Assassination Politics(tm) was V-chips, CC, and Motorcycle Helmets

[jim bell]

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At 02:18 PM 2/15/96 -0800, Bill Frantz wrote:
>[I've changed the Subject: to more accurately reflect the contents]
>
>My purpose on this thread is to examine the limits of Jim Bell's idea of
>Assassination Politics.  My ground rules are to assume that it is a natural
>outgrowth of the technologies of anonymous cash and anonymous remailers. 
>As such arguments that it is immoral are only valid to the extent that they
>bare on individual's decisions to particpate in an assassination.

Pardon me, but the proper word is "bear", not "bare."

>
>I believe that we have general agreement that high government figures are
>not subject to sanction via assassination politics because they already
>enjoy Secret Service levels of protection.

You'd be surprised how few "high government officials" have 
Secret-service-type protection.  President, obviously, vice president, 
Speaker of house, majority and  minority leader of Senate, etc. "Ordinary" 
members of House and senate don't.  A few department heads probably do, but 
that is the exception, rather than the rule.

BTW, for the record, just a couple of days ago Clinton probably passed 
within a mile of my house, "Slant range", in a helicopter, with a day's 
warning.  (The term, "slant range", is a "term of art," for those not in the 
know.)

>I also believe that Jim and I disagree about the significance of Salmon
>Rushdie.  Jim thinks that the lack of anonymity in the Mullah's
>assassination bounty is repelling possible assassins.  I disagree.

Well, then what _IS_ "repelling possible assassins"?  Hint:  If I or you 
killed Rushdie, do you really believe you would be able to collect the 
reward?  I don't.  Unless you get people to really BELIEVE they can collect, 
then it is irrelevant what the value of that reward is!

Hint:  If the mullahs really wanted to see Rushdie dead, they would have 
implemented some sort of "Assassination Politics"-type system to ensure than 
anyone who wanted to collect the reward could do so from the comfort and 
safety of his own home.


>A
>question worth asking is, How much does it cost the British government to
>protect Mr. Rushdie by keeping his location secret and providing other
>unspecified protection.  If anyone knows the answer, it could help build an
>economic model of Assassination Politics.

Which is a valid goal.  Actually, it is unclear why Britain is spending the 
money to protect Rushdie.  Despite the fact that he's done nothing to 
deserve his targeting, governments are remarkably reticent about protecting 
individual citizens.  


>Jim Bell said:
>
>>Actually, I think the primary targets will be either the middle level 
>>manager types, or the ones who have attracted a substantial amount of bad 
>>publicity by "following orders."  Lon Horiuchi (the sniper who shot Vicki 
>>Weaver) for example, would be a excellent example of a person who'd try to 
>>claim, "I was just following orders."  Okay, maybe he was, but so was Adolph 
>>Eichmann.  
>
>I agree that Jim's idea of targeting certain specific individuals, such as
>the sniper above might work.

Now, imagine you were a government employee in this line of work, and a 
fellow employee was bumped off due to a well-publicized incident.  Next time 
you're asked to engage in a Waco-like operation, what do you think you'll 
say to  your manager?   "Is this trip necessary?"

This is called, "deterrence."

>>Once the tax collectors/enforcers were targeted, the rest of the government 
>>wouldn't be able to operate, and would collapse.
>
>However if you tackle the whole tax system, you get into problems of scale.
> The IRS alone (according to their web page) has over 110,000 employees,
>and we havn't even mentioned the state and local employees.  I don't think
>killing one or two will have a sigificant effect (that is occuring now).  I
>will assume that you have to successfully kill about 10% to have enough
>effect to shut off the government's money supply.

Needless to say, I disagree.  In practice, if you discovered that  each year 
there  was a 1% chance of you dying as a consequence of your job, you'd 
probably strongly consider changing your place of employment.

Now, I think statistics show that each year, about 800 billion dollars in  
individual income taxes are collected.  If we assume that the equivalent of 
only 1% of that  value  was donated to solve the "IRS problem," that's 8 
BILLION dollars, which at $10,000 per person would buy 800,000 deaths.  
THat's 7 times the current employment of the IRS.

You tell me:  What would the average person pay THIS YEAR to avoid paying, 
say, a $100,000 tax bill NEXT YEAR?  (Hint:  How much do rich people pay 
their accountants, TODAY, to avoid taxes?)

Another Hint:  Consider Bill Gates.  His wealth is variously estimated at 
over 10 BILLION dollars, probably almost all of which is in long-term 
capital gains (Microsoft stock), for which he will have to pay somewhere 
around 30% in Federal income taxes if he should choose to cash out.  He 
would be 1.5 Billion dollars ahead if he donated $1.5 billion dollars to an 
organization which would eliminate his  requirement to pay the total 3 
billion dollar tax bill to the IRS.  That alone is the equivalent of about 
$14,000 for each IRS employee.


>Attacks at this scale will be difficult because while people will have
>perfect anonymity in cyberspace, they won't enjoy it in physical space. 
>Neighbors, survalence cameras, etc.; in fact all the technology that makes
>privacy so hard to achieve today will be available to catch the assassins. 
>The police will also be more motivated to utilize the technology for this
>class of people than they would for drug dealers, pimps and other low
>lifes.  These points will tend to raise the price of assassinations.

That depends entirely on the identity of the target.  Besides, suppose for a 
moment that all these people are turned into "targets."  It's pretty easy to 
protect ONE INDIVIDUAL; it's far harder to protect thousands.

>Let us assume that we can buy assassinations for $50,000 per person.  Times
>11,000 people is $550 million dollars.  That is quite a sum.  I need to see
>an analysis which shows how to raise money on this scale.

Your estimate is way too high.   Remember, most of the cost of hiring a 
hitman is based on the risk (to him) of actually contacting and TRUSTING his 
contractor. (and vice versa:  The contractor has to trust the hitman.)   
While I have no firm statistics, I would  imagine that the vast 
majority of "contract killings" are  solved (if they are solved at  all, by 
the police) by something other   than evidence collected at the site where 
the killing actually occurred.  If you completely eliminate this risk, (by 
encryption and digital cash, etc.) by free-market principles the cost should 
drop drastically.

More generally, most murders are solved either by researching the prior 
relationships (and motives) of acquaintances of the "victim," or witnesses 
to an incident that the killer didn't expect to occur, etc.   "Assassination 
Politics" would result in a situation in which literally everybody in the 
world had an IDENTICAL motivation to kill the target.  Imagine explaining 
this away to a jury, who themselves might have had an equivalent motivation 
to collect the reward! 

Jim Bell
jimbell at pacifier.com

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