Who Are the Victim of Victimless Crime?
Is prostitution victimless? What about sex outside heavily regulated life long monogamous marriage governments prescribe? Despite various institutional advantage for married couple, 50% of kids born in US are born out of wedlock suggesting that sex outside marriage surely have its attraction over marriage.
But is it victimless?
Well, in a sense yes, in a sense no. Depends on how you define “victim”.
Say cheap product comes from China. The product is cheaper and is in better quality. Then many people buy the product. Is it victimless? No force involved. No fraud involved. It’s consensual. In fact, it’s more than consensual, it’s a good deal. Is it victimless? Well, does everyone support globalization and free trade?
No. There are disgruntled envy competitors that just do not want to see YOU enjoying better deals. If better deals are available from you then you don’t need to buy from them. Those bigots then demand heavy punishments against acts that do not involve fraud or force. Often things are prohibited not because it’s bad, but because it’s TOO GOOD.
So good, it drives out governments’ endorsed alternative of competition. If government do nothing, there will be little intensive for lobbyist to spend millions of dollars to buy law makers. If you’re a law maker, what would you do?
The same way with free sex, though I won’t elaborate. I mean if the cause why people hate free trade is because of competition, it’s a very natural guess to think that people hate free sex out of the same reason too.
However, to prohibit something you need a reason. You need to convince others that somehow the prohibited things are so bad. You need to convince others. Unfortunately, wrong things cannot be proofed, by definition of proof. So you need something that makes people believe anyway DESPITE lack of evidence.
That is called faith.