This is from Jim Bell, author of the Assassination Politics essay. This is worthy of your attention. My other email address is [email protected] Jim Bell
To Andy Greenberg, at Forbes Magazine. On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 6:17 AM, jim bell <[email protected]> wrote: Talked up value of Bitcoin $23 billion,7 October at Prague, Czech Republic, HCCP Paralel PolisI gave a speech at Paralel Polis, HCCP convention, in Prague, Czech Republic proposing my jimbellproject.org activity, and raised the total value of all existing Bitcoin by about $1463 each in about 6 days. Or $24.28 Billion dollars, total.On the 7th day, I rested. Jim Bell ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: jim bell <[email protected]> To: CypherPunks <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, October 13, 2017 5:42 AM Subject: jimbellproject.org is looking for volunteers JimBellproject.org is looking for volunteers I, Jim Bell https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003796765303 , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bell , am newly back from Prague, Czech Republic, from the Paralel Polis https://liberate.hcpp.cz/ convention. I was invited there by Pavol Luptak https://www.facebook.com/wilderko to speak on a subject of my choice, so naturally I chose my favorite. https://steemit.com/hcpp/@digital-liberty/hcpp17-talks-sorted-by-the-topic But importantly, while there I announced my Jim Bell Project, and its http://jimbellproject.org website, where is explained that I will be leading my project to study, perfect, publicize, and obtain people's approval of my idea to replace all existing governments with a new system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KLqi1v2zSE . That new system is based on my provocatively-named Assassination Politics (AP) essay https://cryptome.org/ap.htm from 1995-6, described as an assassination market in Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market . That essay has received the scrutiny of the public since Part 1 was finished in early 1995, and has appeared before the public with the long-term helpful assistance of John Young, owner of the Cryptome.org website, at which the text of my AP essay has resided for decades. The seemingly-improbable goals of this system include eliminating all wars, militaries, nuclear weapons, and holocausts, as well as all governments and taxes, and their costs, variously economic, social, and individual. To a person unfamiliar with the details AP, these goals may and probably should seem obviously impossible or at least wildly improbable, but since 1995 I have believed that they are all not merely possible, but certainly probable,and in fact are individually and collectively inevitable: This means that to any modern society, an AP-type system is not genuinely a choice or option, but are in fact an unavoidable destiny once the combination of good encryption, anonymous networking, and anonymous digital cash have appeared and are allowed to function. This means that even if a large majority of the public claims to be steadfastly "against" the emergence and operation of the AP system, nevertheless even with only 1% of the people willing to use it, it will eventually appear and function effectively, and that 1% of the people will employ it to achieve the outcomes described above. As the AP system achieves its goals and produces the benefits which are claimed, a larger proportion of the people will recognize those advantages, and the opposition to its functioning will be gradually minimized and will eventually disappear. To my knowledge, the AP system has, surprisingly enough, only been considered and analyzed into publicly-available documents by two people: One, R. Sukumaran of the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, in India, https://idsa.in/taxonomy/term/664 , https://idsa.in/system/files/strategicanalysis_sukumaran_0604.pdf , and Robert Vroman. http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=009ape (Vroman's business partner, Bob Murphy, made a half-hearted attempt to disprove it, although his effort may only exist as a publicly-available document on the Wayback Machine https://archive.org/web/ . One of Murphy's pamphlets is here: https://issuu.com/renatos.grun/docs/robert_p._murphy_chaos_theory_two_e ) Before I state my view of the function of the Jim Bell Project, I should say what it is not: It is not intended to be a rapid move to the immediate implementation of a functioning AP organization, accepting wagers on predictions, and paying for correct predictions, each after implementing a functioning AP-type system. This is true, even though I am quite confident that such a move would be fully justified and well-understood by many people. The reality is that the vast majority of the population have simply never heard of the possibility of the AP concept, and of those most probably "understand" AP only to be a high-tech version of Kickstarter or GoFundMe. That majority simply don't recognize that a functioning AP system would inevitably lead to dramatic changes in our society, very efficiently fixing most societal problems: The ones caused by the existence of government. Instead, I foresee that despite the long time the essay has been available, 22 years for the earliest parts, there is still much academic work to be done. In part, that's because of the comparative lack of technical analyses done by members of the public, punctuated only by the works of R. Sukumaran and Robert Vroman. The reality, I believe, is that any system that claims to be able to eliminate even one of the following: wars, militaries, nuclear weapons, holocausts, and all governments and taxes, would arguably be the most astonishing development in the history of human relations if such a capability could be logically verified and proven. Little did I understand, before I wrote a word of Part 1, that my idea would be so shamefully ignored and disregarded for even a few years, let alone a full 22 years. To get an idea of the significance of this concept, on October 6, 2017 the the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. While I shouldn't discount the sincerity of their efforts, I must point out that my careful study of their website does not reveal any strategy capable of "abolishing" the last nuclear weapon, let alone the last 1000 such bombs. So, I have lost my patience. Individuals, as individuals, certainly have the right to ignore AP. But as groups, societies, and including philosophers, educators, scientists, social engineers, sociologists, governments, and nations, we have a compelling moral obligation to recognize the existence of problems, and at least consider proposed solutions for their effectiveness. Therefore, I propose that a group of volunteers, assisted by the population, complete the technical study of the AP proposal, find and fix any problems if they exist, and publicize the results so that the public is to afraid of its capabilities and likely results. If it should happen that the AP proposal is likely to work, and is without significant flaws, and if a substantial fraction of the public (for a ballpark figure, 1% or more?) can understand and agree in principle with the implementation of an AP system, then a decision should be made to implement it and let it function. To be sure, there is no absolute requirement that it be the Jim Bell Project who will do that implemention, nor necessarily the first such implemention, and certainly not the only implementation. Myself, I would much prefer it if the responsibility for the actual implementation and running of a functioning AP system be done by someone, anyone else. FUNDING As an attempt to fund the Jim Bell Project, jimbellproject.org, I have proposed and implemented a set of Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ether tipjars, and I have cheekily proposed that all owners of such electronic cash give me 1/1000 of their value. I propose this, in part, because I believed that the publication of this proposal would cause a 'run' on Bitcoins, raising the prices greatly. I released the text of a protype 'speech', onto the jimbellproject.org website although not the one I actually gave, on October 7,, 2017 . I finally gave the speech approximately 19:00 UTC October 7 2017, Prague Czech time. At that time, the value of Bitcoin in dollars appears to be about: $4350.31. (The price had been essentially constant on the previous 1 1/3day.) A sudden spurt of increase occurred within about an hour, and by Friday, October 13, 2:40-2:49 UTC, (Friday the 13th ?!?!?) the price in dollars had reached $5814.18. So, within about 6 days, the increase of $1463 had occurred. Did I do that? Or most of that? Given that there are about 16.6 million Bitcoins extant, this represents an increase of around $23 billion dollars. Is it reasonable for me to think that I should be given 1/1000 of that increase, say $23 million dollars? Anyone who owns Bitcoins should pause to consider this. They get 999, and I get 1. Sounds fair to me. Jim Bell
