Kent Crispin wrote:

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If we had anonymous betting pools which ABSOLUTELY shielded the identity of the people transferring money to and from them,

There are many other weak points in the security of a system besides the cryptographic techniques.

The major problem with the scheme is that rat-choice is a theoretical abstraction and not graven on tablets of stone by the supreme being. Its a bit like Marxism, discover one small aspect of the way that economies work then assert that it is the _only_ effect. Unfortunately for Bell he underestimated the scope for state intervention. He's lucky he lives in the US, in France he would have been silenced long ago.

Suppose there was an international treaty banning such betting pools, with penalty of death for running one?

I think its more likely that the states involved would start using covert operations using their own personel rather than contracting out the job. Recently a bunch of UK entepreneurs with significant political backing (brown envelopes?) attempted to start a private lottery. They managed to continue for a few months until the government was forced to close them down. But for their ex-cabinet minister on the board the directors would probably have gone to jail.

Anonymous betting pools are an extremely contrived way of funding any positive social good.

Indeed they were merely one in a long line of schemes each of which had three things in common, cryptography, anti-government sentiments and murdering people. I think that people are giving Jim too much credit. I seem to recall that Tim May or Perry Metzeger took Bell's original scheme apart, made it into something like a coherent argument and then dissmissed the strengthened scheme. The problem with AP is that to make it work you have to assume that the public at large accept some particular normative ethical standard. If this were true you wouldn't need AP.

The political implications are far from obvious. Don't forget that Hitler didn't kill 6 million jews by himself. Civil forfeiture laws have supporters. Clinton did win an election.

I seem to recall that the War on Drugs was a Bush proposal originally. Dole supported it and as with the CDA I would not expect a single member of congress to stand up against charges of "drug dealers friend". I think its quite wrong to see Clinton as someone who believes in the authoritarian position, the real problem is he cuts his cloth according to the popular whim. In fact Clinton demonstrates precisely the type of outcome AP would produce but without the murders. Basically AP is mob law or lynch law at best.

This is purely wishful thinking on your part. People from all sides of issues could end up contributing money to all kinds of bets.

Hitlers supporters would probably have set up a bounty for killing Jews, Communists and homosexuals. The British Government spent considerable amounts of effort attempting to assasinate Hitler. It proved impossible. The CIA offers considerable rewards for "information" on certain individuals but the takeup rate is much lower than rat-choice would indicate. If anyone wants to make a quick couple of million I can give them the names of a number of people the CIA would like to see "out of the game". If the sum on offer is insufficient a higher one can almost certainly be agreed. I doubt that there will be many takers however.

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Nuclear weapons would go away, the hole in the ozone layer would close up, and whales would be safe and happy again.

All hogwash, of course. If these problems could be solved through the application of volunteer money they would have been solved long ago.

I think the author might have been being sarcastic.

*No* government will support them. Since AP only works if you have a sizable fraction of the population participating, some participants will get caught. If the penalties are stiff there will be very little incentive to play -- should I risk 10 years in jail so I can donate $10 to get some dictator killed? Not likely.

Interestingly enough the politics of Iran demonstrate why no government could afford to allow an AP type scheme to be enacted. The Iranian government is actually a composite of several power centers. As well as the government proper there are a number of "independent" theocratic organisations that are built on the former state industrial combines. The various groups that formed an alliance to topple the Shah each got a payoff in the form of "guardianship" of one or more of the combines. These combines have the resources to create what is effectively a state within a state. The government would like to move towards a more accomadating situation with the West but it cannot because of the threat from the private states within the state. The infamous fatwah against Salman Rushdie was issued by one of the combines. Similarly the Lebanese crisis involved multiple often opposed "Iranian" supported groups funded by different state factions. Eliminating the leadership of the combines is futile. Death is not a usefull deterent against suicide bombers. Assasination would at best spark off a civil war. Attempting to apply a US constitutional analysis based on the cult of the individual to other cultures is futile.

Of course, it is much easier to aviod getting caught, and the probability of success is much greater, if the victim is a relative unknown. So the prize hits would actually be small ones -- someone might offer $10000 to kill you or me, for example, or a local political rival, and that would be a good deal for a professional assassin -- no bodyguards, police protection, or other safeguards to worry about; and the pursuit will be a small effort.

$10,000 is about the market rate for a hit man at present. In places like Columbia the price is considerably lower - $1000 perhaps. Phill