Assassination Politics 7-8
jimbell
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"Assassination Politics" Part 7, by Jim Bell
Dear libertarian Friend,
I very much understand the concerns you voiced about my idea which I call,
"Assassination Politics," because this essay is nothing if it
is not radical and extreme. I wrote it, in the middle of last year, partly
because I think libertarianism and libertarians in particular need to
address what is, if not a "contradiction," is at least an intolerable
reality: On the one hand, we are told not to initiate agression, but on the
other we are agressed against by the government every time it collects a tax.
I much appreciate the way some people I know have "dropped out" of the
system, and the guts that such a tactic requires. But that's the problem, I
think: Only those with the "guts" do it, which gives the government fewer
targets so
that it can spend more time attacking the few who oppose it. The reality is
that the government STILL collects taxes, and it STILL uses that money to
violate our rights. We all know that's wrong.
My position is quite simple: If tax collection constitutes agression, then
anyone doing it or assisting in the effort or benefitting from the proceeds
thereof is a criminal. This is quite analogous to current law which
prosecutes co-conspirators. While I am not holding out "current law" as
some sort of gold-standard of reasonableness that we must always accept, on
the other hand I think it's plausible to use it to show that once we have
come to the conclusion that taxation is theft, the prescription follows
directly by a form of reasoning allegedly acceptable to society: It is
reasonable to "attack the attackers" and their co-conspirators, and everyone
who is employed by the government is thus a co-conspirator, even if he is
not directly involved in the collection of those taxes. That's because he
IS involved in _benefitting_ from the proceeds of these taxes, and he
presumably provides a certain level of "backup" to the young thugs that
governmental organizations often hire.
I realize, and you should too, that the "non-agression principle" says nothing
about
the EXTENT of the self-defense/retaliation that one might reasonably employ
in defending one's own rights: In a sense, that sounds like an omission
because it at least suggests that a person might "unreasonably" defend
himself with lethal force when far less drastic means might normally be
called for. For what it's worth, I think most people will behave
responsibly. But I think it is pretty straightforward to argue that whatever
means are necessary to stop the attack, are reasonable given the terms of
the non-agression principle: If a given means are known to be inadequate to
actually stop the attack, then further and more serious means are reasonable
and called-for.
To set up a reasonable analogy, if I'm walking down the canonical "dark
alley" and am accosted by a man wielding a knife threatening me with it, it
is presumably reasonable for me to pull a gun and threaten back, or possibly
take the encounter to the final conclusion of gunfire. Even if I should
choose to hold my fire and test to determine whether my actions deterred
him, I can't see that this possibility binds me morally. And should he
advance, despite the gun, as if to attack, I should feel no remorse in
shooting him and taking myself out of danger. If you accept the premises so
far, you apparently accept the principle that escalation of the
self-defense/retaliation is reasonable as long as if the current level of
returned counter-threat is inadequate to stop the agression initiated by the
other
party. To believe otherwise is to believe that ultimately, you are
obligated to accept a certain high level of agression simply because you do
not have the resources (yet) to resist it. I totally reject this concept,
as I hope you would.
So if, hypothetically, I could have an anonymous conversation with a
hard-nosed government employee, and asked him, "If I killed one of your
agents, would you stop trying to collect that tax from me," his predictable
reaction would be, "no, we would continue to try to collect that tax." In
fact, he would probably hasten to add that he would try to have me
prosecuted for murder, as well! If I were to ask if killing ten agents
would stop them, again they would presumably say that this would not change
their actions.
The conclusion is, to me, obvious: Clearly, there is no practical limit to
the amount of self-defense that I would need to protect my assets from the
government tax collector, and to actually stop the theft, so I suggest that
logic requires that I be morally and ethically allowed (under libertarian
principles) to use whatever level of self-defense I choose.
