> On Nov 16, 2019, at 2:51 AM, jim bell <jdb10987@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> On Saturday, November 16, 2019, 12:22:31 AM PST, John Newman <jnn@synfin.org> wrote:
>
> > On Nov 16, 2019, at 1:37 AM, jim bell <jdb10987@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > I think you are mischaracterizing what I am proposing, as suggested by your use of the word, "seems". Also, there is what is typically called an "opportunity cost", which is the 'cost' of NOT selecting the alternative.
> >
>
> What you proposed was quite clearly said. You proposed using AP to kill car thieves and people that look at porn.
>
>
> NO! 24 years ago, I DID propose the former. But go back and read: I DID NOT propose the latter. It was raised as a possibility, by someone else, and I then COMMENTED on that concept.
>
>> If you cannot follow English-language discussion any better than this, who can trust your conclusions?
>
>
>> >You talked about the difficulty in finding people who had committed such crimes (cuz how else do you put an AP hit out on them?)
>
>
>> I can discuss the possibility that tomorrow, it will rain. That doesn't mean I ADVOCATE that it rain, or that I WISH it to rain, let alone can I MAKE it rain!
>
>
>> >> For example, I have long suggested that AP, in use, will get rid of all militaries, wars, and nuclear weapons. The argument is simple: Nobody will need militaries, or nukes, because any disputes can be easily solved by donation.
> >

> >>Maybe, or maybe AP gets co-opted by the same powers running shit right now.
>
>> Can you explain how that might happen? You are speculating.
>

>All of this discussion is speculation Jim :).

Yes, certainly. I think the problem is that people don't take the discussion seriously enough. There was plenty of time to speculate in the 1990's, but I don't think anybody came to enough detailed conclusions.

>The way I see it being co-opted is pretty simple: govcorp uses its nearly limitless financial resources to target anyone who is pushing for AP in a way that would take them out of power. You don’t think they will fight with everything they have?

Well, they certainly went after me, huh? But remember, during the initiation of AP, few if anybody needs to "advocate" for AP, and even if they want to, they can do so anonymously. At least, the tools should exist to allow anonymous discussion,

>They even have AP to use for their ends, because at this point AP has to be a system with perfect privacy (right? We hope so!), making government assassinations deniable.

That merely means that they can have a show at fighting back. Not that this will be effective at saving the then-existing government.

>Legit AP participants, by which I mean people not sanctioned by govcorp who are donating funds and killing the rich/politicians/law-enforcement/etc, would be vilified by the media and the vast majority of society would see AP as horrible criminality.

That's what discussions of this issue are for. Make what amounts to a virtual list of the crimes of governments, past and present, and explain why "the system" didn't stop them at the relevant times. Explain that AP can punish the guilty without the vast majority of the people having to 'stand up' and take a visible position on the subject.

>People don’t give a fuck about real freedom, not most of them.

>The ruling class has too many resources. And some of your most recent statements paint AP in a fucked up new light.

No, you are continuing to misrepresent what I have said. Someone raised an issue, and I simply commented. I didn't expose some sort of 'new' flaw or weakness or undesirability in an AP system that wouldn't have been obvious in 1995. The big problem is SOMEBODY LOST THE FUCKING ARCHIVE!! Or at least, allowed it to be faked.

> When the originator and biggest proponent of the idea has stated he thinks killing car thieves is a valuable usage of the tool

And I did that, 24 years ago. To show the public how a crowd-funded, crowd-sourced retribution system can actually accomplish something that had nothing to do with politics.

>, essentially portraying it as a replacement for the current criminal justice system,

What!?!? You mean that the CONCEPT of AP replacing the current criminal justice system is NEW TO YOU!!! You obviously haven't been paying attention! If anything, I consider that outcome as unavoidable as AP itself, and indeed quite desirable.

>I think you lose another big chunk of sympathetic support.

In other words, if nobody explains to people what will eventually happen, they will be confused and even scared. THAT is the reason for the discussion! And quite possibly, that's one powerful motivation for somebody STEALING THE FUCKING ARCHIVE!

>Murderous treatment of a mere thief is squalid, gross, and totally reminiscent of cops, jail, death row, torture, and the prison-industrial complex...

THAT is why a system will take the current system's place, one that actually employs a series of voluntary court systems, one that uses AP as an ultimate enforcement system, motivating people to agree to what will amount to arbitration.

You really don't understand this?!? You never heard of this? Read the (now non-existent) archives!!!

