5 ms·

The idea of the assassination marketplace as I see it is to provide some means to balance the power of politicians. There's a powerful asymmetry at work in pol

The idea of the assassination marketplace as I see it is to provide some means to balance the power of politicians. There's a powerful asymmetry at work in politics. Prosecutors can knowingly wrongly convict people and face no consequences. The President can authorize a temporary (or perhaps not temporary) war possibly resulting in thousand of deaths and the worst outcome he faces for it is not getting a second term. Given that voting people out of office is not a powerful enough disincentive to cause them to behave morally I welcome new thoughts on providing better incentives. I'm not saying that Assassination Markets are necessarily good but there's an interesting idea there: how to provide the mass of people recourse to politicians in a manner other than voting.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
_delirium 13y ago
Why a marketplace, though? One can already organize resistance against a regime one considers harmful enough to merit violent resistance, via militant groups. They can be right-wing groups like the militia movement or Greece's Golden Dawn, or left-wing groups like the Black Panthers or Germany's Red Army Faction. They do at various times assassinate prosecutors or politicians. An assassination market seems to change the barrier to entry: rather than personal commitment, it's money. Is that likely to produce better decisions, when it comes to extralegal assassinations? I don't see a strong a priori reason to believe that "people wanted dead by people who have money" is likely to be a good signal. That just seems like a formalization of the classic mob hit: if you've got enough cash, you can get anyone offed.
- msandford 13y ago
  Yeah all valid points. That's one of the unintended consequences of the system: someone with enough money can short-circuit the "voting" process to get anyone killed. Let me reiterate: There's a very interesting nugget in there. Namely one (possibly of many) ways for ordinary citizens to provide less asymmetric incentives to politicians and bureaucrats. I'm really interested in alternative methods of achieving similar goals. Rather than death, could we perhaps institute a petition-based vote of no confidence that could be binding? I'm not sure how that would work but it would be a way to kick someone out of office or position sooner than a term limit and which would also be tremendously damaging to their reputation; something which seems rather important to politicians. Maybe you've got other ideas? EDIT: To answer your question specifically the goal of a marketplace is similar to voting but one which isn't necessarily scheduled the way voting is. For example the guy after Obama could win by a 90% landslide, then immediately launch an all-out war against Iran, Syria and say Jordan. That might quickly turn the tide from 90% in favor to 80% against, but we'd have to wait at least 2 years to vote out a lot of people in the House, and four full years to vote the new President out, and a total of six years to get rid of people in the Senate. Given that it's not terribly easy to make a living in the US and that many people have jobs, kids, elderly parents, etc. to prevent a sizable fraction of those opposed to various things from making a serious public statement like a march on Washington, lowering the barrier to entry MIGHT get us better outcomes.
  - _delirium 13y ago
    Recall elections are one way that's sometimes used to handle the "electee turns around and goes nuts" problem: if enough people petition, an early election is held, so people get another chance to vote on whether they want to keep the representative. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_gubernatorial_recall_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_gubernatorial_recall... A downside of that is that it can intensify populism, since you are essentially always campaigning, never governing. One person wins, but instead of getting a few years to try their agenda, the opposite party is every day looking for openings to get them booted out of office early. An in-between idea is just the classic impeachment. It can remove someone from office early, but is supposed to be used only for serious breaches of trust or lawlessness, not mere political disagreement. If Obama totally went nuts, Congress could remove him from office, if they weren't also on board. Overall I think I'm more worried about constant campaigning (and the amplification of political advertising and PACs that entails), so these various measures strike me as more worrying than the problems they try to solve.
    - msandford 13y ago
      Also an excellent point. I'm a libertarian and I'm thoroughly fed up with both parties; neither hold true to their supposed core ideology when faced with the choice to do the right thing or to accrete more power. As such I'm really interested in ways to scare the shit out of politicians in the hope that they'll think LONG and HARD about whether what's being proposed is RIGHT or EXPEDIENT. As such the whole notion has a certain appeal, it's a way to try and curb particularly egregious abuses of power. For example you might see $50mm worth of bounties on a lot of higher-ups at the NSA for letting this spying-on-innocent-as-well-as-guilty Americans business go on for so long. Those programs might then get shut down, or at the very least those people might retire to very private places immediately. Possibilities for abuse? Absolutely. Are those abuses worse than what the folks in power are currently doing to us? That all depends on your viewpoint. I'm honestly not sure where I stand on that one because it's really tough to figure out the exact magnitude of the unintended consequences of any change in policy.
      - 13y ago
- tedks 13y ago
  > One can already organize resistance against a regime one considers harmful enough to merit violent resistance, via militant groups. Because successful states (i.e., not Greece) have vast amounts of institutional knowledge and training on how to infiltrate and destroy radical groups in the embryonic stage. There will never be anything remotely like the Red Army Faction in the USA or Europe as long as the FBI still has any amount of funding. Or even local police, for that matter. In the US, virtually every dissident group is guaranteed to be monitored by police, if not actively infiltrated. It's hard enough to organize unpermitted protests, let alone jailbreaks or breakfast programs. Assassination markets work around this by reducing the need for organized groups.
afarrell 13y ago
Volunteer for their campaigns and provide them with detailed technical and experiential insight into legislation. The reason that lobbyists are so powerful is that they can offer politicians what they need to keep their jobs do their jobs: - Information on legislation that they don't have the time to gather because a person cannot be a lawyer, an engineer of many types, a scientist of many types, a businessman in many industries, and a military officer. - Money so that they can pay for people to knock on doors and build their website and do all the gruntwork of managing a staff. And yes, the people writing legal code should be lawyers or at least highly knowledgable in the law.
dredmorbius 13y ago
The mechanism of impeachment was included in the US Constitution (at the insistence of Benjamin Franklin as I recall) to provide a specific alternative to assassination for removing politicians from office. It actually dates to 14th century England I learn just now checking Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment#History Assassination is ... rather fraught. I'm growing increasingly concerned over the stalemate / obstructionist politics of the US and elsewhere, however.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

