On Thu, 9 Aug 2018 00:20:43 +0000 (UTC) jim bell <jdb10987@yahoo.com> wrote:

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    Hm. That may be a good point. I didn't assume a big 'democratic' majority was needed, but I was still thinking of some sizable percentage. But maybe 1% would be enough - or even less. 

Remember the statistic I like to use:  The Federal governemnt collects 3 trillion dollars in taxes per year.  If those taxpayers pay an additional 1% of that value, or $30 billion, in money towards and AP fund, and if the average cost per death is $100,000, then that's 300,000 deaths per year.

Yep, if a relatively big number of people make small contributions, lots of funds can be raised. Arguably an AP protocol would make that sort of cooperation easier/more effective.

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    Say, 1% of the adult population of the US is ~2 million people. If 2 million people decide to act in a coordinated fashion against the govt they may force the govt to leave them alone. 

Another statistic:       https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2015-update... "The top 1 percent (1.3 million filers) paid a greater share of income taxes (37.8 percent) than the bottom 90 percent (124.5 million filers) combined (30.2 percent)."

Some fraction of those 1% get their money due to the existence and operation of the Federal government, but many do not.   I think many of them resent the amount of money they are paying to maintain an inefficient government.

I'm pretty sure that the richer people are, the more conservative and supportive of the totalitarian status quo they become. As a matter of fact there quite a few obscenely rich people, some of them even pretend to be 'libertarians' but in practice they work for the NSA. Regardless, AP may work if funded by poor libertarians (not rich corporatists)

 

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I'm not aware that there is a "critical mass" for people supporting AP.    Do you have a different figure than my "1%"?

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    I don't. So I guess what I should say is : there's no critical mass of libertarians doing anything meaningful, but if there was, then AP may be a good & efficient tool.

I've always thought so, but then again I'm not an unbiased observer! 

Heh =P  

 >   Notice that the few libertarians who do act against the govt end up in jail like Ulbricht....or you.  

It is unfortunate that Ulbricht could not incorporate an AP-type protection system into Silk Road.   These dark markets tend to be purely defensive, employing rather good secrecy.  Why not dedicate 1% of their gross  market into a fund to kill anyone who attacks them?  

That would be fun. And it could either work, or backfire and make them a higher priority target...

    To be fair, european and asian governments (like say japan and korea) are accomplices of the US govt, play the same imperial games and are guilty as well, so you won't find many anarchists among their subjects either. 

It wouldn't take many!

Perhaps. We'll have to wait and see...

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