Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

deepdotweb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 555 posts

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#541

Post by redthrowaway »

milkshakes wrote: post #515
redthrowaway wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respectfully disagree. Nothing is lost by tailoring the tone of your comments to your audience; you're doing so right now through your choice of words. On Youtube, you might have said, "stop being such a fucking pussy", and it would have fit within the expected norms of conversation there. >I think it's a bit presumptuous of you to appoint yourself the civility police I've done no such thing. By claiming I'm not al…

> By claiming I'm not allowed to criticize someone's behaviour, you're doing the exact same thing you're condemning me for. What I am criticizing you for is failing to understand that, at least in this specific case, your sensitivities do not in fact align with those of the community. And also for name calling someone who has contributed more to the hacker community in this past year than you have in your life. Zed S…

I don't think this discussion is going anywhere productive. If it's alright with you, I'd rather just leave it as is.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#542

Post by dtsygankov »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #249
foxhill wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is seriously the most hilarious response to a hacker news thread i have seen in a long time. it's got it all; > Here we have a group of objectivist libertarians wild conjecture? you bet. > who believe that there should be effectively no laws other than the law of economics and self-interest please, tell me, what else do they think? perhaps next you can tell me what i think, i'd love to hear it. > We need the gov…

I won't wade into all of the waters here. Not even sure what my opinion is at this point. But, I do have a question: If these guys decide to band together to exact some form of "justice" against the thieves, then isn't that a form of "government"? Aren't they making a kind of de facto law? More generally, there seems to be some sort of "code" that evolves out of any given community. And, if everyone agrees on accepta…

> If these guys decide to band together to exact some form of "justice" against the thieves, then isn't that a form of "government"?

It depends on what kind of "justice" it is. Anarchist libertarians define government as a group of people that routinely initiate violence against other people, or routinely steal from other people.

That means, if you are protecting somebody from violence, or protecting someone's property from theft, you are not government. If you grab a thief and return the stolen goods to the rightful owner, you are not government. If you won't allow a known thief on your property, or otherwise refuse dealing with a thief, you are not government. If you prevent theft by exposing or shooting the thief, you are not government.

However, if you exert some kind of retributive justice on the thief, like, take all stuff from him, and shoot him in the back, that makes you a criminal (by definition, not necessarily in the eyes of the people), and if you do so routinely, that makes you a government. Likewise, if you force random people to pay for the incarceration of the thief, that makes you a government.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#543

Post by gwern »

roymurdock wrote: post #528
gwern wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the moral of this story is to not open an account with an anonymous exchange. Instead, open an account with a marketplace backed by some high-profile VC's who have some skin in the game. You can bet that Andreesen isn't going to be careless and ignorant enough to let the same thing happen to Coinbase. Great. Call me when Andreesen funds a black-market for highly illegal drugs.

I think people are less worried about finding a source for illegal drugs, and more worried about finding a secure marketplace where they can trust the administration and exchange their funds securely. Theoretically, I would be relatively bummed out if my favorite drug dealer was arrested. Then I would get over it and find a new dealer. I would be livid if my drug dealer took my money, pointed a gun at my head, then g…

I'm being sarcastic because your solution is a non-solution: using a trustworthy exchange does not solve the problem of centralized escrows being vulnerable. A real solution looks something like 'use multi-sig escrow'.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#544

Post by gwern »

EGreg wrote: post #465
gwern wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There should be a marketplace without the ability to have bitcoins stolen! There is at least one, and it's pretty well-known. You underestimate how much ordinary people don't want to deal with things like m-of-n transactions/multi-sig.

So why can't it be made more user friendly? Marketplace initiates the transaction, and all you have to do is sign it with your bitcoin client.

> Marketplace initiates the transaction, and all you have to do is sign it with your bitcoin client.

'All'?

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#545

Post by baddox »

mikeyouse wrote: post #445
baddox wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple coalitions competing for customer dollars will lead to more economically efficient distribution of violence, just like if you replace "violence" with anything else like "bread" or "automobiles."

I think you're describing hit men.

I'm not sure what your point is. It sounds like you're choosing to describe the system as "hit men" because "hit men" sounds scary and bad. But my point was that this system would produce better results.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#546

Post by dtsygankov »

natmaster wrote: post #289
zedshaw wrote: post #133

This is seriously the most hilarious thing I have read in a long time. Here we have a group of objectivist libertarians who believe that there should be effectively no laws other than the law of economics and self-interest who run an illegal website devoted to the pure greed of cashing in on contraband, and this is what they write: "I’ve included transaction logs at the bottom of this message. Review the vendor’s dis…

You're confusing Libertarianism with some variants of anarchism. Libertarians simply disagree about the ROLE of government - not whether it should exist. Libertarians believe the government should enforce property rights. However, they don't believe the government should make person decisions like who to love or what to eat. Note that only you own yourself, so any harm someone does to someone else or their property i…

> Libertarians simply disagree about the ROLE of government - not whether it should exist.

Libertarianism is a broad and not well-defined term. It incorporates various groups of people that believe in property rights, and believe that government should be "small". Non-existent government is as small as it can get, so most people consider anarcho-capitalism to be a flavor of libertarianism. I use the term "anarchist libertarian" to point out that I am talking about the specific 0-government flavor of libertarianism.

> All that is required is the non-aggression principal and voluntarism.

But if you define libertarianism like that, anarcho-capitalism becomes the only legitimate form of libertarianism. Minarchists do not respect the non-aggression principle, they mostly suggest that people should be forced to pay for the police / military, and most of them do believe in retributive justice. The non-aggression principle, if followed consistently, implies 0 taxes, and 0 government.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#547

Post by __--__ »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #521
jrockway wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think he's being an asshole, he just has the gift of being able to phrase his opinion in a way that makes people that disagree with him feel really bad. It's not being an asshole to tell someone they're being stupid when they do something stupid. These guys just lost several million dollars via their illicit drug-trading website. They don't need a pat on the back from zedshaw.

