At 05:39 PM 6/10/97 -0700, Wei Dai wrote:

I think the novelty of Bell's scheme is that it allows assassination payments to be pooled from a large number of anonymous payers without explicit coordination (i.e., the payers do not have to communicate with each other to work out a contract, etc.). For killing a neighbor it doesn't improve upon the simple untraceable contract, but it can make a big difference when the target has many enemies (Bell gave politicians as an example).

Now in light of the fact that when the target has many enemies the assassination becomes a non-excludable public good, it is almost certain that the scheme cannot actually work in practice. All of the potential payers would rather free-ride and let others pay, so the public good ends up not being "produced".

This not correct: Public goods are underproduced, but they are produced. Thus Bell's scheme would lead to less than the economically optimal number of political assassinations, but this is still a great deal more than zero, and still likely to have substantial effect on political behavior. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd@echeque.com