The invasion of the social by capital: non-aggression insurance

One of the most interesting ideas put forward by libertarian theorists is the concept of an assassination market. As far as I know Timothy C. May was the first to elucidate the concept in The Cyphernomicon where the idea is articulated that a cryptographic market would place bets on the date that a person will die, so that an assassin can get paid for his work by betting on the day that he will kill someone, since he knows that day in advance. The pot of money is divided by all participants who bet on that exact day, and with cryptography the identity of the market participants is kept anonymous.


A sufficiently advanced assassination market could form the basis of a government without leaders, since government is that force of violence of last resort, and if a law can be made enforceable by market dictate then a force equivalent to a congress (or legislator of last resort) exists. If a tax and voucher scheme was also implemented such that the vast majority of assassination market bets were placed by ordinary people, then such a system might even avoid consolidation by the wealthy and remain "democratic" in the sense of enabling competition in all other areas. But as usual, the existing system forms a barrier to any new one, and if you want change you need the existing POTUS to foster it.


It is my intention to articulate a less-than-lethal version of the assassination market in the hopes that such a stepping stone might lead to the more biting option later. Assassination markets do not currently work because they are not sufficiently advanced for full anonymity, because they are suppressed, because they are insufficiently capable of rerouting around their suppression — at this time. May we construct a more tolerable option? One that the the existing system is required to respect? Imagine then non-aggression insurance.


Free-loaders are parasites. One of the most interesting aspects of libertarianism is the unwillingness to oppose parasitism with any kind of mandatory anything. All property is based on violence, whether it is the private security guard, solider, bounty hunter, privateer, mercenary, or cop defending it. Our purpose is not to quibble over who does the violence — we take it as a given that power is not going away, but to articulate a plan for how a Principal might secure his property without said property being captured by an Agent, that is, without the Agent(s) becoming a monopoly (of government) through collusion. How is competition maintained in violence (of last resort) without that competition becoming violent? Therin lies the important question. 


So what is non-aggression insurance? It is the beginning of smart contract government. Imagine that there is a firm that represents the interests of business owners in government, but unlike large lobbyists it is only allowed to block legislation and serves only predominantly small, (rather than large) business owners). Now this mandate to only block is incorporated into its corporate charter. Vouchers are issued to all business owners in a state. These vouchers pay out only when a proposed law is either successfully defeated, or an exemption for enforcement is crafted for that particular state or province. The vouchers are paid for by a tax which is progressive in the sense of forcing wealthy business owners to pay more than small business owners, but the issuance of vouchers is consistent across all levels of business owners and they all receive the same purchasing power. Vouchers pay to block legislation only, and never to make it, and this rule in also state law. When a proposed law is successfully blocked from reaching the President's / Governor's / Mayor's desk the broker working to block receives a cut. Brokers are licenced by the market automatically on a first-come, first serve-basis and the total number of brokers is algorithmically limited to a fixed number per market size, to insure that competition is not so fierce that no money can be made, nor so lacking that collusion is possible. The algorithm automatically adjusts the number of licences up or down based on a formula designed to maintain the income of brokers at a steady state of around 100 K per year adjusted annually for inflation.


This differs from regular lobbyists who serve large Fortune 500 companies. The brokers are servants of predominantly small businesses, since they pay the bills, and unlike large companies they only block law, and do not try to make it. Their purpose is to stifle the entire law making function, such that rent seeking by large corporations is impossible and the legislative process of is stiffled completely.


Business owners place bids on blocking the laws they consider most harmful to their industries, and thus, the law is either defeated or an exemption is carved out for the state with mandatory non-aggression insurance. With a smaller legislative burden than other states business flocks to that particular state, the economy grows, and other states are incentivized to follow the model, until the entire set of all 50 states has some form of non-aggression insurance, (or a fewer number of states since progressive states will destroy themselves). Exit pressure becomes a very real force in politics, and non-aggression insurance may begun to be implemented internationally.


Given enough time this should lead to the total paralyzation of the government apparatus, as the government becomes an incompetent actor incapable of responding to crisis. Into this vacuum the anacho capitalist offers private enforcement as an alternative, and without a government capable of responding competently assassination market may thrive and replace it as law maker/violence of last resort. The corporate charters of non-aggression firms specify an exception where only laws enabling private enforcement may pass. Afterward the conventional democracy becomes incapable of acting, and the assassination market can eliminate its politicians to take its place, since desperate people will flock to the only source of competent enforcement they can find. The private sector gradually comes to replace the public sector, and the invasion of the social by capital is complete. The new regime has two levels; a systems of private enforcement checked by a system of assassination markets. This ensures that when the CEOs of private enforcement companies exceed their natural authority, abuse their power, or gain too much concentration of power, they are eliminated. The old democracy is kept only a means to redistribute purchasing power via vouchers for the new system. Socialism survives as vouchers that put all humans on a footing of equal rights by giving them equal purchasing power in the new market: a market for social services. A social currency becomes normal and the redistribution to pay for it becomes all that is left of democracy. Rather than eliminating democracy it becomes part of a three-branch system to mutually check power of the other branches, which are; private enforcement, assassination markets, and democratic redistribution of purchasing power for security services.