I would take issue with assuming that it was net positive with ratings. Given the anonymous nature handling bots spamming fake reviews would be even harder to catch here, and you ultimately don’t know who ended up addicted/hooked/DUI’s etc from the easy availability this provided. I’m not sure the total effects could ever be qualified, but it’s not like unadulterated drugs are automatically safe. Just look at how many lives pharma-grade opioids ruined, even though they were “safe”.
That’s also not to mention guns and all kinds of other dangerous & illegal parts of it.
I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel.
why do you believe he's anti-drug or anti-cartel?
I know this is probably as minority view, but I think if adults consent to buying and using any drug, that should be both fully legal, and their right and responsibility- any negative consequences are 100% their own fault, not the person who sold them. It's probably true that making drugs easier to buy made more people buy them, but I was only considering the ill effects of fraudulently adulterated products. Do the math differently if you don't see it this way.
I don't know how Silk Road was designed, and have never actually used it or anything like it- but I imagine it would be possible to eliminate fraudulent reviews with proper design, and they may have done so. eBay, for example, is almost free of fraudulent reviews because posting a single review is very expensive- you'd need to sell an item to yourself for full price, and then pay eBay their full (rather large) cut to post a single fraudulent review.
As a buyer, you should be able to take a single high effort review that contains something like mass spec chemical analysis results, and further confirm that the reviewer themselves has a credible history of making purchases and reviews broadly across a lot of different sellers. An impossibly expensive to fake signal. This could also be done automatically by the platform- by making the more credible reviews display first.
> I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel.
I explained this in another comment: >>42787217
Trump is not an idealist- he will promise anything to anyone if it gets power and attention. Previously, he had attempted a political career as a leftist, and switched to the right because it was getting more traction.
The Mexican government has a long history of this. The LAPD’s (well documented for over 50 years) do the same thing.
Trump is a convicted felon with lots of ties to organized crime. Nothing about him pardoning members of some criminal organizations but not others is surprising.
In related news, he signed an executive order forcing prosecutors to seek the death penalty when police are killed, and in the same day pardoned 132 of his supporters that were convicted of assaulting police officers during an event where officers were killed.
It is very clear from what you’ve said that you haven’t used it :) I have browsed it when it was active and I was very pro tor. You’re making a lot of assumptions that simply don’t hold for silk road.
He also pardoned a drug dealing cop killer at the end of his last term. Said cop killer has since been arrested for attempting to strangle his wife to death.
https://www.wesh.com/article/cop-killer-pardoned-by-trump-co...
For reference, Rudy Giuliani was lauded as the anti-organized mayor that brought down the Italian mob in New York, but ultimately was flagged as actually being an upper echelon of Russian organized crime who worked to establish it by eliminating competiton.
I was playing devil's advocate, but agree there is more culpability to a seller if the drug overwhelms your ability to make the choice in the first place- however a lot of very illegal drugs do not do this. More so if you're using emotionally manipulative ads and selling methods as the alcohol and pharma industry do.
I think it isn't mentioned because Silk Road didn't actually facilitate any selling/buying of weapons or any items "whose purpose was to "harm or defraud."" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)#Produc...
> I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel.
He's the candidate that was preferred by Christians, yet probably he was the least Christian-like candidate. Just today/yesterday he criticized a Bishop for values that are clearly Christian, people seem to swallow it. I'm pretty sure trying to add logic/reasoning to the choices he makes is a lost cause.
Furthermore the timeline for this is over a decade after Giuliani was mayor of New York.
For LSD there existed a third-party forum, where a group of (supposedly) vendor-neutral, unaffiliated individuals would purchase samples from vendors, send them to private or state-sponsored labs around the world and publish/discuss the results (often with online links to lab results).
Yes, of course vendors could have also attempted to infiltrate these forums. But as enough of these functions were provided by/for the community, the profit incentive tilts. If you ran a vendor account on the Silk Road, your effort was better spent maintaining/improving good infosec and mail/postal security. Some techniques they developed were quite innovative, the professionalism was evident.
Ross’s story is fascinating and tragic- as everything that’s said for and against his character is generally true. Silk Road was built on naive yet admirable ideals. It fostered a special community, some of which really did reflect those ideals. He got in over his head, and really did try to have someone killed.
Though, the details on that latter point are a bit more complicated- authorities had infiltrated Ross’s inner circle- the motive and the ‘hitman’ himself were fictional. Ross still took the bait though, which is pretty damning. Until that point, they weren’t sure they had a sufficient case on him.
I'd agree with you if the people that used these drugs did so rationally. That's not the case mostly though from what I've heard. Trauma is often the root cause and that's out of many people's control. From then on it's ub to society to help them.
If a high performing exec wants to buy drugs to function better, sure maybe that's ok but I doubt that's the majority of people.
