[I've changed the Subject: to more accurately reflect the contents] My purpose on this thread is to examine the limits of Jim Bell's idea of Assassination Politics. My ground rules are to assume that it is a natural outgrowth of the technologies of anonymous cash and anonymous remailers. As such arguments that it is immoral are only valid to the extent that they bare on individual's decisions to particpate in an assassination. I believe that we have general agreement that high government figures are not subject to sanction via assassination politics because they already enjoy Secret Service levels of protection. I also believe that Jim and I disagree about the significance of Salmon Rushdie. Jim thinks that the lack of anonymity in the Mullah's assassination bounty is repelling possible assassins. I disagree. A question worth asking is, How much does it cost the British government to protect Mr. Rushdie by keeping his location secret and providing other unspecified protection. If anyone knows the answer, it could help build an economic model of Assassination Politics. Jim Bell said:
Actually, I think the primary targets will be either the middle level manager types, or the ones who have attracted a substantial amount of bad publicity by "following orders." Lon Horiuchi (the sniper who shot Vicki Weaver) for example, would be a excellent example of a person who'd try to claim, "I was just following orders." Okay, maybe he was, but so was Adolph Eichmann.
I agree that Jim's idea of targeting certain specific individuals, such as the sniper above might work.
Once the tax collectors/enforcers were targeted, the rest of the government wouldn't be able to operate, and would collapse.
However if you tackle the whole tax system, you get into problems of scale. The IRS alone (according to their web page) has over 110,000 employees, and we havn't even mentioned the state and local employees. I don't think killing one or two will have a sigificant effect (that is occuring now). I will assume that you have to successfully kill about 10% to have enough effect to shut off the government's money supply. Attacks at this scale will be difficult because while people will have perfect anonymity in cyberspace, they won't enjoy it in physical space. Neighbors, survalence cameras, etc.; in fact all the technology that makes privacy so hard to achieve today will be available to catch the assassins. The police will also be more motivated to utilize the technology for this class of people than they would for drug dealers, pimps and other low lifes. These points will tend to raise the price of assassinations. Let us assume that we can buy assassinations for $50,000 per person. Times 11,000 people is $550 million dollars. That is quite a sum. I need to see an analysis which shows how to raise money on this scale. Bill