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Title: Assassination Politics Author: Jim Bell Date: April 1995 Language: en Topics: Assassination, politics, cryptocurrency, digital cash, bitcoin, encryption, anonymity, monero, libertarian, American, technology, cyberpunk, crypto-anarchism, anti-fascism, civil disobedience,
I've been following the concepts of digital cash and encryption since I
read the article in the August 1992 issue of Scientific American on
"encrypted signatures." While I've only followed the Digitaliberty area
for a few weeks, I can already see a number of points that do (and
should!) strongly concern the average savvy individual: 1. How can we
translate the freedom afforded by the Internet to ordinary life? 2. How
can we keep the government from banning encryption, digital cash, and
other systems that will improve our freedom? A few months ago, I had a
truly and quite literally "revolutionary" idea, and I jokingly called it
"Assassination Politics": I speculated on the question of whether an
organization could be set up to legally announce that it would be
awarding a cash prize to somebody who correctly "predicted" the death of
one of a list of violators of rights, usually either government
employees, officeholders, or appointees. It could ask for anonymous
contributions from the public, and individuals would be able send those
contributions using digital cash. I also speculated that using modern
methods of public-key encryption and anonymous "digital cash," it would
be possible to make such awards in such a way so that nobody knows who
is getting awarded the money, only that the award is being given. Even
the organization itself would have no information that could help the
authorities find the person responsible for the prediction, let alone
the one who caused the death. It was not my intention to provide such a
"tough nut to crack" by arguing the general case, claiming that a person
who hires a hit man is not guilty of murder under libertarian
principles. Obviously, the problem with the general case is that the
victim may be totally innocent under libertarian principles, which would
make the killing a crime, leading to the question of whether the person
offering the money was himself guilty. On the contrary; my speculation
assumed that the "victim" is a government employee, presumably one who
is not merely taking a paycheck of stolen tax dollars, but also is
guilty of extra violations of rights beyond this. (Government agents
responsible for the Ruby Ridge incident and Waco come to mind.) In
receiving such money and in his various acts, he violates the
"Non-aggression Principle" (NAP) and thus, presumably, any acts against
him are not the initiation of force under libertarian principles. The
organization set up to manage such a system could, presumably, make up a
list of people who had seriously violated the NAP, but who would not see
justice in our courts due to the fact that their actions were done at
the behest of the government. Associated with each name would be a
dollar figure, the total amount of money the organization has received
as a contribution, which is the amount they would give for correctly
"predicting" the person's death, presumably naming the exact date.
"Guessers" would formulate their "guess" into a file, encrypt it with
the organization's public key, then transmit it to the organization,
possibly using methods as untraceable as putting a floppy disk in an
envelope and tossing it into a mailbox, but more likely either a cascade
of encrypted anonymous remailers, or possibly public-access Internet
locations, such as terminals at a local library, etc. In order to
prevent such a system from becoming simply a random unpaid lottery, in
which people can randomly guess a name and date (hoping that lightning
would strike, as it occasionally does), it would be necessary to deter
such random guessing by requiring the "guessers" to include with their
"guess" encrypted and untraceable "digital cash," in an amount
sufficiently high to make random guessing impractical. For example, if
the target was, say, 50 years old and had a life expectancy of 30 years,
or about 10,000 days, the amount of money required to register a guess
must be at least 1/10,000th of the amount of the award. In practice, the
amount required should be far higher, perhaps as much as 1/1000 of the
amount, since you can assume that anybody making a guess would feel
sufficiently confident of that guess to risk 1/1000th of his potential
reward. The digital cash would be placed inside the outer "encryption
envelope," and could be decrypted using the organization's public key.
The prediction itself (including name and date) would be itself in
another encryption envelope inside the first one, but it would be
encrypted using a key that is only known to the predictor himself. In
this way, the organization could decrypt the outer envelope and find the
digital cash, but they would have no idea what is being predicted in the
innermost envelope, either the name or the date. If, later, the
"prediction" came true, the predictor would presumably send yet another
encrypted "envelope" to the organization, containing the decryption key
for the previous "prediction" envelope, plus a public key (despite its
name, to be used only once!) to be used for encryption of digital cash
used as payment for the award. The organization would apply the
decryption key to the prediction envelope, discover that it works, then
notice that the prediction included was fulfilled on the date stated.
The predictor would be, therefore, entitled to the award. Nevertheless,
even then nobody would actually know WHO he is! It doesn't even know if
the predictor had anything to do with the outcome of the prediction. If
it received these files in the mail, in physical envelopes, which had no
return address, it would have burned the envelopes before it studied
their contents. The result is that even the active cooperation of the
organization could not possibly help anyone, including the police, to
locate the predictor. Also included within this "prediction-fulfilled"
encryption envelope would be unsigned (not-yet-valid) "digital cash,"
which would then be blindly signed by the organization's bank and
subsequently encrypted using the public key included. (The public key
could also be publicized, to allow members of the public to securely
send their comments and, possibly, further grateful remuneration to the
predictor, securely.) The resulting encrypted file could be published
openly on the Internet, and it could then be decrypted by only one
entity: The person who had made that original, accurate prediction. The
result is that the recipient would be absolutely untraceable. The
digital cash is then processed by the recipient by "unbinding" it, a
principle which is explained in far greater detail by the article in the
August 1992 issue of Scientific American. The resulting digital cash is
absolutely untraceable to its source. This overall system achieves a
number of goals. First, it totally hides the identity of the predictor
to the organization, which makes it unnecessary for any potential
predictor to "trust" them to not reveal his name or location. Second, it
allows the predictor to make his prediction without revealing the actual
contents of that prediction until later, when he chooses to, assuring
him that his "target" cannot possibly get early warning of his intent
(and "failed" predictions need never be revealed). In fact, he needs
never reveal his prediction unless he wants the award. Third, it allows
the predictor to anonymously grant his award to anyone else he chooses,
since he may give this digital cash to anyone without fear that it will
be traced. For the organization, this system also provides a number of
advantages .By hiding the identity of the predictor from even it, the
organization cannot be forced to reveal it, in either civil or criminal
court. This should also shield the organization from liability, since it
will not know the contents of any "prediction" until after it comes
true. (Even so, the organization would be deliberately kept "poor" so
that it would be judgment-proof.) Since presumably most of the laws the
organization might be accused of violating would require that the
violator have specific or prior knowledge, keeping itself ignorant of as
many facts as possible, for as long as possible, would presumably make
it very difficult to prosecute.
"At the Village Pizza shop, as they were sitting down to consume a
pepperoni, Dorothy asked Jim, 'So what other inventions are you working
on?" Jim replied, 'I've got a new idea, but it's really evolutionary.
Literally REVOLUTIONARY.' 'Okay, Jim, which government are you planning
to overthrow?,' she asked, playing along. 'All of them,' answered Jim."
Political Implications Imagine for a moment that as ordinary citizens
were watching the evening news, they see an act by a government employee
or officeholder that they feel violates their rights, abuses the
public's trust, or misuses the powers that they feel should be limited.
A person whose actions are so abusive or improper that the citizenry
shouldn't have to tolerate it. What if they could go to their computers,
type in the miscreant's name, and select a dollar amount: The amount
they, themselves, would be willing to pay to anyone who "predicts" that
officeholder's death. That donation would be sent, encrypted and
anonymously, to a central registry organization, and be totaled, with
the total amount available within seconds to any interested individual.
