Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> I'd be more excited about an Etsy of drugs I think you mean more of an Amazon Marketplace of drugs. > the drugs (in general) are still coming to the US the bloody, violent way via paramilitaries, druglords, etc. If the information and payment infrastructure is good enough, it should make producers and shippers invisible to other producers and shippers, including the paramilitaries and drug-lords.
Silk Road 2.0 Launches
141–150 of 243 posts
Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches
#142Never, ever, ever trust anyone or anything that suddenly reappears after a major bust by the authorities. NEVER . Move on.
One would think that they'd start moving to technologies that are decentralized using technologies such as distributed hash tables. This puts the onus on the users to have a client app that helps host the transaction system for everyone else. The clients would openly share the buy and sell orders and then communication would moved to an encrypted channel that supports perfect forward secrecy. The only part that osten…
Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches
#143I am serious here too: I don't support the website's initiative. I endorse the technical aspect of it as a way to test whether the design is optimal and achievable, but in no way would I ever support drug dealers.
Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alright. Let's assume the massive difference in quantity of violence is substantial. We're talking 10s of thousands dead via cartel trade vs. 2 alleged attempted hits on the silk road. Even then that was the operator of the marketplace defending users, it wasn't a vendor killing another vendor to gain a competitive advantage.
But your analysis specifically excluded the source of all of this violence, the wholesale procurement of the drugs by the end user dealers. None of that is different with the Silk Road.
Alcohol and tobbacco dealers aren't involved in shootings in the streets - instead we find them in their shops, carefully following laws and doing business peacefully. Nor are their customers suffering from adulterated goods, or committing robberies to afford black-market prices.
Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
I will never understand why Silk Road is easier than just hitting up your dealer
I've never used SR (or similar site), but there's plenty of drugs which I couldn't get locally if I wanted them - I'm sure they are sold near me, but I wouldn't know how to find them. Heroin, LSD... etc. Hitting up a dealer is only easy if you know how to find a dealer. (Personally I've looked for mushrooms in the past with absolutely no joy. So I've never done mushrooms.) For all drugs, it's quite possible that onli…
Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches
#146I'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 didn't produce him, or it. Thus I feel no shame.
Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches
#147I have a sneaking suspicion that it's a honeypot. Just a hunch.
The Silk Road seizure demonstrated that the only reasonable way to participate in any online drug market is to assume the market itself is compromised and untrustworthy. That means you never upload identifying information in cleartext (e.g., buyers encrypt their addresses with the seller's public key), and you run all bitcoins sent to or received from such a site through a third-party mixer. Of course, there still ha…
Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've never used SR (or similar site), but there's plenty of drugs which I couldn't get locally if I wanted them - I'm sure they are sold near me, but I wouldn't know how to find them. Heroin, LSD... etc. Hitting up a dealer is only easy if you know how to find a dealer. (Personally I've looked for mushrooms in the past with absolutely no joy. So I've never done mushrooms.) For all drugs, it's quite possible that onli…
Unrelated, but have you ever tried mescaline via san pedro? One of the good legal psychedelics if you're thinking about shrooms.
Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but that is where most of the enforcement is and therefore most of the violence.
Wow, this is incredibly uninformed. For one thing, no one's bothering to attack the US border, whereas in Brazil the government is fighting numerous active paramilitary groups which are basically all just fighting each other for control of the drug trade.
Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches
#150The single dumbest thing the last DPR did was continue living in the US