> These guys just lost several million dollars via their illicit drug-trading website. They don't need a pat on the back from zedshaw. I'd agree if he limited his mockery to those people, but his comments are full of broad generalizations and target also honest people with ideas different than zed's. I don't even say I agree with those ideas, though I find the concept of crowdsourcing law worth serious exploring inst…

and he should give a damn about whether you agree or not because... ??

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#548

Post by MartinCron »

baddox wrote: post #536
MartinCron wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Laws" and "law enforcement" are just products, similar to any other service That seems like a rather extraordinary claim with no supporting evidence other than maybe a brief period of time in Iceland. If nothing else, those things are different from other products and services in that the demand is particularly inelastic and is tied up with human emotions in a way that doesn't really fit the naive "rational actor" m…

Why is that an extraordinary claim? They certainly are products. They're things that people want that other people produce. That's not really a statement about history that I would support by giving historical examples. It's simply a plain description of reality.

Why is that an extraordinary claim?

Being things that people want that other people produce is evidence that something can be considered a product. The extraordinary claim is that there isn't anything at all special about something that nearly every civilization has treated in a special way.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#549

Post by mpyne »

einhverfr wrote: post #517
mpyne wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rather the opposite, Hobbes's treatise explains why you didn't witness it throughout recorded history. Once a population group got large enough to have to worry about silly things like common property it ended up having leaders/warlords (either homegrown or due to conquest from abroad). But even so, you certainly saw it in recorded history when government was weaker. "Highwayman" used to connote a very scary ide…

> It's rather the opposite, Hobbes's treatise explains why you didn't witness it throughout recorded history. Once a population group got large enough to have to worry about silly things like common property it ended up having leaders/warlords (either homegrown or due to conquest from abroad). Is there any evidence that humans ever weren't large enough to worry about common property? I mean populations evolve, not in…

> Is there any evidence that humans ever weren't large enough to worry about common property?

Well, yes, as long as you keep going back in the geological record (I won't say historical record since written language would seem to have required a dense-enough population).

> If humans are social creatures, then it seems to me that this view of history can't be right because humans have always formed governments as required by our social nature.

Well even at the family unit level you mention, there would be government (by head-of-household, whoever that was). In areas with multiple families you'd likely have common property which would need it's own form of government (warlord, popular tribal chief, what-have-you). But that's getting back to my original argument.

I think we might actually be in agreement; the key to me seems to be that the Hobbesian nightmare doesn't occur when a populace and its government are organically grown. There's no reason you'd see all-vs.-all in history simply because there was always some form of government.

Hobbes's nightmare seems to come from the collapse of government among a mass of people, and its subsequent power vacuum, which results in subsequent in-fighting (or invasion from abroad). There are multiple examples of this in recorded history as well.

> But bandits have almost always been a reaction to the formation (often by distinct government policies) of a destitute class.

I don't think anyone would argue that destitution increases crime and violence against the weak. It's easier to have morals when you don't have to die of hunger due to your principles.

Likewise I think your point about blood feuds is spot on, but then we need to recognize that it has become government (as you say, law and order by a different means).

The idea that the "war of all vs. all" would be transient (until some form of stable governance sets up) is probably the thing which keeps Hobbes from being as much of a nightmare. But it also wouldn't really make those who live through the transient feel any better about it.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#550

Post by unclebucknasty »

dtsygankov wrote: post #542
unclebucknasty wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't wade into all of the waters here. Not even sure what my opinion is at this point. But, I do have a question: If these guys decide to band together to exact some form of "justice" against the thieves, then isn't that a form of "government"? Aren't they making a kind of de facto law? More generally, there seems to be some sort of "code" that evolves out of any given community. And, if everyone agrees on accepta…

> If these guys decide to band together to exact some form of "justice" against the thieves, then isn't that a form of "government"? It depends on what kind of "justice" it is. Anarchist libertarians define government as a group of people that routinely initiate violence against other people, or routinely steal from other people. That means, if you are protecting somebody from violence, or protecting someone's proper…

Interesting. I think that where things start to get gray is when a.) There's a collective vs. individual action/response involved (even in the cases that are defined as "not a government") and b.) when the "crime" involved is not as clear cut as, say outright theft. In the latter case, someone has to define what's acceptable for a given community (i.e. laws) and all parties must agree to it.

And, of course, there then must be some form of "policing" as well as an agreed upon penalty when a violation occurs.

>if you force random people to pay for the incarceration of the thief, that makes you a government.

The people who pay in a "democratic" society (presumably via taxation) aren't random, right? In theory, they have an interest in laws that, say, prevent theft of their property. Likewise, in a community like SR2 people are "forced" to pay via additional fees that SR2 must levy (whether stated explicitly or not) in order to police, prosecute, etc.

>if you exert some kind of retributive justice on the thief, like, take all stuff from him, and shoot him in the back, that makes you a criminal (by definition, not necessarily in the eyes of the people),

I'm not sure how we get to a definition of what's criminal without it referring back to what's acceptable to "the people". Again, we can hold out things that appear to be obvious (like theft), but even that can be gradated.

I'm not trying to split hairs. In fact, it seems that some of the definitions of libertarianism seem to do just that when drawing contrasts with other forms of government. It all sounds great when speaking on an individual basis, but whenever collective activity is involved (as it invariably will be), it seems to break down. That is, something is needed that at least approximates a form of what we'd recognize as government.

Post reply on HN