Tangentially related: I had the disconcerting experience of reading a Wired article about his arrest[1] while unknowingly sitting about six feet from the spot where he was apprehended. When I read that the FBI agents had stopped at Bello Coffee while preparing their stakeout, I thought, huh, interesting coincidence, I just had a coffee there.
Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me, and suddenly as I was reading I could look up and see exactly the chair he had been in, where the plainclothes police had positioned themselves, how they had arranged a distraction.
Having this tableau unexpectedly unfold right in front of my eyes was a fascinating experience, and it certainly made the article suddenly get a lot more immersive!
EDIT: to be clear, I was not present for the arrest. I was reading the magazine, some years after the arrest, but in the same place as the arrest. (I didn’t qualify the events with “I read that...” since I thought the narrative ellipsis would be obvious from context; evidently not.)
He was being arrested in the article, not IRL. When I say “Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me” I mean that I read
> He went... past the periodicals and reference desk, beyond the romance novels, and settled in at a circular table near science fiction, on the second floor... in a corner, with a view out the window and his back toward the wall.
and realized that I was in the Glen Park public library, at a circular table near science fiction on the second floor, in a corner with my back to the window, and facing directly towards where the article had just said he had sat.
I had the same confusion initially, interestingly chat GPT gets it:
So while wolfgang42 wasn't there when Ulbricht was actually arrested, their realization created a vivid mental image of the event unfolding in that space, which made the story feel more immersive.
In short: they were reading about an old event, but it happened to occur in the same spot they were sitting at that moment. Hope that clears it up!
> their realization created a vivid mental image of the event unfolding in that space, which made the story feel more immersive.
Glad that ChatGPT, probably like GP themselves, is a visualizer and actually can create a "vivid mental image" of something. For those of us with aphantasia, that is not a thing. Myself, I too was mighty confused by the text, which read literally like a time travel story, and was only missing a cat and tomorrow's newspaper.
Legitimately and I say this was absolutely no shade intended. This is a reading comprehension problem, nothing to do with aphantasia.
He clearly states that he was reading an article, he uses past tense verbs when referring to Ross, and to the events spelled out in the article. If you somehow thought that he could be reading an article that ostensibly has to be describing a past event as he was seeing it in real time that is a logic flaw on you.
It has nothing to do with what you can or cannot visualize. All you have to do is ask yourself could he have been reading an article about Ross’s arrest while watching it? Since nobody can violate the causality of space time the answer is no.
This isn’t just you this is everybody in this thread who is reading this and going this is a little confusing. No it’s very clearly him speaking about a past experience reading an article about a past event.
I realised what was going on, but I did a double-take at:
> Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me
The problem is that two past events are being described, so tense alone cannot distinguish them. Cut the readers some slack; the writing could have been better.
Done for effect: it felt to the OP as if it was the present so the writing conveys that, while elsewhere making it clear the arrest was not the present.
I am as baffled at the responses and appreciated this explanation as it was helpful to me to work on my communication style and expresses a lot of similar frustrations I have. Like what is actually going on here? this isn’t shade at anyone, I just feel like people are losing some fundamental ability to deduce from context what they are reading. it’s doubly concerning because people immediately reach to an AI/LLM to explain it for them, which cannot possibly be helping the first problem.
Agree. This entire thread is weird. How do so many people in this thread have such obvious reading comprehension issues?
On a similar note--I've noticed that HN comments are often overwrought, like the commenter is trying to sound smarter than they actually are but just end up muddling what they're trying to say.
I wonder what is going on? I’ve noticed this getting worse for a long time to the point I’m not sure it’s my imagination anymore. I usually like to lambast whole word reading as a complete failure in the american school system that contributes to this, but I think it’s likely something else. Shorter attention spans?
We have a multitude of immediate distractions now.
Books build richer worlds & ideas. But without learning to love books very early in life, which takes a lot of uninterrupted time, they don’t come naturally to most.
I used to read a few books a week, virtually every week. Sometimes two or three in a long day and some night. I still read a lot daily, interesting and useful things in short form. But finding time to read books seems to have become more difficult.
I do think the comment had something about how it was written that made it hard to follow. I understood the first sentence. But then I got to
> Having this tableau unexpectedly unfold right in front of my eyes
And the metaphor / tense shift caught me by surprise and made my eyes retrace to the beginning. I still got it, but there was a little bit of comprehension whiplash as I hit that bump in the road.
