psychoceramics: Assassination Politics

[Mitchell Porter <mitch @ thehub.com.au>]

This is an essay which has been around for months, but which I've only
just read, thanks to discussions on the cypherpunks list. The idea seems
to be that if we could have a system which rewards people for assassinating
unpopular public figures, without incriminating the assassins (the reward 
being the accumulated donations of those who want the figure in question 
dead), then we'd be free from government and war. The essayist
(j--@p--.com) has described a system utilizing encryption and
digital cash, which seems to provide the rewards he describes; but that
it will make for a better world, I doubt. You can see it all on the web:

http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/Publ/ass0.html

Perhaps we'll soon see an "Extermination Politics", organized by
denizens of alt.destroy.the.earth, using similar techniques to organize
human extinction. (See Bruce Sterling's _Heavy Weather_.)

-mitch
http://www.thehub.com.au/~mitch