An Extremely Interesting Take On Crime

SOCALHUSKER · November 25, 2009

By Jim Bell

A little long but a very interesting take on reducing crime, corruption and government. Could it possibly work? Carlfense, what's your take on the legality of it?

Part 1

I've been following the concepts of digital cash and encryption since I read the article in the August 1992 issue of Scientific American on"encrypted signatures." While I've only followed the Digitaliberty area for a few weeks, I can already see a number of points that do (and should!) strongly concern the average savvy individual:

1. How can we translate the freedom afforded by the Internet to ordinary life?

2. How can we keep the government from banning encryption, digital cash, and other systems that will improve our freedom?

A few months ago, I had a truly and quite literally "revolutionary" idea, and I jokingly called it "Assassination Politics": I speculated on the question of whether an organization could be set up to legally announce that it would be awarding a cash prize to somebody who correctly "predicted" the death of one of a list of violators of rights, usually either government employees, officeholders, or appointees. It could ask for anonymous contributions from the public, and individuals would be able send those contributions using digital cash.

I also speculated that using modern methods of public-key encryption and anonymous "digital cash," it would be possible to make such awards in such a way so that nobody knows who is getting awarded the money, only that the award is being given. Even the organization itself would have no information that could help the authorities find the person responsible for the prediction, let alone the one who caused the death.

It was not my intention to provide such a "tough nut to crack" by arguing the general case, claiming that a person who hires a hit man is not guilty of murder under libertarian principles. Obviously, the problem with the general case is that the victim may be totally innocent under libertarian principles, which would make the killing a crime, leading to the question of whether the person offering the money was himself guilty.

On the contrary; my speculation assumed that the "victim" is a government employee, presumably one who is not merely taking a paycheck of stolen tax dollars, but also is guilty of extra violations of rights beyond this. (Government agents responsible for the Ruby Ridge incident and Waco come to mind.) In receiving such money and in his various acts, he violates the "Non-aggression Principle" (NAP) and thus, presumably, any acts against him are not the initiation of force under libertarian principles.

The organization set up to manage such a system could, presumably, make up a list of people who had seriously violated the NAP, but who would not see justice in our courts due to the fact that their actions were done at the behest of the government. Associated with each name would be a dollar figure, the total amount of money the organization has received as a contribution, which is the amount they would give for correctly "predicting" the person's death, presumably naming the exact date. "Guessers" would formulate their "guess" into a file, encrypt it with the organization's public key, then transmit it to the organization, possibly using methods as untraceable as putting a floppy disk in an envelope and tossing it into a mailbox, but more likely either a cascade of encrypted anonymous remailers, or possibly public-access Internet locations, such as terminals at a local library, etc.

In order to prevent such a system from becoming simply a random unpaid lottery, in which people can randomly guess a name and date (hoping that lightning would strike, as it occasionally does), it would be necessary to deter such random guessing by requiring the "guessers" to include with their "guess" encrypted and untraceable "digital cash," in an amount sufficiently high to make random guessing impractical.

For example, if the target was, say, 50 years old and had a life expectancy of 30 years, or about 10,000 days, the amount of money required to register a guess must be at least 1/10,000th of the amount of the award. In practice, the amount required should be far higher, perhaps as much as 1/1000 of the amount, since you can assume that anybody making a guess would feel sufficiently confident of that guess to risk 1/1000th of his potential reward.

The digital cash would be placed inside the outer "encryption envelope," and could be decrypted using the organization's public key. The prediction itself (including name and date) would be itself in another encryption envelope inside the first one, but it would be encrypted using a key that is only known to the predictor himself. In this way, the organization could decrypt the outer envelope and find the digital cash, but they would have no idea what is being predicted in the innermost envelope, either the name or the date.

If, later, the "prediction" came true, the predictor would presumably send yet another encrypted "envelope" to the organization, containing the decryption key for the previous "prediction" envelope, plus a public key (despite its name, to be used only once!) to be used for encryption of digital cash used as payment for the award. The organization would apply the decryption key to the prediction envelope, discover that it works, then notice that the prediction included was fulfilled on the date stated. The predictor would be, therefore, entitled to the award. Nevertheless, even then nobody would actually know WHO he is!

It doesn't even know if the predictor had anything to do with the outcome of the prediction. If it received these files in the mail, in physical envelopes which had no return address, it would have burned the envelopes before it studied their contents. The result is that even the active cooperation of the organization could not possibly help anyone, including the police, to locate the predictor.

Also included within this "prediction-fulfilled" encryption envelope would be unsigned (not-yet-valid) "digital cash," which would then be blindly signed by the organization's bank and subsequently encrypted using the public key included. (The public key could also be publicized, to allow members of the public to securely send their comments and, possibly, further grateful remuneration to the predictor, securely.) The resulting encrypted file could be published openly on the Internet, and it could then be decrypted by only one entity: The person who had made that original, accurate prediction. The result is that the recipient would be absolutely untraceable.

The digital cash is then processed by the recipient by "unbinding" it, a principle which is explained in far greater detail by the article in the August 1992 issue of Scientific American. The resulting digital cash is absolutely untraceable to its source.

This overall system achieves a number of goals. First, it totally hides the identity of the predictor to the organization, which makes it unnecessary for any potential predictor to "trust" them to not reveal his name or location. Second, it allows the predictor to make his prediction without revealing the actual contents of that prediction until later, when he chooses to, assuring him that his "target" cannot possibly get early warning of his intent (and "failed" predictions need never be revealed). In fact, he needs never reveal his prediction unless he wants the award. Third, it allows the predictor to anonymously grant his award to anyone else he chooses, since he may give this digital cash to anyone without fear that it will be traced.

