Assassination Politics (1997)
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Then there is CJ, Carl Johnson, who was sent to prison for supporting Bell. He is on Twitter among other places, also still promoting AP defiantly: https://twitter.com/pro2rat
Neither are interested in remaining anonymous.
Jim Bell probably tops weev as an unsympathetic defendant.
Would you be able to elaborate on that any further?
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.
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 disruptive technologists. Nor am I taking the position that the treatment of this particular jesting assassination advocate was fair or proportionate. Nor am I taking the position that government officials are incapable of crimes worthy of a death sentence [1] (think of the executions of Nazi war criminals after World War 2).
I'm simply saying that the situations of Satoshi and Jim Bell aren't really comparable.
[1] Although, even for people who really deserve it, I'd really rather not have death sentences recommended and carried out by the totally lawless process Mr. Bell jestingly advocated in a country I have to live in.
However, it seems kind of crappy that the government response to a controversial exercise of first-amendment rights is to look really hard at you, dig up some dirt, and get you sent to jail. (Or make some dirt -- or at least trump up the charges if the dirt's not enough.)
(A similar revenge case may have been brought against the CEO of Qwest, for a more 4th-amendment/NSA angle; in this case the charges that may have been trumped up were insider-trading charges, and certain evidence about the government's motives was excluded from the trial by the judge. Here's an article we've discussed in these fora before: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/30... )
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.
What you're ultimately talking about is terrorism - if you're a government employee, don't do bad things* or we might "predict" your death. The choice they're presenting seems to be either bad, violent actors in government, or bad, violent lynch mobs.
*Where "bad things" might be anything from "invading Iraq" to "free healthcare".
Most people would accept that it's moral for someone who's threatened with a gun by another to kill that other person, thus preserving their own life.
Many would still accept as moral the same situation, but where the assailant has a knife.
Many would again accept as moral everything the same, except instead of someone intent to kill with a knife, an assailant who only intended to rob.
Robbery is taking a thing against the wishes/desires/rights of another.
Some might argue that the government collecting taxes is robbery by that definition and thus they have the moral right to defend their property with deadly force. The government certainly will use force to ensure that it gets it's taxes. They won't shoot you but they will take away your freedom and the only way they can do that is with force or the threat of force.
At what point do you disagree with that line of thinking? Why? I'm not trolling you, genuinely curious.
Most people are not very even handed when they feel that their rights have been violated, so it tends to lead to escalation, and tribal/gang style violence, tit-for-tat.
It's much better IMO for a society to deal with disputes by legal means, not by stalking, harassing and killing each other, eg. if I shoot you in self defence, then that's 1 person's worth of productivity lost to the world, similarly if I harass you and threaten you at your home address (0.5 x PP?).
And yes, if you consistently violate other people's rights, or act with poor judgement, then you should lose rights. For example, if you're in the US and threaten people with a gun, you should lose the right to carry a gun, or the right to not be searched.
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, not trolling but genuinely interested.
Agree 100% that people don't react well when they feel their rights are being violated. The loss of agency and personal sovereignty is a really big deal.
I'm with you on the loss of rights examples you give up to a point. I'm totally on board with situational loss of rights (I threaten you with a gun and you're in the right to shoot me) but I'm less in favor of doing that systematically. Mostly because of how safe things are these days (I think quite good) versus the potential for abuse (I think quite high).
It's very much an i-win-you-lose mindset, I don't think it's really based much in reality and I'd rather not live anywhere near a society based on those principles.
Because if someone chooses to not obey, they will eventually face a gun which they did not bring.
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.
Bullshit.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/20/civil-d...
Choosing to break an unjust law doesn't mean that a judge will understand the injustice of it and let you go free, nor is there any assurance that jury would acquit you. That's what I mean when I say "there's no negotiation"
Once a police officers decides to arrest you all negotiations have ceased and they may do whatever the law tells them to, or whatever the law lets them get away with, or perhaps a bit more.
Of course, shooting people over "legal action" sounds crazy, so to make yourself sound better you'd better keep talking about guns.
Edit: Here's a good example of the alternative to shooting people, from Bob Brown, former leader of the Greens here in Australia:
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/as-...
a) it works, and b) if you can't find 1000 people who are also willing to come and protest, perhaps your cause isn't that worthwhile?
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.
"Libertarian or people pointing guns at you" is a false dichotomy.
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?
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 idealistic anarcho-capitalist society, but it seems to be dangerously crossing the line out of "non-aggression" and from skimming the article, seems full of flaws. For example:
> 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.
Is preventing property theft really worth killing a bunch of petty criminals? I highly doubt it. This tough-love approach to preventing crime (especially to this extreme) has been a complete failure in the USA (see their full prison system or the war on drugs).
I'm all for preventative self-defense, but most of this enforcement bulldozes over root causes of issues (socio-economic, mental illness, etc). The goal should be compensating victims (ala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice) and long-term solutions, not creating some esoteric possibility of safety/morality via threat of violence.
Not only that, and just google "wrongful convictions" or "wrongful convictions death penalty". Accuracy of information needs strong information systems and due process (maybe the article discusses this?) but just having target lists + bets is wildly insufficient.
There has also been a lot of literature against private law enforcement (counter to many anarcho ideologies) such as by Novick in his book "Anarchy, State, and Utopia":
http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/...
> TLDR: Protective agencies (judges/police) would be competing against each other. That competitive nature combined with their intended role of protecting us (and themselves) would lead to "an endless series of acts of retaliation and exactation of compensations". Also he demonstrates why the nature of both of the businesses would already create natural monopolies in each local jurisdiction.
