Assassination Politics (by Jim Bell) + Bitcoin = ?
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Suppose an assassin wishes to purchase futures for, e.g., Obama dead on 5/15. If she purchases more than the normal amount of Dead Obama 5/15 Futures (DO515F), there will be a price impact. All of a sudden, the price of DO515F will spike and an observer will conclude there is an elevated probability of assassination on 5/15.
A system designed to disseminate information as widely as possible is not that useful for conspiracies.
Can you imagine the last three American presidents surviving a system like this? What about the current president? I think a large number of lunatics would donate insane amounts of money towards his assassination just to see it through.
The idea that this is a constructive mechanism to put more checks and balances in the hand of the general population is horribly misguided. Who would like to live in a world like this? Also, it wouldn't even fix the most pressing problems, like corruption and abuse of power. An Assassination Market would just shift corruption and abuse to another group. The average citizen would be totally screwed, even worse than today (I know, it's hard to imagine sometimes).
There are so many worthwhile ideas to improve the concept of government. For example, I believe it is worth looking into abandoning the concept of representation or at least de-emphasizing it in politics. So many ideas worth discussing. Anonymous Assassination Markets is not one of them.