At 07:54 PM 6/17/96 -0400, s1113645@tesla.cc.uottawa.ca wrote:

On Sat, 8 Jun 1996 ichudov@algebra.com wrote:

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Since corrupt officials are likely to have more anonymous cash that phreedom phighters, guess who will win.

Remember, Chudov was wrong about this. It's not just the amount of money you have, it's whether you can identify people as your "enemies."

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Also, think about this: lots of people have someone they'd like to assassinate but do not actually do it because of lack of anonymity and associated hassles (like dealing with assassins non-anonymously, abundance of traces, possible confession of the assassin and so on). With your assassination clearinghouse these hassles go away. I think it would present an excellent prospect for reducing the population.

I could see an easy possibility for sting operations with the added feature that you can have assassinated all the supected assassins (ie anybody that may have come near whatever surveillance there may have been). Why bother with courts and trials?

I still think assassination politics is self-terminating.

It would probably be more accurate to say that it is "self-limiting." There's a difference, you know. There may never be a "last" AP death. However, AP deaths may (and probably will) eventually become comparatively rare, precisely because they so straightforwardly obtained if there is a justification for them. That will cause the behavior of people to change, to avoid doing anything which draws the ire of somebody else. Think back to integral calculus, where the area under an infinitely long curve may be finite. If we think of X as being time, and the rate of deaths as the height of the curve above Y=0, the total number of deaths is reflected in the area. Some death rate schedules will integrate to a finite, limited number of deaths. Even if reality doesn't quite approach this optimum situation, it MAY approach a much better reality where the eventual rate of deaths is far lower than the status quo. However, the system will only self-limit to the extent that overt agression among people will be eliminated. If nobody agresses against you, you will have no reason to agress against anyone else. Therefore, the system cannot end in a dictatorship.

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Maybe *that* will help the whales and trees, because of the effect on demand.

Don't you mean supply? Stores and physical companies are easier to target than consumers. But the only remaining environmentalists or for that matter any other people with strong views will be net-based pseudonyms. Usenet flamewars, editorials and talk shows just don't seem dying for, imho.

It is true that there may be a strong deterrent against "people with strong views." However, as I pointed out to the head of a 'Net freedom organization (who was worried about his future!), the only reason our society NEEDS figurehead people such as him is to change unpopular policies that are forced on the rest of us. Once AP begins operating, you don't have to stick your neck out to deter agression against you, and you don't need heads of organizations such as him, or for that matter organizations either. Quite simply, why do you need the head of the ACLU, or for that matter the ACLU as an organization, if you can target anybody who violates the rights that the ACLU currently protects? Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com