That's the point people don't seem to be getting about anonymous reviews- if the review is more costly than the value it provides the seller, they won't do it, and it's fairly easy to make that the case. A separate enthusiast forum where the reviews are from people with a long history of high effort engagement is a good example of that. That's basically the idea behind crypto as well- making false transactions is more expensive than the value it could return.
He wants to be known as a guy who trades favors, so here, he ignored all the previous fear mongering about [scary thing], and is repaying the favor to the "libertarian party" who wanted this, and voted for him.
Almost everything he says is just for show, fits his pattern of behavior better than, "he believes [thing he said]" does.
I just read another article about how the person who says we need to follow "law and order" and "respect police" just pardoned everybody convicted of violence against police... again, trading favors instead of consistently following something he said.
While substances can efficiently help someone destroy their life, keeping them away from drugs won’t stop them from destroying their lives. There’s something already broken in these people that they need to fix before it’s too late.
There are perfectly legal alternatives that can be just as effective with a little more effort. Putting heroin in your arm is just quicker than downing a fifth of vodka, or chasing dopamine at the dog track.
This is a critical point. His explicitly goal is to be an autocrat, there is no other ideology other than what works.
That's why I think the only real bit of him is the one that admires Putin. That is who he wants to be.
It's why his moves seem so random.
Wikipedia isn't perfect, but if I had to put odds on Wikipedia vs "rando on internet forum who claims to remember something from years ago", I'm going with Wikipedia 10 times out of 10.
If you really want to understand, it’s not hard. It just requires making an honest effort to try, without judging. And that’s what stops people who don’t understand it. Try chatting with an LLM sometime about what it looks like from their perspective. Knowing it’s not a human makes it easier to avoid getting upset.
The law is murky and seems to hinge on the court's opinion on whether the person who committed the crime would have had they not been influenced by an officer. The police being the ones to start the conversation doesn't rise to the level of entrapment. The police deceiving you into wanting to commit a crime may rise to the level of entrapment if the courts find you wouldn't have done it otherwise (the example I found that illustrated this best was "Hey there's a warehouse full of valuables let's go rob it" isn't entrapment but "Hey this guy said he's gonna kill your kid you need to kill him first" probably does absent any reason to believe you would have killed him without being deceived first). My guess would be that the grey area, plus the relative ease with which they were able to secure a life sentence for the other charges, is why the murder-for-hire charges never went to trial.
One idea that springs to mind: if a person starts up an anonymous, online marketplace for that activity, imprison him forever.
You can find, and log into, your facebook account, should you have one, here, where I'm sure you would be quite identifiable.
facebookwkhpilnemxj7asaniu7vnjjbiltxjqhye3mhbshg7kx5tfyd dot onion
I don’t personally hold the opinion that Ross Ulbricht shouldn’t have been pursued according to the law- or support his pardon- or even that darknet drug markets should exist! I’m also not really interested in crypto.
However I strongly believe that a completely different approach to drug laws & regulations is necessary to make people safer and reduce crime.
It made the situation...messy, to say the least.
Not to mention lets compare what Ulbricht did to say Snowden?
Are you kidding me?
It is like we live in some idiot version of the Twilight Zone.
I was brought up Christian, sealed my religiousness with a confirmation when I was 15 (which required studies and field trips), and been around religious people for a lot of my younger life. Oh, and my mom worked at a church where I grew up, spent a bunch of time in the church, for better or worse.
I'd like to think that the values of compassion and mercy are two of the most fundamental Christian values, at least from the protestants I spent a lot of time with. It seems to me, that the American bastardization of Catholicism, might not actually be very Christian if those two values aren't include in there.
I'm not religious anymore, but if I learned anything from (truly) religious folks, then it would be that you should treat your fellow humans as just that, fellow humans.
That adults should be able to buy and sell whatever the fuck they want?
And that the government should not get a say, or even a cut?
I don't necessarily fully agree with that, but for sure it's an ideal, and has been expressed many times (e.g. by libertarians).
Furthermore, heroin != vodka in terms of how addictive it is for the average user, and that's partly why only one of them is legal for recreational use.
Controversies about decriminalization aside, harm reduction exists as a studied component in addiction, public health, and psychology circles for a reason.
If someone comes to you and offers you a fictional job to illegally move a lot of drugs for cash and you agree - that's not entrapment, you agreed of your own accord. That the whole thing was a fake setup is not materially relevant.
If you first refuse, and then the undercover officer says "if you don't do this we'll come after you and kill your family" and then you agree under duress - that's entrapment.
It has to be something that's compelling you to do something you would not have done otherwise. Presenting you with the option to make a bad choice is not itself enough because had the situation been real you would have done it.
