FCPUNX:Untraceable Contract Killings

[jamesd at echeque.com]

At 05:39 PM 6/10/97 -0700, Wei Dai wrote:
> I think the novelty of Bell's scheme is that it allows assassination
> payments to be pooled from a large number of anonymous payers without
> explicit coordination (i.e., the payers do not have to communicate with
> each other to work out a contract, etc.).  For killing a neighbor it
> doesn't improve upon the simple untraceable contract, but it can make a
> big difference when the target has many enemies (Bell gave politicians as
> an example).
>
> Now in light of the fact that when the target has many enemies the
> assassination becomes a non-excludable public good, it is almost certain
> that the scheme cannot actually work in practice.  All of the potential
> payers would rather free-ride and let others pay, so the public good ends
> up not being "produced".

This not correct:  Public goods are underproduced, but they are produced.

Thus Bell's scheme would lead to less than the economically optimal
number of political assassinations, but this is still a great deal 
more than zero, and still likely to have substantial effect on 
political behavior.
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