You raised another objection, that quite frankly I believe is invalid. I
believe you implied that until a specific level of escalation is reached (
such as the Feds showing up on your doorstep, etc) then it is not legitimate
to defend oneself. Delicately, I must disagree. As we all well know,
government ultimately operates primarily not on actual, applied force, but
simply the threat of future force if you do not comply. True, there are
people who have decided to call the government's bluff and simply drop out,
but the reality is that this is not practical for most individuals today.
This is no accident: The government makes it difficult to drop out, because
they extort the cooperation of banks and potential employers and others with
which you would otherwise be able to freely contract. In any case, I fail
to see how not "dropping out" makes one somehow morally obligated to pay a
tax (or tolerate the collection of one). I trust you did not inadvertently
mean to suggest this.
The reason, morally, we are entitled to shoot the mugger if he waves the
knife in our face is that he has threatened us with harm, in this case to
our lives, but the threat the government represents to the average citizen
(loss of one's entire assets) is just as real, albeit somewhat different.
Since government is a past reality, and a present reality, and has the
immediate prospects of being a future reality as well, I sincerely believe
that the average citizen can legitimately consider himself CONTINUOUSLY
threatened. The agression has already occurred, in continuously occurring,
and has every prospect of continuing to occur. If anything would justify
fighting back, this would.
To continue the analogy, if you've been repeatedly mugged by the same guy
down the same dark alley for each day of last month, that DOES NOT mean that
you've somehow consented to the situation, or that your rights to your
assets have somehow been waived. With my "Assassination Politics" essay, I
simply proposed tht we (as libertarians as well as being ordinary citizens)
begin to treat agression by government as being essentially equivalent to
agression by muggers, rapists, robbers, and murderers, and view their acts
as a continuing series of agressions. Seen this way, it should not be
necessary to wait for their NEXT agression; they will have always have been
agressing and they will always BE agressing, again and again, until they are
stopped for good.
At that point, the question shifted to one of practicality: Sure,
theoretically we might morally have the "right" to protect ourselves with
lethal force, but if they have any reputation at all, government agents have
a habit of showing up in large numbers when they actually apply direct
force. To take a position that you can only defend yourself when _they've_
chosen the "where" and "when" of the confrontration is downright suicidal,
and I hope you understand that I would consider any such restriction to be
highly unfair and totally impractical. Understand, too, that the reason
we're still stuck under the thumb of the government is that to the extent
it's true, "we've" been playing by THEIR rules, not by our own. By our own
rules, THEY are the agressors and we should be able to treat them
accordingly, on our own terms, at our own convenience, whenever we choose,
especially when we feel the odds are on our side.
I understand, obviously, that the "no initiation of agression" principle is
still valid, but please recognize that I simply don't consider it to be a
valid counter-argument to "Assassination Politics," at least as applied to
targets who happen to be government agents. They've "pre-agressed," and I
don't see any limit to the defenses I should be able to muster to stop that
agression completely and permanently. Not that I don't see a difference
between different levels of guilt: I fully recognize that some of them are
far worse than others, and I would certainly not treat a lowly Forest
Service grunt in the same fashion as an ATF sniper.
Now, there is one more thing that I would hope we could get straight: As I
originally "invented" this system, it occurred to me that there could be
certain arguments that it needed to be "regulated" somehow; "unworthy"
targets shouldn't be killed, etc. The "problem" is, what I've "invented"
may (as I now believe it to be) actually a "discovery," in a sense: I now
believe this kind of system was always inevitable, merely waiting for the
triad of the Internet, digital cash, and good encryption in order to provide
the technical underpinnings for the entire system. If that is genuinely the
case, then there is no real way to control it, except by free-market
principles.
It would be impossible, for example, to set up some sort of
"Assassination Politics Dictator," who decides who will live and who will
die, because competition in the system will always rise to supply every
demand, albeit at possibly a very high price. And if you believe the maxim
that "absolute power corrupts absolutely," you wouldn't want to accept any
form of centralized control (even, perhaps, that of your own!), because any
such control would eventually be corrupted. Most rational people recognize
this, and I do too. I would not have invented a system where "Jim
Bell" gets to make "all the decisions." Quite the contrary, the system I've
described absolutely prevents such centralization. That, quite frankly, is
the novelty and dare I say it, the beauty of this idea. I believe that it
simply cannot be hijacked by centralized political control.
