Re: e-$ and AP

[The Sheriff <sheriff@speakeasy.org>]

>[note for newbies: AP = Assasination Politics system by Jim Bell]
>
>On Wed, 21 Apr 1999 05:21:33 -0400, The Sheriff wrote:
>
>>Here's the one thing that bothers me about AP -- if it's either
>>legalized or simply becomes commonly exepted, what's to keep it
>>from becomming a tool to weed out "undesirables?"  Folks with
>>wierd hair-doos, tattoos, or studs through their woo-woos, in
>>other words.  Granted, everybody's got a right to have an opinion
>>about everybody else's lifestyle.  The problem is that if you get
>>a misfit subculture that is a minority but sticks out like a sore
>>thumb, what's to keep "fed-up neighbors/relatives" and the like
>>from putting prices on the heads of such individuals?  Certainly
>>not majority rule.
>
>It won't happen that way.  Your analysis lacks the inverse reaction: weirdos
>unconsciously congregating by each putting an independent buck on the head of
>a redneck...
>
>As soon as you could identify a group, it could become a victim.  Study
>clearly show that if only 1% of a population carries a concealed weapon,
>crime
>rate on the honest citizen go down dramatically (around 75 to 85%
>depending on
>the crime).  Which redneck will like to run the risk of being killed?  "Which
>one of you sirs will volunteer?".

While your point about concealed weapons is clear -- and as far as
I'm concerned, correct -- the rest of the two previous paragraphs
were a little fuzzy.

>How will the AP market evolve?  I dunno.  Initially, it will probably
>dominated by prizes on dictators and notorious SOB's.  As society evolve over
>decades, will the politics stabilize to a Natural Rights level?  If so, the
>prizes amount and frequency will probably decrease.  What will happen next?
>Will it bring us to a society built out of several groups targetting each
>others?  If the possible outcome of a group's win yields no advantages to the
>winner, will the fight keep going?  I dunno, it depends on Human Nature.
>
>>The fact of the matter is that if you create a situation like
>>this where raw democracy (the free market system, if you will)
>>is allowed to be the deciding factor when it comes to the kind
>>of people who are allowed to live versus the kind of people who
>>are shot in the head, you are paving the way to tyranny.
>
>Your analysis is not consistent with reality again.  People will not get
>"allowed" to live, they will simply mind their own business and live without
>making enemies.  "Live and let live or get killed", "MYOB or else" will be
>the
>rule.

Au contraire.  I make quite a few enemies simply even when I DO
mind my own business.  I've had the...pleasure of meeting a certain
number of individuals who would be happy to execute me for my
choice of religion, should they find it out.  It wouldn't matter
if I was living under a rock when those folks found me out -- they'd
yank me out from under it and have their way with me.

I will certainly give you that, given the general mindset of the
average American (simply drawing on my experience), people being
"allowed" to live (at present, anyway) isn't likely.  At the same
time, however, I came to my conclusion by taking today's situation
to what I believe is the logical conclusion -- people don't simply
let live in America.  If you're unhappy with anything or anybody,
you either lead a protest, file a lawsuit, pass a law, ratify an
ammendment, or some combination of these and other recourses.  It
has gotten to the point that folks simply won't let much be any-
more.  Even if you spilled the hot coffee on yourself, McDonald's
winds up paying .75 million dolars, rather than you taking respon-
sibility for your own actions.

The above mentioned tools are abused these days because everybody
wants repayment/revenge for what happens to them, even if it's
eccentially their own damn fault.  As such, if AP was publically
available, it is my contention that it, too, will be abused in much
the same way that the civil court system has.

>And NO, people won't resort to killing to settle petty disputes.  In any
>dispute, parties know each others, which puts the risk on both parties.  If
>one has the other eliminated, he'd better enjoy his victory right now for he
>won't have a long time to do so.  Rich people have more money to allocate to
>eliminate adversaries, poor people have more solidarity and often more
>family.
>Beside, by the nature of the system, since hit-men will often be insiders,
>can
>the rich man trust his maid?  His chauffeur?  His cook?  His mechanic fixing
>his limo's brakes?

Yeah, if he pays them enough.  In any event, you don't account for
the possibility of multiple enemies.  Certainly, if two people are
in the midst of a heated conflict and one of them winds up dead,
the first guess will be the other party.  Of course, something that
has to be considered is that the police will also have to look at
every other enemy as well.  As for AP, if the other combatant runs
far and fast enough, it won't take long for that individual to run
farther than anonymous funding (on the part of the deceased's family,
friends, ect) can throw the assassin.  After a certain point, there
is more being spent on expense and less being taken for profit, and
so it is my contention that the alleged killer would have to run so
far.

