Early results seem much less controversial than I predicted.
You predicted that Bitcoin users would be happy with killing innocent strangers? Why?
Because "live and let live"? And it's free market expression. No government has stopped them.
Edit: and because the site claims to focus on big names that are guilty of something and above the law.
Previous discussions on these forums gave me the impression that a LOT of people are big fans of these sorts of free-market ideas where government is no longer necessary. I'm extremely sceptical about where this seems to be heading, but I was expecting at least a couple of An-Cap guys to suggest that it's the solution to a justice system without government.
E.g.: various kinds of crimes and punishments are determined by level of crowd-funding, and private contractors deliver retributive justice based on price.
Not sure if Anarchists are avoiding this conversation...
Chiming in as an an-capper. While there is a part of me that likes the idea, it is the vengeful and illogical part. It cannot work because it relies on a God figure. Without the site's leader's pledge to stick only to people who have actually done harm to society, it could easily be a corrupt catch-all murder-for-hire, and that's impossible to know or enforce. But that's just a practical matter of enforcing the site's own stated morality. It certainly doesn't actually abide by the NAP. It's a stretch of logic to apply it here.
Such an extension of the NAP would basically have to state, "anyone who is not actively against those who would coerce me is complicit in the coercion." This is a stretch even when there is direct proximity: The NAP would support the shooting of Kitty Genovese's rapist but not, traditionally, the observers who neither defend nor attack her. While I absolutely support the sentiment that one must consider that such acts are only possible when "good" onlookers do nothing, my NAP framework does not classify the onlooker as equal in guilt to the actual perpetrator.
This "Death Note" situation (anyone who hasn't seen that anime should -- get the Japanese version with English subs -- it's highly relevant) is one in which the observers are removed even further from the action. Politicians are vaguely aware of policies harming people at times, but even the worst of them generally
think they're accomplishing good things that need doing. Maybe even Bernanke, who knows? He could be just a die-hard Keynesian. I cannot endorse assassinating fools for being fools, not at this stage in human evolution. It would also seem to me that by the same logical extension, everyone, every neighbor and friend, who has voted them in, or even those who didn't but simply have not armed themselves with pitchforks and begun the revolution, are also complicit. No, logically, the Assassination Market doesn't fit within the NAP at all.
That's not to say there aren't interesting arguments about "greater good" to be had, but, again, those always require a God substitute, and don't fit within the NAP. And like many things that come down to doing a "little bad" for the "greater good" to prevent larger "bad" -- the whole, burn a village to save it bit -- it is almost always a subconsciously lazy way of not continuing on searching for a path which is even less harmful. For example, after the markets crashed, we might have torched the fed, hung Bernanke, and every other banker we can find... but instead we have created this ecosystem around Bitcoin. We may be able to subvert their entire system, all without raising a finger. It may not always be that easy, but it is lazy to resort to violence by default.
Poll