For the organization, this system also provides a number of advantages .By hiding the identity of the predictor from even it, the organization cannot be forced to reveal it, in either civil or criminal court. This should also shield the organization from liability, since it will not know the contents of any "prediction" until after it comes true. (Even so, the organization would be deliberately kept "poor" so that it would be judgment-proof.) Since presumably most of the laws the organization might be accused of violating would require that the violator have specific or prior knowledge, keeping itself ignorant of as many facts as possible, for as long as possible, would presumably make it very difficult to prosecute.

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Part 2

"At the Village Pizza shop, as they were sitting down to consume a pepperoni, Dorothy asked Jim, 'So what other inventions are you working on?" Jim replied, 'I've got a new idea, but it's really evolutionary. Literally REVOLUTIONARY.' 'Okay, Jim, which government are you planning to overthrow?,' she asked, playing along.

'All of them,' answered Jim."

Political Implications

Imagine for a moment that as ordinary citizens were watching the evening news, they see an act by a government employee or officeholder that they feel violates their rights, abuses the public's trust, or misuses the powers that they feel should be limited. A person whose actions are so abusive or improper that the citizenry shouldn't have to tolerate it.

What if they could go to their computers, type in the miscreant's name, and select a dollar amount: The amount they, themselves, would be willing to pay to anyone who "predicts" that officeholder's death. That donation would be sent, encrypted and anonymously, to a central registry organization, and be totaled, with the total amount available within seconds to any interested individual. If only 0.1% of the population, or one person in a thousand, was willing to pay $1 to see some government slimeball dead, that would be, in effect, a $250,000 bounty on his head.

Further, imagine that anyone considering collecting that bounty could do so with the mathematical certainty that he could not be identified, and could collect the reward without meeting, or even talking to, anybody who could later identify him. Perfect anonymity, perfect secrecy, and perfect security. And that, combined with the ease and security with which these contributions could be collected, would make being an abusive government employee an extremely risky proposition. Chances are good that nobody above the level of county commissioner would even risk staying in office.

Just how would this change politics in America? It would take far less time to answer, "What would remain the same?" No longer would we be electing people who will turn around and tax us to death, regulate us to death, or for that matter sent hired thugs to kill us when we oppose their wishes.

No military?

One of the attractive potential implications of such a system would be that we might not even need a military to protect the country. Any threatening or abusive foreign leader would be subject to the same contribution/assassination/reward system, and it would operate just as effectively over borders as it does domestically.

This country has learned, in numerous examples subsequent to many wars, that once the political disputes between leaders has ceased, we (ordinary citizens) are able to get along pretty well with the citizens of other countries. Classic examples are post-WWII Germany, Japan, and Italy, and post-Soviet Russia, the Eastern bloc, Albania, and many others.

Contrary examples are those in which the political dispute remains, such as North Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Cuba, Red China, and a few others. In all of these examples, the opposing leadership was NOT defeated, either in war or in an internal power struggle. Clearly, it is not the PEOPLE who maintain the dispute, but the leadership.

Consider how history might have changed if we'd been able to "bump off" Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, Ayatollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, Moammar Khadafi, and various others, along with all of their replacements if necessary, all for a measly few million dollars, rather than the billions of dollars and millions of lives that subsequent wars cost.

But that raises an interesting question, with an even more interesting answer. "If all this is so easy, why hasn't this been done before?" I mean, wars are destructive, costly, and dangerous, so why hasn't some smart politician figured out that instead of fighting the entire country, we could just 'zero' the few bad guys on the top?

The answer is quite revealing, and strikingly "logical": If we can kill THEIR leaders, they can kill OUR leaders too. That would avoid the war, but the leadership on both sides would be dead, and guess who is making the decisions about what to do? That's right, the LEADERS!

And the leaders (both theirs and ours!) would rather see 30,000,000 ordinary people die in WWII than lose their own lives, if they can get away with it. Same in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and numerous other disputes around the globe. You can see that as long as we continue to allow leaders, both "ours" and "theirs," to decide who should die, they will ALWAYS choose the ordinary people of each country.

One reason the leaders have been able to avoid this solution is simple: While it's comparatively easy to "get away with murder," it's a lot harder to reward the person who does it, and that person is definitely taking a serious risk. (Most murders are solved based on some prior relationship between the murder and victim, or observations of witnesses who know either the murderer or the victim.)

Historically, it has been essentially impossible to adequately motivate an assassin, ensuring his safety and anonymity as well, if only because it has been impossible to PAY him in a form that nobody can trace, and to ensure the silence of all potential witnesses. Even if a person was willing to die in the act, he would want to know that the people he chooses would get the reward, but if they themselves were identified they'd be targets of revenge.

All that's changed with the advent of public-key encryption and digital cash. Now, it should be possible to announce a standing offer to all comers that a large sum of digital cash will be sent to him in an untraceable fashion should he meet certain "conditions," conditions which don't even have to include proving (or, for that matter, even claiming) that he was somehow responsible for a death.

I believe that such a system has tremendous implications for the future of freedom. Libertarians in particular (and I'm a libertarian) should pay particular attention to the fact that this system "encourages" if not an anarchist outcome, at least a minarchist (minimal government) system, because no large governmental structure could survive in its current form.

In fact, I would argue that this system would solve a potential problem, occasionally postulated, with the adoption of libertarianism in one country, surrounded by non-libertarian states. It could have reasonably been suspected that in a gradual shift to a libertarian political and economic system, remnants of a non-libertarian system such as a military would have to survive, to protect society against the threats represented by foreign states. While certainly plausible, it would have been hard for an average naive person to imagine how the country would maintain a $250 billion military budget, based on voluntary contributions.

