From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 23:10:54 -0800 (PST)
To: blanc <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: RE: Fighting the cybercensor
Message-ID: <199701280710.XAA22120@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 10:21 PM 1/26/97 -0800, blanc wrote:
>From:	jim bell (in response to Dimitri Vulis')
>Look, I've proposed what I consider to be a remarkably consistent method to 
>prevent the kind of political tyranny that you criticize, and I don't see
>any recognition of this fact.
>........................................................
>
>1) Jim, why do you insist on discussing this on an forum for encryption?

Because it's on-topic, that's why.  Because it's not merely a list 
concerning METHODS of encryption, it's also about the _reasons_ for using 
encryption, as well as the _effects_ (both small-scale and large-scale) of 
using encryption.  

If we were satisfied to protect ourselves from, say, 99.999% of the ordinary 
population of this country who might want to read our messages, we'd all be 
satisfied with DES and we'd be happy with GAK.  But the fact is, most of us 
recognize that the REAL reason for good encryption is to keep our messages 
away from a tyrannical government with far more assets than individuals or 
small organizations.


>2) Why do you suppose the Iraqis haven't already thought of doing this 
>themselves?

You need to be a little more specific about who you are referring to when 
you say "the Iraquis."  Presumably, you aren't referring to the "Iraqui on 
the street"?  Perhaps you're talking about the politicians and government 
officials there, right?

Well, if that's the case then the answer should be obvious.  AP is, 
fundamentally, a system that will take down all governments everywhere after 
it starts up anywhere.  The leadership of Iraq may be the leaders of a 
third-rate, third-world country, but as comedian Mel Brooks said in the 
movie, "History of the World, Part I," "It's good to be the king!"   And it is.

These official-types have far more in common with the leadership of the 
other countries than they do with their own citizens.  If anything, they're 
probably actually even MORE rewarded by their position than the leadership 
of westernized countries.  After all, Clinton makes about $250K per year and 
it's pretty risky for him to receive direct bribes.  Kick him out and he 
only loses a cushy job with lots of prestige.   Saddam Hussein and his 
family, on the other hand, probably was able to rake in hundreds of millions 
of dollars a year in baksheesh.  What makes you think that the leadership of 
Iraq would want to craft a weapon (AP) which is guaranteed to drop them to 
the level of their citizenry, or maybe even get themselves killed?  

As for why the ordinary Iraquis didn't think of it...  Or the ordinary 
people of any or every country, as well.  Why didn't THEY think of it?  
Maybe this is just another case of "not invented here" syndrome:  You're 
pissed off that you didn't think of it, and I did.  Sorry, can't help that. 

 

>3) The Mafia uses this method all the time - why then haven't they achieved 
>a more rational society among themselves?

That's just it!  The Mafia DOESN'T use AP or anything like it.  (Admittedly 
I can't really claim personal knowledge of the operation of the Mafia, you 
understand...!)  In fact, apparently, they function diametrically opposed to 
the AP system.  A complete AP-like system is structured (via encryption, 
etc) to totally avoid anybody having to trust anyone else. Each participant 
is kept honest mathematically.  Nobody can inform on anyone else, because 
nobody knows anyone else's identity. 

In fact, a fully-implemented AP-type system not merely hides the identities 
of the participants from each other, but it also hides the existence of 
crimes committed by any of the other participants (if any) from each other.  
A donor to the AP system, for instance, can't know for sure that his 
donation money was paid to a person who killed a target.  At most, he knows 
that the money was paid to somebody who, he's satisfied, had enough 
confidence that the death would occur on a particular date in the 
future to, in effect, bet money on the outcome.

And AP allows anyone to participate in the system, regardless of whether 
he's trusted by the others.

On the contrary, the Mafia, or at least what I've managed to pick up from 
decades of melodramatic movies and newspaper and magazine articles, depends 
intimately on people trusting each other.  That's why it's so devastating to 
them when one of their own (Joseph Valachi, for instance) turns on them and 
rats.  To be sure, that trust is backed up by threat of death for turncoats, 
which is why such defections are rare, but they do indeed occur.

Also, AP (quite unlike the Mafia) encourages literally anyone to do jobs for 
it.  The Mafia, quite the contrary, must trust people, so I assume they 
won't farm out their work to just anyone.


(I should point out that your clear misinterpretation of AP, claiming that 
it is the way the Mafia does things, is just another example of such 
confusion among critics of AP.  I attribute this to such a burning desire to 
discredit AP that you'll use practically any argument, however specious, to 
"prove" it to be incorrect or unworkable.  You're not alone.)


>4) Weren't governments (like the U.S.) instituted to prevent this sort of 
>thing (even if they don't work out as expected)? i.e., there were systems 
>of courts and lawyers and such instituted to openly deal with "criminal" 
>activity so that a) people could receive assistance against low-life 
>degenerate killers, and b) it could be proven that the accused were indeed 
>deserving of punishment.

