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On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

nautil.us

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Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#111

Post by zxcmx »

baddox wrote: post #106
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…

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 vic…

It's because I read that the poster's argument was: drugs are a "victimless crime" and therefore regulating drug sales is a market distortion and pointless.

My counter-argument was that there are negative externalities to many kinds of drug sales and use.

I agree that these concerns are orthogonal but I did not feel that the conclusion was supported by the argument and therefore shifted the field somewhat. I don't think the precise definitions of the terms are central to the discussion.

I do wonder if we're getting a bit caught up on regulating versus criminalization.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#112

Post by oskarth »

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…

> offer incentives to FE (finalize early, ie release funds from the arbitrage) for months

Not too familiar with DNMs, but why would someone agree to this? Just to save a buck? Seems clear it is against your interest, good or bad reputation. What's the stated rational from seller for this, just "I want more liquidity"?

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#113

Post by zxcmx »

jdietrich wrote: post #99
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…

Alcohol has some of the worst negative externalities of any drug of abuse. It's a causal factor in a huge proportion of road traffic accidents and domestic violence. It kills about 88,000 Americans annually due to overdose, accidents and chronic illness. Typical recreational doses are inherently toxic. When we criminalized alcohol, the negative externalities got worse. Gangsters murdered each other in the street for…

I agree, and I generally support "regulation" of drugs rather than criminalisation.

I don't think that an unfettered free market is the right solution though since addiction robs people of the kind of agency we typically assume people have in free market exchanges. That, plus an awareness of social externalities.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#114

Post by defterade »

oskarth wrote: post #112
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…

> offer incentives to FE (finalize early, ie release funds from the arbitrage) for months Not too familiar with DNMs, but why would someone agree to this? Just to save a buck? Seems clear it is against your interest, good or bad reputation. What's the stated rational from seller for this, just "I want more liquidity"?

https://allthingsvice.com/2012/05/30/the-great-420-scam/

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#115

Post by sannee »

oskarth wrote: post #112
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…

> offer incentives to FE (finalize early, ie release funds from the arbitrage) for months Not too familiar with DNMs, but why would someone agree to this? Just to save a buck? Seems clear it is against your interest, good or bad reputation. What's the stated rational from seller for this, just "I want more liquidity"?

> Just to save a buck?

Exactly, FE listings tend to be cheaper

> What's the stated rational from seller for this

I think that "bitcoins dropped in price by 30% since two seconds ago" was at least one of the reasons.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#116

Post by akvadrako »

ship_it wrote: post #52
ct0 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless trying the product becomes fatal. Wouldn't this be a selection bias?

No. Always test purity of the products before consuming.

Most varieties of drugs just cannot be tested, at least without any published procedure.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#117

Post by akvadrako »

Posibyte wrote: post #63

Somebody in the comments of the article brought up a good point. What happens when the site gets shut down? As apparently is the case according to the comment author. I know it's a trope, a huge joke and everything, but this seems like a perfect place to leave notes on the blockchain. It's something that can't be "cleaned" outside of the darknet, it's permanent, and supposedly impossible to forge a private key to man…

There are meta sites (like Grams) that aggregate reviews from all the other marketplaces. Sure, blockchain would be more decentralized, but in this case what's easy is good enough.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#118

Post by akvadrako »

travis86 wrote: post #61

I've never been on the darknet. Where are all these reviews? Are there different drug selling sites where the sites are trusted enough not to remove negative reviews?

The big ones don't seem like they remove negative reviews. That would be fairly easy to spot by the reviewer and would hurt the markets reputation, which is worth a lot more than one dealer.

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#119

Post by slavik81 »

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.

You could substitute 'drug' with just about anything and that would be true.

Sell cars? They put out poisonous fumes. Sell electric cars? People still crash into each other with them. Sell kitchen knives? People stab each other with them. Sell toilet paper? People flush it into the municipal sewer system. Make a funny TV show? People will watch it when they should be spending time with their children.

Drugs aren't special. There are societal costs to every technology. No product is victimless if the criteria you demand is that the societal cost is zero.

I don't even disagree with you on practical matters. I just deeply resent how you have defined that word. When no action is victimless, there is nothing that cannot be outlawed. In fact, that's the same line of reasoning that is used to ban books (via 'corrupting public morals').

Re: On the Darknet, Reputation Is Everything

#120

Post by devdad »

> "One explanation is that dissatisfied customers are substantially less likely to give feedback"

This is given as a truth in the article but the opposite seem to be the truth for the app stores. From a pool of around 300k app users using our apps, organic reviews are much more likely to be negative. The explanation to this is believed (at our company) that unhappy users want to retaliate where the majority of users, the satisfied ones, doesn't have the energy or incentive to leave a review. The way we develop apps nowadays always include a prompt to rate after $conditionOnlyActiveUsersMatch is met. This skews our reviews to the positive side, leaving us with 4.5+ ratings. If we didn't artificially "game" the stores by asking happy users for reviews, we would be at one star because of the organic reviews being from 0.001% angry users.

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