13 March 2001. Thanks to Anonymous.
By Anonymous
In March of 1997 Jim Bell published an idea he jokingly called "Assassination Politics". He writes, "I speculated on the question of whether an organization could be set up to legally announce that it would be awarding 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 send those contributions using digital cash."
Unsurprisingly this idea was not well received by "government employees, officeholders, or appointees". Among those groups are law enforcement officers, judges, prosecutors, and corrections officials. Predicting that Jim Bell would likely find his way into a federal prison was a high probability bet.
Obviously it is wrong and illegal to set up systems to facilitate the infliction of violence and mayhem upon federal officers and employees, if that is what was intended. And the structure of the system, emphasizing the anonymous payment of anonymously accumulated untraceable digital cash to the predictor of the time of death of an official (gee, who would know that most accurately in advance?), leaves little to the imagination as to the purpose of such a system.
The system itself as described brings the full force of the State down on anyone getting involved with it due to its profound non-neutrality as to the act qualifying for the awarding of digital cash (the death of a government official), and the fact that the person most knowledgeable as to the time of that act would clearly be its perpetrator.
There are so many good, selfless, diligent, honest and hard working officials, that you'd think there would be a "Rewards Politics" scheme. For example, some whistleblowers serve noble causes but get in trouble for it. They may lose their jobs or even have court costs defending themselves. Some public officials accomplish so much good for their constituents that honor and rewards should come to them.
So using the evil framework developed in "Assassination Politics", but bending it extensively for good and noble causes, it could just as well be called "Reward Politics" and it could provide rewards for noble public service.
For example, a "Reward Politics" system would allow for the prediction not of a "time of death" of a named official with clear assassination overtones but for a "time of distinction" and "exact nature of distinction". For example, one might predict that "John Doe" (name) will be nominated for the "Nobel Peace Prize" (exact nature of distinction) to be awarded in 2004 (time of distinction). Those who wish to participate and submit digital cash for the prize would do so as in the original scheme. An additional feature would be the provision of the awarding of the combined contributions to a party not directly related to the bettors, contributors, nominators or the noble public official himself. For example, if John is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2004, all proceeds in the form of anonymous digital cash would go to a "non-participating third party award recipient" such as the University of New Mexico's Philosophy Department for use as the Department Head may determine.
A system like this sheds those evil and violent overtones that were the centerpoint of Assassination Politics. It creates a positive system to reward the doing of good. The system itself is innocent, without any bias toward fomenting predictions of evil and death. It enables the anonymous "free expression" of gratitude and honor to a noble person, even when the achievement or the person achieving it may be unpopular with a contributor's employer, customers or associates.
Any abuse of such a system is not the fault of the system but the fault of some evil participant. No different from one person using paper and pencil to write poetry and another using it to write a ransom note. Some one might abuse the system and use it to predict an "exact nature of distinction" such as "receives the big brother award", or "becomes FBI most wanted fugitive", or "presides over the arrest of more than 200 demonstrators at the May demonstration" or similar. Others might abuse the system and establish a "non-participating third party award recipient" like "IRA", "Save the Buddhas from the Taliban", a "legal defense fund" or some other politically incorrect or illegal beneficiary.
The question is how could a neutral and open anonymous system of rewarding predictions of noble achievements as determined by anyone anywhere anonymously, be limited to only "good" rewards and truely noble achievements by admirable officials, and how can the rewards be bestowed appropriately only on noble beneficiaries even when they are uninvolved third parties?
Answering this could enable the freedom of expression to include the anonymous rewarding and honoring of noble service by noble officials worldwide. Failure to impose the limits would mean that it is in the same category as paper and pencil. While it is neutral and not violent, nor criminal nor evil in its structure or intent, it could be used for whatever is in the mind of the anonymous participants. If we move toward a world in which all instrumentalities, such a paper and pencil and bits, can be used only for purposes that are approved and reviewed, then much of the liberty and freedom for which governments are legitimately constituted is gone, and governments simply exist to preserve governments, losing their legitimacy as they consolidate their power through intrusiveness.
As we work to retain and enhance freedom of expression in the digital age, these are questions that need answers so that noble means and noble ends can be justly rewarded in a free society.