Remember "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"?  The 
problem with all existing political systems (and particularly those fallen 
ones from the past) is that they put power in the hands of people who 
subsequently abuse it, destroying the checks and balances that were put in 
place.  


>Humans being what they are, this hasn't worked like it's supposed to, but 
>the point is that there is a reason why such ideas for systems of justice 
>were introduced in the first place.   That reason, as I eloquently read in 
>a book, was "So That Reason May Live".  That is, so that people who choose 
>to live in a "society" may do so by the method of solving problems through 
>the application of intelligence, rather than merely knocking each other off 
>because a voting majority decides they don't like someone.

You misunderstand AP, yet again.  AP doesn't really take votes, it merely 
totals donations.  It is an essential element of the AP system that even a 
tiny minority should be able to kill individuals who are seen as threats, as 
long as this capability is universal.  True, the smaller the minority the 
more uneconomical such an action would be for them, but it would be well 
within the ability of 1% of the population to avoid a another Holocaust by 
getting rid of those pushing for it.

In the current political system, in the US for instance, 51% of the 
population is able to screw the remaining 49%, just as long as they can 
maintain the majority.  Or, perhaps even more accurately and ominously, a 
tiny fraction of the population (the current leadership class) is able to 
screw the 49%, as long as they have the un-thinking backing of the remaining 
and relatively uninvolved 51%.

AP disables this system.  AP turns government into the moral equivalent of a 
pick-up football game:  Nobody is being forced to play, and everybody and 
anybody can simply "get up and leave" whenever he wants to.  The moment the 
"rules of the game" to make an individual's continued participation 
unsatisfying, he can leave.

>Destructive people often ascend to positions of power not simply because 
>they are ruthless, but because they have 1) many sycophantic followers and 
>2) many ignorant, vulnerable people unable to prevent it.  You might be 
>able to kill off  one Saddam, but potentially many others would be waiting 
>in the wings to take his place. 

I don't think so.  Let's suppose you could purchase the death of Saddam for 
$5 million.  The next guy gets killed for another $5 million, and then the 
next, etc.  Who would want to be the next leader?  While $5 million dollars 
is certainly not pocket change for an individual, it is well within the 
capacity of the entire world to fund without any difficulty.   Anybody 
considering taking over Saddam's job, aware of such an easy system to kill 
him, would have no motivation to piss off the world.  Sooner or later, 
Saddam's place would have to be taken by a person who makes it absolutely 
clear to the rest of the world that he's no Saddam.  In fact, he'll point 
out that he would be foolish to take the job if he had ulterior motives.  
Unless you believe that it's physically impossible for Iraq to have an 
honest government (at which point you're displaying what I believe was 
called jingoism?) you'll acknowledge that their system would be fixed rapidly.

That's why AP will be so economical:  The absolute certainty that enough 
money could be raised to get rid of anyone who poses a threat will make it 
simply unnecessary to do so, the vast majority of the time.  It's called 
"deterrence," and is one of the reasons that 99.99% of the population 
doesn't rob banks, commit mass murder, or do any other anti-social things.  
Dictatorships will be impossible under AP because dictators simply won't be 
able to survive.  By being ready at all times to pay to have a dictator 
killed, society will never have any dictators.  Strange but true.


>The situation surrounding the existence 
>of someone like Saddam is part of the contributing factors which keeps him 
>there, not simply that one man himself.

Saddam is still in power because as long as the collective leadership of the 
countries of the world fear to set an example that will cost them their jobs 
and possibly their lives, they will gladly choose the $60 BILLION dollar 
"solution" to the Iraq problem, as opposed to my solution, AP, which would 
not only fix Iraq but every other country on the face of the globe.  That's 
why the leadership will never choose it.  The fact is, George Bush and his 
cronies kept Saddam in power by intentional acts, although he would never 
admit it.


  It was the same with Hitler and 
>with so many others  -  they don't just have an excess of  "power" 
>concentrated within themselves which puts them in positions of control over 
>others  - there will have been many people who will have helped put them 
>there, expecting to derive benefits from it.
>
>And what will be done about all those people who made this "power" 
>possible?  You don't just kill the one man and be done with it - you have 
>to also "kill" the conditions which maintained him.
>Blanc

I assert AP does this quite well.   AP makes it quite impossible to maintain 
a government which pisses off even a small fraction of the population.  
Anyone who feels abused in the citizen/government relationship will be able 
to opt out when he wants.  "Abused", by my definition, is getting less 
benefit out of the arrangement than that person wants in relation to the 
assets he put in.  

 "Governments" may still exist after AP, but in name only.  They will not 
have the ability to force taxation, and they will primarily be a way to 
coordinate volunteer action, and will be dramatically shrunk from today's 
behemoths.  

Such a government can't be corrupted:  To whatever extent that corruption 
makes that government a less-attractive as a project to an honest citizen, 
he will leave it and it will shrink, making it even less able to support 
that corruption.  



Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com