Тег: Retribution

Uber-retribution and uber-justice

It seems that no other post of mine has sparked as much discussion as the description of the uber-retribution concept. Perhaps it is worth breaking down the main arguments of the opponents.

Scientific novelty

It was rightly pointed out to me that similar functionality has already been implemented in Hydra and other similar darknet marketplaces, so I find it necessary to emphasize the differences from existing services, since they proved to be insufficiently articulated in the original post.

  1. Ads placed on the service must be open. Why?
    1.1. While classic hitman exchanges aim not to scare off the target, here the target’s knowledge of the pending retribution is part of the retribution.
    1.2. The more widely a specific injustice becomes known, the greater the likelihood that third parties will add their own money to the prize pool (both those affected by similar actions of the target of retribution, and simply those who are not indifferent).
    1.3. The target of retribution is given a chance to settle things amicably.
  2. The already mentioned possibility of crowdfunding the prize pool (although a similar mechanism is used by prediction markets, where a large number of people can place a bet on a death).
  3. Third parties can apply their own expertise to the provided proofs—both proofs of injustice and proofs of the completed retribution.

And beyond this, such an aggregator of retribution requests must possess far more powerful usability than just a message board; otherwise, it will fail to gain sufficient popularity, without which there will be no network effect, and without a network effect, most requests in the service will remain a voice crying in the wilderness.

Ethics

It was pointed out that this tool could easily be used to carry out attacks on the innocent: all sorts of freaks, gays, drug addicts, lovers of voluntary sex with minors, and so on.

To this, I can say that in a society where such attacks find mass demand, people do not need a special application; they will happily stone an undesirable person anyway, or demand that their relatives commit an honor killing. In our case, the possibility of public retribution is organized against those who would be difficult to deal with without hiding: primarily, people like the hypothetical Petrunko.

At the same time, one must realize that the executor of the retribution risks getting hit back from the target, from state representatives, or even from random passers-by—if they act carelessly and get caught. At the moment the retribution is carried out, they look like the criminal to all witnesses. But, by the way, such an executor could perfectly well be a state representative, for whom it would be easier to evade responsibility.

Retribution is not justice

Retribution, normally, is only part of the justice process, while the proposed mechanism somehow ignores the judicial process: the sentence is passed by the initiator of the request themselves.

It seems to me that designing a universal instrument of justice, where investigation, trial, and punishment are all provided within a single service, is excessively cumbersome. I also want to point out to the public that there are currently no major problems with investigating injustice: this is handled by projects like Scanner and Russian Elephant, FBK, Bellingcat, and a huge number of other independent agencies. Problems arise at the stage of issuing and implementing sentences, because this area, unlike investigation, is monopolized by the state.

So I focused on expanding exactly this bottleneck. Let diligent journalists provide the facts and the evidence base—and through Wanted, a third party, having no direct connection to the hypothetical FBK, organizes the retribution. Meanwhile, by the way, several competing requests can be created for the same case. For example, one person might order a splash of green ink in the eye of the aforementioned Petrunko, while another orders acid. Which contract will more people support? Which contract will be executed? The market will decide that. Let’s trust the market.

Or perhaps no one will order this patriot-statist at all: what a brave young fellow he is

Uber-retribution

In the video about anarcho-capitalism, I fantasized about the possibility of Uber-police providing security on the streets.

Of course, right now such a service has little prospect of being implemented because the state jealously guards its monopoly on police functions. Nothing would stop police provocateurs from DDoS-ing the service with false calls, or even using paramilitaries to deal with well-meaning people rushing to help upon a call—whether driven by the heart or by profit. And the service itself would unlikely be able to gain a sufficient number of users while remaining illegal.

However, certain anarcho-capitalist services for the private production of security can be organized today within the framework of purely agorist practices. And first and foremost, I am talking about Uber-retribution.

Imagine a mobile application with the following functionality.

A user launches the app and anonymously uploads information about a certain injustice, accompanying it with a proper evidentiary base: photos, videos, links to independent testimonies, and so on. Then they specify exactly what punishment they consider acceptable for the perpetrator, as well as the amount they are willing to offer to whoever undertakes to ensure this punishment.

Another user has the opportunity to see in this application what injustices fill the world and, if they wish, add their own funds to those already promised for particular cases.

A third user has the opportunity, after choosing a case to their liking, to carry out the requested retribution—and provide proof. Then anyone wishing to do so can independently verify whether the retribution actually took place and leave their opinion on it. Those who reserved their money for the administration of justice can either perform the verification themselves, trust the opinion of third-party experts, or grant the right to manage the prize fund to someone else, for example, the author of the original description of the injustice—though not necessarily to them, and more on that below.

As everyone who placed their money in the prize fund becomes convinced that the retribution has indeed occurred, they release their funds, and their bitcoins go into the wallet of the person who identified themselves as the one who carried out said retribution. One could get fancy here with smart contracts and multi-signatures, use the principle of how OpenBazaar works, or a banal centralized escrow mechanism, although the latter is undesirable as it would mean the prize money is stored in the service’s wallets, which is potentially unsafe. I am not competent enough in crypto-technologies to unequivocally point to the best desired implementation of this specific mechanism.

And as additional functionality, the application could include the possibility of private messaging between service users, a rating system for those who administer retribution, a system of various medals and other pats on the back for those who help co-finance the restoration of justice, search by map, by categories of villainy, and so on.

