From: hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes)
Date: Thu, 22 Sep 94 12:00:10 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: HIT MEN
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.87.9409220411.A22996-0100000@crl2.crl.com>
Message-ID: <9409221822.AA20694@ah.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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   I'm sorry, but this is patently ludicrous.  This is not a MUD or
   MOO.  We're not talking about game theory and the "iterated
   prisoner's dilemma."  This is about the real world.  

Game theory _does_ make a distinction between activities that make
victims and those that don't.

Gambling is victimless.  All parties consent to the transaction.  The
end result is a rearrangement of economic power.  There is a small
indirect loss to the extent that the two bettors make effort
conducting this transaction, but this effort is not freely usable
by other parties.

Murder has victims.  The dead did not consent to their death.  There
is a direct economic loss in the now unavailable abilities of the dead
and indirect economic loss in the process of disposing the dead's
affairs.

It is not, however, the direct parties to the "transaction" where the
game theory applies, but rather in the relation of other parties.

If I know that two people are betting with each other, that doesn't
affect me, because their activity is completely consensual.  If I
don't want to gamble, I don't have to.  I can't deny my gambling debts
if I've never used an opportunity to get any.

On the other hand, everyone has enemies and everyone has different
enemies at different times.  Each person has some risk of being
murdered, be it large or small.  The relationship between a murderer,
their agent, and the victim is _not_ separable from my own interest,
because I stand some non-negligible possibility of being the victim in
the future.

Therefore it is in my own best interest to take action against a
structure of murder for hire if the cost of that action is less than
the marginal cost of my risk against murder.  In other words, the
cheaper murder for hire is, the more people there will be who will be
interested in making sure it doesn't exist.

Risk is a subjective entity.  The less able one feels able to identify
and analyze potentially harmful events, the higher the risk is.  A
major change in situation, for example, the existence of a truly
anonymous murder market, greatly increases risk, because nobody has
experience in how such might behave.  Do not be surprised if many,
many people take it upon themselves to quash the building blocks for a
murder market.

Ironically, if it seen that the limiting factor in deployment of these
markets is the creative thought of the designers, it will be in the
best interest of many people to use these incipient markets to prevent
their further growth.

Eric