Today’s Boston Globe featured something truly astonishing. They published an op/ed piece by a professor from Wellesley College that actually made sense.
Professor Karl Case teaches economics there, so I guess it’s not too astonishing that he has his head fairly well attached to his shoulders. But I was still flabbergasted to see someone from his institution given access to the sacrosanct pages of the Boston Globe to espouse a principle I’ve always believed in — that “scalping” is yet another of those “victimless crimes” that the government has no business in enforcing. It’s capitalism plain and simple, and further it’s hardly a matter of “life and death” — it’s all about entertainment. Nobody’s ever died from not seeing a certain game or concert or other event.
A little while ago, I read that the legal definition of “vice” was “a crime without an unwilling victim.” Drug use, prostitution, gambling — all lack someone asking the authorities for help. The libertarian in me is having more and more issues with the role of government in fighting them with the full force of the law.
