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
> 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.

Nit: People died, who may not have died, because of his actions but he didn't kill them. Very few people are forced to take drugs.

>>that_g+ys1
It's worth noting that darknet sites have at every point in their history provided higher-purity drugs on average than what was available elsewhere[1]. It's hard to say whether or not more people used drugs because of the Silk Road. But without question, many people who purchased drugs on the Silk Road and survived, would have purchased those drugs elsewhere and died from impurities in the Silk Road's absence. I think there's an argument to be made that Ullbricht saved lives by purveying safer drugs.

[1] https://www.euda.europa.eu/publications/insights/internet-dr...

EDIT: Added citation for commenter who couldn't be bothered to use a search engine. Link contains links to multiple studies.

>>kerkes+ot1
- "But without question, many people who purchased drugs on the Silk Road and survived, would have purchased those drugs elsewhere and died from impurities in the Silk Road's absence. I think there's an argument to be made that Ullbricht saved lives by purveying safer drugs."

But how's that different from arguing that every crack dealer who doesn't cut their crack product is a utilitarian, net-positive life-saver?

Alice sells pure crack. Bob one street down adds fentanyl for the extra kick. It's a reasonable inference that Alice's clients, deprived of Alice, would switch to Bob and promptly off themselves. Does it therefore follow, that Alice-who-sells-crack is an upstanding, lifesaving even, member of society, who should be left free to sell more crack? If not, then what's the differentiation between Alice-who-sells-crack and Ross Ulbricht—what innovation has that cryptocurrency startup innovated, that makes it it a substantively different moral scenario?

Certainly, no crack dealer has ever, in the history of the US, tried to advance this specific utilitarian argument, which Ulbricht attached himself to (as Judge Forrest pointed out—it's a privileged argument of a privileged person).

>>perihe+kF1
> Certainly, no crack dealer has ever, in the history of the US, tried to advance this specific utilitarian argument, which Ulbricht attached himself to (as Judge Forrest pointed out—it's a privileged argument of a privileged person).

Tell me more about how a judge is calling people privileged.

I mean, do you have any discussion of the idea at hand, or are you just going to appeal to how we feel about hypothetical people who might have said the idea? Either the idea is correct or it's not, it doesn't matter if it's a crack dealer, a darknet market administrator, or a judge who makes it.

>>kerkes+bi2
- "Tell me more about how a judge is calling people privileged"

ok

- "The family received food stamps for four years beginning when Katherine was 12. They were homeless for six months. "I came from nothing," Forrest said. "I came from a father who made no money. He was a playwright and then a writer, and even though he published a lot of books, I was a complete scholarship student all the way through."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_B._Forrest

>>perihe+sP2
Yeah, I read that before I said that, and I said it anyway, because that in no way changes anything. The accusation against Ullbricht was uttered by an adult Federal Judge with net worth in the millions, not a 12-year-old on food stamps. Just because she started out underprivileged, does not make her underprivileged now.

And look, I don't even agree with the narrative of "privilege". I think if you see someone being treated badly, the solution to that is to treat that person better, not to adamantly insist that people who are treated better are privileged. Calling someone privileged is pretty much always an ad-hominem argument to discard what they have to say.

I disagree with Forrest, not because she's privileged, although she IS privileged. I disagree with Forrest because the argument that purer drugs kill fewer people than cut ones is just as valid coming from a street crack dealer as it is coming from Ross Ullbricht. I don't care who says an idea, I care whether the idea is true or not.

Do you have any actual refutation of that claim, or are you going to continue to insist that who said it is more important than whether it's true or not?

EDIT: Ironically, the argument Forrest is making here is actually a particularly offensive appeal to privileged (read: racist) misinformation. She references "crack dealers" specifically because crack has a reputation as the worst of the worst of drugs, when in fact crack is extremely similar to regular cocaine. The difference is that crack is used by poor, often black users, whereas cocaine is used by rich, often white, users. But criminal charges for crack vs. cocaine are still drastically different, although this has improved[1]. This is part of a larger pattern where drugs are prosecuted with more severity if they're used by poor black people than if they are used by middle class white people. For example, PCP is a whole schedule higher than, although these are chemically similar drugs with similar effects and harms in any of the scientific literature I can find.

[1] https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/crack-vrs-po...