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Assassination Politics (1997)

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Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#11

Post by _delirium »

csense wrote: post #4
fiatmoney wrote: post #2

The saga of Jim Bell after the publication of that essay provides an excellent case study in why people like "Satoshi" have an interest in remaining as anonymous as possible.

I wasn't familiar with this, but Wikipedia knows of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bell There are many excellent reasons for remaining anonymous or pseudonymous, both online and offline. That being said, there's a vast difference between inventing a disruptive technology and advocating (even in jest) the killing of government officials. I'm not taking the position that governments never unjustly harass disrup…

Part of the issue with Bell is that it's not clear to anyone that it was really in jest, or even just a hypothetical future proposal. He proposed an assassination market, and was collecting home addresses of IRS and FBI officials, coincidentally.

Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#12

Post by aidenn0 »

If you and contribute funds to pay an anonymous assassin, you've committed attempted murder. If the anonymous assassin succeeds, you can be tried for murder even if they never locate the assassin.

Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#13

Post by afarrell »

msandford wrote: post #7
dmix wrote: post #6

I first read about "Assassination Markets" in this brilliant book, that delves into the old 90s cypherpunks mailing list (members which included Julian Assange and most likely the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi): http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Kills-Secrets-EmpowerWhistlebl... I still haven't read this full article, mostly just a summary, so here are my rough thoughts: It seems like something straight out of an idealisti…

The idea of the assassination marketplace as I see it is to provide some means to balance the power of politicians. There's a powerful asymmetry at work in politics. Prosecutors can knowingly wrongly convict people and face no consequences. The President can authorize a temporary (or perhaps not temporary) war possibly resulting in thousand of deaths and the worst outcome he faces for it is not getting a second term.…

Volunteer for their campaigns and provide them with detailed technical and experiential insight into legislation. The reason that lobbyists are so powerful is that they can offer politicians what they need to keep their jobs do their jobs: - Information on legislation that they don't have the time to gather because a person cannot be a lawyer, an engineer of many types, a scientist of many types, a businessman in many industries, and a military officer. - Money so that they can pay for people to knock on doors and build their website and do all the gruntwork of managing a staff.

And yes, the people writing legal code should be lawyers or at least highly knowledgable in the law.

Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#15

Post by kilroy123 »

dmix wrote: post #6

I first read about "Assassination Markets" in this brilliant book, that delves into the old 90s cypherpunks mailing list (members which included Julian Assange and most likely the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi): http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Kills-Secrets-EmpowerWhistlebl... I still haven't read this full article, mostly just a summary, so here are my rough thoughts: It seems like something straight out of an idealisti…

What's frighting to me, is someone could attempt to build an "Assassination Market" with: tor, bitcoins, and a single website.

But I'm skeptical this would really work. Just look the 25 million dollar bounty on Osama bin laden, which no one tried claimed. (That's just reporting him) Maybe, it would work if you didn't go through a government to try to claim your reward, but I'm still skeptical.

Still, I think if a "bounty" was out for someone on a tor website, that would make for some huge headlines. Plus spook the person enough to get their attention.

Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#16

Post by msandford »

_delirium wrote: post #9
msandford wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of the assassination marketplace as I see it is to provide some means to balance the power of politicians. There's a powerful asymmetry at work in politics. Prosecutors can knowingly wrongly convict people and face no consequences. The President can authorize a temporary (or perhaps not temporary) war possibly resulting in thousand of deaths and the worst outcome he faces for it is not getting a second term.…

Why a marketplace, though? One can already organize resistance against a regime one considers harmful enough to merit violent resistance, via militant groups. They can be right-wing groups like the militia movement or Greece's Golden Dawn, or left-wing groups like the Black Panthers or Germany's Red Army Faction. They do at various times assassinate prosecutors or politicians. An assassination market seems to change…

Yeah all valid points. That's one of the unintended consequences of the system: someone with enough money can short-circuit the "voting" process to get anyone killed.

Let me reiterate: There's a very interesting nugget in there. Namely one (possibly of many) ways for ordinary citizens to provide less asymmetric incentives to politicians and bureaucrats.

I'm really interested in alternative methods of achieving similar goals. Rather than death, could we perhaps institute a petition-based vote of no confidence that could be binding? I'm not sure how that would work but it would be a way to kick someone out of office or position sooner than a term limit and which would also be tremendously damaging to their reputation; something which seems rather important to politicians. Maybe you've got other ideas?

EDIT: To answer your question specifically the goal of a marketplace is similar to voting but one which isn't necessarily scheduled the way voting is. For example the guy after Obama could win by a 90% landslide, then immediately launch an all-out war against Iran, Syria and say Jordan. That might quickly turn the tide from 90% in favor to 80% against, but we'd have to wait at least 2 years to vote out a lot of people in the House, and four full years to vote the new President out, and a total of six years to get rid of people in the Senate.

Given that it's not terribly easy to make a living in the US and that many people have jobs, kids, elderly parents, etc. to prevent a sizable fraction of those opposed to various things from making a serious public statement like a march on Washington, lowering the barrier to entry MIGHT get us better outcomes.

Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#17

Post by sanjuro »

kilroy123 wrote: post #15
dmix wrote: post #6

I first read about "Assassination Markets" in this brilliant book, that delves into the old 90s cypherpunks mailing list (members which included Julian Assange and most likely the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi): http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Kills-Secrets-EmpowerWhistlebl... I still haven't read this full article, mostly just a summary, so here are my rough thoughts: It seems like something straight out of an idealisti…

What's frighting to me, is someone could attempt to build an "Assassination Market" with: tor, bitcoins, and a single website. But I'm skeptical this would really work. Just look the 25 million dollar bounty on Osama bin laden, which no one tried claimed. (That's just reporting him) Maybe, it would work if you didn't go through a government to try to claim your reward, but I'm still skeptical. Still, I think if a "bo…

It has already happened. Here's my website: http://assmkedzgorodn7o.onion/

Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#18

Post by anthonyb »

aidenn0 wrote: post #12

If you and contribute funds to pay an anonymous assassin, you've committed attempted murder. If the anonymous assassin succeeds, you can be tried for murder even if they never locate the assassin.

Interesting that the libertarian solution to someone violating your rights seems to be to violate their rights back in even more spectacular and violent fashion.

Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#19

Post by krapp »

kilroy123 wrote: post #15
dmix wrote: post #6

I first read about "Assassination Markets" in this brilliant book, that delves into the old 90s cypherpunks mailing list (members which included Julian Assange and most likely the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi): http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Kills-Secrets-EmpowerWhistlebl... I still haven't read this full article, mostly just a summary, so here are my rough thoughts: It seems like something straight out of an idealisti…

What's frighting to me, is someone could attempt to build an "Assassination Market" with: tor, bitcoins, and a single website. But I'm skeptical this would really work. Just look the 25 million dollar bounty on Osama bin laden, which no one tried claimed. (That's just reporting him) Maybe, it would work if you didn't go through a government to try to claim your reward, but I'm still skeptical. Still, I think if a "bo…

Anyone foolish enough to try it deserves what they'll get.

Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#20

Post by krapp »

anthonyb wrote: post #18
aidenn0 wrote: post #12

If you and contribute funds to pay an anonymous assassin, you've committed attempted murder. If the anonymous assassin succeeds, you can be tried for murder even if they never locate the assassin.

Interesting that the libertarian solution to someone violating your rights seems to be to violate their rights back in even more spectacular and violent fashion.

It's not really violence if it's the government you're killing, I guess...

Though this might not be so much a libertarian solution as an example of the degree to which libertarian ideals can be twisted to achieve the sort of ends they claim to fight against.

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