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Silk Road 2.0 Launches

forbes.com

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Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#101

Post by devindotcom »

swalsh wrote: post #86

Yesterday my cousin was found dead. He had committed suicide. It was the end of a long battle he had been waging against himself. Drugs have destroyed this small part of my family, but i'm really glad to see something like the silk road revitalized. I think the sooner we realize how fleeting a battle it is to fight them, the sooner we can place the money where it belongs. My cousin is dead now, but I think my tax mon…

It's tragic that money that could have been spent on social programs like ones I've helped run was instead going to ridiculous and ineffective tactics. Sorry for your loss.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#102

Post by darkarmani »

rhgraysonii wrote: post #94
swalsh wrote: post #86

Yesterday my cousin was found dead. He had committed suicide. It was the end of a long battle he had been waging against himself. Drugs have destroyed this small part of my family, but i'm really glad to see something like the silk road revitalized. I think the sooner we realize how fleeting a battle it is to fight them, the sooner we can place the money where it belongs. My cousin is dead now, but I think my tax mon…

I've been an active Libertarian for several years now, and just looking at the countless stories I've heard like this leads me to hold the same belief as you do. It truly is tragic the way many people are simply thrown in a cell rather than helped with what is clearly an illness. Addiction itself is not a choice. Using a drug is, but the consequences that follow oftentimes cannot be overcome. I'm sorry for your loss.

> this leads me to hold the same belief as you do

His belief was that tax money should be spent on rehabilitation instead of the drug war. Shouldn't you be against using tax money for this and instead supporting private charities?

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#103

Post by darkarmani »

nickles wrote: post #78
jarrett wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> considering that the sellers might be cops Why wouldn't law enforcement pose as buyers, as well? This is a common tactic in narcotics enforcement. Entrapment often isn't an issue, as the seller took the first step of advertising the drugs for sale. Are you getting at the fact that the buyer must have a receiving address, while the seller can ship anonymously? I would be skeptical of that. If I were attempting to tr…

This is what made Kaczynski (the Unabomber) so difficult to track. IIRC, he would travel for a few hours (by bus) to a town and deposit his packages in a mailbox there [citation needed]. This made it difficult to track him, since the origin of the package didn't leak any information about the sender. For sellers, proper OPSec requires that they do not leave fingerprints in/on the package, that mailing locations are r…

Isn't that also a result in the quantity of packages sent? If you want to run a business, you'd need a much larger set of "random" mailboxes then if you are sending out a handful of bombs over years.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#104

Post by scott_karana »

njharman wrote: post #37
thex86 wrote: post #27

A serious question: while I have nothing against Silk Road (the drug war is a waste of money anyways), aren't people afraid of putting stuff in their body that they had an anonymous person send to them? I mean, unless the seller has a reputation, isn't there is a substantial risk of using that drug? Are my fears unfound? On one hand, the idea of buying drugs online is probably more safe than doing it on the streets,…

Do you ever buy anything at grocery store, drug store, restaurant that you put in your body? There is risk in everything. Generally people aren't sociopaths and aren't out to harm others. Risk is minimal but exists. Sellers on Silkroad do have reputation? Anonymous does not mean "unknown".

> Do you ever buy anything at grocery store, drug store, restaurant that you put in your body?

Not really a fair comparison. If a grocery store assaults or defrauds you, you have legal recourse.

There is nothing you can do if an illicit transaction fails.

The rest of what you say is true, of course.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#105

Post by lettergram »

darkarmani wrote: post #102
rhgraysonii wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been an active Libertarian for several years now, and just looking at the countless stories I've heard like this leads me to hold the same belief as you do. It truly is tragic the way many people are simply thrown in a cell rather than helped with what is clearly an illness. Addiction itself is not a choice. Using a drug is, but the consequences that follow oftentimes cannot be overcome. I'm sorry for your loss.

> this leads me to hold the same belief as you do His belief was that tax money should be spent on rehabilitation instead of the drug war. Shouldn't you be against using tax money for this and instead supporting private charities?

