I just came across this, assassination politics, and it reminded me of the topic of sanctioned violence in a hypothetical futuristic Libertarian community.

QuoteA few months ago, I had a truly and quite literally "revolutionary" idea, and I jokingly called it "Assassination Politics": I speculated on the question of whether an organization could be set up to legally announce that it would be awarding a cash prize to somebody who correctly "predicted" the death of one of a list of violators of rights, usually either government employees, officeholders, or appointees. It could ask for anonymous contributions from the public, and individuals would be able send those contributions using digital cash.

I also speculated that using modern methods of public-key encryption and anonymous "digital cash," it would be possible to make such awards in such a way so that nobody knows who is getting awarded the money, only that the award is being given. Even the organization itself would have no information that could help the authorities find the person responsible for the prediction, let alone the one who caused the death.

It was not my intention to provide such a "tough nut to crack" by arguing the general case, claiming that a person who hires a hit man is not guilty of murder under libertarian principles. Obviously, the problem with the general case is that the victim may be totally innocent under libertarian principles, which would make the killing a crime, leading to the question of whether the person offering the money was himself guilty.

On the contrary; my speculation assumed that the "victim" is a government employee, presumably one who is not merely taking a paycheck of stolen tax dollars, but also is guilty of extra violations of rights beyond this. (Government agents responsible for the Ruby Ridge incident and Waco come to mind.) In receiving such money and in his various acts, he violates the "Non-aggression Principle" (NAP) and thus, presumably, any acts against him are not the initiation of force under libertarian principles.

That's from 1997, so never say that nutty ideas can't arise and in some cases be taken on as part of a society. In fact that particular tract could be quite influential in the society envisioned.

Quote from: The Traveller;640070I just came across this, assassination politics, and it reminded me of the topic of sanctioned violence in a hypothetical futuristic Libertarian community.

That's from 1997, so never say that nutty ideas can't arise and in some cases be taken on as part of a society. In fact that particular tract could be quite influential in the society envisioned.

Yeah, but that's pretty clearly not so much "libertarian" as "unabomber conspiracy-theorist survivalist".

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;640351Yeah, but that's pretty clearly not so much "libertarian" as "unabomber conspiracy-theorist survivalist".

RPGPundit

A paid up member of the Libertarian party expresses an unsavoury idea in Libertarian terms - all this does is illustrate that any philosophy can be shoehorned into saying whatever people want it to.

That it almost exactly mirrors that facet of the society I described is merely happy coincidence.

Quote from: The Traveller;640377A paid up member of the Libertarian party expresses an unsavoury idea in Libertarian terms - all this does is illustrate that any philosophy can be shoehorned into saying whatever people want it to.

Nobody is denying your second point there.  You can use any philosophical affiliation to say anything you want IF you twist its foundational landmarks enough to make it unrecognizable.

And on that note, I don't really know enough about the US Libertarian party to know just how libertarian they actually are; for all I know they might be "libertarians" the way the Republican party is for "small government" or the democratic party is in favor of "ending the war".

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;640738Nobody is denying your second point there.  You can use any philosophical affiliation to say anything you want IF you twist its foundational landmarks enough to make it unrecognizable.

And on that note, I don't really know enough about the US Libertarian party to know just how libertarian they actually are; for all I know they might be "libertarians" the way the Republican party is for "small government" or the democratic party is in favor of "ending the war".

RPGPundit

They aren't dissimilar to Tea Partiers from what I know. I hope in light of this you can see how a state might dub itself Libertarian, or even ultra Libertarian, while not following certain tenets of the philosophy however. Self proclaimed Libertarians and Libertarian groups exist right now in a similar vein.

I'm delighted to have come across that tract for different reasons however, as it led me to the awesome gaming concept of an assassination market. That's definetely getting added to the next game.

The American Libertarian Party isn't like the Tea Party from what I can tell, at least not the current one that is basically just the libertarian wing of the Republican Party without much of a coherent message.

The LP is probably not genuinely Libertarian either, but on the opposite end of the spectrum of the Tea Party in being very "liberal" culturally and socially, which often trumps their economic message.  

Prior to the Rothbard brand of AnCap libertarianism becoming popular in the US the LP was even further to the left, to the point of basically reveling on the scorn they brought on themselves like rebellious teenagers pushing social boundaries rather than being an actual political party.  To some extent I don't think that their "Hey look at me, I'm promoting public sex acts with pre-pubescent children for freedom!" reputation has ever fully left them and most American Libertarians are not associated with the LP or follow a brand of libertarianism that post-dates the LPs original platform and the LP only clings to now in an attempt to be relevant to American libertarians who weren't interested in Libertarianism As Iconoclasm.

But to go back on topic, I ran the late-TSR FR pre-made adventure Wyrmskull Throne when it came out, which is a predominantly undersea adventure and I thought it was pretty good in terms of story and NPCs, with a relatively weak dungeon.

The only big issue with running any underwater adventure is the limited value of terrain and miniatures, so there is much more emphasis on theater of the mind, but that might just be a worthwhile trade off depending on how your group likes to roll.

When I ran Wyrmskull Throne it was as part of a longer FR campaign and the PCs were inadvertently dragged into events (which is more or less how the adventure is written to proceed) so the PCs were actually on a larger mission that they had to get back to, but I wish I/we had more time to explore the mini-setting presented in the adventure.

And yes, they actually did it. I love being right. Sort of. Just goes to show that today's lunatic can be tomorrow's pseudoreligious icon.

Couple of quotes from the slashdot discussion:

QuoteOr it's simply a honeypot.

QuoteOr some bizarre ultra-libertarian performance art.

Heh.

On of the things I actually liked about the much-despised CYBERPUNK V.3.0 was the concept that things had gotten so shitty on land that humans were returning to the seas. Like many things in that game the treatment of the idea wasn't so hot, but it's a neat, potential-filled idea.

I have never met a real Libertarian in face-to-face real life. All of the "Libertarians" I've personally encountered were just Christian Conservative Republicans hijacking the label to look... I don't know, hip or cool or something. Their commitment to liberty and freedom would completely evaporate as soon as the demon SEX came into the mix: You should be able to practice surgery out of your backyard lawnmower shed without a licence... but no abortions. You have the right to own as many AK-47s as can fit in your house... but no right to oral sex. You can advocate a coup, but not publish Hustler. I find this sad in a way that's hard to articulate: Dishonesty (possibly not deliberate) clouding discussion of some important ideas that should be discussed, even if I'm not 100% on board with all of them. I hope it's different in other places.