On one hand I'm sympathetic to Ross in that I can empathize with his youthful ideals and ego that drove the marketplace, but I also think he genuinely would have authorized that person be killed had it been real and people are in prison for a lot less. His market was also a lot more than drugs iirc.
I find his supporters downplaying the assassination bit irritating - I suspect they do it because they know it's the least defensible bit and they can argue it on technicality. I think it'd be better if they just accepted it.
I also think he's very unlikely to commit another crime now that he's out, but still - a lot of people are in prison for a lot less.
It’s cheaper than the alternative, though, if there is rat poison in it, there is nothing you can do!
Caveat Emptor is a shit way to run a society. It incentivizes the sociopaths.
Both Hippies and Libertarians fail to understand that if your organizational principles don’t account for sociopaths, they will take over and ruin everything.
There was definitely a fake ID tab on it. Isn't fraud one of the main purposes of having a fake ID?
Guns were definitely for sale on Silk Road. Ulbricht stopped selling them because it wasn't lucrative enough.
I can't find the original post, but this post quotes his comments at the time when he closed the gun forum:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66587.msg1079466#msg...
While technically accurate, the tone of the Ulbricht quote differs somewhat:
The volume hasn't even been enough to cover server costs and is actually waning at this point. I had high hopes for it, but if we are going to serve an anonymous weapons market, I think it will require more careful thought an planning.Sure there is, I can take you to court.
>Caveat Emptor is a shit way to run a society. It incentivizes the sociopaths.
Bureaucracy and nanny states do that too.
>Both Hippies and Libertarians fail to understand that if your organizational principles don’t account for sociopaths, they will take over and ruin everything.
I don't think the latter are against locking people up. Or executing them even!
And the former, I dunno, perhaps they handle them Midsommar style!
Not to mention the issue is quite solvable: sellers can sell whatever, but need to specify the contents and whether they match a specification (e.g. same contents as aspirin). If you want to buy rat poison drug or heroin cut with sawdust, it's on you.
Literally entrapment.
Like you said, it hinges on if you would have committed the crime without encouragement from the police.
A trap car is not entrapment. You walking past a trap car, checking if the door is unlocked and then going for a joyride / stealing it means you convinced yourself to do this crime.
An undercover policeman telling you he's seen an unlocked car, and "just take it for a spin, for the hell of it"? That's entrapment.
>By a 5–3 margin, the Court upheld the conviction of a Missouri man for selling heroin even though all the drug sold was supplied to him, he claimed, by a Drug Enforcement Administration informant who had, in turn, gotten it from the DEA. The majority held that the record showed Hampton was predisposed to sell drugs no matter his source...The case came before the court when the defendant argued that while he was predisposed, it was irrelevant since the government's possible role as sole supplier in the case constituted the sort of "outrageous government conduct" that Justice William Rehnquist had speculated could lead to the reversal of a conviction in the court's last entrapment case, United States v. Russell.[2] Rehnquist was not impressed and rejected the argument in his majority opinion.
Here's one where the government said "Hey you should sell this heroin that I gave you" and the conviction was upheld because "the record showed Hampton was predisposed to sell drugs no matter his source." So no, the simple act of an undercover cop asking you if you'd like to commit a crime isn't entrapment on its face.
* unfettered and unregulated and anonymous weapons sales. * willful ignorance and rejection of any of the social costs of buying and selling hard drugs. * commerce that operates in a world that is difficult to be taxes by government entities, and ideally anonymously (even though bitcoin is the least anonymous thing in the world)
A large portion of people at the Libertarian convention that Trump gave a speech at would prefer complete legalization of all drugs.
I think it's a belief that a lot of us arrive at early in our lives, many eventually grow out of it.
Vivek Ramaswamy is a partner at a16z
If you aren't aware that it's an LEO urging you on, I don't see why you should be able to argue impropriety. You made the decision as if it were real and would have real consequences.
Very astute. What’s interesting to me is the ability for youth to discount this potential change, mostly because they just see the end result vs the journey. I know I was like that.
It was under his own will, the DEA just supplied him the means to do so.
It's basically as if I was in a seedy bar and spot a pistol on an undercover agent, and I tell them I know an easy spot to rob near the bar. Then the undercover agent gives me the pistol, asking for 20% of the take. It only turns into entrapment if I was talking about money problems and the undercover agent would have told me robbing a nearby convienence store could be an easy solve to my money troubles.
Speedrunning the history of civil society the dumb way.
Law is the history of transgressions against the public good.
Courts can do very little to remedy the harm of dying from rat poison. They can address, in an imperfect way, the incidental harm your death by rat poison causes to other people, but, I think most people would strongly prefer not to die of rat poison, than to die of rat poison but have their dependents compensated financially for the loss of their future income, etc.