> >>Maybe they never let it take off.
>
>
>> Prior to the development of Bitcoin, there were probably discussions on CP to the point, "Maybe they will never let digital cash take off." Didn't seem to stop it, huh? And now, there are many hundreds of altcoins in existence, and there is little news of somebody trying to "ban" them.
>
>> And today, there is actually a REAL death-prediction market in existence, Ethereum+Augur. But not, yet, an "assassination market", but that simply because a large payment to one unknown predictor. So, we are vastly closer to an AP-type market in 2019 than we were in 1995. Your weak speculation wouldn't have appeared to be so weak in 1995 or 1996, but you are well over 20 years too late.
>

>In danger of repeating myself, I think it boils down to a few things. Not enough “regular people” give a goddamn about freedom, toppling the government, etc. They are happy to shake a US soldier's hand and thank him for his service, they call cops when they have a problem, they just want a veneer of freedom and plenty of toys to buy. Further, you’ve poisoned the well with some noxious ideas about minor shit. It seems to me AP is for war criminals, billionaires, people destroying the planet for profit, etc… not for minor thievery or other shit that, under the current system, would just land you on paper or in some part of the American gulag for a brief time.

That's the pessimistic POV. But I believe things can, and will, change.

>
> >>Maybe even if the tech is there, which it isn’t now, people are too fucking happy to get the latest gizmo from Apple and ignore the fact that they are slaves.
>
> >If they never have any sort of idea that they can be anything other than slaves, you will be right. But I think we are long past that situation.
>

>Do you see a groundswell of support for anarchism in the wealthy American empire? Take off the blinders man. People are fucking stupid and mostly law-abiding “good citizens” who just want more money.

That's why most technological developments don't come in, in the form of a 'vote'. Ever heard of a 'vote', perhaps in the late 1800's, where the public voted to allow automobiles to operate on the roads of the day? I suspect it never happened, or at least if it did, it wouldn't have made any difference. How about a 'vote' to let people use electricity? Or the telephone? Didn't happen. Railroads? Airplanes? Didn't happen. Refrigerators? Dishwashers?

Was there a 'vote' to allow digital cash? Computers? Fax machines? Pain relievers? Antibiotics? Microwave ovens? Anything like that? Didn't happen.

I think the fact is, it simply doesn't matter what the public 'thinks' about AP. It will begin to operate regardless of the wishes of maybe 99% of the population. In 1995, when I wrote the AP essay, people in America didn't HATE their politicians. Now they do, to a very large degree. I have come to believe that when AP begins to operate, at least a large minority of the population will cheer. And they will, because up until then they have become familiar with calling the first targets criminals and evil people. And in many cases, they will be RIGHT.

>> >Most people are not anarchists.
>
>
>> Mostly because they have grown up their entire lives being unaware of the possibility that a society can be run without a centralized, heirarchical government. And they were also nearly unaware that some non-governmental entity could issue "currency" that people could actually use to buy real things. Things have changed, huh?
>

>Crypto-currency is an important precursor to the technical problems of AP, but AP isn't just a technical problem. The fact that people are investing in bitcoin to try to make a big score has fuck all to do with the ideas behind AP, which involves financing murder for the greater good (oh, and to deter car theft :).

None of your arguments explain why you think AP won't work. Just explains why YOU don't want to see it work. Can't you see why that is irrelevant for most people?

>> > Can the critical mass of well-intending users of AP, a group of which I don’t think I can consider you to be a member after your most recent suggestions,
>
>> You were completely wrong about what you claimed to be my recent suggestion.
>
>
> > >be depended upon to win in a fight to target and pay for assassinations against the billionaire ruling class and their government and corporate lackeys?
>
>
> >The key in such a project is to eliminate, as much as possible, the need to 'trust' individuals. I again refer to Ethereum+Augur, which it is said can continue to run even if thousands of CPUs are taken out of service.
>
>
> >>> That, at least if it is likely to be true, would be a genuine benefit, a huge one in fact. So, how do you know that even if AP has some sort of negative factor associated with it, that a post-AP world wouldn't be better than today? I suggest that 'you' (term used generically) who expresses an objection to AP have a certain responsibility to figure out which is better: The status quo or the post-AP world. It's not a legitimate objection to cherry-pick one aspect, ignore everything else, and declare "I don't like it!!!"
>
>
>> >It is absolutely legitimate to find certain aspects of AP, or in this case how it would be implemented by you, and see obvious problems. How else do you problem solve or analyze the efficacy of.. anything?
>
>> I have been trying to get this analysis started since 1995.
>
>
>> > If, nearly 25 years after AP was first publicized, nobody has done the admittedly-involved work to determine this, that suggests that people are unthinkingly defaulting to the status quo, and for no obvious reason. The old excuse, "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know" is a poor excuse.
>
>
> >I think people probably either see the limitations I’ve expressed, or they are part of that population that is disgusted by the idea and do>esn’t really want to live in a world of escalating assassination wars. I mean, it sounds like a cool video game :)
>
>
>> Actually, "assassinations" will not "escalate": They will de-escalate. As people surrender, there will be an increasingly smaller reason to resort to AP. The more certain the targets' loss becomes, the less likely that they will resist.
>
>

>You don’t think govcorp will do everything they can to protect their people?