As I pointed out in the essay, if _I_ were running one of the organizations
accepting those donations and offering those prizes, I would selectively
list only those targets who I am genuinely satisfied are guilty of the
violation of the "non-agression principle." But as a practical matter,
there is no way that I could stop a DIFFERENT organization from being set up
and operating under DIFFERENT moral and ethical principles, especially if it
operated
anonymously, as I antipate the "Assassination Politics"-type systems will
be. Thus, I'm forced to accept the reality that I can't dictate a
"strongly limited" system that would "guarantee" no "unjustified" deaths: I
can merely control my little piece of the earth and not assist in the abuse
of others. I genuinely believe, however, that the operation of this system
would be a vast improvement over the status quo.
This, I argue, is somewhat analogous to an argument that we should be
entitled to own firearms, despite the fact that SOME people will use them
wrongly/immorally/illegally. The ownership is a right even though it may
ultimately allow or enable an abuse that you consider wrong and punishable.
I consider the truth of such an argument to be obvious and correct, and I
know you would too.
I realize that this lacks the crisp certitude of safety which would be
reassuring to the average, "pre-libertarian" individual. But you are not
the "average individual" and I trust that as long-time libertarians you
will recognize rights must exist even given the hypothetical possibility
that somebody may eventually abuse them.
I do not know whether I "invented" or "discovered" this system; perhaps it's
a little of both. I do genuinely believe that this system, or one like it,
is as close to being technologically inevitable as was the invention of
firearms once the material we now know as "gunpowder" was invented. I think
it's on the way, regardless of what we do to stop it. Perhaps more than
anyone else on the face of this planet, this notion has filled me,
sequentially and then simultaneously, with awe, astonishment, joy, terror,
and finally, relief.
Awe, that a system could be produced by a handful of people that
would rid the world of the scourge of war, nuclear weapons, governments, and
taxes. Astonishment, at my realization that once started, it would cover
the entire globe inexorably, erasing dictatorships both fascistic and
communistic, monarchies, and even so-called "democracies," which as a
general rule today are really just the facade of government by the special
interests. Joy, that it would eliminate all war, and force the dismantling
not only of all nuclear weapons, but also all militaries, making them not
merely redundant but also considered universally dangerous, leaving their
"owners" no choice but to dismantle them, and in fact no reason to KEEP them!
Terror, too, because this system may just change almost EVERYTHING how we
think about our current society, and even more for myself personally, the
knowledge that there may some day be a large body of wealthy people who are
thrown off their current positions of control of the world's governments,
and the very-real possibility that they may look for a "villain" to blame
for their downfall. They will find one, in me, and at that time they will
have the money and (thanks to me, at least partially) the means to see their
revenge. But I would not have published this essay if I had been unwilling
to accept the risk.
Finally, relief. Maybe I'm a bit premature to say it, but I'm satisfied we
_will_ be free. I'm convinced there is no alternative. It may feel like a
roller-coaster ride on the way there, but as of today I think our
destination is certain. Please understand, we _will_ be free.
Your libertarian friend,
Jim Bell
Klaatu Burada Nikto
Something is going to happen... Something... Wonderful!
"Assassination Politics" Part 8
The following article appeared in the Sunday, February 4, 1996 issue of Asahi
Evening News, in an article
written by
columnist Paul Maxwell, page 6. He writes a regular column about the Internet
for this newspaper.
"Networks: Paul Maxwell"
"Dial Internet for murder"
'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." (Shakespeare, Henry VI).
A startling and controversial idea has surfaced on the Internet recently--fear
with me for a moment while I
explain it. It
is based on two technological developments: digital cash and encryption
software.
