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).
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.