If only 0.1% of the population, or one person in a thousand, was willing
to pay $1 to see some government slimeball dead, that would be, in
effect, a $250,000 bounty on his head. Further, imagine that anyone
considering collecting that bounty could do so with the mathematical
certainty that he could not be identified, and could collect the reward
without meeting, or even talking to, anybody who could later identify
him. Perfect anonymity, perfect secrecy, and perfect security. And that,
combined with the ease and security with which these contributions could
be collected, would make being an abusive government employee an
extremely risky proposition. Chances are good that nobody above the
level of county commissioner would even risk staying in office. Just how
would this change politics in America? It would take far less time to
answer, "What would remain the same?" No longer would we be electing
people who will turn around and tax us to death, regulate us to death,
or for that matter sent hired thugs to kill us when we oppose their
wishes. No military? One of the attractive potential implications of
such a system would be that we might not even need a military to protect
the country. Any threatening or abusive foreign leader would be subject
to the same contribution/assassination/reward system, and it would
operate just as effectively over borders as it does domestically. This
country has learned, in numerous examples subsequent to many wars, that
once the political disputes between leaders have ceased, we (ordinary
citizens) are able to get along pretty well with the citizens of other
countries. Classic examples are post-WWII Germany, Japan, and Italy, and
post-Soviet Russia, the Eastern bloc, Albania, and many others. Contrary
examples are those in which the political dispute remains, such as North
Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Cuba, Red China, and a few others. In all of these
examples, the opposing leadership was NOT defeated, either in war or in
an internal power struggle. Clearly, it is not the PEOPLE who maintain
the dispute, but the leadership. Consider how history might have changed
if we'd been able to "bump off" Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo,
Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, Ayatollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, Moammar
Khadafi, and various others, along with all of their replacements if
necessary, all for a measly few million dollars, rather than the
billions of dollars and millions of lives that subsequent wars cost. But
that raises an interesting question, with an even more interesting
answer. "If all this is so easy, why hasn't this been done before?" I
mean, wars are destructive, costly, and dangerous, so why hasn't some
smart politician figured out that instead of fighting the entire
country, we could just 'zero' the few bad guys on the top? The answer is
quite revealing, and strikingly "logical": If we can kill THEIR leaders,
they can kill OUR leaders too. That would avoid the war, but the
leadership on both sides would be dead, and guess who is making the
decisions about what to do? That's right, the LEADERS! And the leaders
(both theirs and ours!) would rather see 30,000,000 ordinary people die
in WWII than lose their own lives, if they can get away with it. Same in
Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and numerous other disputes around the
globe. You can see that as long as we continue to allow leaders, both
"ours" and "theirs," to decide who should die, they will ALWAYS choose
the ordinary people of each country. One reason the leaders have been
able to avoid this solution is simple: While it's comparatively easy to
"get away with murder," it's a lot harder to reward the person who does
it, and that person is definitely taking a serious risk. (Most murders
are solved based on some prior relationship between the murder and
victim, or observations of witnesses who know either the murderer or the
victim.) Historically, it has been essentially impossible to adequately
motivate an assassin, ensuring his safety and anonymity as well, if only
because it has been impossible to PAY him in a form that nobody can
trace, and to ensure the silence of all potential witnesses. Even if a
person was willing to die in the act, he would want to know that the
people he chooses would get the reward, but if they themselves were
identified they'd be targets of revenge. All that's changed with the
advent of public-key encryption and digital cash. Now, it should be
possible to announce a standing offer to all comers that a large sum of
digital cash will be sent to him in an untraceable fashion should he
meet certain "conditions," conditions which don't even have to include
proving (or, for that matter, even claiming) that he was somehow
responsible for a death. I believe that such a system has tremendous
implications for the future of freedom. Libertarians in particular (and
I'm a libertarian) should pay particular attention to the fact that this
system "encourages" if not an anarchist outcome, at least a minarchist
(minimal government) system, because no large governmental structure
could survive in its current form. In fact, I would argue that this
system would solve a potential problem, occasionally postulated, with
the adoption of libertarianism in one country, surrounded by
non-libertarian states. It could have reasonably been suspected that in
a gradual shift to a libertarian political and economic system, remnants
of a non-libertarian system such as a military would have to survive, to
protect society against the threats represented by foreign states. While
certainly plausible, it would have been hard for an average naive person
to imagine how the country would maintain a $250 billion military
budget, based on voluntary contributions. The easy answer, of course, is
that military budgets of that size would simply not happen in a
libertarian society. More problematic is the question of how a country
would defend itself, if it had to raise its defenses by voluntary
contribution. An equally simplistic answer is that this country could
probably be defended just fine on a budget 1/2 to 1/3 of the current
budget. True, but that misses the point. The real answer is even
simpler. Large armies are only necessary to fight the other large armies
organized by the leadership of other, non-libertarian states, presumably
against the will of their citizenry. Once the problem posed by _their_
leadership is solved (as well as ours; either by their own citizenry by
similar anonymous contributions, or by ours), there will be no large
armies to oppose.
In the 1960's movie, "The Thomas Crown Affair," actor Steve McQueen
plays a bored multi-millionaire who fights tedium by arranging
well-planned high-yield bank robberies. He hires each of the robbers
separately and anonymously, so that they can neither identify him nor
each other. They arrive at the bank on schedule, separately but
simultaneously, complete the robbery, then separate forever. He pays
each robber out of his own funds, so that the money cannot be traced,
and he keeps the proceeds of each robbery. In my recent essay generally
titled "Digitaliberty," or earlier "Assassination politics," I
hypothesized that it should be possible to LEGALLY set up an
organization which collects perfectly anonymous donations sent by
members of the public, donations which instruct the organization to pay
the amount to any person who correctly guesses the date of death of some
named person, for example some un-favorite government employee or
officeholder. The organization would total the amounts of the donations
for each different named person, and publish that list (presumably on
the Internet) on a daily or perhaps even an hourly basis, telling the
public exactly how much a person would get for "predicting" the death of
that particular target. Moreover, that organization would accept
perfectly anonymous, untraceable, encrypted "predictions" by various
means, such as the Internet (probably through chains of encrypted
anonymous remailers), U.S. mail, courier, or any number of other means.
Those predictions would contain two parts: A small amount of untraceable
"digital cash," inside the outer "digital envelope," to ensure that the
"predictor" can't economically just randomly choose dates and names, and
an inner encrypted data packet which is encrypted so that even the
organization itself cannot decrypt it. That data packet would contain
the name of the person whose death is predicted, and the date it is to
happen. This encrypted packet could also be published, still encrypted,
on the Internet, so as to be able to prove to the world, later, that
SOMEBODY made that prediction before it happened, and was willing to
"put money on it" by including it outside the inner encrypted
"envelope." The "predictor" would always lose the outer digital cash; he
would only earn the reward if his (still-secret) prediction later became
true. If, later on, that prediction came true, the "lucky" predictor
would transmit the decrypt key to the organization, untraceably, which
would apply it to the encrypted packet, and discover that it works, and
read the prediction made hours, days, weeks, or even months earlier.
Only then would the organization, or for that matter anyone else except
the predictor, know the person or the date named. Also included in that
inner encrypted digital "envelope" would be a public key, generated by
the predictor for only this particular purpose: It would not be his
"normal" public key, obviously, because that public key would be
traceable to him. Also present in this packet the predictor has earned.
(This presentation could be done indirectly, by an intermediary, to
prevent a bank from being able to refuse to deal with the organization.)
Those "digital cash" codes will then be encrypted using the public key
included with the original prediction, and published in a number of
locations, perhaps on the Internet in a number of areas, and available
by FTP to anyone who's interested. (It is assumed that this data will
somehow get to the original predictor. Since it will get to "everyone"
on the Internet, it will presumably be impossible to know where the
predictor is.) Note, however, that only the person who sent the
prediction (or somebody he's given the secret key to in the interim) can
decrypt that message, and in any case only he, the person who prepared
the digital cash blanks, can fully "unbind" the digital cash to make it
spendable, yet absolutely untraceable. (For a much more complete
explanation of how so-called "digital cash" works, I refer you to the
August 1992 issue of Scientific American.) This process sounds
intricate, but it (and even some more detail I haven't described above)
is all necessary to: 1. Keep the donors, as well as the predictors,
absolutely anonymous, not only to the public and each other, but also to
the organization itself, either before or after the prediction comes
true. 2. Ensure that neither the organization, nor the donors, nor the
public, is aware of the contents of the "prediction" unless and until it
later becomes true. (This ensures that none of the other participants
can be "guilty" of knowing this, before it happens.) 3. Prove to the
donors (including potential future predictors), the organization, and
the public that indeed, somebody predicted a particular death on a
particular date, before it actually happened. 4. Prove to the donors and
the public (including potential future predictors) that the amount of
money promised was actually paid to whoever made the prediction that
later came true. This is important, obviously, because you don't want
any potential predictor to doubt whether he'll get the money if he makes
a successful prediction, and you don't want any potential donor to doubt
that his money is actually going to go to a successful predictor. 5.
Prevent the organization and the donors and the public from knowing, for
sure, whether the predictor actually had anything to do with the death
predicted. This is true even if (hypothetically) somebody is later
caught and convicted of a murder, which was the subject of a successful
"prediction": Even after identifying the murderer through other means,
it will be impossible for anyone to know if the murderer and the
predictor were the same person. 6. Allow the predictor, if he so
chooses, to "gift" the reward (possibly quite anonymously) to any other
person, one perhaps totally unaware of the source of the money, without
anyone else knowing of this. Even the named "target" (the "victim") is
also assured of something: He his best "friend," could collect the
reward, absolutely anonymously, should they "predict" his death
correctly. At that point, he will have no friends. This may represent
the ultimate in compartmentalization of information: Nobody knows more
than he needs to, to play his part in the whole arrangement. Nobody can
turn anyone else in, or make a mistake that identifies the other
participants. Yet everyone can verify that the "game" is played
"fairly": The predictor gets his money, as the donors desire. Potential
future predictors are satisfied (in a mathematically provable fashion)
that all previous successful predictors were paid their full rewards, in
a manner that can't possibly be traced. The members of the public are
assured that, if they choose to make a donation, it will be used as
promised. This leads me to a bold assertion: I claim that, aside from
the practical difficulty and perhaps, theoretical impossibility of
identifying either the donors or the predictor, it is very likely that
none of the participants, with the (understandable) hypothetical
exception of a "predictor" who happens to know that he is also a
murderer, could actually be considered "guilty" of any violation of
black-letter law. Furthermore, none of the participants, including the
central organization, is aware, either before or after the "prediction"
comes true, that any other participant was actually in violation of any
law, or for that matter would even know (except by watching the news)
that any crime had actually been committed. After all, the donors are
merely offering gifts to a person who makes a successful prediction, not
for any presumed responsibility in a killing, and the payment would
occur even if no crime occurred. The organization is merely coordinating
it all, but again isolating itself so that it cannot know from whom the
money comes, or to whom the money eventually is given, or whether a
crime was even committed. (Hypothetically, the "predictor" could
actually be the "victim," who decides to kill himself and "predict"
this, giving the proceeds of the reward to his chosen beneficiary,
perhaps a relative or friend. Ironically, this might be the best revenge
he can muster, "cheating the hangman," as it were.) In fact, the
organization could further shield itself by adopting a stated policy
that no convicted (or, for that matter, even SUSPECTED) killers could
receive the payment of a reward. However, since the recipient of the
reward is by definition unidentified and untraceable even in theory,
this would be a rather hollow assurance since it has no way to prevent
such a payment from being made to someone responsible.
In part 3, I claimed that an organization could quite legally operate,
assisted by encryption, international data networking, and untraceable
digital cash, in a way that would (indirectly) hasten the death of named
people, for instance hated government employees and officeholders. I
won't attempt to "prove" this, for reasons that I think will be obvious.