The easy answer, of course, is that military budgets of that size would simply not happen in a libertarian society. More problematic is the question of how a country would defend itself, if it had to raise its defenses by voluntary contribution. An equally simplistic answer is that this country could probably be defended just fine on a budget 1/2 to 1/3 of the current budget. True, but that misses the point.

The real answer is even simpler. Large armies are only necessary to fight the other large armies organized by the leadership of other, non-libertarian states, presumably against the will of their citizenry. Once the problem posed by their leadership is solved (as well as ours; either by their own citizenry by similar anonymous contributions, or by ours), there will be no large armies to oppose.

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Part 3

In the 1960's movie, "The Thomas Crown Affair," actor Steve McQueen plays a bored multi-millionaire who fights tedium by arranging well-planned high-yield bank robberies. He hires each of the robbers separately and anonymously, so that they can neither identify him nor each other. They arrive at the bank on schedule, separately but simultaneously, complete the robbery, then separate forever. He pays each robber out of his own funds, so that the money cannot be traced, and he keeps the proceeds of each robbery.

In my recent essay generally titled "Digitaliberty," or earlier "Assassination politics," I hypothesized that it should be possible to LEGALLY set up an organization which collects perfectly anonymous donations sent by members of the public, donations which instruct the organization to pay the amount to any person who correctly guesses the date of death of some named person, for example some un-favorite government employee or officeholder. The organization would total the amounts of the donations for each different named person, and publish that list (presumably on the Internet) on a daily or perhaps even an hourly basis, telling the public exactly how much a person would get for "predicting" the death of that particular target.

Moreover, that organization would accept perfectly anonymous, untraceable, encrypted "predictions" by various means, such as the Internet (probably through chains of encrypted anonymous remailers), U.S. mail, courier, or any number of other means. Those predictions would contain two parts: A small amount of untraceable "digital cash," inside the outer "digital envelope," to ensure that the "predictor" can't economically just randomly choose dates and names, and an inner encrypted data packet which is encrypted so that even the organization itself cannot decrypt it. That data packet would contain the name of the person whose death is predicted, and the date it is to happen.

This encrypted packet could also be published, still encrypted, on the Internet, so as to be able to prove to the world, later, that SOMEBODY made that prediction before it happened, and was willing to "put money on it" by including it outside the inner encrypted "envelope." The "predictor" would always lose the outer digital cash; he would only earn the reward if his (still-secret) prediction later became true. If, later on, that prediction came true, the "lucky" predictor would transmit the decrypt key to the organization, untraceably, which would apply it to the encrypted packet, and discover that it works, and read the prediction made hours, days, weeks, or even months earlier. Only then would the organization, or for that matter anyone else except the predictor, know the person or the date named.

Also included in that inner encrypted digital "envelope" would be a public key, generated by the predictor for only this particular purpose: It would not be his "normal" public key, obviously, because that public key would be traceable to him. Also present in this packet the predictor has earned. (This presentation could be done indirectly, by anintermediary, to prevent a bank from being able to refuse to deal with the organization.)

Those "digital cash" codes will then be encrypted using the public key included with the original prediction, and published in a number of locations, perhaps on the Internet in a number of areas, and available by FTP to anyone who's interested. (It is assumed that this data will somehow get to the original predictor. Since it will get to "everyone" on the Internet, it will presumably be impossible to know where the predictor is.) Note, however, that only the person who sent the prediction (or somebody he's given the secret key to in the interim) can decrypt that message, and in any case only he, the person who prepared the digital cash blanks, can fully "unbind" the digital cash to make it spendable, yet absolutely untraceable. (For a much more complete explanation of how so-called "digital cash" works, I refer you to the August 1992 issue of Scientific American.)

This process sounds intricate, but it (and even some more detail I haven't described above) is all necessary to:

1. Keep the donors, as well as the predictors, absolutely anonymous, not only to the public and each other, but also to the organization itself, either before or after the prediction comes true.

2. Ensure that neither the organization, nor the donors, nor the public, is aware of the contents of the "prediction" unless and until it later becomes true. (This ensures that none of the other participants can be "guilty" of knowing this, before it happens.)

3. Prove to the donors (including potential future predictors), the organization, and the public that indeed, somebody predicted a particular death on a particular date, before it actually happened.

4. Prove to the donors and the public (including potential future predictors) that the amount of money promised was actually paid to whoever made the prediction that later came true. This is important, obviously, because you don't want any potential predictor to doubt whether he'll get the money if he makes a successful prediction, and you don't want any potential donor to doubt that his money is actually going to go to a successful predictor.

5. Prevent the organization and the donors and the public from knowing, for sure, whether the predictor actually had anything to do with the death predicted. This is true even if (hypothetically) somebody is later caught and convicted of a murder, which was the subject of a successful "prediction": Even after identifying the murderer through other means, it will be impossible for anyone to know if the murderer and the predictor were the same person.

6. Allow the predictor, if he so chooses, to "gift" the reward (possibly quite anonymously) to any other person, one perhaps totally unaware of the source of the money, without anyone else knowing of this.

Even the named "target" (the "victim") is also assured of something: He his best "friend," could collect the reward, absolutely anonymously, should they "predict" his death correctly. At that point, he will have no friends.