The key words are "everything they CAN". Which won't be nearly enough. I think in the mid-1990's there was discussion on CP to the extent "If [fill in the blank, a technological development the government doesn't want to see occur] happens, 'they' would just shut down the Internet!!!". At that point, that tactic might actually have seemed plausible!

Back in the 1980's, if in an office the telephones went down, you could imagine people standing around, being unable to accomplish nearly anything. And in the 1990's, if their local computer networks went down, the same effect: People can't accomplish what they expect to be able to do. By the 2000's and certainly in 2019, what would happen if the Internet went down? Sheer disaster. All over the world.

> Their resources are vast and would be deployed as soon as the first AP hit happens (or the first AP hit is bungled, always a possibility with this).

People won't necessarily know some event was "the first AP hit" for hours, days, or perhaps over a week. There would be much speculation, obviously.

>
> >> Wouldn't it have been better if, 10-20 years ago, somebody had implement a 'model AP' system, a simulation of it. In other words, just figure out what would likely happen. No actual cash, no payments, no deaths, etc. Wouldn't we have learned something? If your opinion today had been informed by this kind of simulation, how do you know your opinion wouldn't have been different today?
>
>
> >Sure, a simulation would be cool, even today. Neither of us can know how the outcome of a simulation would affect our thoughts on AP - until we see one, it’s pure conjecture.
>
> AP, itself, won't require a simulation. But a simulation may make some people feel better, become more confident that things will turn out okay.
>

Ok, you are the one who brought up simulations. I still think it would be fascinating.