First, even if such an operation were indeed "legal," that fact alone
would not stop its opponents from wanting to shut it down. However,
there is also another way of looking at it: If this system works as I
expect it would, even its claimed "illegality" would be irrelevant,
because it could operate over international borders and beyond the legal
reach of any law-abiding government. Perhaps the most telling fact,
however, is that if this system was as effective as it appears it would
be, no prosecutor would dare file charges against any participant, and
no judge would hear the case, because no matter how long the existing
list of "targets," there would always be room for one or two more. Any
potential user of this system would recognize that an assault on this
system represents a threat to its future availability, and would act
accordingly by donating money to target anyone trying to shut it down.
Even so, I think I should address two charges that have been made,
apparently quite simplistically, claiming that an implementation of this
idea would violate the law. Specifically: "Conspiracy to commit murder"
and "misprision of felony." As I understand it, in order to have a
"conspiracy" from a criminal standpoint, it is necessary to have at
least two people agree to commit a crime, and have some overt act in
furtherance of that crime. Well, this charge already "strikes out"
because in the plan I described, none of the participants _agrees_ with
ANYONE to commit a crime. None of the participants even informs anyone
else that he will be committing a crime, whether before or after the
fact. In fact, the only crime appears (hypothetically; this assumes that
a crime was actually committed) to be a murder committed by a single
individual, a crime unknown to the other participants, with his identity
similarly unknown. Remember, the "prediction" originally sent in by the
predictor was fully encrypted, so that the organization (or anyone else,
for that matter) would be unable to figure out the identity of the
person whose death was predicted, or the date on which it was predicted
to occur. Thus, the organization is incapable of "agreeing" with such a
thing, and likewise the donors as well. Only if the prediction later
came true would the decrypt key arrive, and only then would the
organization (and the public) be made aware of the contents. Even then,
it's only a "prediction," so even then, nobody is actually aware of any
crime that can be associated with the predictor. "Misprision of Felony"
This crime, sort of a diluted form of "accessory before and/or after the
fact," was claimed to qualify by "Tim of Angle," who subsequent to my
answer to him on this subject has totally failed to support his initial
claim. (A recent curiosity is that this crime is one that has been
charged against Michael Fortier, the person who claims he helped OKC
bombing suspect Tim McVeigh "case the joint" at the Federal building.) I
include it here, nevertheless, because his simplistic (and un-careful)
reading of my idea led him to perhaps the "closest" law that one might
allege that the participants would have broken. Tim claimed: No. That's
called "misprision of felony" and makes you an accessory before the
fact. Arguably, under the felony murder rule you could get TOA> capital
punishment in a state that has such. However, I did a little library
research, checking Black's Law Dictionary. Here is the entry for this
item: "Misprision of felony. The offense of concealing a felony
committed by another, but without such previous concert with or
subsequent assistance to the felon as would make the party concealing an
accessory before or after the fact. United State s v. Perlstein,
C.C.A.N.J., 126 F.2d 789, 798. Elements of the crime are that the
principal committed and completed the felony alleged, that the defendant
had full knowledge of that fact, that the defendant failed to notify the
authorities, and that defendant took an affirmative step to conceal the
crime. U.S. v. Ciambrone, C.A. Nev., 750 F.2d 1416, 1417. Whoever,
having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony recognizable by a
court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible
make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military
authority under the United States, is guilty of the federal crime of
misprision of felony. 18 U.S.C.A 4." See also Obstructing Justice .in
Black’s Law Dictionary. The only "element" of this crime which is
arguably satisfied is the first: Some person other than the defendant
for "misprision of felony") committed a crime. The second element fails
miserably: "...that the defendant had full knowledge of that fact... "
My previous commentary makes it clear that far from "full knowledge of
that fact," other participants are carefully prevented from having ANY
"knowledge of that fact." The third element, " that the defendant failed
to notify the authorities..." is also essentially non-existent: No other
participants have any information as to the identity of a predictor, or
his location, or for that matter whether he has had any involvement in
any sort of crime. In fact, it would be possible for each of the other
participants to deliver (anonymously, presumably) copies of all
correspondence they have sent, to the police or other agency, and that
correspondence would not help the authorities even slightly to identify
a criminal or even necessarily a crime. In fact, normal operation of
this organization would be to publicize "all" correspondence it
receives, in order to provide feedback to the public to assure them that
all participants are fulfilling their promises and receiving their
rewards. This publication would presumably find its way to the police,
or it could even be mailed to them on a "fail[ing] to notify
authorities." Nevertheless, none of this material could help any
authorities with their investigations, to their dismay. The fourth and
last element of the crime of "misprision of felony", "...and that
defendant took an affirmative step to conceal the crime," would totally
fail. The organization would not " conceal" the crime. In fact, it will
have no ability to do anything to the contrary, if for no other reason
that it _has_ no knowledge of the crime! And as described above, it
would carefully avoid having access to any information that could help
solve the crime, and thus it would escape any obligations along these
lines. Summary: In hindsight, it is not surprising that such an
organization could operate legally within the U.S., although at least
initially not without political opposition. First, this is at least
nominally supposed to be a "free country," which should mean that police
and other authorities aren't able to punish behavior just because they
don't like it. Secondly, it is obvious that most laws today were
originally written during an era in which laws assumed that
"conspirators" at least knew each other, had met each other, could
identify each other, or had (at least!) talked to each other. On the
contrary, in my scenario none of the participants even know on what
continent any of the others reside, let alone their country, city, or
street. They don't know what they look like, sound like, or for that
matter even "type like": None of their prose, save a few sparse
"predictions," ever gets communicated to anyone else, so even
text-comparison programs would fail to "target" anyone. Equally
surprising (to those who originally wrote the laws against "conspiracy")
would be "Person A's" ability to satisfy himself that "Person B"
deserves the award, without knowing that "Person B" is (or is not)
actually responsible for a particular death.
In the previous four notes on the subject of Digitaliberty, I've
suggested that this concept (collecting anonymous donations to, in
effect, "purchase" the death of an un-favorite government employee)
would force a dramatic reduction of the size of government at all
levels, as well as achieving what will probably be a "minarchist"
(minimal government) state at a very rapid rate. Furthermore, I pointed
out that I thought that this effect would not merely affect a single
country or continent, but might in fact spread through all countries
essentially simultaneously. But in addition to such (apparently)
grandiose claims, it occurs to me that there must be other changes to
society that would simultaneously occur with the adoption of such a
system. After all, a simplistic view of my idea might lead one to the
conclusion that there would be almost no governmental structure left
after society had been transformed. Since our current "criminal justice
system" today is based totally on the concept of "big government," this
would lead a naive person to wonder how concepts such as "justice,"
"fairness," "order," and for that matter protection of individual rights
can be accomplished in such a society. Indeed, one common theme I've
seen in criticisms of my idea is the fear that this system would lead to
"anarchy." The funny thing about this objection is that, technically,
this could easily be true. But "anarchy" in real life may not resemble
anything like the "anarchy" these people claim to fear, which leads me
to respond with a quote whose origin I don't quite remember: "Anarchy is
not lack of order. Anarchy is lack of ORDERS." People presumably will
continue to live their lives in a calm, ordered manner. Or, at least as
calm and ordered as they WANT to. It won't be "wild in the streets," and
they won't bring cannibalism back as a national sport, or anything like
that. It occurs to me that probably one of the best ways to demonstrate
that my idea, "assassination politics" (perhaps ineptly named, in view
of the fact that its application is far greater than mere politics),
would not result in "lack of order" is to show that most if not all of
the DESIRABLE functions of the current so-called "criminal justice
system" will be performed after its adoption. This is true even if they
will be accomplished through wholly different methods and, conceivably,
in entirely different ways than the current system does. I should
probably first point out that it is not my intention to re-write the
book of minarchist theory. I would imagine that over the years, there
has been much written about how individuals and societies would function
absent a strong central government, and much of that writing is probably
far more detailed and well thought out than anything I'll describe here.
One reason that ALMOST ANY "criminal justice system" would be better and
more effective than the one we currently possess is that, contrary to
the image that officialdom would try to push, anyone whose job depends
on "crime" has a strong vested interest in _maintaining_ a high level of
crime, not eliminating it. After all, a terrorized society is one that
is willing to hire many cops and jailers and judges and lawyers, and to
pay them high salaries. A safe, secure society is not willing to put up
with that. The "ideal" situation, from the limited and self-interested
standpoint of the police and jailers, is one that maximizes the number
of people in prison, yet leaves most of the really dangerous criminals
out in the streets, in order to maintain justification for the system.
That seems to be exactly the situation we have today, which is not
surprising when you consider that the police have had an unusually high
level of input into the "system" for many decades. The first effect of
my idea would be, I think, to generally eliminate prohibitions against
acts which have no victims, or "victimless crimes." Classic examples are
laws against drug sales and use, gambling, prostitution, pornography,
etc. That's because the average (unpropagandized) individual will have
very little concern or sympathy for punishing an act which does not have
a clear victim. Without a large, central government to push the
propaganda, the public will view these acts as certainly not "criminal,"
even if still regarded as generally undesirable by a substantial
minority for a few years. Once you get rid of such laws, the price of
currently illegal drugs would drop dramatically, probably by a factor of
100. Crime caused by the need to get money to pay for these drugs would
drop drastically, even if you assume that drug usage increased due to
the lowering of the price. Despite this massive reduction in crime,
perhaps as much as 90%, the average person is still going to want to
know what "my system" would do about the residual, "real" crime rate.