This may represent the ultimate in compartmentalization of information: Nobody knows more than he needs to, to play his part in the whole arrangement. Nobody can turn anyone else in, or make a mistake that identifies the other participants. Yet everyone can verify that the "game" is played "fairly": The predictor gets his money, as the donors desire. Potential future predictors are satisfied (in a mathematically provable fashion) that all previous successful predictors were paid their full rewards, in a manner that can't possibly be traced. The members of the public are assured that, if they choose to make a donation, it will be used as promised. This leads me to a bold assertion: I claim that, aside from the practical difficulty and perhaps, theoretical impossibility of identifying either the donors or the predictor, it is very likely that none of the participants, with the (understandable) hypothetical exception of a "predictor" who happens to know that he is also a murderer, could actually be considered "guilty" of any violation of black-letter law. Furthermore, none of the participants, including the central organization, is aware, either before or after the "prediction" comes true, that any other participant was actually in violation of any law, or for that matter would even know (except by watching the news) that any crime had actually been committed.

After all, the donors are merely offering gifts to a person who makes a successful prediction, not for any presumed responsibility in a killing, and the payment would occur even if no crime occurred. The organization is merely coordinating it all, but again isolating itself so that it cannot know from whom the money comes, or to whom the money eventually is given, or whether a crime was even committed. (Hypothetically, the "predictor" could actually be the "victim," who decides to kill himself and "predict" this, giving the proceeds of the reward to his chosen beneficiary, perhaps a relative or friend. Ironically, this might be the best revenge he can muster, "cheating the hangman," as it were.)

In fact, the organization could further shield itself by adopting a stated policy that no convicted (or, for that matter, even SUSPECTED) killers could receive the payment of a reward. However, since the recipient of the reward is by definition unidentified and untraceable even in theory, this would be a rather hollow assurance since it has no way to prevent such a payment from being made to someone responsible.

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Part 4

In part 3, I claimed that an organization could quite legally operate, assisted by encryption, international data networking, and untraceable digital cash, in a way that would (indirectly) hasten the death of named people, for instance hated government employees and officeholders. I won't attempt to "prove" this, for reasons that I think will be obvious. First, even if such an operation were indeed "legal," that fact alone would not stop its opponents from wanting to shut it down. However, there is also another way of looking at it: If this system works as I expect it would, even its claimed "illegality" would be irrelevant, because it could operate over international borders and beyond the legal reach of any law-abiding government.

Perhaps the most telling fact, however, is that if this system was as effective as it appears it would be, no prosecutor would dare file charges against any participant, and no judge would hear the case, because no matter how long the existing list of "targets," there would always be room for one or two more. Any potential user of this system would recognize that an assault on this system represents a threat to its future availability, and would act accordingly by donating money to target anyone trying to shut it down.

Even so, I think I should address two charges which have been made, apparently quite simplistically, claiming that an implementation of this idea would violate the law. Specifically: "Conspiracy to commit murder" and "misprision of felony."

As I understand it, in order to have a "conspiracy" from a criminal standpoint, it is necessary to have at least two people agree to commit a crime, and have some overt act in furtherance of that crime.

Well, this charge already "strikes out" because in the plan I described, none of the participants agrees with ANYONE to commit a crime. None of the participants even informs anyone else that he will be committing a crime, whether before or after the fact. In fact, the only crime appears (hypothetically; this assumes that a crime was actually committed) to be a murder committed by a single individual, a crime unknown to the other participants, with his identity similarly unknown.

Remember, the "prediction" originally sent in by the predictor was fully encrypted, so that the organization (or anyone else, for that matter) would be unable to figure out the identity of the person whose death was predicted, or the date on which it was predicted to occur. Thus, the organization is incapable of "agreeing" with such a thing, and likewise the donors as well. Only if the prediction later came true would the decrypt key arrive, and only then would the organization (and the public) be made aware of the contents. Even then, it's only a "prediction," so even then, nobody is actually aware of any crime which can be associated with the predictor.

"Misprision of Felony"

This crime, sort of a diluted form of "accessory before and/or after the fact," was claimed to qualify by "Tim of Angle," who subsequent to my answer to him on this subject has totally failed to support his initial claim. (A recent curiosity is that this crime is one that has been charged against Michael Fortier, the person who claims he helped OKC bombing suspect Tim McVeigh "case the joint" at the Federal building.)

I include it here, nevertheless, because his simplistic (and un-careful) reading of my idea led him to perhaps the "closest" law that one might allege that the participants would have broken. Tim claimed: No. That's called "misprision of felony" and makes you an accessory before the fact. Arguably, under the felony murder rule you could get TOA> capital punishment in a state that has such.

However, I did a little library research, checking Black's Law Dictionary. Here is the entry for this item: "Misprision of felony. The offense of concealing a felony committed by another, but without such previous concert with or subsequent assistance to the felon as would make the party concealing an accessory before or after the fact. United States v. Perlstein, C.C.A.N.J., 126 F.2d 789, 798. Elements of the crime are that the principal committed and completed the felony alleged, that the defendant had full knowledge of that fact, that the defendant failed to notify the authorities, and that defendant took an affirmative step to conceal the crime. U.S. v. Ciambrone, C.A. Nev., 750 F.2d 1416, 1417. Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony recognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, is guilty of the federal crime of misprision of felony. 18 U.S.C.A 4." See also Obstructing Justice in Black's Law Dictionary.

The only "element" of this crime which is arguably satisfied is the first: Some person other than the defendant for "misprision of felony") committed a crime. The second element fails miserably: "...that the defendant had full knowledge of that fact... " My previous commentary makes it clear that far from "full knowledge of that fact," other participants are carefully prevented from having ANY "knowledge of that fact." The third element, "..that the defendant failed to notify the authorities..." is also essentially non-existent: No other participants have any information as to the identity of a predictor, or his location, or for that matter whether he has had any involvement in any sort of crime. In fact, it would be possible for each of the other participants to deliver (anonymously, presumably) copies of all correspondence they have sent, to the police or other agency, and that correspondence would not help the authorities even slightly to identify a criminal or even necessarily a crime.