In some ways, we're treated to an experience like the author's as we hit that sentence, so in that sense it's clever writing. On the other hand, maybe too clever for a casual web forum instead of, say, a letter.
Right. I'm not claiming the LLM has visual imagination - I suspect that OP has it, and that ChatGPT was trained on enough text from visual thinkers implicitly conveying their experience of the world, that it's now able to correctly interpret writing like that of OP's.
It's a strange feeling, watching the AI get better at language comprehension than me.
I made a similar mistake on the original comment as you (I read it as "Ulbricht returned to the cafe, he actually sat down right in front of me while I was reading the story about his previous arrest here, and that's when I realised it was the same place"), and also thought you were saying that you think ChatGPT has a visual "imagination" inside.
(I don't know if it does or doesn't, but given the "o" in "4o" is supposed to make it multi-modal, my default assumption is that 4o can visualise things… but then, that's also my default assumption about humans, and you being aphantasic shows this is not necessarily so).
You could also say that ChatGPT erred similarly to the original writer, who was unclear and misleading about events.
We needn't act like they share some grand enlightenment. It's just not well expressed. ChatGPT's output is also frequently not well expressed and not well thought out.
There's many more ways to err than to get something right. ChatGPT getting OP right where many people here didn't tells us it's more likely that there is a particular style of writing/thinking that is not obvious to everyone, but ChatGPT can identify and understand, rather than just both OP and ChatGPT accidentally making exactly the same error.
Why would that be more likely? Seems like OP and ChatGPT (which is just many people of different skill levels) might easily make the same failure to communicate. Many failures of ChatGPT are failures to communicate or to convey structured thinking.
Because out of all possible communication failures OP and ChatGPT could make, them both making the exact same error, in a way that makes the two errors cancel out, is extremely unlikely.
Reducing any judgment out of your comment, you have to admit that the commenter's action was a successful comprehension strategy they learned from and can use in the future without chatgpt.
Okay, that's actually pretty wild. I totally misunderstood too, but the response from the "AI" does indeed "clear it up" for me. A bit surprised actually, but then again, I suppose I shouldn't be, since language is what those "large language models" are all about after all... :)
Indeed. But their is something surprising here, however. people like chomsky would present examples like this for decades as untracktable by any algorithm, and as a proof that language is a uniquely human thing. they went as far as to claim that humans have a special language organ, somewhere in their brain perhaps. turns out, a formula exists, it is just very very large.
> chomsky would present examples like this for decades as untracktable by any algorithm, and as a proof that language is a uniquely human thing
Generatove AI has all but solved the Frame Problem.
Those expressions where intractable bc of the impossibility to represent in logic all the background knowledge that is required to understand the context.
It turns out, it is possible to represent all that knowledge in compressed form, with statistical summarisation applied to humongous amounts of data and processing power, unimaginable back then; this puts the knowledge in reach of the algorithm processing the sentence, which is thus capable of understanding the context.
Which should be expected, because since human brain is finite, it follows that it's either possible to do it, or the brain is some magic piece of divine substrate to which laws of physics do not apply.
The problem turned out to be that some people got so fixated on formal logic they apparently couldn't spot that their own mind does not do any kind of symbolic reasoning unless forced to by lots of training and willpower.
That’s not what it means at all. You threw a monkey in your own wrench.
The brain has infinite potentials, however only finite resolves. So you can only play a finite number of moves in a game of infinite infinities.
Individual minds have varying mental technology, our mental technologies change and adapt to challenges (not always in real time.) thus these infinite configurations create new potentials that previously didn’t exist in the realm of potential without some serious mental vectoring.
Get it? You were just so sure of yourself you canceled your own infinite potentials!
Remember, it’s only finite after it happens. Until then it’s potential.
No, it doesn't. The brain has a finite number of possible states to be in. It's an absurdly large amount of states, but it is finite. And, out of those absurd but finite number of possible states, only a tiny fraction correspond to possible states potentially reachable by a functioning brain. The rest of them are noise.
You are wrong! Confidently wrong at that. Distribution of potential, not number of available states. Brain capacity and capability is scalar and can retune itself at the most fundamental levels.
As far as we know, universe is discrete at the very bottom, continuity is illusory, so that's still finite.
Not to mention, it's highly unlikely anything at that low a level matters to the functioning of a brain - at a functional level, physical states have to be quantized hard to ensure reliability and resistance against environmental noise.
Potential is resolving into state in the moment of now!