You know, murder, rape, robbery, burglary, and all that. Well, in the
spirit of the idea, a simplistic interpretation would suggest that an
individual could target the criminal who victimizes him, which would put
an end to that criminal career. Some might object, pointing out that the
criminal is only identified in a minority of crimes. That objection is
technically correct, but it's also a bit misleading. The truth is that
the vast majority of "victim"-type crime is committed by a relatively
tiny fraction of the population who are repeat criminals. It isn't
necessary to identify For example, even if the probability of a car
thief getting caught, per theft, is only 5%, there is at least a 40%
probability of getting caught after 10 thefts, and a 65% chance after 20
thefts. A smart car-theft victim would be happy to donate money
targeting ANY discovered car-thief, not necessarily just the one who
victimized him. The average car-owner would be wise to offer such
donations occasionally, as "insurance" against the possibility of his
being victimized someday: An average donation of 1 cent per day per car
would constitute $10,000 per day for a typical city of 1 million cars.
Assuming that amount is far more than enough to get a typical car
thief's "friends" to "off" him, there is simply no way that a
substantial car-theft subculture could possibly be maintained. Another
alternative is that insurance companies would probably get into the act:
Since they are going to be the financial victims of thefts of their
insured's property, it is reasonable to suppose that they would be
particularly inclined to deter such theft. It is conceivable that
current-day insurance companies would transmogrify themselves into
investigation/deterrence agencies, while maintaining their insurance
role, in view of the fact that they have the most to lose. This is
particularly true because if "assassination politics" (as applied to
criminals and crime) comes about, they could then actually DO SOMETHING
about the problem, rather than merely reporting on the statistics to
their customers and stockholders. Such companies would also have a
strong motivation to provide a workable system of rewards for solving
crimes and identifying criminals, rewards that (naturally enough!) can
be given out totally anonymously. While I would like to talk about the
other advantage of this new kind of justice, the fact that politicians
and other government employees would no longer have de-facto immunity in
most cases, the reality is that since we would no longer HAVE
"politicians and other government employees," to mention that advantage
would be redundant. The principle is valid, however: In today's system,
you can have people known to be guilty of crimes, but not prosecuted
because they are part of "the system." Classic examples would be heroes
of the right (Oliver North) and heroes of the left (Jim Wright) who
either escape prosecution or conviction for "political" or
"bureaucratic" reasons. With "assassination politics" that would simply
never happen.
A frequent initial belief among people who have recently heard of my
"assassination politics" idea is the fear that this system will somehow
be "out of control": It would end up causing the death of ordinary,
"undeserving" people. This system, however, will not be without its own
kind of "control. "Not a centralized control, decidable by a single
individual, but a decentralized system in which everyone gets an
implicit "vote." A good analogy might be to consider a society in which
everyone's house thermostat is controlled to operate at a temperature
which is set for the entire country. Each person's control input is
taken as a "vote," whether to get hotter, colder, or to stay the same
temperature. The central control computer adjusts the national setpoint
temperature in order to equalize the number of people who want the
temperature colder and hotter. Each house is at the same, nationally set
temperature, however. Clearly, no one individual is in control of the
setting. Nevertheless, I think it would be generally agreed that this
system would never produce a REALLY "off the wall" temperature setting,
simply because so many people's inputs are used to determine the output.
Sure, if a group of 10,000 kids decided (assisted by the Internet)
together to screw with the system, and they all set their houses'
thermostat inputs to "hotter," they could SLIGHTLY increase the overall
setting, but since there are probably about 100 million separate
dwellings in the U.S., their fiddlings will be drowned out by the vast
majority of the population's desires. Is this system "out of control"?
True, it is out of the "control" of any single individual, but
nevertheless it is well within the control of the population as a whole.
It turns out that "assassination politics" actually has a rather similar
control mechanism to the one I've described above. First, I've pointed
out that if I were to operate a centralized system such as this, I'd
only accept donations naming people who are in violation of the
"Non-Initiation Of Force Principle" (NIOFP), well known to libertarians.
By this standard, government employees (who have accepted paychecks paid
for with funds stolen from citizenry by taxes) and criminals whose
crimes actually had a victim would be included. Let's call this
hypothetical organization "Organization A," or OrgA for short. True,
somebody else might be a little less scrupulous, accepting donations for
the termination of ANYBODY regardless of whether he "deserves" his fate
(call them "Organization B," or OrgB, for short.) Most potential donors
(who, I suggest, would have "typical" levels of scruples) would see that
if they patronize OrgB, their interests wouldn’t be protected. For
example, OrgB (if it survives and thrives) might later come back to
target them, because of some other donor. OrgA would not. Naturally, our
"ethical" donors don't want this, so they would choose to give their
donation to the most "ethical" organization that will accept it. This
maximizes the donors' benefit, and minimizes the potential harm. Since
BOTH organizations will accept donations for "deserving" victims, while
only OrgB will accept them for "just anybody," it is reasonable to
conclude that (capitalism being what it is) OrgB's rates (the percentage
of the price it keeps as profit) can be and will be higher for its
donations (that's because there is less competition in its area of
specialization.) Thus, it would be more economical to target "deserving"
people through OrgA, and thus donors will be drawn to it. In addition,
OrgA will become larger, more credible, believable and trustworthy, and
more potential "guessers" (assassins?) will "work" its system, and for
lower average potential payments (all else being equal.) Even so, and
ironically, the average donation level for people listed by OrgA would
likely be higher, since (if we assume these are "deserving" people) more
people will be contributing towards their demise. After all, if a
potential donor wants to "hit" some government bigwig, there will be
PLENTY of other donors to share the cost with. Millions of donations of
$1 to $10 each would be common and quite economical. On the other hand,
if you just selected a target out of the telephone directory, an
"undeserving" target, you'll probably be the only person wanting to see
him dead, which means that you'll probably have to foot the whole bill
of perhaps $5K to $10K if you want to see any "action. " Add to that
OrgB 's "cut," which will probably be 50%, and you're talking $10K to
$20K. I contend that the likelihood of this kind of thing actually
happening will be quite low, for "undeserving victims." Now, the
die-hards among you will probably object to the fact that even this tiny
residual possibility is left. But consider: Even _today_ it would be
quite "possible" for you to pick a name randomly out of a list, find him
and kill him yourself. Does this frequently happen? Apparently not. For
just one thing, there's no real motive. Unless you can show that the
application of "assassination politics" would dramatically increase the
likelihood of such incidents, I suggest that this "problem" will likely
not be a problem after all. For a while, I thought that the "lack of a
motive" protection was momentarily overturned by a hypothetical: I
thought, suppose a person used this system as part of a sophisticated
extortion scheme, in which he sends an anonymous message to some rich
character, saying something like "pay me a zillion dollars anonymously,
or I put out a digital contract on you." For a while, this one had me
stumped. Then, I realized that an essential element in this whole play
was missing: If this could be done ONCE, it could be done a dozen times.
And the victim of such an extortion scheme has no assurance that it
won't happen again, even if he pays off, so ironically he has no
motivation to pay off the extortion. Think about it: The only reason to
make the payment is to remove the threat. If making the payment can't
guarantee to the target that the threat is removed, he has no reason to
make the payment. And if the target has no reason to make the payment,
the extortionist has no reason to make the threat! Another, related (and
equally simplistic) fear is that political minorities will be
preferentially targeted. For example, when I pointed out that
"establishment" political leaders would probably "go" quite quickly, one
wag suggested to me that "libertarian leaders" could likewise be
targeted. Such a suggestion reflects a serious misunderstanding of
political philosophy, and libertarians in particular: I consider it
obvious (to me, at least) that libertarians NEED no leaders. (You don't
need leaders if you don't want to control a population, or achieve
political power. The only reason libertarians "need" leaders today is to
take places in the government and (then) to shut it down.) And if my
idea is implemented, "libertarian leaders" represent no more of a threat
to anyone than the average libertarian citizen. Fully recognizing this,
another (and far more credible) person thought a while, and in a proud
revelation suggested that one way that the establishment would "fight
back" is to convert to a government that is based on fully decentralized
authority, as opposed to the leader-centric system we have today. Such a
system could not be attacked by killing individual people, any more than
you can kill a tree by pulling off a single leaf. His "solution" was, in
effect, to totally disband the current government and turn it over to
the public at large, where it highly de-centralized system that is not
controlled by a tiny fraction of the population in a structure called a
"government," essentially identical to his idea. So in effect, the only
way the government can survive is to totally surrender. And once it
surrenders, the people win. And in practice, it will have no
alternative. Will this idea be "out of control"? To a great extent, that
depends on what your definition of the word "control." I have come to
believe that "assassination politics" is a political Rorschach
(ink-blot) test: What you think of it is strongly related to your
political philosophy.
