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Assassination Politics (1997)

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Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#51

Post by msandford »

krapp wrote: post #46
randallsquared wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure why people with a libertarian bent have to keep bringing guns into arguments. Because if someone chooses to not obey, they will eventually face a gun which they did not bring.

Surely the libertarian model amounts to something more productive than "the state will shoot you if you aren't ready to shoot them first?"

Yeah it's more about people interacting in a voluntary manner. The first and probably last rule of libertarian philosophy is that it's not OK to initiate aggression against others. So two individuals entering into a contract is OK but one person threatening another with violence is not.

The fact that the state/government has a monopoly on violence means that your interactions with them aren't necessarily voluntary. Many people don't have a problem with paying for roads, or some semblance of a military, or schools or whatnot.

But the very nature of a state is that if you don't do what it tells you to, you have no recourse. Someone might not put a gun to your head but you have to know that there's no negotiation.

Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#52

Post by anthonyb »

msandford wrote: post #51
krapp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the libertarian model amounts to something more productive than "the state will shoot you if you aren't ready to shoot them first?"

Yeah it's more about people interacting in a voluntary manner. The first and probably last rule of libertarian philosophy is that it's not OK to initiate aggression against others. So two individuals entering into a contract is OK but one person threatening another with violence is not. The fact that the state/government has a monopoly on violence means that your interactions with them aren't necessarily voluntary. M…

> you have no recourse ... you have to know that there's no negotiation

Bullshit.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/20/civil-d...

Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#53

Post by msandford »

anthonyb wrote: post #38
msandford wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So immediate threats aren't OK but eventual ones are? I guess I can see how a person might think that way. What if the US had a post-earning tax where the tax collector had to physically come to your house and demand the money that the government said you owed it. And he was armed. And he made the threat of violence personally rather than through a large bureaucracy? Would that change things? Why or why not? Again, n…

I'm not sure why people with a libertarian bent have to keep bringing guns into arguments. The Rule of Law is one of modern societies great inventions, as long as all parties agree to abide by it. When they don't, organised opposition (eg. protests) and negotiation are usually far better at instigating change than randomly shooting back. It's very much an i-win-you-lose mindset, I don't think it's really based much i…

Because a gun is an excellent example of force, coercion or violence. If someone points a gun at you, you know exactly what it means.

The laws, the courts, everything else is ultimately backed up by violence or the threat of violence. If you are convicted of a crime and you say you don't want to go to jail there are people whose job it is to MAKE you go to jail. If you cooperate, the threat of violence doesn't turn into actual violence but if you do not, it will materialize.

It's probably the easiest way to cut out the myriad different ways that the state will back up it's laws with actions and cut to the chase: you can choose not to comply but you will pay dearly for it.

Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#54

Post by aidenn0 »

Zigurd wrote: post #29
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.

If your contribution can be traced. Such a system would not be viable without at least, deniability if not outright anonymity.

I must have misread the article; I thought it was only anonymous for the assassin (I'm sorry, "predictor").

Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#55

Post by Houshalter »

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.

All forms of punishment "violate their rights". Most libertarians are not pacifists, and most people in general approve of some kind of consequences for criminals.

Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#56

Post by kilroy123 »

sanjuro wrote: post #17
kilroy123 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

I wouldn't mess around with this if I were you. It may have taken the FBI a while to bring down the Silk Road, but with this kind of thing, you'll have the CIA and NSA after you.

Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#57

Post by anthonyb »

msandford wrote: post #53
anthonyb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why people with a libertarian bent have to keep bringing guns into arguments. The Rule of Law is one of modern societies great inventions, as long as all parties agree to abide by it. When they don't, organised opposition (eg. protests) and negotiation are usually far better at instigating change than randomly shooting back. It's very much an i-win-you-lose mindset, I don't think it's really based much i…

Because a gun is an excellent example of force, coercion or violence. If someone points a gun at you, you know exactly what it means. The laws, the courts, everything else is ultimately backed up by violence or the threat of violence. If you are convicted of a crime and you say you don't want to go to jail there are people whose job it is to MAKE you go to jail. If you cooperate, the threat of violence doesn't turn i…

All of which ignores that there are many different ways of interacting with the state without resorting to violence, in favour of a nice soundbite.

"Libertarian or people pointing guns at you" is a false dichotomy.

Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#58

Post by nandemo »

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 fair to call this "the" libertarian solution just because this guy proposes it and calls himself libertarian. I haven't seen Rothbard or Friedman advocating wanton killing of government employees.

Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#59

Post by rdl »

angersock wrote: post #34
rdl wrote: post #32

I got "invited" to federal court over this (I ran the mailing list archive at MIT which USG used as evidence). I was outside the US at the time, working on anon ecash in the Caribbean, so it was a request, not a demand. I met Jennifer Granick as a result, and learned the "if you can possibly avoid it, never ever set foot inside federal court" rule, which has subsequently served me quite well. Jim Bell probably tops w…

I met Jennifer Granick as a result, and learned the "if you can possibly avoid it, never ever set foot inside federal court" rule, which has subsequently served me quite well. Would you be able to elaborate on that any further?

I was outside the USA, and it was just a request with no legal weight. I stayed on a tiny island in the Caribbean for the duration of the trial. (It wasn't a big deal to FBI, either -- I answered their questions through counsel, and the whole thing was essentially a formality. Jim Bell was posting to a public list for which I maintained public archives, so I had no legal or moral duty to him or anyone else.

I was 18 or 19, and almost went because it would have been a free trip to DC and potentially interesting, but the correctly raised concern is that I could have been ordered to remain available if I had been there. Not worth the risk, especially since I wasn't particularly helpful to anyone (I would have been fine with helping IRS CID when a guy was posting personal threats on people publicly)

I actually tried to explain to both sides that my archiver wasn't assured to be canonical; it was just a regular list subscriber, with a simple to discover email address, and no inbound filtering (since cp list addresses were distributed and constantly changing), so anyone could post random messages to it. Even worse, sending a forged message id with new content would overwrite the original message.

Re: Assassination Politics (1997)

#60

Post by msandford »

anthonyb wrote: post #57
msandford wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a gun is an excellent example of force, coercion or violence. If someone points a gun at you, you know exactly what it means. The laws, the courts, everything else is ultimately backed up by violence or the threat of violence. If you are convicted of a crime and you say you don't want to go to jail there are people whose job it is to MAKE you go to jail. If you cooperate, the threat of violence doesn't turn i…

All of which ignores that there are many different ways of interacting with the state without resorting to violence, in favour of a nice soundbite. "Libertarian or people pointing guns at you" is a false dichotomy.

Yeah sure there's a million ways but ultimately if you don't do what you're supposed to, that threat is there.

I'm not suggesting that false dichotomy, you are. What I am suggesting is that the state exists in it's current form largely because it does hold the monopoly on violence. The very definition of government is that it's the entity with the monopoly on violence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D64KcZsD82E

How many steps removed does the guy toting the gun have to be in order for the implicit threat of violence to be OK? Zero? Two? Eight? How does the abstraction of that implicit threat make it any more palatable?

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