Be grateful, not scornful that it all collapses into state (don’t we all like consistency?), that is not however what it “is”. It “is” potential continuously resolving. The masterwork that is the mind is a hyoerdimensional and extradimentional supercomputer (that gets us by yet goes mostly squandered). Our minds and peripherals can manipulate, break down, and remake existential reality in the likeness of our own images. You seem to complain your own image is soiled by your other inputs or predispositions.
Sure, it’s a lot of work yet that’s what this whole universe thing runs on. Potential. State is what it collapses into in the moment of “now”.
And you’re right, continuity is an illusion. Oops.
I never bought into Searle's argument with the Chinese room.
The rules for translation are themselves the result of intelligence; when the thought experiment is made real (I've seen an example on TV once), these rules are written down by humans, using human intelligence.
A machine which itself generates these rules from observation has at least the intelligence* that humans applied specifically in the creation of documents expressing the same rules.
That a human can mechanically follow those same rules without understanding them, says as much and as little as the fact that the DNA sequences within the neurones in our brains are not themselves directly conscious of higher level concepts such as "why is it so hard to type 'why' rather than 'wju' today?" despite being the foundation of the intelligence process of natural selection and evolution.
* well, the capability — I'm open to the argument that AI are thick due to the need for so many more examples than humans need, and are simply making up for it by being very very fast and squeezing the equivalent of several million years of experiences for a human into a month of wall-clock time.
Minds shuffle information. Including about themselves.
Paper with information being shuffled by rules exhibiting intelligence and awareness of “self” is just ridiculously inefficient. Not inherently less capable.
I don’t think I understand this entirely. The point of the thought experiment is to assume the possibility of the room and consider the consequences. How it might be achievable in practice doesn’t alter this
The room is possible because there's someone inside with a big list of rules of what Chinese characters to reply with. This represents the huge amount of data processing and statistical power. When the thought expt was created, you could argue that the room was impossible, so the experiment was meaningless. But that's no longer the case.
I'm not sure I'm following you. My comment re Chinese room was that parent said the data processing we now have was unimaginable back in the day. In fact, it was imaginable - the Chinese room imagined it.
Just as an additional datapoint, since I’m confused by fellow commenters’ confusion—I thought your narrative was clear, colorful, and entertaining, and I hope you’ll keep things so literary and engaging in your future contributions too :)
As with so many matters of crime, punishment, and high dudgeon, the physical reality of the situation always feels so banal. Dread Pirate Roberts’ lawless dark kingdom, where he commissions trans-national assassinations… looks a lot like a nerdy dude’s laptop on a municipal library table.
Yes, I thought it was an interesting blend of past and present. If this were a scene in a show or movie it could be edited beautifully - the reader, sitting alone in a corner, looks up and in a lucid, almost psychedelic way, the past comes to life with Ulbrict sitting in front of him, that unfold as he continues reading.
Regarding your edit. The first paragraph kind of lines up with you reading about it. But the second one is kind of confusing, and I think it's because "then" can mean two different things here. You meant "at the time of his arrest". If you casually read it without cross referencing the first paragraphs context, you might think it means "as I was sitting there".
And there's nothing in the following sentences that corrects this garden path assumption.
>Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me
Would not confuse as many if you wrote
>At the time of his arrest Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me
Or even clearer
>At the time of his arrest Ulbricht had walked into the public library and sat down at the table which was now directly in front of me
His writing employs a little bit of poetry in order to capture his feeling. Not all writing benefits from being as clear and bland as possible. HN should probably read some non-fiction books from time to time
Not sure which novels you’re picking but in my experience novels are frequently more ambiguous and harder to parse than the parent comment, often on purpose. If you’ve really ’never had a single issue’ maybe you’re not choosing challenging texts
Wow, you've totally cracked the mystery. This explains why all the commenters are at each other's throats - half of them are reading it one way and half are reading the other way, and only one of the two ways makes any sense.
Yes, it took three reads before I worked out what the story was trying to say.
Even just adding one word "Then Ulbricht had walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me" would be enough of a clue.
Exactly, that was my point about then being a word that can be interpreted in two ways, and the following sentence does not error correct this assumption.
If you read it one way, it's almost impossible to not be misdirected, because the following sentence works with both meanings.
If you include the had this would be enough of a clue to correct the incorrect assumption. Although it still might make for slightly bumpy reading.
I used to live in Glen Park at that time and I vividly remember seeing Ross working as a cashier at the Canyon Market, helping me bag my groceries. It was probably around the time he was starting the Silk Road. The place where he was arrested was also my favorite table at the Public Library, where I used to go work. It is incredible to be that close to history.