As is easy to see, the service is quite universal and, with proper quality of execution, allows everyone to remain anonymous except for the object of retribution and the victim (who, however, can claim they had nothing to do with it and ordered no retribution, which may well be true). Also, the object of retribution, upon finding an announcement calling for all sorts of punishments upon their head, can anonymously contact the claimant and try to reach a friendly agreement. Although one cannot rule out attempts to reach an agreement through threats or to eliminate the claimant altogether—and for this very reason, it would be useful to be able to delegate the right to authorize payment to a third-party auditor via the app; then additional violence against the victim would in no way protect the aggressor, as the victim would no longer have the right to stop the launched mechanism of retribution.

Finally, nothing prevents any law enforcement officer, upon discovering information about a certain crime, from treating it as a criminal report—and making some extra money on the side. This would be quite in the spirit of the agorist doctrine of corrupting government servants so they get used to working for people rather than official superiors.

At the same time, it will be extremely problematic by law to hold anyone in the chain of application users accountable, provided, of course, they are not caught red-handed.

Of course, such an application would unlikely be placed in official stores, so one would have to limit it to the circle of Android users and suggest downloading the APK from the project’s website—but this is a trivial inconvenience. Again, all functionality can be perfectly provided via a website to avoid being tied to a phone altogether.

All that’s left is to come up with a name. Without straining my imagination too much, I would call it something simple and clear to all consumers of Hollywood products, meaning all inhabitants of the globe: Wanted.

Besides a service that allows organizing decentralized retribution, it would also be useful to have functionality for collecting evidence: a way to start recording video to the cloud with literally one button, and preferably to stream it, and to do all this in the background with the screen off. Of course, it is important to record the filming time and geolocation, and to have the ability to send a distress signal via SMS to a group of contacts. Various decoys would be useful, allowing the simulation of deleting information from the phone, fake passwords, secret disk space, and so on. Similar applications exist, and nothing prevents them from being posted in the store—but I haven’t heard of all such functionality being gathered into one convenient product yet. I would name such an application vividly: They’re beating our people!

If you have heard of anyone developing something similar, please let me know. If there are ideas for implementation—we can discuss them.

So, I understand that under libertarianism, there is seemingly nothing complicated with judges and courts—they will continue as they were. But who will execute the sentence, and on what grounds should one trust a particular person to carry out a court judgment?

anonymous question

With judges and courts under ancap, not only will nothing be difficult—it will be much simpler than it is now.

Currently, one must perform a multitude of strange ritualistic gestures just so the monopolist condescends to review a request and decide something, and these processes drag on insanely long; very often, both litigating parties end up as victims in fact, while only all sorts of intermediaries benefit from the procedure.
The majority of disputes under ancap will resemble modern commercial arbitration: when establishing certain relations, the parties decide in advance whom they trust to resolve their conflicts, and then, having sought a court, voluntarily execute its decision.

In situations where the parties, while establishing relations, do not fully trust each other’s integrity, they can immediately deposit a sufficiently large sum each, granting the arbitrator the right to deduct a penalty from the deposit in favor of the party to whom that penalty is awarded after the conflict is resolved.

An indispensable condition of a court is the voluntary consent of the parties to execute any of its decisions in advance. Forcible summons to court, as well as the forcible execution of a court sentence, is simply ritualized retribution.

Will there be an institution of such retribution under ancap? Yes, it is quite likely there will be.

Imagine that Bob caused some damage to Alice and disappeared. Alice hires detectives and establishes who caused the damage, after which she seeks judgment from persons who are, in her opinion, sufficiently authoritative: what compensation she could forcibly seize from Bob. The court examines the evidence and becomes convinced that the damage was indeed caused by Bob, then decides what compensation would be appropriate, and Alice, with the court decision in hand, begins to seize Bob’s property. The more authoritative the court Alice turned to is for those guarding Bob’s property, the easier it will be for her to achieve the seizure. Sooner or later, Alice receives her compensation, rewards everyone who helped her, and with that, her claims against Bob are exhausted (though he may still have claims against her, since the conflict between Alice and Bob was not settled amicably).

Finally, it may happen that Alice demands Bob’s head as compensation rather than property. Then, if the court recognizes her demand as justified, she, with this decision in hand, begins to hire bounty hunters, setting a reward for Bob’s head. They will be all the more willing to sign up for this work the larger the reward and the more authoritative the judge is for them. And here it will be in Bob’s interest to find Alice and try to reconcile with her (killing Alice may not be enough, as it would not cancel the contract on his head).

Bob, you shouldn’t have disappeared…

Until what age do I need to ask your daddy’s permission

Anonymous question

Ancap, boys, this is the decentralization of law.

Dad has his opinion, mom has hers, you have yours, and I have mine. As long as I am actually dependent on my parents, it makes sense for you and me to be interested in their opinions on such matters. Once I stop being dependent, seeking their opinion can only be done for the purpose of building a friendly relationship with them.

And if they don’t agree with each other, then they can figure it out between themselves somehow.

But there is another possibility. You asked my opinion about hooking up, I’m for it. You asked Dad’s, he’s also for it. You asked Mom’s, she’s against it. We decide to ignore Mom’s opinion, and she shoots you in the back of the head for your lack of understanding. Now, when the court hearing happens, Mom will depend on the judge’s opinion regarding the permissibility of her actions, but you will already be indifferent to that.

no mom jokes here!

By the way, the appearance of a permanent source of income brings forward the date of a girl’s emancipation from her parents, so give girls bitcoins 😏
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