Jim Bell article excerpt (Was: Letter on Jim Bell)

[Tim May]

At 11:08 AM -0800 1/6/98, Adam Back wrote:

>it looks more like Jim was suggesting that free market forces would
>tend to prevent deaths of lesser known people.  Think about it -- it
>would be dead easy to get a contract on Barney due to the number of
>people who know and hate him -- but on an average neighbor, who is
>completely obscure, you'd easily have to fund the entire bet yourself.

The weakness of Bell's scheme was always that it only worked (so to speak)
with well-known people.

While there are some who want well-known people dead, most murders-for-hire
happen for personal or financial reasons.

Given untraceable payment systems, and buttressed with untraceable escrow
systems, a much more efficient approach is simply to hire the killers
untraceably.

And the fluff about "picking the death date" is a side issue, one which
merely makes the whole thing more cumbersome.

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."