Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

nautil.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 150 posts

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#71

Post by ringaroundthetx »

Zak wrote: post #13
ringaroundthetx wrote: post #4

What are the latest dark net markets these days anyway and have they gone Monero native yet? 2-of-3 multisig will at least provide software level trust of the escrow process. The reviews on quality of goods would still be important though, but from an enforcement side it will be exponentially more expensive to take down one of these sites. Prior DNM busts typically also got the warchest of everything held in escrow,…

I checked a few sites I found from the list in the sidebar of /r/darknetmarkets. A couple of them allowed paying into their escrow service with Monero, and for vendors to receive Monero, but it looks like they're still fundamentally based on a multisig Bitcoin transaction. This seems like a mistake to me; I would have expected faster Monero adoption, especially with Bitcoin hitting performance bottlenecks.

yeah, darknetmarkets should have dropped bitcoin completely a while ago

I'm not sure Monero's 2-of-3 multisig is actually merged into production yet, but they have 2-of-2 so thats still a real limitation. Also Monero has and will hit performance bottlenecks very quickly too, cryptonote coins have no layer-2 scaling solution on the roadmap. Although they have had adaptive block sizes from day 1, the block sizes grow very slowly compared to spikes in traffic. The transaction fees would quickly reach unoptimal $ amounts, but the market itself would just require larger deal flow.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#72

Post by popinman322 »

zxcmx wrote: post #66
joe_the_user wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug dealing is commerce that happens to be illegal. It's completely logical that most of the considerations of an ordinary market apply here. Drugs are a "victimless crime" in the technical sense that if all goes as planned, none of the people involved would have any complaint afterwards. The thing is, the article doesn't mention the market for less victim-less crimes. It seems like a market for "murder for hire" wo…

Drug sale and use is not victimless. The costs vary with the type of drug and the enforcement regime but the social costs never go to zero. There can be huge negative externalities involved with drug use, as anyone with a family member who has a drug problem could tell you. Even in the most enlightened societies one would have to acknowledge that support and rehabilitation for the small percentage of users who have p…

Proper drug education would likely go a very long way towards ameliorating addiction problems (the main contributor to negative externalities in drug markets).

Why are people using heroin? Are they depressed? In pain? What about amphetamines? Do they have ADHD?

Moreover, how many first time users actually know how to/understand the importance of properly titrating up, or even safe dosages of the substance they're using?

Not to mention that people taking substances for underlying mental issues might finally appear on the radar of their GP.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#73

Post by vkou »

zxcmx wrote: post #66
joe_the_user wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug dealing is commerce that happens to be illegal. It's completely logical that most of the considerations of an ordinary market apply here. Drugs are a "victimless crime" in the technical sense that if all goes as planned, none of the people involved would have any complaint afterwards. The thing is, the article doesn't mention the market for less victim-less crimes. It seems like a market for "murder for hire" wo…

Drug sale and use is not victimless. The costs vary with the type of drug and the enforcement regime but the social costs never go to zero. There can be huge negative externalities involved with drug use, as anyone with a family member who has a drug problem could tell you. Even in the most enlightened societies one would have to acknowledge that support and rehabilitation for the small percentage of users who have p…

> Drug sale and use is not victimless. The costs vary with the type of drug and the enforcement regime but the social costs never go to zero.

The sale and consumption of sugary drinks is not victimless either, but there's a multi-billion dollar industry behind it.

You're making a great argument for regulating Coca-Cola. (And it's one I happen to agree with.)

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#74

Post by zxcmx »

joe_the_user wrote: post #70
zxcmx wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug sale and use is not victimless. The costs vary with the type of drug and the enforcement regime but the social costs never go to zero. There can be huge negative externalities involved with drug use, as anyone with a family member who has a drug problem could tell you. Even in the most enlightened societies one would have to acknowledge that support and rehabilitation for the small percentage of users who have p…

Drug sale and use is not victimless. The costs vary with the type of drug and the enforcement regime but the social costs never go to zero. The selling of drugs may be undesirable some people's minds, "society" may decide it should be suppressed. That's your judgment but drug use remains "victimless" in the sense I described earlier - all people involved want the event to happen. Theft or assault are against cooperat…

So what we are discussing is externalities.

For example you might have a land owner and a factory, and both parties involved are perfectly happy for the factory to pump toxic waste straight into the ground. Neither party wants the police involved.