And, anyhow, doesn't that just prove my point?  You piss off the
wrong people, get into an argument, everybody assumes you're a killer
because the other guy is dead, and suddenly you're not being "allowed"
to live anymore.

>> When
>>the US was created, it was not created to be a Democracy.  It
>>was created to be a representitive republic, regulated by a set
>>of laws that required a huge, mass-majority vote to change.  In
>>essence, the will-of-the-moment isn't supposed to rule here. It
>>is not the way the US was designed to work.
>
>Yeah, but hte way it is ran now (and my beloved Kanada too) is NOT as a
>representative republic.  You live under Admiralty Law, in the world of
>statutory law.  Admiralty Law imposed on the land is despotism and this is in
>the regime you live.  Forget about Natural Law and Anglo-Saxon Common Law, I
>don't think there are Common Law courts in NY state!

Oh, hey, I'm not saying that we're still doing things the way
our forefathers intended.  I'm just saying that our government
was created the way it was for a reason, one of those reasons
being that raw democracy, even where it's money doing the
voting in alt.anonymous.ap, doesn't work the way this country
was intended to.

>Wether the penalty for violating other people's right is applied by "govt" or
>by a private AP system doesn't matter a lot.  Natural Law is not called
>Natural for nothing: it comes from the intrinsical sense of justice of the
>Human Animal.  People won't put money on the head of others lightly.  And if
>they do, the amount they put will be representative of what they really think.

To be perfectly honest, I simply don't think that'll work.  When
you're anonymous, if you place money on the wrong head, where is
the error correction?  Where is the reconing?  Where is the appeal?
The legal system, though not perfect, is far better than an AP
system because, in most cases anyway, it's public, there are venues
through which you can persue the rectification of wrongs against
your person (even on the part of the system itself), and given the
number of judges who will review a case in the process of appealing
percieved in justices, the legal system as it stands today is far
closer to being failsafe than an AP system will be any day of the
week.

>Also, realize that some rich man who wants to eliminate somebody for sure
>will
>likely not use AP for AP doesn't guarantee that the job will get done, it
>only
>puts a probability of a hit on the head of somebody, which is contingent on
>the context, the present offer and demand (i.e. the market), etc.

That doesn't eliminate the risk of abuse.

>I expect to see many people with price on their head modify their status so
>that the bounty is not active anymore.  A prize could get awarded to, as an
>example, "any level so and so IRS agent".  If a given individual wants to
>reduce the risk, he'll quit his legalized extortion agent job...

And what if his position is a just one?  One that he worked hard for
his whole life, one that supports not only himself but his family?
Who, I ask you, has the right to not only drive him out of his house,
town or position, but to do it anonymously so that he never knows
the face of the individual who ruined his life for what may turn out
to be a frivilous reason?

At best, it's domestic terrorism.

>>It was designed that way for a good reason -- to remain resistant
>>to the tyrrany of majority rule.  I'm not saying it's perfect,
>>but the ideals that birthed this country work (when applied), and
>>were, in my not so humble opinion, better thought-out than the
>>idea of AP.
>
>I agree that the founding principles of USA are great.  Only, see how they
>got
>corrupted over the life time of any given individual...  And history only
>repeats itself.  I am not advocating AP, I simply say that it's mechanics
>(economic theory) entails that it is not _automatically_ a monster.  I might
>become one, for unforeseen reasons, but up to now, nobody came up with a cast-
>in-armed-cement argument.

No system is a monster, automatically or otherwise.  I'm speaking
of the people who I can see making use of it.

>I am not very at ease with the idea of living in an AP world, but mostly
>because of the implied unknown.  We all fear the unknown.  But come to think
>of it, the status quo has a lot against it anyway...  How many million of
>people died in the last century because some illuminated govt official
>decided
>that killing was the solution?  (Mao: 50 million, Stalin: a bunch, etc).
>Some
>very detailed excrutiatingly evaluates it at 150 millions caused by
>collectivist ideas (communism, socialism) alone.

Mayhaps.  That doesn't means that it's stopped, that it won't
happen again, or that what seems unlikely or unseemly now will
be seen in a similar light by future rulers.

Love, luck, and marijuana lollipops,
The Sheriff. -- ***<REPLY TO: sheriff@speakeasy.org>***
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