Dear libertarian Friend, I very much understand the concerns you voiced
about my idea which I call, "Assassination Politics," because this essay
is nothing if it is not radical and extreme. I wrote it, in the middle
of last year, partly because I think libertarianism and libertarians in
particular need to address what is, if not a contradiction," is at least
an intolerable reality: On the one hand, we are told not to initiate
aggression, but on the other we are aggressed against by the government
every time it collects a tax. I much appreciate the way some people I
know have "dropped out" of the system, and the guts that such a tactic
requires. But that's the problem, I think: Only those with the "guts" do
it, which gives the government fewer targets so that it can spend more
time attacking the few who oppose it. The reality is that the government
STILL collects taxes, and it STILL uses that money to violate our
rights. We all know that's wrong. My position is quite simple: If tax
collection constitutes aggression, then anyone doing it or assisting in
the effort or benefiting from the proceeds thereof is a criminal. This
is quite analogous to current law that prosecutes co-conspirators. While
I am not holding out "current law" as some sort of gold-standard of
reasonableness that we must always accept, on the other hand I think
it's plausible to use it to show that once we have come to the
conclusion that taxation is theft, the prescription follows directly by
a form of reasoning allegedly acceptable to society: It is reasonable to
"attack the attackers" and their co-conspirators, and everyone who is
employed by the government is thus a co-conspirator, even if he is not
directly involved in the collection of those taxes. That's because he IS
involved in _benefiting_ from the proceeds of these taxes, and he
presumably provides a certain level of "backup" to the young thugs that
governmental organizations often hire. I realize, and you should too,
that the "non-aggression principle" says nothing about the EXTENT of the
self-defense/retaliation that one might reasonably employ in defending
one's own rights: In a sense, that sounds like an omission because it at
least suggests that a person might "unreasonably" defend himself with
lethal force when far less drastic means might normally be called for.
For what it's worth, I think most people will behave responsibly. But I
think it is pretty straightforward to argue that whatever means are
necessary to stop the attack, are reasonable given the terms of the
non-aggression principle: If a given means are known to be inadequate to
actually stop the attack, then further and more serious means are
reasonable and called-for. To set up a reasonable analogy, if I'm
walking down the canonical "dark alley" and am accosted by a man
wielding a knife threatening me with it, it is presumably reasonable for
me to pull a gun and threaten back, or possibly take the encounter to
the final conclusion of gunfire. Even if I should choose to hold my fire
and test to determine whether my actions deterred him, I can't see that
this possibility binds me morally. And should he advance, despite the
gun, as if to attack, I should feel no remorse in shooting him and
taking myself out of danger. If you accept the premises so far, you
apparently accept the principle that escalation of the
self-defense/retaliation is reasonable as long as if the current level
of returned counter-threat is inadequate to stop the aggression
initiated by the other party. To believe otherwise is to believe that
ultimately, you are obligated to accept a certain high level of
aggression simply because you do not have the resources (yet) to resist
it. I totally reject this concept, as I hope you would. So if,
hypothetically, I could have an anonymous conversation with a hard-nosed
government employee, and asked him, "If I killed one of your agents,
would you stop trying to collect that tax from me," his predictable
reaction would be, "no, we would continue to try to collect that tax."
In fact, he would probably hasten to add that he would try to have me
prosecuted for murder, as well! If I were to ask if killing ten agents
would stop them, again they would presumably say that this would not
change their actions. The conclusion is, to me, obvious: Clearly, there
is no practical limit to the amount of self-defense that I would need to
protect my assets from the government tax collector, and to actually
stop the theft, so I suggest that logic requires that I be morally and
ethically allowed (under libertarian principles) to use whatever level
of self-defense I choose. You raised another objection that quite
frankly I believe is invalid. I believe you implied that until a
specific level of escalation is reached (such as the Feds showing up on
your doorstep, etc) then it is not legitimate to defend oneself.
Delicately, I must disagree. As we all well know, government ultimately
operates primarily not on actual, applied force, but simply the threat
of future force if you do not comply. True, there are people who have
decided to call the government's bluff and simply drop out, but the
reality is that this is not practical for most individuals today. This
is no accident: The government makes it difficult to drop out, because
they extort the cooperation of banks and potential employers and others
with which you would otherwise be able to freely contract. In any case,
I fail to see how not "dropping out" makes one somehow morally obligated
to pay a tax (or tolerate the collection of one). I trust you did not
inadvertently mean to suggest this. The reason, morally, we are entitled
to shoot the mugger if he waves the knife in our face is that he has
threatened us with harm, in this case to our lives, but the threat the
government represents to the average citizen (loss of one's entire
assets) is just as real, albeit somewhat different. Since government is
a past reality, and a present reality, and has the immediate prospects
of being a future reality as well, I sincerely believe that the average
citizen can legitimately consider himself CONTINUOUSLY threatened. The
aggression has already occurred, in continuously occurring, and has
every prospect of continuing to occur. If anything would justify
fighting back, this would. To continue the analogy, if you've been
repeatedly mugged by the same guy down the same dark alley for each day
of last month, that DOES NOT mean that you've somehow consented to the
situation, or that your rights to your assets have somehow been waived.
With my "Assassination Politics" essay, I simply proposed that we (as
libertarians as well as being ordinary citizens) begin to treat
aggression by government as being essentially equivalent to aggression
by muggers, rapists, robbers, and murderers, and view their acts as a
continuing series of aggressions. Seen this way, it should not be
necessary to wait for their NEXT aggression; they will have always have
been aggressing and they will always BE aggressing, again and again,
until they are stopped for good. At that point, the question shifted to
one of practicality: Sure, theoretically we might morally have the
"right" to protect ourselves with lethal force, but if they have any
reputation at all, government agents have a habit of showing up in large
numbers when they actually apply direct force. To take a position that
you can only defend yourself when _they've_ chosen the "where" and
"when" of the confrontation is downright suicidal, and I hope you
understand that I would consider any such restriction to be highly
unfair and totally impractical. Understand, too, that the reason we're
still stuck under the thumb of the government is that to the extent it's
true, "we've" been playing by THEIR rules, not by our own. By our own
rules, THEY are the aggressors and we should be able to treat them
accordingly, on our own terms, at our own convenience, whenever we
choose, especially when we feel the odds are on our side. I understand,
obviously, that the "no initiation of aggression" principle is still
valid, but please recognize that I simply don't consider it to be a
valid counter-argument to "Assassination Politics," at least as applied
to targets who happen to be government agents. They've "pre-aggressed,"
and I don't see any limit to the defenses I should be able to muster to
stop that aggression completely and permanently. Not that I don't see a
difference between different levels of guilt: I fully recognize that
some of them are far worse than others, and I would certainly not treat
a lowly Forest Service grunt in the same fashion as an ATF sniper. Now,
there is one more thing that I would hope we could get straight: As I
originally "invented" this system, it occurred to me that there could be
certain arguments that it needed to be "regulated" somehow; "unworthy"
targets shouldn't be killed, etc. The "problem" is, what I've "invented"
may (as I now believe it to be) actually a "discovery," in a sense: I
now believe this kind of system was always inevitable, merely waiting
for the triad of the Internet, digital cash, and good encryption in
order to provide the technical underpinnings for the entire system. If
that is genuinely the case, then there is no real way to control it,
except by free-market principles. It would be impossible, for example,
to set up some sort of "Assassination Politics Dictator," who decides
who will live and who will die, because competition in the system will
always rise to supply every demand, albeit at possibly a very high
price. And if you believe the maxim that "absolute power corrupts
absolutely," you wouldn't want to accept any form of centralized control
(even, perhaps, that of your own!), because any such control would
eventually be corrupted. Most rational people recognize this, and I do
too. I would not have invented a system where "Jim Bell" gets to make
"all the decisions." Quite the contrary, the system I've described
absolutely prevents such centralization. That, quite frankly, is the
novelty and dare I say it, the beauty of this idea. I believe that it
simply cannot be hijacked by centralized political control. As I pointed
out in the essay, if _I_ were running one of the organizations accepting
those donations and offering those prizes, I would selectively list only
those targets that I am genuinely satisfied are guilty of the violation
of the "non-aggression principle." But as a practical matter, there is
no way that I could stop a DIFFERENT organization from being set up and
operating under DIFFERENT moral and ethical principles, especially if it
operated anonymously, as I anticipate the "Assassination Politics"-type
systems will be. Thus, I'm forced to accept the reality that I can't
dictate a "strongly limited" system that would "guarantee" no
"unjustified" deaths: I can merely control my little piece of the earth
and not assist in the abuse of others. I genuinely believe, however,
that the operation of this system would be a vast improvement over the
status quo. This, I argue, is somewhat analogous to an argument that we
should be entitled to own firearms, despite the fact that SOME people
will use them wrongly/immorally/illegally. The ownership is a right even
though it may ultimately allow or enable an abuse that you consider
wrong and punishable. I consider the truth of such an argument to be
obvious and correct, and I know you would too. I realize that this lacks
the crisp certitude of safety that would be reassuring to the average,
"pre-libertarian" individual. But you are not the "average individual"
and I trust that as long-time libertarians you will recognize rights
must exist even given the hypothetical possibility that somebody may
eventually abuse them. I do not know whether I "invented" or
"discovered" this system; perhaps it's a little of both. I do genuinely
believe that this system, or one like it, is as close to being
technologically inevitable as was the invention of firearms once the
material we now know as "gunpowder" was invented. I think it's on the
way, regardless of what we do to stop it. Perhaps more than anyone else
on the face of this planet, this notion has filled me, sequentially and
then simultaneously, with awe, astonishment, joy, terror, and finally,
relief. Awe, that a system could be produced by a handful of people that
would rid the world of the scourge of war, nuclear weapons, governments,
and taxes. Astonishment, at my realization that once started, it would
cover the entire globe inexorably, erasing dictatorships both fascistic
and communistic, monarchies, and even so-called "democracies," which as
a general rule today are really just the facade of government by the
special interests. Joy, that it would eliminate all war, and force the
dismantling not only of all nuclear weapons, but also all militaries,
making them not merely redundant but also considered universally
dangerous, leaving their "owners" no choice but to dismantle them, and
in fact no reason to KEEP them! Terror, too, because this system may
just change almost EVERYTHING how we think about our current society,
and even more for myself personally, the knowledge that there may some
day be a large body of wealthy people who are thrown off their current
positions of control of the world's governments, and the very-real
possibility that they may look for a "villain" to blame for their
downfall. They will find one, in me, and at that time they will have the
money and (thanks to me, at least partially) the means to see their
revenge. But I would not have published this essay if I had been
unwilling to accept the risk. Finally, relief. Maybe I'm a bit premature
to say it, but I'm satisfied we _will_ be free. I'm convinced there is
no alternative. It may feel like a roller-coaster ride on the way there,
but as of today I think our destination is certain. Please understand,
we _will_ be free. Your libertarian friend, Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com Something is going to happen... Something...