The economic exchange is between two mutually cooperative parties, but... they are often not the only ones affected by the trade. Which is why we regulate pollutants.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#75

Post by hackandtrip »

No one trust the reviews written on the site. They could be easily faked, along with reputation, in most (all, in different ways) DarkNetMarkets. You have to research on communities (on the "white" web, reddit for example) where each sellers has feedback, and famous ones got their products verified by indipendent company.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#76

Post by ike_yeah »

nostrademons wrote: post #59
valj wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing apples with oranges. A drug dealer is a peon, someone at the very bottom of an enormous multinational pyramid who sells a commodity product in a market where every disgruntled customer has the ability to put them behind bars, rather than just leave a bad review online. This is actually the most prime example of an 'untrusted' relationship. If it weren't for the total imbalance of power you have to br…

The local bank manager is also a peon. If you were considering selling your company to Jamie Dimon - well, you can probably trust that he's not going to kill you, but you will show up with an army of lawyers and investment bankers to make sure you get a fair deal.

hey bro, peon is what?

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#77

Post by TheAdamist »

scoggs wrote: post #62
Sangermaine wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would the end buyer know if the tests were genuine? The vendors could easily be paying for good results since there’s zero transparency or ability to check.

They could also just send in pure / accurately labeled stuff in for testing, unless the testing company is ordering stuff at random from an alias / PO Box or something to prevent sellers from masking their true products ingredients.

Tech companies get busted for sending golden hardware samples to review sites, the truth eventually comes out.

Although no one dies if their video card is slower than advertised.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#78

Post by sandworm101 »

md224 wrote: post #20

I think it's a really positive thing that people are able to leave reviews for drug purchases. In the absence of FDA regulation, a public reputation system incentivizes dealers to avoid harming their customers with dangerously-adulterated products. In the midst of an opioid crisis, with people overdosing on heroin cut with fentanyl, having this accountability can save lives. There's a subreddit (whose name I won't me…

>>> public reputation system incentivizes dealers to avoid harming their customers with dangerously-adulterated products.

So do the many laws that would see them on manslaughter or even murder for providing lethal drugs.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#79

Post by gt_ »

zxcmx wrote: post #74
joe_the_user wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug sale and use is not victimless. The costs vary with the type of drug and the enforcement regime but the social costs never go to zero. The selling of drugs may be undesirable some people's minds, "society" may decide it should be suppressed. That's your judgment but drug use remains "victimless" in the sense I described earlier - all people involved want the event to happen. Theft or assault are against cooperat…

So what we are discussing is externalities. For example you might have a land owner and a factory, and both parties involved are perfectly happy for the factory to pump toxic waste straight into the ground. Neither party wants the police involved. The economic exchange is between two mutually cooperative parties, but... they are often not the only ones affected by the trade. Which is why we regulate pollutants.

Your analogy of the polluting factory works if discussing the substances you listed which are not passively controlled under use, or in the case of second hand smoke. I think we can (and must) discuss those seperately for the sake of clarity of conversation.

On the topic at hand, using heroine to intoxicate one’s self is very victimless. Injection needles are sharp and carry disease. Alright, but scissors are sharp, sex carries disease and heroine was initially introduced and prescribed as a pharmaceutical. Social and economic externalities of drug use is highly subjective and difficult to isolate, which is among most rational arguments for legalization. Drugs always both solve problems and create new ones. Each situation is more than likely drastically different and impossible to readily comprehend, involved with and conflated with mental health, legal systems, moral judgements, embarrassment, fear.

Results of approaches actively considerate of this complexity (Portugal’s controversial policies come to mind) tend to suggest that the economic and social problems you mention may moreso be a result of simplistic accusations like the factory analogy.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#80

Post by Toboe »

criloz2 wrote: post #35
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one argument against capitalism as a whole, and it's worth taking seriously. Capitalism is still the best tool we have, but it's not without downsides. Example: open source is the communist model, and it works very well. To each according to their need, from each according to their ability. No one owns anything, and you're free to fork or vote with your feet. Ditto for illegal drug markets. If you're unhappy…

I don't see how open source is a communist model, nobody is coerced to publish their code, they do because they want to, even several companies are making some of their source code public for improving the trust that their client has in their product and increase their sales.

And "no coercion" is contradicts the claim of it being communist how?
Post reply on HN