_delirium 13y ago

Why a marketplace, though? One can already organize resistance against a regime one considers harmful enough to merit violent resistance, via militant groups. They can be right-wing groups like the militia movement or Greece's Golden Dawn, or left-wing groups like the Black Panthers or Germany's Red Army Faction. They do at various times assassinate prosecutors or politicians. An assassination market seems to change the barrier to entry: rather than personal commitment, it's money. Is that likely to produce better decisions, when it comes to extralegal assassinations? I don't see a strong a priori reason to believe that "people wanted dead by people who have money" is likely to be a good signal. That just seems like a formalization of the classic mob hit: if you've got enough cash, you can get anyone offed.

msandford 13y ago
Yeah all valid points. That's one of the unintended consequences of the system: someone with enough money can short-circuit the "voting" process to get anyone killed. Let me reiterate: There's a very interesting nugget in there. Namely one (possibly of many) ways for ordinary citizens to provide less asymmetric incentives to politicians and bureaucrats. I'm really interested in alternative methods of achieving similar goals. Rather than death, could we perhaps institute a petition-based vote of no confidence that could be binding? I'm not sure how that would work but it would be a way to kick someone out of office or position sooner than a term limit and which would also be tremendously damaging to their reputation; something which seems rather important to politicians. Maybe you've got other ideas? EDIT: To answer your question specifically the goal of a marketplace is similar to voting but one which isn't necessarily scheduled the way voting is. For example the guy after Obama could win by a 90% landslide, then immediately launch an all-out war against Iran, Syria and say Jordan. That might quickly turn the tide from 90% in favor to 80% against, but we'd have to wait at least 2 years to vote out a lot of people in the House, and four full years to vote the new President out, and a total of six years to get rid of people in the Senate. Given that it's not terribly easy to make a living in the US and that many people have jobs, kids, elderly parents, etc. to prevent a sizable fraction of those opposed to various things from making a serious public statement like a march on Washington, lowering the barrier to entry MIGHT get us better outcomes.
- _delirium 13y ago
  Recall elections are one way that's sometimes used to handle the "electee turns around and goes nuts" problem: if enough people petition, an early election is held, so people get another chance to vote on whether they want to keep the representative. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_gubernatorial_recall_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_gubernatorial_recall... A downside of that is that it can intensify populism, since you are essentially always campaigning, never governing. One person wins, but instead of getting a few years to try their agenda, the opposite party is every day looking for openings to get them booted out of office early. An in-between idea is just the classic impeachment. It can remove someone from office early, but is supposed to be used only for serious breaches of trust or lawlessness, not mere political disagreement. If Obama totally went nuts, Congress could remove him from office, if they weren't also on board. Overall I think I'm more worried about constant campaigning (and the amplification of political advertising and PACs that entails), so these various measures strike me as more worrying than the problems they try to solve.
  - msandford 13y ago
    Also an excellent point. I'm a libertarian and I'm thoroughly fed up with both parties; neither hold true to their supposed core ideology when faced with the choice to do the right thing or to accrete more power. As such I'm really interested in ways to scare the shit out of politicians in the hope that they'll think LONG and HARD about whether what's being proposed is RIGHT or EXPEDIENT. As such the whole notion has a certain appeal, it's a way to try and curb particularly egregious abuses of power. For example you might see $50mm worth of bounties on a lot of higher-ups at the NSA for letting this spying-on-innocent-as-well-as-guilty Americans business go on for so long. Those programs might then get shut down, or at the very least those people might retire to very private places immediately. Possibilities for abuse? Absolutely. Are those abuses worse than what the folks in power are currently doing to us? That all depends on your viewpoint. I'm honestly not sure where I stand on that one because it's really tough to figure out the exact magnitude of the unintended consequences of any change in policy.
    - 13y ago
tedks 13y ago
> One can already organize resistance against a regime one considers harmful enough to merit violent resistance, via militant groups. Because successful states (i.e., not Greece) have vast amounts of institutional knowledge and training on how to infiltrate and destroy radical groups in the embryonic stage. There will never be anything remotely like the Red Army Faction in the USA or Europe as long as the FBI still has any amount of funding. Or even local police, for that matter. In the US, virtually every dissident group is guaranteed to be monitored by police, if not actively infiltrated. It's hard enough to organize unpermitted protests, let alone jailbreaks or breakfast programs. Assassination markets work around this by reducing the need for organized groups.

afarrell 13y ago

Volunteer for their campaigns and provide them with detailed technical and experiential insight into legislation. The reason that lobbyists are so powerful is that they can offer politicians what they need to keep their jobs do their jobs: - Information on legislation that they don't have the time to gather because a person cannot be a lawyer, an engineer of many types, a scientist of many types, a businessman in many industries, and a military officer. - Money so that they can pay for people to knock on doors and build their website and do all the gruntwork of managing a staff. And yes, the people writing legal code should be lawyers or at least highly knowledgable in the law.

dredmorbius 13y ago

The mechanism of impeachment was included in the US Constitution (at the insistence of Benjamin Franklin as I recall) to provide a specific alternative to assassination for removing politicians from office. It actually dates to 14th century England I learn just now checking Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment#History Assassination is ... rather fraught. I'm growing increasingly concerned over the stalemate / obstructionist politics of the US and elsewhere, however.