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[return to "Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon"]
1. rappat+0c[view] [source] 2025-01-22 01:38:25
>>Ozarki+(OP)
I think his original sentence was absolutely deserved—even though the charge of hiring a contract killer to assassinate his business competition may have been dropped, I think it's clear he did many things in the same vein. Even if you support his original pursuit of a free and open online marketplace, I think most people would agree he took it a bridge too far in the end.

That said, I do think he absolutely deserved to be released, not because he didn't deserve to be locked up in the first place, but because he's clearly been rehabilitated and has done great work during his time in prison. All that considered, ten years seems like a not unreasonable prison sentence for what he did. I hope he'll continue to do good when he's released.

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2. offsig+SK[view] [source] 2025-01-22 06:56:34
>>rappat+0c
"he took it a bridge too far" is a massive trivialization.

The guy operated a marketplace for illegal goods in order to enrich himself. The illegality wasn't just incidental, it was literally his business model -- by flouting the law, he enjoyed massive market benefit (minimal competition, lack of regulation, high margins etc) by exploiting the arbitrage that the rest of us follow the rules.

Said a different way, he knowingly pursued enormous risk in order to achieve outsized benefits, and ultimately his bet blew up on him -- we shouldn't have bailed him out.

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3. silver+gN[view] [source] 2025-01-22 07:20:48
>>offsig+SK
His sentence was excessive and cruel to make an example out of him. There’s a serial child rapist in the same prison serving less time.
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4. ty6853+9O[view] [source] 2025-01-22 07:29:14
>>silver+gN
The state hates more than anything someone who operates on first principles that the empire is wrong.

A serial rapist, even one that would happily do it again, will often repent and quickly admit guilt. They have no interest in undermining the philosophical basis of the state. They will posture themselves as bound but imperfect citizens under the law.

Ross violated the only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law. He was sentenced for being a heretic.

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5. TeMPOr+SS[view] [source] 2025-01-22 08:17:40
>>ty6853+9O
> Ross violated the only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law. He was sentenced for being a heretic.

Good.

Let's keep in mind that the shared faith in this "holy religion, the rule of law" is the only thing holding together your country, my country, everyone's countries, and civilized society in general. Take that away, and everything around us will collapse, regressing the few survivors of that event to the prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other for what little scraps the land has to give.

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6. kybern+9U[view] [source] 2025-01-22 08:30:31
>>TeMPOr+SS
I'm from Germany. I could tell you something about blindly following the "rule of law". If you throw morality out the window the law can become a very ugly instrument.
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7. ben_w+Kb1[view] [source] 2025-01-22 11:19:05
>>kybern+9U
Everything done without consideration is very quickly evil. Free tragedy of the commons with every free market; equivalents of Malthus for poverty wages and zero profit margins in the economy; Nash games where all parties want to defect and want the other not to; AI optimising for paperclips.

Rule of law is a pillar, but not the only one — in an ideal case the laws themselves are bound by constitutional requirements, and the constitutional requirements are bound by democratic will, and the democratic will by freedom of speech, and the freedom of speech by a requirement for at least attempting to be honest.

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