So even though I personally lean towards libertarian/decentralized ideas, public courts/judges is likely still the best solution and anonymous assassination marketplaces sounds dangerously flawed.
Given that voting people out of office is not a powerful enough disincentive to cause them to behave morally I welcome new thoughts on providing better incentives. I'm not saying that Assassination Markets are necessarily good but there's an interesting idea there: how to provide the mass of people recourse to politicians in a manner other than voting.
An assassination market seems to change the barrier to entry: rather than personal commitment, it's money. Is that likely to produce better decisions, when it comes to extralegal assassinations? I don't see a strong a priori reason to believe that "people wanted dead by people who have money" is likely to be a good signal. That just seems like a formalization of the classic mob hit: if you've got enough cash, you can get anyone offed.
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.
A downside of that is that it can intensify populism, since you are essentially always campaigning, never governing. One person wins, but instead of getting a few years to try their agenda, the opposite party is every day looking for openings to get them booted out of office early. An in-between idea is just the classic impeachment. It can remove someone from office early, but is supposed to be used only for serious breaches of trust or lawlessness, not mere political disagreement. If Obama totally went nuts, Congress could remove him from office, if they weren't also on board.
Overall I think I'm more worried about constant campaigning (and the amplification of political advertising and PACs that entails), so these various measures strike me as more worrying than the problems they try to solve.
For example you might see $50mm worth of bounties on a lot of higher-ups at the NSA for letting this spying-on-innocent-as-well-as-guilty Americans business go on for so long. Those programs might then get shut down, or at the very least those people might retire to very private places immediately.
Possibilities for abuse? Absolutely. Are those abuses worse than what the folks in power are currently doing to us? That all depends on your viewpoint. I'm honestly not sure where I stand on that one because it's really tough to figure out the exact magnitude of the unintended consequences of any change in policy.
Or you'll get bounties put out on postal workers because the Post Office is secretly reading everyone's mail.
I would submit that out of the pool of people willing to participate in an assassination-for-hire marketplace, few are likely to be reasonable in what they would consider a killing offense.
This would allow thought to proceed on pure merit, rather than social proof.
An assassination program like this more or less defies the concept of 'ideas based on merit.'
Participating in this marketplace would be somewhat like voting, except it would have a tangible effect.
But a marketplace for violence is just as bad or even worse than the implicit violence of the state in my opinion. While I believe that sometimes violence might be necessary to oppose tyranny, I don't know that I trust the 'justness' of a system which presumes anyone employed by the state should find themselves subject to that kind of threat. Eventually (inevitably) it would wind up being used as a tool for political and ethnic genocide. Or petty crime.
Or, to turn that around the other way, something happens just after the election which causes 80-90% of the electorate to support an attack on Iran, Syria, and Jordan. The president after Obama, after some consideration and discussion with people in her/his cabinet decides to not attack.
With the threat of death over his/her head, might the president decide to make a decision, not based on deliberation and careful consideration, but just as a way to pander to the public lest s/he get killed. Is that a desirable outcome?
Personally I'm more interested in the nugget of insight than necessarily the exact methods he outlines.
For all the million little ways that the government involves itself in our daily lives there is huge asymmetry and thus plenty of opportunity for injustice.
For the really big things there is also huge asymmetry. If something is a really big deal and even 10% of the US population went to Washington to protest you'd probably see a swift reaction. That's a really good thing and it's one of the reasons that many systems of representative government do work.
The question in my mind is: What is the price for big freedoms in terms of little freedoms, and is this a good bargain? Personally I'd like to have my big freedoms AND my little ones too. So any kind of thought along those lines is interesting even if it's not ultimately good.
The thing I took away from the article most is that there probably are ways to give the people more freedom on the little things without necessarily compromising on the big ones. Not necessarily via Assassination Markets, but SOMEHOW.
Paul Johnson's Modern Times devotes a chapter to this: http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Times-Revised-Edition-Perennial...
In general, private armies, political assassinations, and other forms of political violence seldom lead to good outcomes: other examples would be Lebanon during and prior to the civil and (not to Godwin this) Weimar Germany with government-funded but ruthless and private and political Freikorps, as well as KPD/SPD/NSDAP/etc... paramilitary organizations. Finally, if a government enacts and enforces laws and decrees contrary to the constitution and human rights in general (i.e., it is no longer a constitutional state), introduction of political gives government forces both an excuse and the means to start acting fully extra-judicially.
I'll note that I'm saying this as a individual with classical liberal/libertarian political leanings and as a strong supporter of a right to bear arms. My view is shared with by David Friedman, an anarcho-capitalist (a view that I don't subscribe to, but respect): http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/07/in_case_of_revo....
Because successful states (i.e., not Greece) have vast amounts of institutional knowledge and training on how to infiltrate and destroy radical groups in the embryonic stage. There will never be anything remotely like the Red Army Faction in the USA or Europe as long as the FBI still has any amount of funding. Or even local police, for that matter. In the US, virtually every dissident group is guaranteed to be monitored by police, if not actively infiltrated. It's hard enough to organize unpermitted protests, let alone jailbreaks or breakfast programs.
Assassination markets work around this by reducing the need for organized groups.
And yes, the people writing legal code should be lawyers or at least highly knowledgable in the law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment#History
Assassination is ... rather fraught. I'm growing increasingly concerned over the stalemate / obstructionist politics of the US and elsewhere, however.
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.
I look forward to seeing if that guy ever posts again lol.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870400980457530...
Here's a link: http://assmkedzgorodn7o.onion/ If you don't have Tor installed you can also access the site by adding .to: http://assmkedzgorodn7o.onion.to/
I have zero advice for you. Im sure you will be front page news soon enough.