Wonderful!
The following article appeared in the Sunday, February 4, 1996 issue of
Asahi Evening News, in an article written by columnist Paul Maxwell,
page 6. He writes a regular column about the Internet for this
newspaper. "Networks: Paul Maxwell" "Dial Internet for murder" 'The
first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." (Shakespeare, Henry VI).
A startling and controversial idea has surfaced on the Internet
recently--fear with me for a moment while I explain it. It is based on
two technological developments: digital cash and encryption software.
Briefly, digital cash is a system for transferring funds from one person
to another on the Net. For this system to be as good as cash, the
transactions must be capable of being conducted anonymously, just like
in real life. (You go into the Seven-Eleven, buy a Cafe Latte, and
nobody knows your name or your credit history. The purchase is not
recorded in a database of your consumer preferences.) Several competing
schemes for digital cash have been launched, but the one that eventually
gains universal acceptance will surely have this anonymity feature. The
second innovation is a kind of software called public-key encryption. It
allows you to send a file or an email message that is "locked" in such a
way that it can only be opened by the intended recipient. The recipient,
however, cannot open it until given a "key." This "key" may then be used
to encrypt a return message that can only be opened by the original
sender. Freelance visionary and tinkerer Jim Bell has been following
both of these developments for the past few years. Recently, he asked
himself a couple of tough questions: "How can we translate the freedom
afforded by the Internet to ordinary life?" How can we keep government
from banning encryption, digital cash, and other systems that will
improve our freedom?" Suddenly, Bell had a revolutionary idea.
("Revolutionary" is the word he uses, and it fits.) You and me--the
little guys, the ordinary working people of the world--could get
together, all pitch in, and pay to have every rotten scoundrel in
politics assassinated. And we could do it legally. Sort of. Bell
imagined an organization that would award "a cash prize to somebody who
correctly 'predicted' the death of one of a list of violators of rights,
usually either government employees, officeholders, or appointees. It
could ask for anonymous contributions from the public, and individuals
would be able to send those contributions using digital cash." He
explains that "using modern methods of public-key encryption and
anonymous digital cash, it would be possible to make such awards in such
a way so that nobody knows who is getting awarded the money, only that
the award is being given. Even the organization itself would have no
information that could help the authorities find the person responsible
for the prediction, let alone the one who caused the death. "Are you
following this? Let's say that we, the public, decide we've finally had
enough of [insert name of villain]. Ten dollars from me, ten from
you--suddenly there's a million dollars in a fund. The money will go to
the first person that can "predict" the date, time, and circumstances of
the villain's death. Obviously, this information is only known in
advance by the assassin. He sends an anonymous, "locked" message. He
kills the villain. He sends the "key" to the message. He has, without
ever revealing his identity, "correctly predicted" the murder. The "key"
that he has provided is then used to "lock the award money in a file
that is then publicly posted on the Internet. Only the person who
originated the key may open the file and claim the digital cash. In
other words, public anger could finance cash awards for assassinations.
The organization that collected the money and announced a list of
possible targets would never know about a crime in advance, and would
never know the identity or whereabouts of a criminal. It would not
technically be guilty of conspiracy or complicity. Jim Bell has thought
about this a lot, and feels that the idea is technically feasible,
practical, even foolproof. Suppose for a moment he's right? What are the
implications? World leaders live with the threat of assassination every
day of their lives. But at the local level, this could really have an
impact. And the "target" list wouldn't necessarily to politicians--any
offensive public personality would be fair game. Picture yourself a year
from now, sitting around with friends. Somebody says, "Remember when
Juice Newton got whacked?" And you say, "Yeah--best ten bucks I ever
spent." Satisfying as it might be to declare war on asinine pop singers,
Bell has a more civic-minded suggestion: Let's kill all the car thieves.
He reasons that a very small number of career criminals are responsible
for nearly all car thefts. If one million car owners in a given
metropolitan area contributed just four dollars a year, it would create
$10,000 a day in "prize money" for the "predictor" of any car thief's
death. "Assuming that amount is far more than enough to get a typical
car thief's 'friends' to 'off' him," he writes, "there is simply no way
that a substantial car-theft subculture could possibly be maintained."
Jim as high hopes for his plan--he thinks it could eventually lead to
the end of political tyranny. But if you don't like this idea, he has
others. In a recent email exchange, I asked what he was doing now. "I
recommend that you rent the movie, "The Day the Earth Stood Still," he
answered. "I'm working on a similar project."
by Jim Bell, February 27, 1996 For about a year I have been considering
the implications of "Assassination Politics," and for more than six
months I've been sharing the subject and my musings with you, the
interested reader. I've also been debating the issue with all comers, a
self-selected bunch who range from enthusiastic proponents to clueless
critics. Ironically, some of you have even chided me for "wasting time"
with some of the less perceptive among my numerous "opponents." In
defense, my response has always been that when I respond to a person, I
do it not primarily for his benefit, but for others who might be
fence-sitting and are waiting to see if my idea will break down
anywhere. If there is anything which has fascinated me as much as the
original idea, it is this vast and dramatic disparity between these
various responses. It's been called everything from "a work of genius"
to "atrocious," and probably much worse! Clearly, there must be a
fundamental, social issue here that needs to be resolved. While nobody
has quite yet said it in those terms, I'm sure that more than one of you
have probably wanted to react to my prose with the line, "See a shrink!"
[American slang for a psychiatrist, for the international readers out
there.] Well, in a sense that's exactly what I did, but the "shrink" I
"saw" had been dead for over five decades: Sigmund Freud. Much to my
surprise, I was handed a copy of a book, Introduction to Great Books
(ISBN 0-945159-97-8), which contained (page 7) a letter from Freud to
Albert Einstein. On page 6, there is an introduction, describing the
reason for this communication. It says: "In 1932, the League of Nations
asked Albert Einstein to choose a problem of interest to him and to
exchange views with someone about it. Einstein chose "Is there any way
of delivering mankind from the menace of war?" as his problem and
Sigmund Freud as his correspondent. In his letter to Freud, Einstein
said that one way of eliminating war was to establish a supranational
organization with the authority to settle disputes between nation as and
power to enforce its decisions. But Einstein acknowledged that this
solution dealt only with the administrative aspect of the problem, and
that international security could never be achieved until more was known
about human psychology. Must right always be supported by might? Was
everyone susceptible to feelings of hate and destructiveness? It was to
these questions Freud addressed himself in his reply." Interestingly
enough, when I first started thinking about the idea that I would later
term "Assassination Politics," I was not intending to design a system
that had the capability to eliminate war and militaries. What I was
targeting, primarily, was political tyranny. By my standards, that
included not merely totalitarian governments but also ones that many of
us would consider far more benign, in particular the Federal government
of the United States of America, "my" country. Only after I had thought
of the fundamental principle of allowing large numbers of citizens to do
away with unwanted politicians was I "forced," by my work up to that
point, to address the issue of the logical consequences of the operation
of that system, which (by "traditional" ways of thinking) would leave
this country without leaders, or a government, or a military, in a world
with many threats. I was left with the same fundamental problem that's
plagued the libertarian analysis of forming a country in a world
dominated by non-libertarian states: It was not clear how such a country
could defend itself from aggression if it could not force its citizens
to fight. Only then did I realize that if this system could work within
a single country, it could also work worldwide, eliminating threats from
outside the country as well as corrupt politicians within. And shortly
thereafter, I realized that not only could this occur, such a spread was
absolutely inevitable, by the very nature of modern communications
across the Internet, or older technologies such as the telephone, fax,
or even letters written on paper. In short, no war need ever occur
again, because no dispute would country he intended to war with,
obviously, but he would also draw the ire of citizens within his own
country who either didn't want to pay the taxes to support a wasteful
war, or lose their sons and daughters in pointless battles, or for that
matter were simply opposed to participating in the aggression. Together,
all these potentially affected peoples would unite (albeit quite
anonymously, even from each other) and destroy the tyrant before he had
the opportunity to make the war. I was utterly astonished. Seemingly,
and without intending to do so, I had provided a solution for the "war"
problem that has plagued mankind for millennia. But had I? I really
don't know. I do know, however, that very few people have challenged me
on this particular claim, despite what would normally appear to be its
vast improbability. While some of the less perceptive critics of
"Assassination Politics" have accused me of eliminating war and replace
it with something that will end up being worse, it is truly amazing that
more people haven't berated me for not only believing in the impossible,
but also believing that the impossible is now actually inevitable! A
little more than a week ago, I was handed this book, and asked to read
Freud's letter, by a person who was aware of my "little" philosophical
quandary. I began to read Freud's letter in response to Einstein, having
never read any other word Freud had written, and having read essentially
none of the works of the giants of Philosophy. (Now, of course, I feel
tremendously guilty at the omission in my education, but I've always
been attracted more to the "hard sciences," like chemistry, physics,
mathematics, electronics, and computers.) Since this letter was
specifically on war, and the question of whether man could ever avoid
it, I felt perhaps it would contain some fact or argument that would
correct what was simply a might end up being right, but alternatively
hoped that if wrong, I would be soon corrected. I was fearful that I was
wrong, but also fearful that there would be nothing in this essay that
would assist me in my analysis of the situation. About a third of the
way through Freud's letter, I had my answer. Below, I show a segment of
Freud's reply, perhaps saving the whole letter for inclusion into a
later part of this ongoing essay. While I could drastically oversimplify
the situation and state, "Freud was wrong!," it turns out that this