I believe they are suggesting an experience of imaginatively visualising the events of the arrest linearly as they were narrated in their read-through of the article, serendipitously aided by being physically present at the same location, and are referencing the article's narration partially in the present tense to similarly immerse us in medias res as we follow their remark.
Alternatively, they are themselves Ross Ulbricht, describing an out-of-body fever dream or post-traumatic flashback. This seems ... somewhat less likely.
Singular "they" dates at least back as far as the 14th century, and I've yet to meet a person who objects to it but does not use it themselves now and again without even noticing if you observe them speak enough. It's entirely integral to English.
The interlude during which some pushed for "they" to be exclusively plural, was a mere brief blip in the history of the language.
It's also a couple of centuries older than singular "you", so if you want to complain about a pronoun changing between singular and plural, that's a better candidate.
I’ve been writing they to refer to individuals in the third person for five decades. Usage of they as a neutral singular pronoun began in the 14th century. Stercus alibi iace, outrage monkey.
It's so funny how outrage poisoned partisans have such crushing issues with pronouns. The word 'They' has been used to refer to individuals for hundreds of years. Get a life
I dont know, ask the commenter - he who reads OPs story and comments on it, projects himself into it when commenting on it.. there is no fixed answer to this.
I thought that starting my story in media res would make for a better dramatic effect, but it seems I overestimated my audience and went a little too heavy on the narrative ellipsis.
> Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me, and suddenly as I was reading I could look up and see exactly the chair he had been in, where the plainclothes police had positioned themselves, how they had arranged a distraction.
Alternately:
> Ulbricht had walked into the public library
gives the game away.
If you still want to play around a bit:
> I could see where Ulbricht walked into the public library. The table he sat at. I looked up and saw where the plainclothes police had positioned themselves, how they had arranged a distraction.
That way you are leaving some ambiguity, but are not directly lying with the tenses.
Well, a lot of times the audience is to blame... There are many people that are stupid, aren't trained in style figures of writing or just not trained in reading in a way that allows for complex conceptual frameworks. It also happens in software: someone writes great code, it's very complex and some people don't understand it and blame the author of writing unreadable code. Its easy to call something unreadable if you don't understand what it's saying. Let me bring it differently: it takes two to tango. I found his story interesting and engaging.
Let me bring it in another way:
Sometimes the joke is brilliant, but the audience just doesn't understand it. It's not a bad joke or a bad comedian. It's a bad audience.
To go into the meat of this: he is imagining it while reading in the same location as the incident happened. This is a style of writing. It's definitely not wrong.
To paraphrase the asshole quote: "if one person misunderstands you, that's their fault; if everyone does, it's yours". The same goes for your comedian analogy: sure, you can tell a brilliant joke in French to a Chinese audience, but why?
I think you could have told it as experiencing the events without making your post confusing, but you'd have to redo your first paragraph. Your first paragraph is external, meta, and places his arrest in your past, which throws off the effect when that suddenly changes in the next sentence. It's not the audience's fault that that is hard to parse.
Many of us can't. Personally, for nearly three decades I thought the ability to vividly experience a book this way was just some overused and extremely exaggerated metaphor - and then I discovered aphantasia is a thing, and I score close to top of its severity scale.
So perhaps it's less about your starting point, and more about describing a frame of mind some in the audience don't have, and can't relate to.
Curiously, I don't recall ever seeing this particular style of writing before, in any of the books I ever read.
I found it interesting and could visualize you as you were visualizing it while reading. The only part that made me go back was I thought he sat down to your table until I reread you could see the table he sat down at years ago.
I've seen this type of thing recently and also have been told some comments were "obviously" meaning something else. I think people must've stopped reading books and lost interpretation skills.
I liked the way you wrote it, I could picture you sitting in the library, picturing the arrest yourself :-).
The reactions remind me of a philosophy class I had, where the professor went for a thought experiment in order to explain an idea. "Imagine a world where ...". There was a physicist in the class who kept interrupting the professor, saying "well that's not possible because of how physics works". I would have asked him what he thought about Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings; could he enjoy them at all? But he ruined the class for me so I didn't :-).
I had a similar experience watching Mr. Robot. There’s a scene where it shifts to first person PoV and the voiceover says something like “am I seeing this? Is this real?” … and it was EXACTLY the PoV I had every day walking out of my office on 36th st back then.
I once walked home after an evening of some friends and beer.
