what is a criminal?

someone who knowingly hurts other people for their own benefit.

ultimately criminal behaviour is selfish behaviour; i win at the expense of you losing, whether this is street crime or predatory lending.

by this standard, much of what passes for normal business practices are criminal, including high rents and low wages. On the other hand, personal behaviors such as gambling, drug use, sodomy, and prostitution, are not.

I distinguish between moral crimes, which hurt others, and legal crimes, where religious and other beliefs are turned into laws against certain behaviours. The usual argument is that society is brought down by things like prostitution. Personally, i think society is much more damaged by repression.

I believe in Freedom, a very unfashionable idea these days.

In fact, i believe that putting people in jail for victimless crimes, such as drugs, is in itself a crime, and those who advocate such brutal repression are themselves criminals, since they seek to hurt others (by locking them up) in order to force the whole society to live by their puritanical beliefs.

So, i ask you, come up with your own definition. What is a criminal?