A fortune teller in Montgomery county went to court to try and overturn a local ban on fortune telling. The fortune teller claimed his free speech rights were being hindered. The county claimed they were justified in having a law to prevent fraud. The county won, as you might have expected (unlike in movies, the little guy usually loses in real life).
This case might seem like an intellectual riddle to some. Should we stop fraud or uphold free-speech? However, it really is quite simple. There is a fundamental difference between fortune telling and actual fraud. A guy who purports to sell milk but gives you coloured water (I believe this used to be common in India) or a pharmacist who sells you a different drug from the one you asked for is giving you something that you did not want and did not pay for. More precisely, the customer in those cases has a expectation, built upon unambigously laid out terms and well-defined history, of what he or she is supposed to receive — and this expectation is violated in an objective manner.
In fortune-telling on the other hand, the customer gets what he or she should expect to get. The product in this case exactly matches the average consumer’s reasonable understanding of it.
Suppose that in a hypothetical world where it is really possible to predict the future and lots of people do so successfully, I (in my current state of ignorance) decide to set up shop and represent myself as equivalent to those other real fortune tellers. Then I will be committing fraud, because I will be giving the customer an objectively different product than from what he asked for and had reason to expect. But in our world, the average customer knows what fortune telling entails. In fact many people who go to these tellers are there just for the fun of it. As Matt Bandyk puts it, “To say that the local government needs to `protect’ its citizens from the `fraud’ perpetrated by these businesses is giving the fortune tellers too much credit, and its customers too little credit. These customers know what they are getting into when they sit in front of the tarot cards or a crystal ball–if it makes them feel a little bit better, and a local business benefits, who is really being hurt in that exchange?”
If you still think fortune-telling should be outlawed by the government on grounds of fraud, consider that by the same expanded logic, all religious institutions are committing fraud. Do we really want to live in a world where the government has the power to decide the correctness of speech to this degree and ban your speech whenever it doesn’t meet their test?
(Hat Tip: The Agitator)
Isn’t there a mens rea aspect to this too? Real fraudsters *design* a sidewalk shell game to their advantage. Fortune tellers, meanwhile, frequently believe at least somewhat in goofy New Age nonsense. How do you prove they *know* they are lying about guessing about the future?
I am not so sure about mens rea. For instances, in cases of breach of contract or tort, mens rea is not generally needed; actus rea is good enough, though the presence of the former can increase the penalty.
@Abhishek: I agree with you line of thinking. There is one question however: what happens if a fortune-teller predicts something, the customer truly believes it will come true – and it doesn’t happen?
@Kevin: Very difficult to apply mens rea here…..if one looks at only actus reus, then shouldn’t all religious institutions and cults come under the scanner, as Abhishek said? Scientology, for instance?
Cheers,
Quirky Indian
QI: I think what the courts will take into account is whether the product basically matches the *average* customer’s *reasonable* expectation of it. That’s the standard line of thinking in all such cases, because otherwise there are always nutcases who will claim they misunderstood. So, if a rare customer believes something and it doesn’t come true, too bad.
(And even if for the sake of argument we grant this point, the customer will still have to prove actual harm to gain compensation. At worst it could be a case of civil liability, nothing more. Certainly the state has no business pre-empting it in the absence of a complaint.)
hey abhishek,
I stumbled upon your blog and found a few of your posts very interesting, like the one I’m replying to. I have put you on blogroll list.
You seem to be a seasoned guy out here. I too have a little blog; I’ve begun very recently though :)
good wishes,
vaibhav,
bangalore,
india.
[…] a related short piece on fraud and religion I wrote a while […]
I dont think anyone has the ability to see into the future. However, fortune tellers are like psychologists. They can be very helpful if you have a good guide. Madame Zora from http://www.thewhatbox.com is a good “teller”