At 10:21 PM 1/26/97 -0800, blanc wrote:

From: jim bell (in response to Dimitri Vulis') Look, I've proposed what I consider to be a remarkably consistent method to prevent the kind of political tyranny that you criticize, and I don't see any recognition of this fact. ........................................................

1) Jim, why do you insist on discussing this on an forum for encryption?

Because it's on-topic, that's why. Because it's not merely a list concerning METHODS of encryption, it's also about the _reasons_ for using encryption, as well as the _effects_ (both small-scale and large-scale) of using encryption. If we were satisfied to protect ourselves from, say, 99.999% of the ordinary population of this country who might want to read our messages, we'd all be satisfied with DES and we'd be happy with GAK. But the fact is, most of us recognize that the REAL reason for good encryption is to keep our messages away from a tyrannical government with far more assets than individuals or small organizations.

2) Why do you suppose the Iraqis haven't already thought of doing this themselves?

You need to be a little more specific about who you are referring to when you say "the Iraquis." Presumably, you aren't referring to the "Iraqui on the street"? Perhaps you're talking about the politicians and government officials there, right? Well, if that's the case then the answer should be obvious. AP is, fundamentally, a system that will take down all governments everywhere after it starts up anywhere. The leadership of Iraq may be the leaders of a third-rate, third-world country, but as comedian Mel Brooks said in the movie, "History of the World, Part I," "It's good to be the king!" And it is. These official-types have far more in common with the leadership of the other countries than they do with their own citizens. If anything, they're probably actually even MORE rewarded by their position than the leadership of westernized countries. After all, Clinton makes about $250K per year and it's pretty risky for him to receive direct bribes. Kick him out and he only loses a cushy job with lots of prestige. Saddam Hussein and his family, on the other hand, probably was able to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars a year in baksheesh. What makes you think that the leadership of Iraq would want to craft a weapon (AP) which is guaranteed to drop them to the level of their citizenry, or maybe even get themselves killed? As for why the ordinary Iraquis didn't think of it... Or the ordinary people of any or every country, as well. Why didn't THEY think of it? Maybe this is just another case of "not invented here" syndrome: You're pissed off that you didn't think of it, and I did. Sorry, can't help that.

3) The Mafia uses this method all the time - why then haven't they achieved a more rational society among themselves?

That's just it! The Mafia DOESN'T use AP or anything like it. (Admittedly I can't really claim personal knowledge of the operation of the Mafia, you understand...!) In fact, apparently, they function diametrically opposed to the AP system. A complete AP-like system is structured (via encryption, etc) to totally avoid anybody having to trust anyone else. Each participant is kept honest mathematically. Nobody can inform on anyone else, because nobody knows anyone else's identity. In fact, a fully-implemented AP-type system not merely hides the identities of the participants from each other, but it also hides the existence of crimes committed by any of the other participants (if any) from each other. A donor to the AP system, for instance, can't know for sure that his donation money was paid to a person who killed a target. At most, he knows that the money was paid to somebody who, he's satisfied, had enough confidence that the death would occur on a particular date in the future to, in effect, bet money on the outcome. And AP allows anyone to participate in the system, regardless of whether he's trusted by the others. On the contrary, the Mafia, or at least what I've managed to pick up from decades of melodramatic movies and newspaper and magazine articles, depends intimately on people trusting each other. That's why it's so devastating to them when one of their own (Joseph Valachi, for instance) turns on them and rats. To be sure, that trust is backed up by threat of death for turncoats, which is why such defections are rare, but they do indeed occur. Also, AP (quite unlike the Mafia) encourages literally anyone to do jobs for it. The Mafia, quite the contrary, must trust people, so I assume they won't farm out their work to just anyone. (I should point out that your clear misinterpretation of AP, claiming that it is the way the Mafia does things, is just another example of such confusion among critics of AP. I attribute this to such a burning desire to discredit AP that you'll use practically any argument, however specious, to "prove" it to be incorrect or unworkable. You're not alone.)

4) Weren't governments (like the U.S.) instituted to prevent this sort of thing (even if they don't work out as expected)? i.e., there were systems of courts and lawyers and such instituted to openly deal with "criminal" activity so that a) people could receive assistance against low-life degenerate killers, and b) it could be proven that the accused were indeed deserving of punishment.

