Dark Web – Justice League

> Under state law, that first day for adult sales at licensed dispensaries is supposed to come next month. The enabling marijuana legalization legislation signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy last year directs the CRC to begin adult use marijuana sales before Feb. 22, with 30-day notice beginning Jan. 23.

> But there's a catch. The CRC is yet to issue any licenses for recreational marijuana sales, so even if sales are approved as of Feb. 22, there won't be any dispensaries selling it.

My embassy was quite helpful in negotiating with the guards to get me in a "VIP" cell, which was a room within the cell run by some Iranians. They said if I paid them a certain sum, I'd be under their wing and they'd protect me.

Couple days later one of them woke me up and asked me to check if I had any cigarettes missing, which I did (not that I cared much). Someone had seen a Russian guy take some of my smokes while I was asleep and told the "boss". They went and beat the crap out of him.

The Iranians also had a line to the cleaning crew who would pass in front of the cell once a day. Every morning you could place an order for (almost) anything you wanted from the outside world. They'd take the payments, write it all down and pass it to the cleaning crew through the bars of the cell who would deliver it all the next day. So while most of our cell mates fought over bowls of rice, in the VIP room we had feasts of curries, fruit, soft drinks. It was like a banquet every day.

The main Iranian guy even had Russian girls come over but they couldn't enter the cells.

The day I got out one of them approached me and ever so gently and politely asked me "You are going home yes? Could I please have your towel?". He could have just taken it along with anything else I had but he stuck to the rules.

So yeah, these guys definitely had a legal system!

The entire topic interested me so much that I went our IRL to take courses in settling disputes and handling arbitration. Based on that I established rules to arbitrate and settle disputes by. Rules for both parties to interact, prior to sale of service/product and during arbitration.

Some cases took minutes to hours to settle, others days or weeks, sometimes even months. Sometimes people get incredibly emotionally involved for a few dollars, sometimes disputes for well over what I earned in a year, where solved by both parties only giving (yes/no) answers to my questions and inquiries, for them to request deletion of their accounts after the dispute was settled. The contents being mostly obscured by encryption, but only my rules allowed their commerce to flow in the first place.

I was tempted often to step in and steal money, but something told me that sitting out the experience would be so much more valuable for my moral compass and the understanding of people. I am happy it went that way, it did teach me so much about people, disputes, conflicts and problems. Now when I face problems and difficult characters in life, its like I have a cheat code of handling the situation.

The other thing I did learn during my ... lets call it 'tenure' was that this type of trade and commerce brings out the darkest characters and the darkest in people. That's another topic on its own ... I am happy to see this get attention on HN. This sort of "justice" has been around since the early 00's, preceding most darknet markets. And somehow I keep being drawn to them ... well until I got scared of by the FEDS (who of course always were around, and sometimes did bust people during ongoing disputes) and then my tenure was over. Good luck to those still in the game.

The crown jewels in such a community is operator/admin access. For both police (basically, for infiltration), as well as for scammers (because they could create or kill credibility with sockpuppets, bans). Remember that's how Reddit was started (sockpuppets), and Assange did it as well.