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On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

nautil.us

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Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#101

Post by vkou »

wallace_f wrote: post #82
vkou wrote: post #73

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 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.)

Yet if we compare the regulated drug market to the unregulated one (mostly perscription painkillers vs marijuana) the regulated market has arguably worse outcomes and higher costs. Also, Kurz Gesagt has a great video on addiction--it's not as simple as blaming the problems/externalities solely on drugs: https://youtu.be/ao8L-0nSYzg

What if you compare prescription painkillers to heroin and fentanyl? Apples to apples, as opposed to apples to weed?

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#102

Post by chisleu »

azernik wrote: post #96
chisleu wrote: post #95

This article is total bullshit. Reviews on SR were rarely negative because the venders didn't do "some bad business". They did really good business, followed by really bad business and disappeared. It was common for vendors to cash out ESPECIALLY on the 4/20 sales and various other sales. They would offer incentives to FE (finalize early, ie release funds from the arbitrage) for months. Then, they would have a big sa…

Part of why I'm so up on pot legalization - locally grown, conflict-free drugs.

IMHO, It's only conflict free if you grow it yourself unfortunately. I don't smoke myself but I plan to summer in Colorado in 2018 and grow a crop to give to oncology patients and the like.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#103

Post by rootsudo »

azernik wrote: post #96
chisleu wrote: post #95

This article is total bullshit. Reviews on SR were rarely negative because the venders didn't do "some bad business". They did really good business, followed by really bad business and disappeared. It was common for vendors to cash out ESPECIALLY on the 4/20 sales and various other sales. They would offer incentives to FE (finalize early, ie release funds from the arbitrage) for months. Then, they would have a big sa…

Part of why I'm so up on pot legalization - locally grown, conflict-free drugs.

Conflict-free?

I never understood that. Is Sugar considered conflict-free?

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#104

Post by wallace_f »

vkou wrote: post #101
wallace_f wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet if we compare the regulated drug market to the unregulated one (mostly perscription painkillers vs marijuana) the regulated market has arguably worse outcomes and higher costs. Also, Kurz Gesagt has a great video on addiction--it's not as simple as blaming the problems/externalities solely on drugs: https://youtu.be/ao8L-0nSYzg

What if you compare prescription painkillers to heroin and fentanyl? Apples to apples, as opposed to apples to weed?

My assumption is that most recreational drug users are choosing caffeine, alcohol, marijuana, perecription painkillers, perscription amphetamines, probably in that order.

I know heroin use exists, but I've never personally met a regular heroin user in my life. So my comparison is the regulated vs unregulated market broadly speaking and representative of what's commonly being consumed.

If you watched the Kurz Gesagt video, there is a point to be made that extreme disassociative addiction is rooted in unhappy life circumstance, not in the drugs themselves.

Personally I could be in favor of some regulations around heroin, but the ones we have now create more problems than they solve.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#105

Post by TeMPOraL »

dukeflukem wrote: post #54
TeMPOraL wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not capitalism either, because open source developers don't sell code, or write code under pressure of earning a living. They just write it and give it away. Not sure what the right word is, but textbook-definition communism fits - open-source code isn't really owned in practical sense.

My understanding is you have an automatic copyright on the code you create. When you share you can optionally grant a license BSD etc. to let people use that code subject to X. So the code subject is owned.

That's an implementation detail, not the way people in Open Source think of it day-to-day.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#106

Post by baddox »

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…

It sounds like you’re equivocating on the term “victimless crime.” The term is very commonly used to refer to crimes where no people who are directly involved in the crime are harmed. It doesn’t mean that the act has literally zero social costs.

Externalities are a completely separate argument. Externalities can apply to actions regardless of their legality, and are completely orthogonal to whether an action is a victimless crime.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#107

Post by baddox »

TheAdamist wrote: post #77
scoggs wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

See also Volkswagen.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#108

Post by dukeflukem »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #105
dukeflukem wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is you have an automatic copyright on the code you create. When you share you can optionally grant a license BSD etc. to let people use that code subject to X. So the code subject is owned.

That's an implementation detail, not the way people in Open Source think of it day-to-day.

I'm not sure how copyright and licensing is an implementation detail. Its fairly important to consider.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#109

Post by [deleted] »

chisleu wrote: post #95

This article is total bullshit. Reviews on SR were rarely negative because the venders didn't do "some bad business". They did really good business, followed by really bad business and disappeared. It was common for vendors to cash out ESPECIALLY on the 4/20 sales and various other sales. They would offer incentives to FE (finalize early, ie release funds from the arbitrage) for months. Then, they would have a big sa…

[deleted]

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#110

Post by stinos »

joshvm wrote: post #6

It is somewhat amusing that the cocaine in the stock photo costs 0.13BTC at a price of $27. I know people who have bought weed for the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars in today's bitcoin (even post crash). The comment about eBay is interesting - that negative feedback is scarce because people don't bother if they're unhappy. I think one aspect is that it's more difficult to leave a negative review, and…

today's bitcoin (even post crash).

Isn't it too soon to call this a crash (honest question)? I mean, it's at 12k or so now. It was at 6k a month ago. In the eyes of skeptical me, even not knowing anything about financial markets, those numbers don't exactly seem like crashing. Yet.

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