From: intelemetry <intelemetry@openmailbox.org>
>> But I approached the problem
>> differently: I saw that very few people would want to pay, say,
> >$10,000 to buy someone else's death. But I immediately also saw
>>that 10,000 people might want to pay $1 each for that outcome.
>>That amounts to a crowdsourced decision, with its accompanying
>> advantages and benefits. And I also saw that such a functioning
>> system would deter virtually everything which we call wrong in
>> today's society. Anybody who is trying to argue against an AP-type
>> system is inherently attempting to defend the hugely flawed status
>> quo, even if they don't realize that. I also solved David
>>Friedman's "Hard problem", see his book, "The Machinery of
>> Freedom", the previously-assumed difficulty or impossibility of
>> providing for the defense of a fully libertarian or anarchistic
>> society. Perhaps my big advantage was that I didn't know
>> Friedman's "Hard Problem" even existed, at least under that label,
>> until long after I'd already solved it.
>Claiming that an assassination market solves the defense problem in
>Friedman's utilitarian and general anarchocapitalism is very bold.
>You have a betting pool for killing people.
>You don't have any sort of collection of funds that protect a society
>from something like everyday crime, you've merely got a hit market.
To the extent that crime presents a problem that needs to be solved,
there is no reason that private organization can't exist to detect crime,
and then prove it to an excellent standard. Those who commit crime
can be presented with a choice: make your victim whole, and/or accept
preventive confinement, or earn a bounty on an AP-type system.
Your idea is effectively crowdsourcing, which in many ways could be
very useful for Friedman's hard problem. However, while remaining
purely voluntary in nature, what differentiates your assassination
market from:
- taxes (compulsory collection of small amounts from many)
Taxes are, as you pointed out, compulsory. Donating to an AP-type system
won't be compulsory. But potential criminals won't know who is donating, and
who is not donating. And it will probably not matter: Most people, out of a sense
of self-protection, will donate to such crime-prevention and detection funds,
because they will amount to a deterrent against all criminals.
- hits (a few wealthy individuals take out a contract)
Moreover, you still are facing the 'free-rider' problem, where, "if
everybody else in my community payed a dollar to kill this guy, why
should I have to do so, it is only -1 dollar.
I don't think 'free riders' will be much of a problem. For one thing, I think
the system (AP) will be vastly more efficient than the convention crime
protection system. (in the same way that military defense could be 100x
cheaper.
>I am neither trying to discredit nor insult your ideas; just curious
>if you could expound upon how an assassination market fits into
>defense in a free society.
>This video might help set the context:
>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0_Jd_MzGCw>'The Market for Security | Robert P. Murphy '
>- - Intelemetry
I hope that someday, in the future, technology will advance to the point where
transcripts to 55-minute videos can be automatically generated. I can already
see that Murphy speaks rapidly, but I could easily read the transcript 10x as fast
as he can speak it. By pointing to that video, you are effectively asking me to
employ 55 minutes of my life on something which you say will merely "set the context".
Murphy and his business partner, Robert Vroman, engaged in a public
three-part debate about AP. Vroman wote two, Murphy wrote one.
and of Bob Murphy, www.anti-state.com/murphy/murphy17.html (although the Murphy
essay might not be available, except as an archive on the Wayback Machine.)
Further, consider