As I came up to my house it was dark but I clearly saw a little person walking through my back garden. About 3 foot tall, at the most, it seemed. And they were holding the hand of a smaller person half their height. Walking together, no hurry at all.
I just froze and watched them walking away, and turn a corner.
The feelings of disbelief, but wanting to believe were crazy.
I came out of my shock. Ran the length of my home and managed to see mother and child raccoons now walking on all fours.
They must have walked 20 feet on their back legs together, holding hands.
For a minute of my life I was actually Alice in Wonderland and there were tiny people who walked gardens at night.
My kids used to go to that library! We lived in the neighborhood (Glen Park- one of the "gems" of San Francisco) and the downtown is almost like a little village (except with California levels of traffic and trash). It was a bit weird to think that my kids were probably reading books while this guys was, uh, transacting his business nearby.
I mean, it’s possible that the library had rearranged their chairs in the intervening years and that exact one was now at a different table, but it was certainly a chair in the same location.
This is unrelated but you just did a wonderful job of explaining why I love history so much. There’s something so exciting (to me) about deeply researching an event, going to where it happened and seeing the land (or library) come alive with images of the past.
BTW Boondock Saints is like one of the dumbest movies of all time, they made a behind-the-scenes documentary about how the film failed because of how arrogant the directors/screenwriters were. It's so stupid, it's great
I read this article when it was first published years ago, and it is written so well I still "see the movie" in my head when I think about it. Your experience must have been next-level.
I'll share my experience, too: I live near Glen Park and was in Bello that day, taking up one of those coveted seats, as all this was happening. I recall being aware of a lot of police cars outside, and perhaps seeing the phalanx around Ross as they walked past the window. Clearly something big was going on, but I stepped outside and the street was already back to normal. Shrug, perhaps I'll hear about it on the evening news. Not a peep. :-)
It was only some months & years later that I heard about Glen Park, the library, and Bello being part of the drama, and other local landmarks. To this day I keep hearing about other local details. (I learned a few months ago that his group house was on Monterey Blvd, not far from the conservatory).
Looking back, I had noticed a number of 'out-of-town' business people in Bello around that time. Glen Park is a busy local scene, but gets very few visitors, so they stuck out. Clean cut, business casual, but not FiDi types. They were cheerful but not interested in chatting. Who would go to a cafe and not want to socialize, I wondered? I thought perhaps realestate people.
I went to Bello frequently then, and must have seen Ross there a few times too, but I only vaguely recall once or twice. Something drew my attention to his laptop, maybe it had an EFF sticker on it? But he likewise didn't seem interested in conversation. I do recall once he was talking with an older man, in his 50's or early 60's, about libertarianism.
Literacy and nuance is hard with written words — especially when a large chunk of your audience is either a non-native English speaker or and Adderall addict. I feel like this community is heavily laden with both, and surely there must be some significant overlap between those groups.
i had a similar experience working in copenhagen. read an article about copenhagen sub orbital rockets, looked up and out my window and my eye landed on the rocket i was just reading about. weird.
You’re not going to hear from the people who thought it made perfect sense, so the replies are a pretty biased sample. (This is also true of the parent complaint about reading comprehension, tbh.) But I see three confused replies and three corrections (not counting my own), so it doesn’t seem to be every reply.
I think the problem is that I took an artistic style in an attempt to paint a picture for the reader, but I did it in a long thread on a technical forum where people are probably mostly skimming rather than engaging in literary criticism, so I should maybe have anticipated this would be a problem.
I thought it was fine, I wasn't confused for a moment. The only real problem here is that HN attracts a certain brand of nerds who are inclined to think it's hilarious when Maurice Moss says "Yes, it's one of those", many of whom are likely frothing right now because I just committed a comma splice in the previous sentence.
I (and others) have vouched a few of his comments back to life, he does write a good comment.
I don't know the original reasons for his apparent perma-dead'ing (users can option to "show dead" and see these comments) but I suspect it's due to going fully Australian wih swear words and invectives when he gets a bit passionate about something .. or even just adding colour for a lark, as we do.
I feel torn about this because it seems there was good evidence for attempted murder- and I cannot understand why they never tried him for that (seemingly larger) crime. However, for the crime he was actually found guilty of, the sentence was unfair and unreasonable. It seems they unethically sentenced him for crimes he was not even ever charged with.
