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DanielLC comments on Eutopia is Scary - for the author - Less Wrong
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The story was pretty vague on the details. Maybe on one level, Eliezer was simply trying to put the reader in the shoes of someone from the 17th or 18th century, told that in the future, neither witchcraft or consensual sodomy would be crimes at all.
I don't know whether Eliezer had a fleshed-out vision of how nonconsensual sex could be a good policy. However, even under current law, assault (whether sexual or otherwise) is not just a crime, it's also a civil tort. A lot of violent criminals are indigent, of course, but in theory, every assault victim should be able to recover civil damages. The damages are supposed to be in such an amount as to "make the injured party whole." In practice, this is a clumsy, inefficient system. Ideally, however, a victim should be able to say: "I really, really didn't want to get punched in the face on the street. But he wanted to hit me, and did. But now I'm mildly wealthy. So, I guess I came out ahead."
Witchcraft only isn't a crime because it's impossible. If the government thought it was possible to sell your soul to the devil for supernatural powers, it would be highly illegal.
Or highly taxed / regulated. You can sell your soul to the devil only if you have permission of the state to do so, and then you must use a part of your powers in service to the state. For example, hunting and killing illegal witches. Now this could be an interesting movie.
It might be worth thinking harder about what work the words 'soul' and 'supernatural' are doing here.
After all, in the real world, it is certainly possible to exchange time and money for powers that not everybody has -- greater physical prowess, for example, or wealth, or status, or various abilities conveyed by technology. Some of those powers are illegal for individuals to possess, some are not. Some are highly regulated, some are not. Mostly the dividing line seems to be based on what the power lets one do, although there are various inconsistencies mostly due to historical reasons.
Selling your soul to the devil means being tortured for eternity right? I don't think they'll let you do that just to mitigate the other (non-soul) damage done by other witches. Especially if it means sending the other witches to be tortured starting earlier. You'd cause more damage than you prevent.
If it was just worshiping some god granted you powers, that would totally be legal.
witch hunter robin was fairly boring even though it had this premise.
There's an extremely good C.S. Lewis quote on that point: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1co/rationality_quotes_october_2009/17d4
I read that a little while before this. That's probably why I made that post.