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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. clucki+Gf1[view] [source] 2025-01-22 11:55:12
>>offsig+SK
Many criminal gangs from biker groups to foreign cartels are doing the same thing and reaping profits in the $100Bs scale annually.

Your argument is not an argument for incarceration, it is an argument for abolition of prohibition and regulating the sales of some psychoactives.

The same stone would hit the fentanyl epidemic, it would hit the pushers of ”zombie drug” laced cocktails, it would hit cross-border trafficking, to name only a few. Society would massively benefit. So would the economy.

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