From: Robert Hettinga <[email protected]> at 7:03 PM, [email protected] wrote:
>> Is this not unlike a tontine? >Pretty much. Though Mr. Bell might have something to say about that. Oh, why not? On checking Wikipedia, I learned that "tontine" has meant different things in history. My initial exposure to 'tontine' was to watch the movie, "The Wrong Box" in 1966, representing the kind of tontine that fictional versions usually present: A group of donors putting money into a fund, eventually being paid to the last survivor of the group. I recall one of the (funny!) scenes from that movie, where the two last survivors are in a room, with one tottering about the room trying to kill the other, but failing. If I understand this new operation, it's not precisely like any tontine that the Wikipedia article described. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tontine But each person running a system such as this will generally make new rules. I should probably take the time to say, yet again, that I am not involved in any way with either of these two efforts, nor do I know the persons or people involved with either. Some kind of inventiveness is to be expected here. 'Sanjuro's system involves names and amounts-per-name. Quite a vanilla approach. But on learning of that system a couple of months ago, and being aware of the fate of Silk Road 1.0, and the prompt arrival of Silk Road 2.0 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_%28marketplace%29#Silk_Road_2.0 , it occurred to me that if the operators of Silk Road 2.0 wanted to assist their security and that of their users, they might protect themselves using an 'AM'-type of system. After all, it is said that SR1.0 sold $1.2 billion of merchandise (mostly illegal?) over a period of two years. Consider what would happen if the operators had dedicated a 1% "security tax" on such transactions, or ultimately a total of $12 million. Could they dedicate that amount, targeted not to specific names, but to be targeted at 'any judge involved in a SR2.0 prosecution', 'any prosecutor involved in a SR2.0 prosecution', or 'any investigator involved in a SR2.0 prosecution'? (For purposes of concreteness, say hypothetically $500K per judge, $250K per prosecutor, and $100K per investigator. So, the amount of $12 million described above could, therefore, fund about 10 different SR2.0-anti-prosecution cases.) In other words, pre-authorize the 'AM'-type system operator to name the target as soon as that name becomes known. One advantage of such a plan to the participants is that their donations would be more likely to see prompt usage, and would therefore more immediately deter anyone who was in a position to decide whether or not to investigate, prosecute, or judge such a case. There is yet another possible tactic, which I have given the humorous name, "Jury Booty". What if this hypothetical 'AM'-type system is contracted to announce that it would pay a fixed dollar amount, for concreteness let's say $100K, to be distributed evenly to any portion of any jury who votes 'not guilty' to a Silk Road 2.0 case? In other words, the money would be split only among those jurors who vote 'not guilty'. This tactic would have the advantage that it would represent as much as a $100K deterrent to a conviction, to be paid to any lone hold-out juror who decides to break with the rest of the jury. (Although, despite America's 5th Amendment double-jeopardy clause, the reality is that re-prosecution may be done if the vote to acquit is not unanimous. Therefore, the payment might have to be repeated in a subsequent trial, etc.) Authorities, no doubt, would want to label this 'jury tampering'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_tampering However, it is likely that if no actual 'offer' is made to a specific juror, and 'everybody' simply KNOWS that these payments will occur (due to prior advertising and other publicity, and because other jurors have always been paid in the past), this should not run afoul of such laws. One reason that these tactics would be particularly effective with a Silk-Road 2.0-type system is that they would likely reduce the risk of participating in such sales and purchases. The high prices of illegal drugs is a product of the risk involved in their manufacture, distribution, sales, and purchase. If such risks are dramatically reduced, the overall cost for such drugs could drop by a factor of 2, or much more. A potential illegal-drug purchaser should consider a 1% 'tax' worthwhile if it drops the price of his purchase by 50%. See Game Theory, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory Jim Bell
