251–260 of 641 posts
I think that this is completely disproportionate. He is being treated as if he was a serial killer or a mob-boss. Hell, even Al Capone was only sentenced to 11 years in Prison.
Capone was sentenced to eleven years for tax evasion, not more serious criminal offenses.
Just like the not-very-explicit "murder for hire" used to justify the astonishing sentence given Ulbricht.
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Harm reduction is a reasonable argument for a Country to make for changing its drug policies, or for a person to make in an effort to advocate for a change to a Country's laws. It is not a reasonable argument for an individual to make to try to justify their illegal get-rich scheme.
It really is. If the law is hurting people, and breaking the law helps people, it's completely reasonable to use that argument to morally justify your illegal behavior. I'd be interested to hear your argument why it is not. Edit: Though to be clear that wouldn't work to justify all your illegal behavior, if that included like hypothetically trying to have someone killed.
I'd agree that lawbreaking is a reasonable moral choice, but not in this case. Moral lawbreaking, in my view, is done when there is a clear benefit or reason to the lawbreaking. And by clear I mean clear to a reasonable and moral person, and not just a speculative personal opinion.
Given that frame of reference, I would argue that (1) the notion that online drug dealing would lead to harm reduction for a drug addict is speculative rather than clear; (2) the harm caused by improved access to hard drugs by more potential addicts would be tremendous and therefore likely exceed any potential harm reduction; (3) given Ulbrict's apparent willingness to hire hitmen, I find it impossible to believe he was in any way motivated by concern for others.
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Plus, it happened multiple times. Even if no one was actually killed the guy still tried to have multiple people killed.
The person Ross hired as a hitman was an undercover agent who had been befriending Ross online for over a year.
That seems way too harsh to me. I have strong opinions on the US War on Drugs and it's failure to meaningful deal with drug use/abuse in the USA. And I feel even worse about how it's spilling out into the rest of the world as we go "global" with everything. I can't say I know every detail of the case but I don't recall anyone getting killed or even hurt by Mr. Ulbricht so in my mind the punishment does not fit the cr…
You have to understand that the "murder for hire" evidence was introduced as part of the trial (at which point Ross' lawyer could have disputed it, but didn't) so it could be used as part of the sentencing decision... and that kind of takes the luster off of the "non-violent crime" argument.
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The poster is referring to the (often great) disparity between natural and legal rights. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights
Of course he is. But I think the idea of natural rights is dumb. They're made up by humans. They're enforced by humans. Their exact nature is disagreed upon and debated by humans. The idea that there is some set of core natural rights that comes from somewhere other than humans is a tactic used to avoid debate on which rights we should and should not have by people unwilling to actually support their ideas with facts…
If humans followed the law above all else, then we would not have democracy, or even republics. We'd have totalitarian nations of smiling slaves.
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The real lesson should be don't serious commit crimes. I don't know any organization that has never had a security fuck up.
The real lesson should be don't serious commit crimes. The whole of morality is not contained by the law. How about those folks who broke apartheid law by going to the University of Alabama? I stipulate that operational security is not exactly part of breaking apartheid laws, but still... Copyright laws are going way way overboard. How about breaking those laws in order to expose corruption? That could happen, easily…
Going to UofA during segregation wasn't a serious crime.
As a practical matter, civil disobedience is most effective when you aren't committing serious crimes.
Throwing a rock through a window to support coffee farmers in Guatemala is one thing. Bombing a logging operation is quite another.
Even if you think you are being moral, it's really stupid to commit serious crimes.
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>it is unlikely that future versions of this sort of thing will be stoppable by any centralized government Silk road 2 has already been busted.
What about Abraxas, BlackBank, Agora, KISS, Outlaw, East India Company, Babylon, Oxygen, The Real Deal, Bloomsfield, and The Crypto Market?
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Bear in mind that prosecutors have a professional duty to zealously argue the government's case just as the defense lawyers have a duty to zealously argue for innocence or lenity of their clients. Unfortunately judges no longer have that much discretion to weigh the competing arguments because of the mandatory sentencing guidelines Congress came up with. It has since been established by the Supreme Court that the gui…
The Federal judges who apply the Sentencing Guidelines all "hold their Offices during good Behavior", so I kind of wonder what you mean by "career suicide" -- a reduced likelihood of elevation to a higher court?
Murderers get less than that. We are truly an interesting society, aren't we - somehow kids doing LSD, a mostly harmless substance, is causing us more harm, as a society, than, say, violence?
How do you know LSD is mostly harmless?
Gross miscarriage of justice. People have a right to buy drugs. Every single government actor involved in this case is far more guilty than Ross and, frankly, they are the ones that deserve prison. Yes, Ross should have realized you can't massively break the law and get away with it. He made a big mistake. But the mistake he made was assuming that other people were more benevolent than they really are. This young man…
> Gross miscarriage of justice. People have a right to buy drugs. Legally, they do not. If you have a problem with that, take it up with (relevant to the federal laws at issue here) the Congress.
The rule of law and courts were supposed to protect such minorities (ie drug legalization through generalized privacy of Roe v Wade, and trade via the right to free speech). It's pretty fucked up that the legal system has rotted so thoroughly that the courts are harshly persecuting them while the majority of interested people dissent.
Then again, much of that rot is due to the "war on drugs" and its underlying philosophy that people exist to serve their government.