[92774] in Cypherpunks
Re: Jim Bell article excerpt (Was: Letter on Jim Bell)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tim May)
Thu Jan 8 04:49:57 1998
In-Reply-To: <199801061908.TAA00400@server.eternity.org>
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 12:40:21 -0800
To: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>, declan@well.com
From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
Cc: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Reply-To: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
At 11:08 AM -0800 1/6/98, Adam Back wrote:
>it looks more like Jim was suggesting that free market forces would
>tend to prevent deaths of lesser known people. Think about it -- it
>would be dead easy to get a contract on Barney due to the number of
>people who know and hate him -- but on an average neighbor, who is
>completely obscure, you'd easily have to fund the entire bet yourself.
The weakness of Bell's scheme was always that it only worked (so to speak)
with well-known people.
While there are some who want well-known people dead, most murders-for-hire
happen for personal or financial reasons.
Given untraceable payment systems, and buttressed with untraceable escrow
systems, a much more efficient approach is simply to hire the killers
untraceably.
And the fluff about "picking the death date" is a side issue, one which
merely makes the whole thing more cumbersome.
--Tim May
The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
