Mike Duvos wrote:

In a world with an indestructible Net, anonymous digital cash, and strong privacy tools, AP will ultimately evolve, first in a relatively benign form and then, once it becomes ubiquitous, in the form envisioned by Bell.

{excerpt from WebWorld 24} "Assassination Politics," originated by Jim Bell, had been just a theoretical exercise during his lifetime, dismissed by most who read it as a thinly veiled joke, at best. Bell, however, had developed a workable autobot which instituted his system, albeit in a very rudimentary way. Basically, his procedure was analogous to a lottery system where the players were contributing to a prize that could be collected, not by chance, but by anyone who fulfilled the preconditions of those contributing. And the precondition was that, in order to pocket the 'prize', one had to assassinate the person targeted by the contributors. Since Bell's system used anonymous remailers, his system would allow individuals and groups to anonymously defend themselves from all types of aggression. Eventually someone modified Bell's 'Assassination Bot' to serve as a useful tool for political polling. Someone else took it a step further, and it became a valid electoral tool. Then, inevitably, just before the Channel Revolution broke out, it's newly refined features were once again modified to serve Bell's original purpose, and all hell broke loose when established geo-political figures began dropping like flies, or resigning in terror when they realized that the people were indeed speaking, and doing so by putting a price on the heads of their oppressors.