Being Libertarian doesn't necessary mean you have to be against all tax. For example (in the Libertarian point of view), taxes should only be used to maintain order, that being said the government should run prisons. However, in the case of drugs a rehabilitation program likely would be cheaper than a drug war and still under the classification of "maintaining order." Since drug users can often be violent, unable to drive, etc. and could cause harm.

Therefore, it's actually better and fair to use a small tax for rehabilitation than it is to use prisons to keep drug users locked up. This is according to the Libertarian point of view.. Strictly Libertarians are against tax, however in this case a more middle road can be argued for and be within the Libertarian's view.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#106

Post by gknoy »

RivieraKid wrote: post #47
ihsw wrote: post #6

I have a sneaking suspicion that it's a honeypot. Just a hunch.

It's run by one of the admins of the original SR according to the article. And would it be even legal for the police to do this?

Since when in recent years has that been a determining factor? The war on Bad People has been the go-to excuse for all sorts of things which we might feel should not be legal, or which are not. The Justice Department can merely choose not to prosecute them, congress can enact legislation granting immunity, or the agencies can flat-out lie about what they are doing.

If the government is running a drug marketplace as a honeypot to catch sellers and buyers, it's possible that some of those buyers and sellers might mount an effective suit ... but I'd say the expected result is much more likely to be jail time for the buyers/sellers.

Moreover, the courts will rule that only people directly harmed by such things can sue for it, and then will deny THEIR suit unless they are able to prove that it happened. Since it'll all be classified up to the moon, the government will deny its existence, and no suits will happen.

This is a deliberately cynical take on how that would go down, but I fear it's probably not inaccurate.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#107

Post by nostromo »

subpixel wrote: post #44
andrewljohnson wrote: post #3

I'd never buy heroin from a website, but I see the Silk Road as cyber-civil-disobedience, and I hope the persona of DPR and the site itself are as unsinkable as they claim. The drug war is a ghastly thing, and the number of people we lock up in the US is more shameful than our foreign policy. You can begrudge the first DPR his lame security, shady murder contracts, and ill-gotten fortune, but he's the product of our…

I don't see the Silk Roads of the world making much difference with regard to the drug war. Right now Silk Road is the eBay of drugs, where convenience is it's competitive advantage. I can get some drug without visiting a shady person in some shady place, but the drugs (in general) are still coming to the US the bloody, violent way via paramilitaries, druglords, etc. A huge part of the US war on drugs takes place amo…

But the competitive advantage of druglords is controlling the means of distribution, not the means of cultivation. So, SilkRoad could help bypass those monopolized distribution channels and undermine the druglord's competitive advantage.

For example, if a druglord is competing directly with a mom-and-pop drug cultivator on SilkRoad -- the drug lord has higher costs (bribery, paramilitary force, etc.) and only marginally lower COGS from scale. Because they are unable to intimidate or kill other cultivators, like they do in meat space, the druglord could be at a real disadvantage.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#109

Post by jlgreco »

pokoleo wrote: post #54
njharman wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever buy anything at grocery store, drug store, restaurant that you put in your body? There is risk in everything. Generally people aren't sociopaths and aren't out to harm others. Risk is minimal but exists. Sellers on Silkroad do have reputation? Anonymous does not mean "unknown".

I'm rather sure that Anonymous does mean "(of a person) not identified by name; of unknown name."

It would not be controversial to state that the Federalist Papers were published anonymously, despite the fact that the authors gave themselves the pseudonym "Publius".

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#110

Post by phusion »

anaphor wrote: post #26
ihsw wrote: post #6

I have a sneaking suspicion that it's a honeypot. Just a hunch.

You'd have to be a complete moron or a huge addict to use this. How much do you want to bet this is run by the FBI and filled with various browser exploits designed to de-anonymize you? I wouldn't even connect to it, let alone buy or sell drugs on it.

Then there a lot of moron drug addicts on this forum.
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