>
>
> > Jim Bell
> >
> >
> >
> > On Friday, November 15, 2019, 11:22:33 PM PST, John Newman <jnn@synfin.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> > I object to replacing a police state with a police state by mob, which seems to be what you are actually proposing.
> >
> > > On Nov 16, 2019, at 12:56 AM, jim bell <jdb10987@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > I wish you would actually EXPLAIN yourself. This sounds remarkably passive-agressive.
> > >
> > > You either have a valid objection, or you don't. If you had one, you should be willing to state it.
> > >
> > > Don't pretend to have a valid opinion, unless you can defend it.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On Friday, November 15, 2019, 10:37:59 PM PST, John Newman <jnn@synfin.org> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > I always had a bad feeling about AP, for a few reasons. Jim just made
> > > some of those reasons extremely obvious.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > John
> > >
> > > On Fri, Nov 15, 2019 at 11:30:50PM +0000, jim bell wrote:
> > > > One difficulty with using AP...or any enforcement mechanism...against ANYBODY is, you first have to detect the alleged crime. I used car thieves as a foil in Part 5 of AP. https://cryptome.org/ap.htm
> > > > Like bank robbers, the probability of catching (or even identifying) a car thief the first time he acts is probably low. But eventually, he will get found out. And then he can get targeted using AP.
> > > > If a pedophile was satisfied with looking at some dirty pictures, which can reside in some subdirectory on his computer, it isn't clear how this can be proven in enough confidence to induce the public to donate to an AP system. But it's arguable that it isn't really necessary to make sure AP would work...it would be enough to CONVINCE people that AP would work. Not exactly the same thing.
> > > > Its clear that the news media has a major problem with their tolerating and covering up for pedophiles and other sex criminals. We are definitely learning that now, with people like Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby,
> > > > This site lists many others.
> > > > https://www.ranker.com/list/famous-registered-offenders/celebrity-lists
> > > >
> > > > If executives of the news media get targeted by an AP-type for tolerating sex crimes, they would become far more careful about failing to expose this kind of news. And that's a good step.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On Friday, November 15, 2019, 02:20:57 PM PST, Zenaan Harkness <zen@freedbms.net> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Jim, if you want any success, John appears right when he suggested
> > > > you link your system with targetting pedophiles - Joe Blogs in the
> > > > public tends to be motivated in protecting his young daughters,
> > > > nieces etc, and although I think your idea is a flawed idea, you
> > > > might get public traction at the moment with all the hoohah around
> > > > Epstein and the Clintons.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On Fri, Nov 15, 2019 at 06:50:39PM +0000, jim bell wrote:
> > > > > This Fund, and perhaps implied offer, seems to have arrived at just the right time. I have proposed that an alternative to TOR be constructed, and that is certainly not an idea that is new with my proposal. Anybody who is uncomfortable with TOR should want to see real competition.
> > > > > I have found, by obtaining a quotation, that the hardware costs are probably going to be $80 per node, and it would be good if 1000 nodes could be achieved, at least initially. People could host these nodes at their businesses and homes where they are already paying for Internet service.
> > > > > I think we should appply for some of these funds. Potentially, they could subsidize the hardware, say $80,000. They could also subsidize a portion of the internet service costs: I suggest the subsidy be set to approximately difference between the cost of 40 Mbit/second service, maybe $40 per month, and 1 gigabit/second service, which for Centurylink I believe to be $65/month. (and there appears to currently be no monthly data-limit for 1 Gig service.)
> > > > > This would powerfully motivate people to offer to host a node, because they would be getting the 1 gigabit service upgrade essentially for free. This might also provide funds for development of the software, which is a task in itself. A subsidy of $25/month is about $300/year, and multiplied by 1000 nodes amounts to $300,000, or a total of about $380,000 for the first year.
> > > > > Can anybody imagine a more worthy, concrete proposal to accomplish what this 'Unknown Fund' proposes to accomplish? And its yearly cost represents less than 1/2 of a percent of the proposed fund.
> > > > > Jim Bell
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > On Thursday, November 14, 2019, 01:48:41 PM PST, grarpamp <grarpamp@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > https://www.unknown.fund/
> > > > >
> > > > > "
> > > > > Unknown Fund - Press Release 11/13/2019
> > > > >
> > > > > We are going to invest and donate $75 million of bitcoin in startups
> > > > > that help anonymity ideas. Preferred niches are personal data
> > > > > protection, tools for online anonymity, cryptocurrencies, blockchain.
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Unknown Fund is Going to Invest and Donate $75 Million for the
> > > > > Development of Ideas of Anonymity
> > > > >
> > > > > The anonymous organisation Unknown Fund has announced that it intends
> > > > > to invest and donate $75 million in bitcoin to startups which directly
> > > > > or indirectly support the idea of anonymity. Preference will be given
> > > > > to the following niches: protection of personal data, tools for
> > > > > anonymity, cryptocurrency and blockchain.
> > > > >
> > > > > The organizers of the fund are ordinary, anonymous people from
> > > > > different countries who met on the 4chan English-language imageboard.
> > > > > In a brief to our news agency Anonymous said:
> > > > >
> > > > > “We are you, we are your sons and daughters, brothers and sisters,
> > > > > friends and colleagues. Our ranks consist of representatives of many
> > > > > countries and nationalities, united by a virtual comradely spirit and
> > > > > the belief that we are fighting for the good of many, and not for the
> > > > > benefit of some. Anonymous is the voice of those who believe in truth,
> > > > > freedom and the right to self-expression.”
> > > > >
> > > > > The Unknown Fund sees the protection of personal data as one of the
> > > > > main challenges for modern man. The use of data has already become a
> > > > > powerful tool for manipulating people. The effectiveness of this tool
> > > > > is both amazing and frightening.
> > > > >
> > > > > Using as examples the ultra-targeted advertising used in Brexit
> > > > > campaigns and in the last presidential elections in the United States,
> > > > > one can see how easy it is to manipulate public opinion with enough
> > > > > personal data. However, the manipulation of people occurs not only in
> > > > > big politics, but also in our daily lives. A perfect example is the
> > > > > level of addiction that the general population has to social networks
> > > > > - addiction orchestrated and achieved by corporations.
> > > > >
> > > > > Anonymous added:
> > > > >
> > > > > “Now the main goal of large corporations is to collect as much
> > > > > information as possible about the personal lives of people, and then
> > > > > use it for their enrichment. And they do a great job of it by making
> > > > > ordinary people get poorer. We are ready to fight for change and
> > > > > protect people."
> > > > >
> > > > > The Unknown Fund also sees incredible opportunities to protect the
> > > > > rights and freedoms of people that technology such as blockchain and
> > > > > cryptocurrencies give us. This is a chance for humanity to create a
> > > > > new environment, a new and honest monetary system, and to make the
> > > > > world a better place.
> > > > >
> > > > > Unknown Fund suggests investment in commercial startups and donations
> > > > > to nonprofit organizations. Investing is just the beginning. Anonymous
> > > > > have developed a number of strategies and methods that will be
> > > > > announced later.
> > > > >
> > > > > Anonymous ended the brief with the words:
> > > > >
> > > > > “If you believe in freedom of speech and the media, and most
> > > > > importantly, in a free and accessible Internet, then you are also
> > > > > Anonymous. Our opponents should not doubt our determination or
> > > > > conviction. We will continue to fight as much as necessary to achieve
> > > > > our goal.”
> > >
> > > > >
> > > > > "
> > > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > GPG fingerprint: 17FD 615A D20D AFE8 B3E4 C9D2 E324 20BE D47A 78C7