Briefly, digital cash is a system for transferring funds from one person to
another on the Net. For this
system to be as
good as cash, the transactions must be capable of being conducted anonymously,
just like in real life. (You
go into the
Seven-Eleven, buy a Cafe Latte, and nobody knows your name or your credit
history. The purchase is not
recorded in a
database of your consumer preferences.)
Several competing schemes for digital cash have been launched, but the one that
eventually gains universal
acceptance
will surely have this anonymity feature.
The second innovation is a kind of software called public-key encryption. It
allows you to send a file or an
email
message that is "locked" in such a way that it can only be opened by the
intended recipient. The recipient,
however,
cannot open it until given a "key." This "key" may then be used to encrypt a
return message that can only be
opened by
the original sender.
Freelance visionary and tinkerer Jim Bell has been following both of these
developments for the past few
years.
Recently, he asked himself a couple of tough questions: "How can we translate
the freedom afforded by the
Internet to
ordinary life?" How can we keep government from banning encryption, digital
cash, and other systems that
will
improve our freedom?"
Suddenly, Bell had a revolutionary idea. ("Revolutionary" is the word he uses,
and it fits.) You and me--the
little guys,
the ordinary working people of the world--could get together, all pitch in, and
pay to have every rotten
scoundrel in
politics assassinated. And we could do it legally. Sort of.
Bell imagined an organization that would award "a cash prize to somebody who
correctly 'predicted' the
death of one of
a list of violators of rights, usually either government employees,
officeholders, or appointees. It could ask
for
anonymous contributions from the public, and individuals would be able to send
those contributions using
digital cash."
He explains that "using modern methods of public-key encryption and anonymous
digital cash, it would be
possible to
make such awards in such a way so that nobody knows who is getting awarded the
money, only that the
award is being
given. Even the organization itself would have no information that could help
the authorities find the person
responsible
for the prediction, let alone the one who caused the death."
Are you following this? Let's say that we, the public, decide we've finally had
enough of [insert name of
villain]. Ten
dollars from me, ten from you--suddenly there's a million dollars in a fund.
The money will go to the first
person who
can "predict" the date, time, and circumstances of the villain's death.
Obviously, this information is only
known in
advance by the assassin.
He sends an anonymous, "locked" message. He kills the villain. He sends the
"key" to the message. He
has, without
ever revealing his identity, "correctly predicted" the murder. The "key" that
he has provided is then used to
"lock the
award money in a file that is then publicly posted on the Internet. Only the
person who originated the key
may open the
file and claim the digital cash.
In other words, public anger could finance cash awards for assassinations. The
organization that collected
the money
and announced a list of possible targets would never know about a crime in
advance, and would never know
the identity
or whereabouts of a criminal. It would not technically be guilty of conspiracy
or complicity.
Jim Bell has thought about this a lot, and feels that the idea is technically
feasible, practical, even foolproof.
Suppose for
a moment he's right? What are the implications?
World leaders live with the threat of assassination every day of their lives.
But at the local level, this could
really have
an impact. And the "target" list wouldn't necessarily to politicians--any
offensive public personality would
be fair game.
Picture yourself a year from now, sitting around with friends. Somebody says,
"Remember when Juice
Newton got
whacked?" And you say, "Yeah--best ten bucks I ever spent."
Satisfying as it might be to declare war on asinine pop singers, Bell has a more
civic-minded suggestion:
Let's kill all the
car thieves. He reasons that a very small number of career criminals are
responsible for nearly all car thefts.
If one
million car owners in a given metropolitan area contributed just four dollars a
year, it would create $10,000
a day in
"prize money" for the "predictor" of any car thief's death.
"Assuming that amount is far more than enough to get a typical car thief's
'friends' to 'off' him," he writes,
"there is
simply no way that a substantial car-theft subculture could possibly be
maintained."
Jim as high hopes for his plan--he thinks it could eventually lead to the end of
political tyranny. But if you
don't like this
idea, he has others. In a recent email exchange, I asked what he was doing now.
"I recommend that you rent the movie, "The Day the Earth Stood Still.," he
answered. "I'm working on a
similar
project."