brief conclusion is at best highly misleading and at worst flirting with
dishonesty. By far the greater part of Freud's analysis makes a great
deal of sense to me, and I would say he's probably correct. But it is at
one point that I believe he goes just a bit wrong, although for reasons
which are entirely understandable and even predictable, given the age in
which he lived. It must be remembered, for example, that Freud was born
into an era where the telephone was a new invention, broadcast radio was
non-existent, and newspapers were the primary means that news was
communicated to the public. It would be highly unreasonable for us to
have expected Freud to have anticipated developments such as the
Internet, anonymous digital cash, and good public-key encryption. In
some sense, at that point, my biggest regret was that I couldn't discuss
the issue with either of these two communicants, Freud having died in
1939, and Einstein in 1955, after having helped initiate research that
led to the development of the atomic bomb, the weapon that for decades
and even now, makes it absolutely, vitally important to eliminate the
possibility of war from the world. But I'll let Dr. Freud speak, as he
spoke over sixty years ago, because he has much to say: "Such then, was
the original state of things: domination by whoever had the greater
might--domination by brute violence or by violence supported by
intellect. As we know, this regime was altered in the course of
evolution. There was a path that led from violence to right or law. What
was that path? It is my belief that there was only one: the path which
led by way of the fact that the superior strength of a single individual
could be rivaled by the union of several weak ones. "L'union fait la
force." [French; In union there is strength.] Violence could be broken
by union, and the power of those who were united now represented law in
contrast to the violence of the single individual. Thus we see that
right is the might of a community. It is still violence, ready to be
directed against any individual who resists it; it works by the same
methods and follows the same purposes. The only real difference lies in
the fact that what prevails is no longer the violence of an individual
but that of a community." [But below is where I think Freud falls into a
certain degree of error, perhaps not by the standards and realities of
_his_ day, but those of ours. My comments are in square brackets,], and
Freud's comments are quoted "". Freud continues: ] "But in order that
the transition from violence to this new right or justice may be
effected, one psychological condition must be fulfilled. The union of
the majority must be a stable and lasting one. If it were only brought
about for the purpose of combating a single dominant individual and were
dissolved after his defeat, nothing would be accomplished. The next
person who though himself superior in strength would once more seek to
set up a dominion by violence and the game would be repeated ad
infinitum. The community must be maintained permanently, must be
organized, must draw up regulations to anticipate the risk of rebellion
and must institute authorities to see that those regulations--the laws--
are respected and to superintend the execution of legal acts of
violence. The recognition of a community of interests such as these
leads to the growth of emotional ties between the members of a united
group of people--communal feelings which are the true source of its
strength." [end of Freud's quote] [Those of you who truly comprehend the
idea of "Assassination Politics" will, I'm confident, understand exactly
why I considered this segment of Freud's letter to be important enough
to include, and will probably also recognize why I consider Freud's
analysis to go wrong, albeit for comparatively minor and understandable
reasons. I will address the last paragraph in greater detail, to explain
what I mean. I will repeat Freud's words, and address each of his points
from the standpoint of today's situation and technology.] "But in order
that the transition from violence to this new right or justice may be
effected, one psychological condition must be fulfilled. The union of
the majority must be a stable and lasting one." [In a sense, Freud is
absolutely correct: Whatever system is chosen to "govern" a society, it
must continue to operate "forever.”] Freud continues: " If it were only
brought about for the purpose of combating a single dominant individual
and were dissolved after his defeat, nothing would be accomplished."
[This is where the problem begins to creep in. Freud is leading up to
justifying the existence of a formal government as he knew them in the
1930's, based on the continuing need for keeping the peace. The first,
and I think, the most obvious problem is that Freud seems to implicitly
assume that the purpose of the union will actually be fulfilled by the
formation of a government. Freud, who died in 1939, didn't see what his
survivors saw, a "legitimate" government in Germany having killed
millions of people in the Holocaust, or many other incidents subsequent
to that. And Freud, whose letter was written in 1932, was probably not
aware of the slaughter of the Russian Kulaks in the late 1920's and
early 1930's, or the purges that followed. Freud could have felt,
generally, that the problems with a country's governance were caused
either by inadequate government or simply a rare example of government
gone bad. We know, to the contrary, that governments very frequently "go
bad," in the sense of violating citizen's rights and abusing the power
entrusted to them. Few may end up killing millions, but to assume that
we must continue to tolerate governments just because they don't go
quite as far as Nazi Germany would be foolish in the extreme.] [The
second problem is the implicit assumption that the long-term control he
(correctly) sees MUST come from an organization like a traditional
government. True, in the era in which Freud lived, that conclusion made
a great deal of sense, because a well-functioning government appeared
superior to none at all. And it was at least plausible that such control
COULD come from a government. But as the old saying goes, "Power
corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."] [To use a house's
thermostat as an analogy, but differently than I did in "Assassination
Politics part 6," a person who lived in an era before automatic furnace
thermostats would always conclude that a person's efforts would have to
be continually directed towards maintaining an even temperature in his
house, by adding fuel or limiting it, by adding more air or restricting,
etc. To the extent that this manual control constitutes a "government,"
he will believe that this hands-on control will always be necessary. But
we now live in a time where a person's time is rarely directed towards
this effort, the function having been taken over by automatic
thermostats which are cheap, reliable, and accurate. They are also,
incidentally, essentially "uncorruptible," in the sense that they don't
fail except for "understandable" reasons, and repair is cheap and easy.
(And a thermostat can never be bribed, or get tired, or have its own
interests at heart and begin to subvert your own commands.) Quite
simply, the progress of technology has put control of temperature in the
hands of an automatic, error-free system that is so reliable as to be
ignorable most of the time.] [I argue that likewise, the progress of
technology would allow an automatic system to be set up, which I called
"Assassination Politics" (but could probably use a more apt name, since
its application extends far beyond the issue of politics) different from
traditional government, a difference somewhat analogous to the
difference between a person's full-time efforts and an automatic
thermostat. Aside from the dramatic reduction in effort involved, an
automatic system would eliminate the errors caused by inattention by the
operator, such as leaving, falling asleep, or other temporary lack of
concentration. These failures are somewhat analogous to the failure or
misbehavior of a corruptible or indifferent or even a malicious
government.] [This makes a government like Freud saw totally
unnecessary. Of course, Freud could not have anticipated the
technological developments that would make an "automatic" replacement
for government even possible, and thus he followed his contemporary
paradigms and sought to justify the governments, as they then existed.]
Freud continues: "The next person who thought himself superior in
strength would once more seek to set up a dominion by violence and the
game would be repeated ad infinitum." [This statement is correct, but I
think it misses the point: Many functions of individuals and machines
are never "completed", and must "be repeated ad infinitum." (The most
basic example: If we are optimistic about the future of the human race,
by definition reproduction and survival must be "repeated ad
infinitum.") That does not mean that the mechanism which handles that
need must be any more complicated that the minimum necessary to achieve
the control needed. I agree that a system of long-term control is
necessary; where I disagree with Freud is simply that I believe that a
vastly better method of control now can potentially exist than the
traditional governments that he knew. To the extent that he couldn't
have anticipated the Internet, anonymous digital cash, and good
encryption, he had no reason to believe that government could be
"automated" and taken out of the hands of a tiny fraction of the
population, a fraction which is corruptible, malicious, and
self-interested. Also, by not being aware of modern technology, he is
unaware how easy it has become, conceptually, for people to come
together for their self-defense, if that self-defense required only a
few kilobytes be sent over fiber-optic cables to a central registry.
Freud's objection to an "endlessly repeating" system breaks down in this
case, so his conclusion need not be considered valid.] Freud continues:
"The community must be maintained permanently, must be organized, must
draw up regulations to anticipate the risk of rebellion and must
institute authorities to see that those regulations--the laws-- are
respected and to superintend the execution of legal acts of violence."
[Again, I think Freud misses the point. He refers to "the risk of
rebellion," but I think he forgets that the main reason for "rebellion"
is the abuse by the government then in control. (Naturally, it looks
differently from the standpoint of that government!) If the latter
problem could be eliminated, "rebellion" would simply never occur, for
there would be no reason for it. If those that were "rebelling" were in
the wrong, violating somebody's rights, then my "Assassination Politics"
system would be able to take care of it. This, presumably and
understandably, Freud could never have foreseen. Also, Freud does not
address the question of whether or not the government which promulgates
those laws is doing so in a way primarily for the benefit of the public,
or those who populate the government itself. Graft was well known if
Freud's time; it seems to me that he should have addressed the question
of whether or not an entity called a "government" could actually achieve
the benefits he claims justify the government, without being subverted
by those who control it, for their own interests. If not, then there is
certainly an issue to be addressed: At what point do the depredations of
a parasitic government exceed its benefits? And can we find a way to do
without it?] Freud continues: "The recognition of a community of
interests such as these leads to the growth of emotional ties between
the members of a united group of people--communal feelings which are the
true source of its strength." [this is end of the portion of Freud's
letter which I quote here.] One of the interesting things about this
statement is that it is the development of tools such as the Internet
which will be eliminating the very concept of "foreign" and "foreigner."