In fact, normal operation of this organization would be to publicize "all" correspondence it receives, in order to provide feedback to the public to assure them that all participants are fulfilling their promises and receiving their rewards. This publication would presumably find its way to the police, or it could even be mailed to them on a "fail[ing] to notify authorities." Nevertheless, none of this material could help any authorities with their investigations, to their dismay.

The fourth and last element of the crime of "misprision of felony", "...and that defendant took an affirmative step to conceal the crime," would totally fail. The organization would not " conceal" the crime. In fact, it will have no ability to do anything to the contrary, if for no other reason that it has no knowledge of the crime! And as described above, it would carefully avoid having access to any information that could help solve the crime, and thus it would escape any obligations along these lines.

Summary:

In hindsight, it is not surprising that such an organization could operate legally within the U.S., although at least initially not without political opposition. First, this is at least nominally supposed to be a "free country," which should mean that police and other authorities aren't able to punish behavior just because they don't like it.

Secondly, it is obvious that most laws today were originally written during an era in which laws assumed that "conspirators" at least knew each other, had met each other, could identify each other, or had (at least!) talked to each other. On the contrary, in my scenario none of the participants even know on what continent any of the others reside, let alone their country, city, or street. They don't know what they look like, sound like, or for that matter even "type like": None of their prose, save a few sparse "predictions," ever gets communicated to anyone else, so even text-comparison programs would fail to "target" anyone.

Equally surprising (to those who originally wrote the laws against "conspiracy") would be "Person A's" ability to satisfy himself that "Person B" deserves the award, without knowing that "Person B" is (or is not) actually responsible for a particular death.

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Part 5

In the previous four notes on the subject of Digitaliberty, I've suggested that this concept (collecting anonymous donations to, in effect, "purchase" the death of an un-favorite government employee) would force a dramatic reduction of the size of government at all levels, as well as achieving what will probably be a "minarchist" (minimal government) state at a very rapid rate. Furthermore, I pointed out that I thought that this effect would not merely affect a single country or continent, but might in fact spread through all countries essentially simultaneously.

But in addition to such (apparently) grandiose claims, it occurs to me that there must be other changes to society that would simultaneously occur with the adoption of such a system. After all, a simplistic view of my idea might lead one to the conclusion that there would be almost no governmental structure left after society had been transformed. Since our current "criminal justice system" today is based totally on the concept of "big government," this would lead a naive person to wonder how concepts such as "justice," "fairness," "order," and for that matter protection of individual rights can be accomplished in such a society.

Indeed, one common theme I've seen in criticisms of my idea is the fear that this system would lead to "anarchy." The funny thing about this objection is that, technically, this could easily be true. But "anarchy" in real life may not resemble anything like the "anarchy" these people claim to fear, which leads me to respond with a quote whose origin I don't quite remember:

"Anarchy is not lack of order. Anarchy is lack of ORDERS."

People presumably will continue to live their lives in a calm, ordered manner. Or, at least as calm and ordered as they WANT to. It won't be "wild in the streets," and they won't bring cannibalism back as a national sport, or anything like that.

It occurs to me that probably one of the best ways to demonstrate that my idea, "assassination politics" (perhaps ineptly named, in view of the fact that its application is far greater than mere politics), would not result in "lack of order" is to show that most if not all of the DESIRABLE functions of the current so-called "criminal justice system" will be performed after its adoption. This is true even if they will be accomplished through wholly different methods and, conceivably, in entirely different ways than the current system does.

I should probably first point out that it is not my intention to re-write the book of minarchist theory. I would imagine that over the years, there has been much written about how individuals and societies would function absent a strong central government, and much of that writing is probably far more detailed and well-thought-out than anything I'll describe here.

One reason that ALMOST ANY "criminal justice system" would be better and more effective than the one we currently possess is that, contrary to the image that officialdom would try to push, anyone whose job depends on "crime" has a strong vested interest in maintaining a high level of crime, not eliminating it. After all, a terrorized society is one that is willing to hire many cops and jailers and judges and lawyers, and to pay them high salaries. A safe, secure society is not willing to put up with that. The "ideal" situation, from the limited and self-interested standpoint of the police and jailers, is one that maximizes the number of people in prison, yet leaves most of the really dangerous criminals out in the streets, in order to maintain justification for the system. That seems to be exactly the situation we have today, which is not surprising when you consider that the police have had an unusually high level of input into the "system" for many decades.

The first effect of my idea would be, I think, to generally eliminate prohibitions against acts which have no victims, or "victimless crimes." Classic examples are laws against drug sales and use, gambling, prostitution, pornography, etc. That's because the average (unpropagandized) individual will have very little concern or sympathy for punishing an act which does not have a clear victim. Without a large, central government to push the propaganda, the public will view these acts as certainly not "criminal," even if still regarded as generally undesirable by a substantial minority for a few years. Once you get rid of such laws, the price of currently illegal drugs would drop dramatically, probably by a factor of 100. Crime caused by the need to get money to pay for these drugs would drop drastically, even if you assume that drug usage increased due to the lowering of the price.

Despite this massive reduction in crime, perhaps as much as 90%, the average person is still going to want to know what "my system" would do about the residual, "real" crime rate. You know, murder, rape, robbery, burglary, and all that. Well, in the spirit of the idea, a simplistic interpretation would suggest that an individual could target the criminal who victimizes him, which would put an end to that criminal career.

