There are, it seems to me, many situations in which an explicit exchange of A for B is punished by the law or by societal disapproval or both, but an implicit exchange is tolerated. I'll just mention two. My real point here is the second of them, which is a simplified version of something that has been in the news recently. 1: Prostitution. A john pays a hooker, the hooker provides sex. It is all very transactional. I understand that undercover cops posing as prostitutes are told to wait for an 'explicit offer of cash' before they can make the bust. [News you can use!] On the other hand, if we see an elderly and wealthy man in the company of his stripper girlfriend 50 years or more younger, we generally figure that the A-for-B exchange is implicit, and not so immediately transactional. Like Anna Nicole Smith and J. Howard Marshall. We may shrug at the gold-digger/sugar-daddy connection, we may give it an indulgent chuckle. We don't call the police, nor do we gen...