[Cryptography] Incentive Politics

[Phillip Hallam-Baker]

On Sat, Sep 30, 2023 at 11:03 PM Howard Harmon via cryptography <
cryptography at metzdowd.com> wrote:

> Hi Everyone.
>
> For those of you that have been around a while, you may remember Jim
> Bell’s *Assassination Politics* essays from a few decades back. If so,
> you may be interested in the following paper we wrote that addresses the
> issues Bell’s proposal has (as well as issues contained in other similar
> proposals). The abstract and links to the paper are pasted at the end of
> this email.
>
> We are a small group of academics (some of you know us) choosing to
> operate under the pseudonym “Howard Harmon."  We have had a lot of fun
> writing this paper and thinking about this problem, and have decided to
> share our work because we hold a strong conviction that if the “anonymous
> task marketplaces” we describe in our paper are implemented, then they
> could have a significant positive impact on society.  To this end, we would
> greatly appreciate any thoughts or comments you may have to offer.
>
> If any of you decide to read the paper, many of you will take issue with
> its lack of rigor and formalism, and especially our “hand-wavy” approach in
> describing the protocol we give. We are sympathetic, but decided to write
> it like this so that the layperson can read and understand the paper, and
> it is our hope that those of you annoyed by this will not miss the forest
> for the trees.
>
> Paper details below.
>
> *Abstract:* The existence of a marketplace for users to anonymously post
> large-scale tasks with an associated monetary reward, designed so the
> executors of the task almost certainly receive the reward while preserving
> anonymity, would provide humanity with remarkable new capabilities. Jim
> Bell proposed one solution specific for assassination marketplaces in his *Assassination
> Politics* essays, but several flaws contained in Bell's solution and
> others have prevented their adoption. We propose a protocol allowing for
> the existence of task marketplaces that can be built using smart contracts,
> and that rectifies the flaws contained in existing proposals. Specifically,
> our protocol provides a means by which participants can fund a public
> contract detailing some task, in a way that is trustless, decentralized,
> and preserves anonymity, while ensuring the executor of the task is almost
> certainly paid, and the task is almost certainly completed. Successfully
> funded and completed contracts are precisely those with significant
> support, thereby providing a natural defense against the proliferation of
> especially abhorrent or criminal contracts.
>
> *Link (LaTeX PDF): *https://drive.proton.me/urls/0SBN8VX9J4#EvyJhiqdlecb
> (let us know if there are better places to post this PDF).
>
> *Bitcoin forum discussion: *
> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5468699.new#new
>
> *Medium post:*
> https://medium.com/@howardharmon/incentive-politics-and-a-solution-to-the-hitman-problem-857175848ef
>

This is why any 'smart contract' scheme that allows this type of activity
is going to end up being shut down.

Governments can't stop people encrypting their conversations, but they are
very good at regulating the flow of money.

The weakness of the whole pseudo-currency world is beginning to be seen
even by some of its strongest adherents as the value of NFTs has declined
to $0 as I predicted and the large exchanges are starting to collapse under
the sheer weight of the frauds upon frauds. I would rather invest in a
business run by Donald J. Trump than put money in Binance or Crypto.com or
any other crypto exchange. And I am no fan of Mr Trump.

What we were promised was decentralized finance. What was delivered instead
was a classic Ponzi fraud wrapped up in psychobabble. Pseudo-currencies are
to the world of cryptography what astrology is to astronomy and esoteric
alchemy to chemistry.


There is a rule in physics that if you claim to have invented a perpetual
motion machine, you are mistaken, something, somewhere is adding energy
into your system. The same holds for proposals for better assassination
markets: if a system allows such, the system is going to be regulated out
of existence.
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