Some might object, pointing out that the criminal is only identified in a minority of crimes. That objection is technically correct, but it's also a bit misleading. The truth is that the vast majority of "victim"-type crime is committed by a relatively tiny fraction of the population who are repeat criminals. It isn't necessary to identify For example, even if the probability of a car thief getting caught, per theft, is only 5%, there is at least a 40% probability of getting caught after 10 thefts, and a 65% chance after 20 thefts. A smart car-theft victim would be happy to donate money targeting ANY discovered car-thief, not necessarily just the one who victimized him.

The average car-owner would be wise to offer such donations occasionally, as "insurance" against the possibility of his being victimized someday: An average donation of 1 cent per day per car would constitute $10,000 per day for a typical city of 1 million cars. Assuming that amount is far more than enough to get a typical car thief's "friends" to "off" him, there is simply no way that a substantial car-theft subculture could possibly be maintained.

Another alternative is that insurance companies would probably get into the act: Since they are going to be the financial victims of thefts of their insured's property, it is reasonable to suppose that they would be particularly inclined to deter such theft. It is conceivable that current-day insurance companies would transmogrify themselves into investigation/deterrence agencies, while maintaining their insurance role, in view of the fact that they have the most to lose. This is particularly true because if "assassination politics" (as applied to criminals and crime) comes about, they could then actually DO SOMETHING about the problem, rather than merely reporting on the statistics to their customers and stockholders.

Such companies would also have a strong motivation to provide a workable system of rewards for solving crimes and identifying criminals, rewards that (naturally enough!) can be given out totally anonymously.

While I would like to talk about the other advantage of this new kind of justice, the fact that politicians and other government employees would no longer have de-facto immunity in most cases, the reality is that since we would no longer HAVE "politicians and other government employees," to mention that advantage would be redundant.

The principle is valid, however: In today's system, you can have people known to be guilty of crimes, but not prosecuted because they are part of "the system." Classic examples would be heroes of the right (Oliver North) and heroes of the left (Jim Wright) who either escape prosecution or conviction for "political" or "bureaucratic" reasons. With "assassination politics" that would simply never happen.

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Part 6

A frequent initial belief among people who have recently heard of my "assassination politics" idea is the fear that this system will somehow be "out of control": It would end up causing the death of ordinary, "undeserving" people.

This system, however, will not be without its own kind of "control. "Not a centralized control, decidable by a single individual, but a decentralized system in which everyone gets an implicit "vote." A good analogy might be to consider a society in which everyone's house thermostat is controlled to operate at a temperature which is set for the entire country. Each person's control input is taken as a "vote," whether to get hotter, colder, or to stay the same temperature. The central control computer adjusts the national setpoint temperature in order to equalize the number of people who want the temperature colder and hotter. Each house is at the same, nationally set temperature, however. Clearly, no one individual is in control of the setting. Nevertheless, I think it would be generally agreed that this system would never produce a REALLY "off the wall" temperature setting, simply because so many people's inputs are used to determine the output. Sure, if a group of 10,000 kids decided (assisted by the Internet) together to screw with the system, and they all set their houses' thermostat inputs to "hotter," they could SLIGHTLY increase the overall setting, but since there are probably about 100 million separate dwellings in the U.S., their fiddlings will be drowned out by the vast majority of the population's desires. Is this system "out of control"? True, it is out of the "control" of any single individual, but nevertheless it is well within the control of the population as a whole.

It turns out that "assassination politics" actually has a rather similar control mechanism to the one I've described above. First, I've pointed out that if I were to operate a centralized system such as this, I'd only accept donations naming people who are in violation of the "Non-Initiation Of Force Principle" (NIOFP), well known to libertarians. By this standard, government employees (who have accepted paychecks paid for with funds stolen from citizenry by taxes) and criminals whose crimes actually had a victim would be included. Let's call this hypothetical organization "Organization A," or OrgA for short.

True, somebody else might be a little less scrupulous, accepting donations for the termination of ANYBODY regardless of whether he "deserves" his fate (call them "Organization B," or OrgB, for short.) Most potential donors (who, I suggest, would have "typical" levels of scruples) would see that if they patronize OrgB, their interests wouldn't be protected. For example, OrgB (if it survives and thrives) might later come back to target them, because of some other donor. OrgA would not. Naturally, our "ethical" donors don't want this, so they would choose to give their donation to the most "ethical" organization that will accept it. This maximizes the donors' benefit, and minimizes the potential harm.

Since BOTH organizations will accept donations for "deserving" victims, while only OrgB will accept them for "just anybody," it is reasonable to conclude that (capitalism being what it is) OrgB's rates (the percentage of the price it keeps as profit) can be and will be higher for its donations (that's because there is less competition in its area of specialization.) Thus, it would be more economical to target "deserving" people through OrgA , and thus donors will be drawn to it. In addition, OrgA will become larger, more credible, believable and trustworthy, and more potential "guessers" (assassins?) will "work" its system, and for lower average potential payments (all else being equal.) Even so, and ironically, the average donation level for people listed by OrgA would likely be higher, since (if we assume these are "deserving" people) more people will be contributing towards their demise.

After all, if a potential donor wants to "hit" some government bigwig, there will be PLENTY of other donors to share the cost with. Millions of donations of $1 to $10 each would be common and quite economical. On the other hand, if you just selected a target out of the telephone directory, an "undeserving" target, you'll probably be the only person wanting to see him dead, which means that you'll probably have to foot the whole bill of perhaps $5K to $10K if you want to see any "action. " Add to that OrgB 's "cut," which will probably be 50%, and you're talking $10K to $20K. I contend that the likelihood of this kind of thing actually happening will be quite low, for "undeserving victims."

