zlacker

>>Ozarki+(OP)
I know he wasn't convicted of hiring a hitman, and I know the attempt didn't succeed, but he still tried to kill other people. Moreover, during a Bitcoin conference, he gave a live talk from prison via phone and still lied, claiming they planted the log on his laptop. A full pardon is ridiculous. It's unfair to so many people, including his partners like Variety Jones, also known as Thomas Clark. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure he won't do anything like this again.

>>I_am_t+km1
He did kill people. That factored into his sentencing[0]: the multiple overdose deaths from heroin and other things Ulbricht sold/facilitated/took a cut of the proceeds of.

He killed children.

- "During the sentencing hearing, Forrest heard from the father of a 25-year-old Boston man who died of a heroin overdose and the mother of a 16-year-old Australian who took a drug designed to mimic LSD at a post-prom party and then jumped off a balcony to his death. Prosecutors said the two victims were among at least six who died after taking drugs that were bought through Silk Road."

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-29/silk-road... ("Silk Road Mastermind Handed Life in Prison for Drug Bazaar" (2015))

It's squarely within the Overton window to impose extremely harsh sentences for people who sell heroin*. Most (?) Asian countries *execute* people who sell heroin. Trump himself has proposed, multiple times over the years, executing US heroin dealers[1,2]—which underscores the incredible degree of hypocrisy behind this pardon.

*(It's also within some people's Overton windows to contemplate the opposite of this, in a framework of harm minimization. I can't steelman this argument in the specific case of Ulbricht. Is it harm reduction to sell heroin? Is it harm reduction to sell fatal drugs to high-school age kids?)

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43465229 ("Trump urges death penalty for drug dealers" (2018))

[2] https://www.npr.org/2023/05/10/1152847242/trump-campaign-exe... ("Trump wants the death penalty for drug dealers. Here's why that probably won't happen" (2023))

>>perihe+4r1
Ulbricht didn't kill those people. Those people took drugs under their own autonomy and died as a result.

>>cedws+ws1
Plus he didn't even sell the drugs. He created a technology platform that facilitates it. I can think of many other communications platforms that also do this, for example Google, email, Verizon, etc.

>>xyzzy9+rt1
I’m generally lasseiz-faire when it comes to most drugs, although I do think some drugs like opioids are rather objectively a cancer to society and anybody in that pipeline needs to be punished.

So. Comparisons to Google, Verizon, etc?

While his actions aren’t equivalent to a “direct” old-fashioned drug dealer selling fentanyl, they’re clearly also not equivalent to providers like Google or Verizon.

They provide truly general purpose communications networks. Common carriers. That’s different from a marketplace explicitly designed to facilitate a particular thing like selling drugs.

I mean, you can upload non-porn videos to PornHub, or attempt to met platonic knitting circle buddies on there. But let’s not sit around and pretend the entire operation isn’t designed around the explicit purpose of selling porn.

>>JohnBo+kB1
It wasn’t designed for just drugs. There were many different categories.

>>xyzzy9+rO1
Different categories, yes. But mostly drugs.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gh5_2YgWoAABY-O?format=jpg&name=...