as Walter Block argued with great flair, in general the police shouldn’t punish blackmailers. Yes, you are arguably a moral degenerate, a huge jerk, etc. etc. if you blackmail someone, but why is it a crime?

… if some producer happens to know that David Letterman is building his own special Top Ten List (you know I had to work in some cheesy pun in this post), and if that producer has the legal right to blog about it, talk about it, even to write a book about it, then how in the world is it a crime for him to give Letterman the option of buying his silence?

The way I see it, the only true crime involved with blackmail per se, would be if Letterman paid the guy $2 million, and then the guy went ahead and spread the gossip anyway. Of course, the crime there would be violating the deal, not the offer a deal in the first place.

If its the government’s job to enforce contracts (even private, secret contracts) but the government makes those contracts illegal, than it makes it more likely that a blackmail agreement would blow up in the way that Bob describes.

This is probably why Letterman didn’t pay the blackmailer… there’s no guarantee that he would have kept his silence. If there was a court that would enforce these agreements, however, than both parties could have been happy.

I’m sure this issue is too sticky to change, though.

I’m going to try a recurring thing, where I link to other blog posts and make very quick comments about them. We’ll see how weekly Friday posts work for this.

1) Robert Murphy praises Paul Krugman – a huge turn of events from a man who is usually (and often correctly) hypercritical of the Nobel Laureate. I guess Austrians and Keynesians can find some common ground – namely when they’re attacking assumptions made the Chicago school.

2) Tyler Cowen tries to get Peter Boettke to admit that the financial bailouts were a good idea. Boettke predictably refuses, stating that Cowen is misstating what it means to be a libertarian. Cowen hits back with the notion that letting banks go bankrupt instead of bailing them out would still increase the size of government – because you need the court systems to deal with all the fallout. Steve Horowitz weighs in on the Austrian Economics blog, saying that Tyler is confusing increasing the scale of government (which would be necessary to deal with increased work load associated with bankruptcy from bank failure, but would not give government new powers). Horowitz points out the the bailouts increased the scope of government – creating a the feds precedence to use new powers.  I think this last view is essentially correct. I’ve stopped thinking of Cowen as a libertarian for a while now. Stay tooned, because I’m sure this debate is not over.

3) A strange case where the Dutch government has taken legal guardianship over a 13 year old girl, who is trying to become the youngest person to sail, solo, around the world. Her parents are ok with it, but the nanny state has intervened. Possible violation of freedoms or just negligent parents (or both)?

4) My father has a new education related blog, but has yet to post. He keeps trying to get me to teach him, but I everything I tell him he forgets in a couple weeks and asks me to repeat myself. I’m not holding out much hope that his blog will be very successful, but we’ll see. He has some good ideas about providing resources to fellow educators – something he knows a lot about.

But it is a good thing?  I buy that it would be good for allowing “gay marriage” (in the way that all civil union contracts would be the same for all consenting adults regardless of gender) but why should the state not incentivize the survival of family structure?  How would alimony and child support payments be enforced?  I’m no expert in contract law (or any law for that matter) but treatment of these issues seems problematic – and by that I mean overlooked.  One of the highest rates of single parenthood is in poor black communities, and that doesn’t seem to be working out too well for them (here is just one report)  Maybe we need stronger incentives to retain familial structure, rather than less.

Here’s one more statement of Rizzo’s I find misrepresents reality a bit:

For many centuries the State was not involved in restricting the nature of “marriage.” The terms of marriage were the domain of the Church.

Rizzo seems to forget or neglect the fact that, for a long time, the church was essentially the state.  And I’m not even talking about medieval europe here.  For good or ill, religious attitudes still affect policy makers decisions in the United States.

This points to a larger question (I’m not particularly interesting in debating the plausibility of a real change occurring in the public’s conception of marriage law).  Without a doubt, the role of the Church in people’s lives, from daily rituals to law and governence is waning.  Therefore, is the growth of a allegedly religious-neutral State a natural way for the morality of the majority to express itself?

If we’re replacing religious doctrine with some agreed upon, democratic form of secular humanism (influenced but not dictated by traditional religious tennants) maybe common law that  governs marriage isn’t a bad thing.  Maybe leaving marriage terms up to the individual parties would generate chaos?

On the other hand, tryanny of the majority is something we’re supposed to want to avoid, as well as the assumption that politicians know best.

Truly, this a tricky issue with many layers.  Isn’t it better to discuss them all before defaulting to the standard (though admittedly defensible) libertarian-anarchist position?

PS – Hello World!