Now, the die-hards among you will probably object to the fact that even this tiny residual possibility is left. But consider: Even today it would be quite "possible" for you to pick a name randomly out of a list, find him and kill him yourself. Does this frequently happen? Apparently not. For just one thing, there's no real motive. Unless you can show that the application of "assassination politics" would dramatically increase the likelihood of such incidents, I suggest that this "problem" will likely not be a problem after all.

For a while, I thought that the "lack of a motive" protection was momentarily overturned by a hypothetical: I thought, suppose a person used this system as part of a sophisticated extortion scheme, in which he sends an anonymous message to some rich character, saying something like "pay me a zillion dollars anonymously, or I put out a digital contract on you." For a while, this one had me stumped. Then, I realized that an essential element in this whole play was missing: If this could be done ONCE, it could be done a dozen times. And the victim of such an extortion scheme has no assurance that it won't happen again, even if he pays off, so ironically he has no motivation to pay off the extortion. Think about it: The only reason to make the payment is to remove the threat. If making the payment can't guarantee to the target that the threat is removed, he has no reason to make the payment. And if the target has no reason to make the payment, the extortionist has no reason to make the threat!

Another, related (and equally simplistic) fear is that political minorities will be preferentially targeted. For example, when I pointed out that "establishment" political leaders would probably "go" quite quickly, one wag suggested to me that "libertarian leaders" could likewise be targeted. Such a suggestion reflects a serious misunderstanding of political philosophy, and libertarians in particular: I consider it obvious (to me, at least) that libertarians NEED no leaders. (You don't need leaders if you don't want to control a population, or achieve political power. The only reason libertarians "need" leaders today is to take places in the government and (then) to shut it down.) And if my idea is implemented, "libertarian leaders" represent no more of a threat to anyone than the average libertarian citizen.

Fully recognizing this, another (and far more credible) person thought a while, and in a proud revelation suggested that one way that the establishment would "fight back" is to convert to a government that is based on fully decentralized authority, as opposed to the leader-centric system we have today. Such a system could not be attacked by killing individual people, any more than you can kill a tree by pulling off a single leaf. His "solution" was, in effect, to totally disband the current government and turn it over to the public at large, where it highly de-centralized system that is not controlled by a tiny fraction of the population in a structure called a "government," essentially identical to his idea. So in effect, the only way the government can survive is to totally surrender. And once it surrenders, the people win. And in practice, it will have no alternative.

Will this idea be "out of control"? To a great extent, that depends on what your definition of the word "control." I have come to believe that "assassination politics" is a political Rorschach (ink-blot) test: What you think of it is strongly related to your political philosophy.

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Part 7

Dear libertarian Friend,

I very much understand the concerns you voiced about my idea which I call, "Assassination Politics," because this essay is nothing if it is not radical and extreme. I wrote it, in the middle of last year, partly because I think libertarianism and libertarians in particular need to address what is, if not a contradiction," is at least an intolerable reality: On the one hand, we are told not to initiate aggression, but on the other we are aggressed against by the government every time it collects a tax.

I much appreciate the way some people I know have "dropped out" of the system, and the guts that such a tactic requires. But that's the problem, I think: Only those with the "guts" do it, which gives the government fewer targets so that it can spend more time attacking the few who oppose it. The reality is that the government STILL collects taxes, and it STILL uses that money to violate our rights. We all know that's wrong.

My position is quite simple: If tax collection constitutes aggression, then anyone doing it or assisting in the effort or benefiting from the proceeds thereof is a criminal. This is quite analogous to current law which prosecutes co-conspirators. While I am not holding out "current law" as some sort of gold-standard of reasonableness that we must always accept, on the other hand I think it's plausible to use it to show that once we have come to the conclusion that taxation is theft, the prescription follows directly by a form of reasoning allegedly acceptable to society: It is reasonable to "attack the attackers" and their co-conspirators, and everyone who is employed by the government is thus a co-conspirator, even if he is not directly involved in the collection of those taxes. That's because he IS involved in benefiting from the proceeds of these taxes, and he presumably provides a certain level of "backup" to the young thugs that governmental organizations often hire.

I realize, and you should too, that the "non-aggression principle" says nothing about the EXTENT of the self-defense/retaliation that one might reasonably employ in defending one's own rights: In a sense, that sounds like an omission because it at least suggests that a person might "unreasonably" defend himself with lethal force when far less drastic means might normally be called for. For what it's worth, I think most people will behave responsibly. But I think it is pretty straightforward to argue that whatever means are necessary to stop the attack, are reasonable given the terms of the non-aggression principle: If a given means are known to be inadequate to actually stop the attack, then further and more serious means are reasonable and called-for.

To set up a reasonable analogy, if I'm walking down the canonical "dark alley" and am accosted by a man wielding a knife threatening me with it, it is presumably reasonable for me to pull a gun and threaten back, or possibly take the encounter to the final conclusion of gunfire. Even if I should choose to hold my fire and test to determine whether my actions deterred him, I can't see that this possibility binds me morally. And should he advance, despite the gun, as if to attack, I should feel no remorse in shooting him and taking myself out of danger. If you accept the premises so far, you apparently accept the principle that escalation of the self-defense/retaliation is reasonable as long as if the current level of returned counter-threat is inadequate to stop the aggression initiated by the other party. To believe otherwise is to believe that ultimately, you are obligated to accept a certain high level of aggression simply because you do not have the resources (yet) to resist it. I totally reject this concept, as I hope you would.

So if, hypothetically, I could have an anonymous conversation with a hard-nosed government employee, and asked him, "If I killed one of your agents, would you stop trying to collect that tax from me," his predictable reaction would be, "no, we would continue to try to collect that tax." In fact, he would probably hasten to add that he would try to have me prosecuted for murder, as well! If I were to ask if killing ten agents would stop them, again they would presumably say that this would not change their actions.

