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Shedding light on the dark web

economist.com

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Re: Shedding light on the dark web

#31

Post by Cshelton »

Sellers of drugs, will ALWAYS sell drugs, both illegal and legal.

Buyers/Users of drugs will ALWAYS buy/use drugs, illegal or legal.

It is an interaction between humans of Earth, no government or entity, no system or blocks will ever stop it. Shut down the internet, it will continue. Short of a massive purge of life, drugs will never go away.

If you somehow...were able to shut down the "darkweb", it would move into something else that authorities are unaware of.

On a whim, if I desired, I can purchase any drug I want, probably get it today, without using the internet.

The war on drugs has no end. Stop trying to pretend you (the lawmakers) have never tried an illegal substance. Even the most powerful public figure in the world (Obama) has admitted to using illegal substances at one point in his life.

Government: It's time to sit down, shut up, stop wasting the taxpayers money and leave it alone.

Re: Shedding light on the dark web

#32

Post by jmcgough »

rhizome wrote: post #18
idlewords wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a public health perspective, Prohibition was a success. The main reason it failed as policy is chemistry. You can make ethanol from anything—even a cactus, as Mexico has taught us.

From a public health perspective, Prohibition was a success. I don't know about that, didn't lead poisoning go way up?

There was also "jake leg" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica_ginger#History)

Re: Shedding light on the dark web

#33

Post by TylerE »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #29
rhizome wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a public health perspective, Prohibition was a success. I don't know about that, didn't lead poisoning go way up?

And methanol poisoning. Not to mention other nasty things that were intentionally added to industrial alcohol to poison anyone who tried to drink it [1] - now, it would be interesting to try and get a sense for how many drunk drivers were kept off the roads during Prohibition, but I doubt most would consider it an unalloyed success, even then. 1: http://www.vox.com/2014/8/8/5975605/alcohol-prohibition-pois...

Gotta wonder how much of a negative impact on drunk driving the technology had... I have to imagine it's a lot harder to pull off when everything is a non-synchronized manual transmission.

Re: Shedding light on the dark web

#36

Post by idlewords »

OhHeyItsE wrote: post #30
idlewords wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a public health perspective, Prohibition was a success. The main reason it failed as policy is chemistry. You can make ethanol from anything—even a cactus, as Mexico has taught us.

> From a public health perspective, Prohibition was a success. Do you count skyrocketing murder rate and gov't-poisoned hooch in your metric for success?

Sure do. It takes a lot of murder and poison to offset a 20% drop in cirrhosis. Read the paper linked below.

Re: Shedding light on the dark web

#37

Post by hx87 »

idlewords wrote: post #27
randall wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(citation required, also addressing parent's points would be helpful.)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470475/ See also the very entertaining book by Daniel Okrent.

Even according to that article, Prohibition only worked in a public health sense if you considered a reduction in alcohol consumption an absolute public health good in itself. I don't know about you, but drinking 50 gallons a year of legitimate, old school, high-quality pre-prohibition beer and wine doesn't exactly sound worse than drinking 25 gallons a year of moonshine from questionable sources.

Re: Shedding light on the dark web

#38

Post by Lawtonfogle »

Cshelton wrote: post #31

Sellers of drugs, will ALWAYS sell drugs, both illegal and legal. Buyers/Users of drugs will ALWAYS buy/use drugs, illegal or legal. It is an interaction between humans of Earth, no government or entity, no system or blocks will ever stop it. Shut down the internet, it will continue. Short of a massive purge of life, drugs will never go away. If you somehow...were able to shut down the "darkweb", it would move into s…

Now apply this logic to other things traded on the darkweb.

Re: Shedding light on the dark web

#39

Post by jswny »

Cshelton wrote: post #31

Sellers of drugs, will ALWAYS sell drugs, both illegal and legal. Buyers/Users of drugs will ALWAYS buy/use drugs, illegal or legal. It is an interaction between humans of Earth, no government or entity, no system or blocks will ever stop it. Shut down the internet, it will continue. Short of a massive purge of life, drugs will never go away. If you somehow...were able to shut down the "darkweb", it would move into s…

I tend to feel the same way. These types of things are inevitable, you are never going to stop them from happening. However, when debating this point, I have a hard time defending my point when someone else says "so should we just not do anything? Wouldn't that increase the illegal activity? Should we let people buy guns too? Where do you draw the line?" I have to say, I'm not sure what to say about that. If the government did not actively fight this, successful or not, would it cause the markets and illegal drug users to proliferate?

Re: Shedding light on the dark web

#40

Post by boulos »

Fej wrote: post #34

Do we really use the term "darknet"? I thought it was a layman's term and frowned upon.

The Economist is a broadly targeted publication. That's a term that's widely "understood", so just as Internet (capital I) is sort of silly, I don't take umbrage with it in such settings.
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