FROM ELI HARMAN —“People demonstrate that they are willing, sometimes, to go s

FROM ELI HARMAN

—“People demonstrate that they are willing, sometimes, to go so far as to kill to prevent the disclosure of certain information.

***In so doing, they demonstrate that information to be their property, that which they consider to be their own and that they will fight to defend.***

The matter then becomes merely a contest as to who shall prevail, those who wish to prohibit blackmail or those who wish to perpetrate it.

But there is no reason to suppose the latter will win. Blackmail is not a productive behavior but a parasitic one, engaged in by parasitic people. And what someone stands to lose from blackmail generally increases in proportion as they produce.

I’ll take their side both for principled as well as pragmatic reasons.

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