They will become artificial distinctions. There is clearly much
precedent for this, from the country in which I live, America. When
formed, it contained people whose primary loyalty was to their _state,_
not to the Federal government as a whole. Even our civil war, from 1861
to 1865, was based on loyalty to states or regions, rather than the
country as a whole. To cite just one example, myself, while I reside in
the state called Washington, I've lived in a number of other states, but
I don't consider myself loyal to any particular state. (Perhaps using
myself as an example is misleading, because at this point I don't
consider myself "loyal" to any government at all!) In fact, later in
Freud's letter, he says, "Anything that encourages the growth of
emotional ties between men must operate against war." Sadly, Freud did
not live to see the development of the Internet, and the massive
international communication which it has already begun to foster. In
_his_ day, the ordinary people of one country and another rarely
communicated, except perhaps for letters with relatives from "the old
country" that emigrated. The idea of going to war with people from whom
you get email on a daily basis is, in itself, a "foreign concept" to me,
and I hope it will remain so! In that sense, Freud was very right:
"Assassination Politics" active or not, it will be much harder for
governments to whip up their citizens into a frenzy to kill the enemy if
they can type to them every day. Frustratingly left unanswered is a
question whose answer I'd like to know: Could I have convinced Freud, or
Einstein, that "Assassination Politics" is not only a necessary or even
an unavoidable system, but also a GOOD one? Could I convince them today,
had they miraculously survived until today, aware of the last 64 years
of history subsequent to their correspondence? Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com Klaatu Burada Nikto Something is going to happen...
Something...Wonderful!
"Non-Euclidean Thinking” by Jim Bell An interesting communication I had
recently on the subject of "Assassination Politics." My commentary is
preceded with >> or nothing; the other person's commentary starts with a
">". The subject is how to actually implement this system, and my first
comment notices the fact that despite my efforts, the government has not
attempted to use this issue to justify some sort of crackdown on net
rights, or anything like that. I think they're actually afraid to start
the debate, I think they don't believe you're a threat. You're probably
right about this. I guess I'll have to think of something to change
their minds, huh? Remember, they have incredible >amounts of money with
which to hire bright but greedy people. All they have to do is find the
people running the "Guess the Death Date" lottery. They would have great
incentive to apply their considerable resources to this end. Your logic
is excellent. But as strange as it may seem, there may be a different
way... Let's see, how do I explain? First, a little diversion that may
or may not be relevant to this subject, but initially won't appear to be
so. Somewhere around 20-25 years ago, I read some item concerning Howard
Hughes, the late billionaire. It described the history of his business
ventures, in fields such as aircraft ("Spruce Goose" is a well-known
example) but also mentioned that Hughes Tool was (originally?) into
oil-well drilling equipment. I don't know how much you know about oil
well drilling and drill bits, but they look nothing like the classic
fluted drill bits common in hardware stores. Oil well drill bits consist
of multiple ultra-hard carbide points mounted on rotating shafts mounted
at the end of the drill "string," and these shafts must be connected to
the main shaft with bearings. They roll around on the rock, not sliding,
and they "spall" off pieces of rock due to enormous applied pressure.
Oil well drilling is done by lubricating the drilling operation with
what is called "drilling mud," which is actually a slurry of solids in
water, which is primarily used to cool the cutter and wash away the rock
chips and dust produced in the operation. Now, since the rotating cutter
wheels must spin on their axis, that means they have to be run on shafts
with bearings installed. These bearings cannot be perfectly sealed and
thus protected against rock and mud dust, and their useful lifetime is
strongly limited by their quality. And since every time they wear out
the whole drill string has to be pulled from the well, that's an
EXTREMELY expensive proposition for well drillers. So it should not be
surprising that these guys considered bearing quality to be very, very
important. A little improvement was worth a lot of money. "Quality", to
a bearing manufacturer, is strongly related to surface hardness, and
traditionally, the best bearings were (and, mostly, still are) the
hardest. But there's a problem: Ultimately, a very hard circular bearing
rotating on a very hard flat surface (especially if its heavily loaded)
applies nearly all its for on a single point (for ball bearings) or on a
single line (for roller bearings) and that eventually causes bearing
failure. So there was an upper limit, generally, on how good you could
get in bearings. And the hardest won. Until Hughes. [Don’t go to sleep
yet... it gets relevant real soon] According to the source I read, what
Hughes Tool did that made them really rich was quite simple and
counter-intuitive: Rather than trying to make his bearings as HARD as
you can get, he made them SOFT, very soft, "almost as soft as lead."
(Which, if you know anything about metals, is very soft indeed.) The
bearings deformed on their raceways, spreading out the load over a far
larger area, and the resulting bearings were the best in the business.
(He probably also applied a lot of research into how to avoid "metal
fatigue," but that's quite another story.) Very counter-intuitive, but
he "won" precisely because he did exactly the opposite of what everyone
"knew" was the proper way to go. Okay, so that explains a genius that
later became a billionaire who later turned into a neurotic, or worse.
"What," you will ask, "does this all have to do with Assassination
Politics?" Well, to draw an observation originally posited in an essay
titled the "Libertech Project," about 7 years ago, libertarians (of all
people) are "non-Euclidean thinkers." Basically, this means that we
recognize that the best way to go from "point A" to "point B" is NOT
NECESSARILY a straight line. And like Columbus, who sailed west in order
to go east, sometimes it is necessary to sit down, and totally re-think
your strategy if you're trying to accomplish some goal. By "classical"
thinking, "Assassination Politics" would have to be the best,
tightest-security, more protected organization that has ever existed on
the face of this planet. Just about EVERY powerful person would want to
kill anybody who had anything to do with such a system. The codes would
have to be unbreakable, the remailers would have to be certain, but most
importantly, each and every participant would have to be perfectly
anonymous to even have a prayer of pulling it off. Especially the
operators of such a system. Especially them. That's classical thinking.
And that's what I thought a few months ago. I thought, "it's do-able,
but it's gonna be a lot of work!" But let's suppose, for a moment, that
somebody "pulls a Hughes." Rather than trying to make the hardest
bearings in the world, why doesn't somebody try to make the softest?
Rather than trying their darndest to stay anonymous, or wait and let
somebody else implement this system, why not just "let it all hang out,"
(as the saying went in the 1960's) and publicly announce that they're
implementing this system, come hell or high water, and invite anyone who
wants to participate to help form what will be the LAST revolution on
earth, the one that'll take down ALL the governments. This sounds crazy,
right? I mean, who wants to die? Who wants to commit suicide just to...
just to... just to... make an ENTIRE WORLD FREE FOREVER? Free from wars,
militaries, governments, taxes, political oppression. Free from the kind
of totalitarian governments that existed and currently exist. Free from
the Holocausts that have killed Jews, Cambodians, Armenians, Russian
Kulaks, Iraqi Kurds, Chinese dissidents, Native Americans, and oh so
many others? "Who, exactly, would be stupid enough to risk death to make
the world free???" Everyone who volunteered to fight to fight Hitler, to
name just one example. Remember, or have we forgotten so soon, that
occasionally people die to keep the rest of us free. That's the way it's
been for hundreds of years. The United States of America was founded by
people who risked death to shake off the yoke of a government that was,
by the standards of the day, not particularly bad. Think about it.
Somebody had to be the first one to start banging on the Berlin Wall,
with a sledgehammer, in 1989. Somebody had to be the first to walk
through. Somebody had to be the first to stand up and say, "Enough!" And
the ironic thing is, the most strangely unusual thing, is that the
entire Eastern Bloc fell, almost bloodlessly, in a couple weeks, because
one by one everybody realized that all that's sometimes required is to
finally stand up and be counted, and to just say no to the government.
When the time was right, all it took was a slight push and the dominoes
tumbled down. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that EVERYONE
would be identified. The "donors" to the system would remain perfectly
anonymous, and the "guessers" would likewise be perfectly anonymous, but
the organization itself would be made up of real people, who have
published addresses, who have simply decided that they have had enough
of the current system and are going to participate in a PERFECTLY LEGAL
enterprise by the laws of the country, and just DARE the government to
try to stop them. The organization wouldn't have to buy ads; the
publicity firestorm would be enormous. Suddenly, all the politicians
would be put on the spot! Instead of being asked by the reporters for
their position on the economy, pollution, the budget deficit, or some
other thing, they'll ask, "Why should the public NOT want to see you
dead?" When would be the best time to do it? Why, during a major
political campaign! When Congress is out of session, and they can't pass
legislation without calling some sort of emergency session. But it won't
matter anyway, for a few weeks the organization doesn't actually have to
take bets or make payments, they'll merely publicize their efforts for
all to see. To reassure the public, they could announce that they'll
only take bets on elected and appointed political officeholders...and
anyone who tries to stop the system. And the politicians will be
scurrying around, looking for political cover, trying to figure out how
to NOT look scared, but at the same time each is wondering if he'll be
the first to go. And all the while, the public will be loving it,
laughing at the efforts of the politicos to cover their collective
asses, and taking private bets among themselves on who will be the first
one to die. Prosecute the participants? On what charge? "Conspiracy to
commit gambling"? Which prosecutor would risk appearing to be impeding
the progress of a useful system? At that point, the organization's
members will just be publicly exercising their first-amendment rights.
Which judge would take the case? Now THEY'RE on the spot, THEY have to
decide what to do. I contend that in an election year, before the
election, there would be mass resignations from Congress, or members
deciding "it's just not fun anymore" and decline to return even if
re-elected, as well as the complete loss of whatever residual confidence
the public has in the government. Whew! Is this all just wishful
thinking? I really don't know!