blackmail is legal) vs. how many people benefit from being able to trade. In practise, I suspect the first factor will easily outweigh the second.
There’s a pretty simple economic argument for why blackmail is bad: it involves a negative-sum threat rather than a positive-sum deal. I was surprised to not see this argument in the econbloggers’ discussion; good to see it come up here. To lay it out succinctly and separate from other arguments:
Ordinarily, when two people make a deal we can conclude that it’s win-win because both of them chose to make the deal rather than just not interacting with each other. By default Alice would just act on her own preferences and completely ignore Bob’s preferences, and the mirror image for Bob, but sometimes they find a deal where they each give up something in return for the other person doing something that they value even more. With some simplifying assumptions, the worst case scenario is that they don’t reach a deal and they both break even (compared to if they hadn’t interacted), and if they do reach a deal then they both wind up better off.
With a threat, Alice has an alternative course of action available which is somewhat worse for Alice than her default action but much worse for Bob, and Alice tells Bob that she will do the alternative action unless Bob does something for Alice. With some simplifying assumptions, if Bob agrees to give in then their interaction is zero-sum (Alice gets a transfer from Bob), if Bob refuses and Alice carries out her threat then it is negative sum (Bob loses a lot and Alice loses something too), and if Bob refuses and Alice backs down then it’s zero sum (both take the default action).
Ordinary deals add value to the world and threats subtract value from the world, and blackmail is a type of threat.
If we remove some simplifying assumptions (e.g. no transaction costs, one-shot interaction) then things get more complicated, but mostly in ways that make ordinary deals better and threats worse. In the long run deals bring people together as they seek more interactions which could lead to win-win deals, deals encourage people to invest in abilities that will make them more useful to other people so that they’ll have more/better opportunities to make deals, and the benefits of deals must outweigh the transaction costs & risks involved at least in expectation (otherwise people would just opt out of trying to make those deals). Whereas threats push people apart as they seek to avoid negative sum interactions, threats encourage people to invest in abilities that make them more able to harm other people, and transaction costs increase the badness of threats (turning zero sum interactions into negative sum) but don’t prevent those interactions unless they drive the threatmaker’s returns down far enough.
After discussing this offline, I think the main argument that I laid out does not hold up well in the case of blackmail (though it works better for many other kinds of threats). They key bit is here:
This only looks at the effects on Alice and on Bob, as a simplification. But with blackmail “carrying out the threat” means telling other people information about Bob, and that is often useful for those other people. If Alice tells Casey something bad about Bob, that will often be bad for Bob but good for Casey. So it’s not obviously negative sum for the whole world.
When the public interest motivates the release of private info, it’s called ‘whistleblowing’ and is* legally protected and considered far more moral than blackmail. I think that contrast is helpful to understanding why that’s not enough to make blackmail moral.
*in some jurisdictions, restrictions may apply, see your local legal code for a full list of terms & conditions.
I think you’re right that it’s not trivially negative sum because it can have positive outcomes for third parties. Still expect a world of legal blackmail to be worse.
As a means of disclosing information about wrongdoing, blackmail has no advantage over whistle-blowing, and also no advantage over journalism. Journalists have to disclose information, whereas it doesn’t get disclosed in successful blackmail, and journalists need a public interest defense,whereas it’s perfectly possible to blackmail someone over private behaviour.
I think there’s a greater distinction in the public eye: if you offer to not whistleblow in exchange for money, that’s not whistleblowing, that’s blackmail.
But if the blackmail information is a good thing to publish, then blackmailing is still immoral, because it should be published and people should be incentivized to publish it, not to not publish it. We, as a society, should ensure that if, say, someone routinely engage in kidnapping children to harvest their organs, and someone knows this information, then she should be incentivized to send this information to the relevant authorities and not to keep this information to herself, for reasons that are I hope obvious.
You’ve assumed here that the default is for Alice not to share, while it might seem positive if the default was for her to share. So in practise, it’ll depend on how many new shares it incentivises (including people who only went to the effort to discover the information since blackmail is legal) vs. how many people benefit from being able to trade. In practise, I suspect the first factor will easily outweigh the second.