Re: e-$ and AP

["Jean-Francois Avon" <jf_avon@citenet.net>]

On 21 Apr 99 07:28:51 EDT, not provided not provided wrote:

>"Jean-Francois Avon" <jf_avon@citenet.net> wrote:
>On 20 Apr 99 07:35:39 EDT, not provided not provided wrote:


>>The actual market for hit men differ radically from an AP-generated >market.
>
>There will still be very high costs associated with the hit man profession. 

Agreed.  But AP will diminish the opportunity cost substantially in several 
way:

1) due to anonymity, all the expenditure related to keeping a client base 
(advertizing, etc) while at the same time maintaining sufficient anonimity to 
avoid being caught

2) contracts could get picked only on a most-profitable basis

3) all the population has access to the hit list and the bounty.


>A
>person would have to be extremely competent to succeed in this vocation.

As a professionnal, yes, but as a one-timer, not necessarily.  One of Bell's 
assumption (and I agree with it), is that AP has the potential to turn 
*anybody* into a potential hit man.

Generally speaking, people who like power attract a certain kind of people in 
thier entourage.  As an exemple under AP, even Saddam would not be safe: any 
one of his staff, regardless of blood connection with him, could figure out a 
way to kill him, fully anonymously collect the bounty and retire. Unless you 
assume that only people with great ethics congregates with Saddam...  :-)

The risk to even the most hardened dictator or SOB will be likely to be too 
much for him to stomach because the menace will come from within, from his 
direct and hopefully trusty entourage.  That is the major point for the 
efficiency of AP. 

>But
>if you're extremely competent many lucrative but lower risk vocations compete
>for your services.

I agree.  This is why AP is likely to get used only for extreme cases.  Non-
professionnal will be willing to take chances of not being caught if the prize 
is big, but otherwise, privatized conflict resolution will probably emerge 
(since the court do not recognize certain things and are not likely to do so 
in a near future)

>A heavyweight champion can make $50 million in an evening, so all the best
>athletes flock to that prize, right? No, the most of the best athletes find
>the costs of being a heavyweight boxer too high since they can still make a
>lot of money in other sports, with less risk.

Agreed, but again, you do not consider all of the aspects of AP when saying 
that.  Under AP, anybody with an opportunity and the guts to do it could 
become a one-time hitman and retire rich.  And since AP hitmen will likely be 
working from a relatively close distance within the victim's entourage, they 
don't need to limit themselves to the usual hitmen methods.  Anything goes.

Can Saddam trust his mechanic to work on his limo's brakes?  Can he trust his 
armourer to supply him with safe ammo?  Can he trust his cook?  Who supplies 
him with his tobacco?  How about his mistresses?  Or his pilots?  Maybe the 
general in charge of the scheduling or maintenance of his plane is not 
trustable...  And so on, ad nauseam...

>Most of the people competent to be successful hit men will have lucrative
>opportunities in fields with less risk, less cost, and that's where they'll
>go.

I agree that the conventionnal job is probably a "labour of love"...  ROTFL!

>AP will probably be tried, but I'd expect it to flutter and die out or reach
>equilibrium at a fairly low level.

Low level, yes, but only because SOB will learn fairly quickly that from now 
on, it's "live and let live or get killed..."

Ciao

jfa

Microsoft: where do you want to get stuck today?