The conclusion is, to me, obvious: Clearly, there is no practical limit to the amount of self-defense that I would need to protect my assets from the government tax collector, and to actually stop the theft, so I suggest that logic requires that I be morally and ethically allowed (under libertarian principles) to use whatever level of self-defense I choose.

You raised another objection, that quite frankly I believe is invalid. I believe you implied that until a specific level of escalation is reached ( such as the Feds showing up on your doorstep, etc) then it is not legitimate to defend oneself. Delicately, I must disagree. As we all well know, government ultimately operates primarily not on actual, applied force, but simply the threat of future force if you do not comply. True, there are people who have decided to call the government's bluff and simply drop out, but the reality is that this is not practical for most individuals today. This is no accident: The government makes it difficult to drop out, because they extort the cooperation of banks and potential employers and others with which you would otherwise be able to freely contract. In any case, I fail to see how not "dropping out" makes one somehow morally obligated to pay a tax (or tolerate the collection of one). I trust you did not inadvertently mean to suggest this.

The reason, morally, we are entitled to shoot the mugger if he waves the knife in our face is that he has threatened us with harm, in this case to our lives, but the threat the government represents to the average citizen (loss of one's entire assets) is just as real, albeit somewhat different. Since government is a past reality, and a present reality, and has the immediate prospects of being a future reality as well, I sincerely believe that the average citizen can legitimately consider himself CONTINUOUSLY threatened. The aggression has already occurred, in continuously occurring, and has every prospect of continuing to occur. If anything would justify fighting back, this would.

To continue the analogy, if you've been repeatedly mugged by the same guy down the same dark alley for each day of last month, that DOES NOT mean that you've somehow consented to the situation, or that your rights to your assets have somehow been waived. With my "Assassination Politics" essay, I simply proposed that we (as libertarians as well as being ordinary citizens) begin to treat aggression by government as being essentially equivalent to aggression by muggers, rapists, robbers, and murderers, and view their acts as a continuing series of aggressions. Seen this way, it should not be necessary to wait for their NEXT aggression; they will have always have been aggressing and they will always BE aggressing, again and again, until they are stopped for good.

At that point, the question shifted to one of practicality: Sure, theoretically we might morally have the "right" to protect ourselves with lethal force, but if they have any reputation at all, government agents have a habit of showing up in large numbers when they actually apply direct force. To take a position that you can only defend yourself when they've chosen the "where" and "when" of the confrontation is downright suicidal, and I hope you understand that I would consider any such restriction to be highly unfair and totally impractical. Understand, too, that the reason we're still stuck under the thumb of the government is that to the extent it's true, "we've" been playing by THEIR rules, not by our own. By our own rules, THEY are the aggressors and we should be able to treat them accordingly, on our own terms, at our own convenience, whenever we choose, especially when we feel the odds are on our side.

I understand, obviously, that the "no initiation of aggression" principle is still valid, but please recognize that I simply don't consider it to be a valid counter-argument to "Assassination Politics," at least as applied to targets who happen to be government agents. They've "pre-aggressed," and I don't see any limit to the defenses I should be able to muster to stop that aggression completely and permanently. Not that I don't see a difference between different levels of guilt: I fully recognize that some of them are far worse than others, and I would certainly not treat a lowly Forest Service grunt in the same fashion as an ATF sniper.

Now, there is one more thing that I would hope we could get straight: As I originally "invented" this system, it occurred to me that there could be certain arguments that it needed to be "regulated" somehow; "unworthy" targets shouldn't be killed, etc. The "problem" is, what I've "invented" may (as I now believe it to be) actually a "discovery," in a sense: I now believe this kind of system was always inevitable, merely waiting for the triad of the Internet, digital cash, and good encryption in order to provide the technical underpinnings for the entire system. If that is genuinely the case, then there is no real way to control it, except by free-market principles.

It would be impossible, for example, to set up some sort of "Assassination Politics Dictator," who decides who will live and who will die, because competition in the system will always rise to supply every demand, albeit at possibly a very high price. And if you believe the maxim that "absolute power corrupts absolutely," you wouldn't want to accept any form of centralized control (even, perhaps, that of your own!), because any such control would eventually be corrupted. Most rational people recognize this, and I do too. I would not have invented a system where "Jim Bell" gets to make "all the decisions." Quite the contrary, the system I've described absolutely prevents such centralization. That, quite frankly, is the novelty and dare I say it, the beauty of this idea. I believe that it simply cannot be hijacked by centralized political control.

As I pointed out in the essay, if I were running one of the organizations accepting those donations and offering those prizes, I would selectively list only those targets who I am genuinely satisfied are guilty of the violation of the "non-aggression principle." But as a practical matter, there is no way that I could stop a DIFFERENT organization from being set up and operating under DIFFERENT moral and ethical principles, especially if it operated anonymously, as I anticipate the "Assassination Politics"-type systems will be. Thus, I'm forced to accept the reality that I can't dictate a "strongly limited" system that would "guarantee" no "unjustified" deaths: I can merely control my little piece of the earth and not assist in the abuse of others. I genuinely believe, however, that the operation of this system would be a vast improvement over the status quo.

This, I argue, is somewhat analogous to an argument that we should be entitled to own firearms, despite the fact that SOME people will use them wrongly/immorally/illegally. The ownership is a right even though it may ultimately allow or enable an abuse that you consider wrong and punishable. I consider the truth of such an argument to be obvious and correct, and I know you would too.

I realize that this lacks the crisp certitude of safety which would be reassuring to the average, "pre-libertarian" individual. But you are not the "average individual" and I trust that as long-time libertarians you will recognize rights must

T_O_Bull · December 1, 2009