Remember "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"? The problem with all existing political systems (and particularly those fallen ones from the past) is that they put power in the hands of people who subsequently abuse it, destroying the checks and balances that were put in place.

Humans being what they are, this hasn't worked like it's supposed to, but the point is that there is a reason why such ideas for systems of justice were introduced in the first place. That reason, as I eloquently read in a book, was "So That Reason May Live". That is, so that people who choose to live in a "society" may do so by the method of solving problems through the application of intelligence, rather than merely knocking each other off because a voting majority decides they don't like someone.

You misunderstand AP, yet again. AP doesn't really take votes, it merely totals donations. It is an essential element of the AP system that even a tiny minority should be able to kill individuals who are seen as threats, as long as this capability is universal. True, the smaller the minority the more uneconomical such an action would be for them, but it would be well within the ability of 1% of the population to avoid a another Holocaust by getting rid of those pushing for it. In the current political system, in the US for instance, 51% of the population is able to screw the remaining 49%, just as long as they can maintain the majority. Or, perhaps even more accurately and ominously, a tiny fraction of the population (the current leadership class) is able to screw the 49%, as long as they have the un-thinking backing of the remaining and relatively uninvolved 51%. AP disables this system. AP turns government into the moral equivalent of a pick-up football game: Nobody is being forced to play, and everybody and anybody can simply "get up and leave" whenever he wants to. The moment the "rules of the game" to make an individual's continued participation unsatisfying, he can leave.

Destructive people often ascend to positions of power not simply because they are ruthless, but because they have 1) many sycophantic followers and 2) many ignorant, vulnerable people unable to prevent it. You might be able to kill off one Saddam, but potentially many others would be waiting in the wings to take his place.

I don't think so. Let's suppose you could purchase the death of Saddam for $5 million. The next guy gets killed for another $5 million, and then the next, etc. Who would want to be the next leader? While $5 million dollars is certainly not pocket change for an individual, it is well within the capacity of the entire world to fund without any difficulty. Anybody considering taking over Saddam's job, aware of such an easy system to kill him, would have no motivation to piss off the world. Sooner or later, Saddam's place would have to be taken by a person who makes it absolutely clear to the rest of the world that he's no Saddam. In fact, he'll point out that he would be foolish to take the job if he had ulterior motives. Unless you believe that it's physically impossible for Iraq to have an honest government (at which point you're displaying what I believe was called jingoism?) you'll acknowledge that their system would be fixed rapidly. That's why AP will be so economical: The absolute certainty that enough money could be raised to get rid of anyone who poses a threat will make it simply unnecessary to do so, the vast majority of the time. It's called "deterrence," and is one of the reasons that 99.99% of the population doesn't rob banks, commit mass murder, or do any other anti-social things. Dictatorships will be impossible under AP because dictators simply won't be able to survive. By being ready at all times to pay to have a dictator killed, society will never have any dictators. Strange but true.

The situation surrounding the existence of someone like Saddam is part of the contributing factors which keeps him there, not simply that one man himself.

Saddam is still in power because as long as the collective leadership of the countries of the world fear to set an example that will cost them their jobs and possibly their lives, they will gladly choose the $60 BILLION dollar "solution" to the Iraq problem, as opposed to my solution, AP, which would not only fix Iraq but every other country on the face of the globe. That's why the leadership will never choose it. The fact is, George Bush and his cronies kept Saddam in power by intentional acts, although he would never admit it. It was the same with Hitler and

with so many others - they don't just have an excess of "power" concentrated within themselves which puts them in positions of control over others - there will have been many people who will have helped put them there, expecting to derive benefits from it.

And what will be done about all those people who made this "power" possible? You don't just kill the one man and be done with it - you have to also "kill" the conditions which maintained him. Blanc

I assert AP does this quite well. AP makes it quite impossible to maintain a government which pisses off even a small fraction of the population. Anyone who feels abused in the citizen/government relationship will be able to opt out when he wants. "Abused", by my definition, is getting less benefit out of the arrangement than that person wants in relation to the assets he put in. "Governments" may still exist after AP, but in name only. They will not have the ability to force taxation, and they will primarily be a way to coordinate volunteer action, and will be dramatically shrunk from today's behemoths. Such a government can't be corrupted: To whatever extent that corruption makes that government a less-attractive as a project to an honest citizen, he will leave it and it will shrink, making it even less able to support that corruption. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com