I'd also argue he almost certainly saved a huge number of lives with Silk Road: the ability to view eBay style feedback and chemical test results makes buying illegal drugs far safer than buying them on the street. On Silk Road people could buy from a reputable seller with a long history of providing unadulterated products, and could view testimonials from other buyers who had sent the products for chemical analysis.
Not going to comment on the murder part as that’s well discussed here.
I would take issue with assuming that it was net positive with ratings. Given the anonymous nature handling bots spamming fake reviews would be even harder to catch here, and you ultimately don’t know who ended up addicted/hooked/DUI’s etc from the easy availability this provided. I’m not sure the total effects could ever be qualified, but it’s not like unadulterated drugs are automatically safe. Just look at how many lives pharma-grade opioids ruined, even though they were “safe”.
That’s also not to mention guns and all kinds of other dangerous & illegal parts of it.
I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel.
For LSD there existed a third-party forum, where a group of (supposedly) vendor-neutral, unaffiliated individuals would purchase samples from vendors, send them to private or state-sponsored labs around the world and publish/discuss the results (often with online links to lab results).
Yes, of course vendors could have also attempted to infiltrate these forums. But as enough of these functions were provided by/for the community, the profit incentive tilts. If you ran a vendor account on the Silk Road, your effort was better spent maintaining/improving good infosec and mail/postal security. Some techniques they developed were quite innovative, the professionalism was evident.
Ross’s story is fascinating and tragic- as everything that’s said for and against his character is generally true. Silk Road was built on naive yet admirable ideals. It fostered a special community, some of which really did reflect those ideals. He got in over his head, and really did try to have someone killed.
Though, the details on that latter point are a bit more complicated- authorities had infiltrated Ross’s inner circle- the motive and the ‘hitman’ himself were fictional. Ross still took the bait though, which is pretty damning. Until that point, they weren’t sure they had a sufficient case on him.
Is that why they never prosecuted the attempted murder? It sounds like entrapment.
That's the point people don't seem to be getting about anonymous reviews- if the review is more costly than the value it provides the seller, they won't do it, and it's fairly easy to make that the case. A separate enthusiast forum where the reviews are from people with a long history of high effort engagement is a good example of that. That's basically the idea behind crypto as well- making false transactions is more expensive than the value it could return.
The truth is no one knows why they didn't bring those charges, or the real details behind the evidence or what happened in those interactions. It's pretty much shrouded beneath things like:
-DOJ released some details and screenshots, but
-the FBI agents who were involved in investigating this topic were like arrested for stealing bitcoin from silk road or something, so their work is hard to find credible
-general lack of clarity as to the identity of the person running silk road at the time this happened
The law is murky and seems to hinge on the court's opinion on whether the person who committed the crime would have had they not been influenced by an officer. The police being the ones to start the conversation doesn't rise to the level of entrapment. The police deceiving you into wanting to commit a crime may rise to the level of entrapment if the courts find you wouldn't have done it otherwise (the example I found that illustrated this best was "Hey there's a warehouse full of valuables let's go rob it" isn't entrapment but "Hey this guy said he's gonna kill your kid you need to kill him first" probably does absent any reason to believe you would have killed him without being deceived first). My guess would be that the grey area, plus the relative ease with which they were able to secure a life sentence for the other charges, is why the murder-for-hire charges never went to trial.
> the example I found that illustrated this best was "Hey there's a warehouse full of valuables let's go rob it" isn't entrapment
Literally entrapment.
Like you said, it hinges on if you would have committed the crime without encouragement from the police.
A trap car is not entrapment. You walking past a trap car, checking if the door is unlocked and then going for a joyride / stealing it means you convinced yourself to do this crime.
An undercover policeman telling you he's seen an unlocked car, and "just take it for a spin, for the hell of it"? That's entrapment.
>By a 5–3 margin, the Court upheld the conviction of a Missouri man for selling heroin even though all the drug sold was supplied to him, he claimed, by a Drug Enforcement Administration informant who had, in turn, gotten it from the DEA. The majority held that the record showed Hampton was predisposed to sell drugs no matter his source...The case came before the court when the defendant argued that while he was predisposed, it was irrelevant since the government's possible role as sole supplier in the case constituted the sort of "outrageous government conduct" that Justice William Rehnquist had speculated could lead to the reversal of a conviction in the court's last entrapment case, United States v. Russell.[2] Rehnquist was not impressed and rejected the argument in his majority opinion.
Here's one where the government said "Hey you should sell this heroin that I gave you" and the conviction was upheld because "the record showed Hampton was predisposed to sell drugs no matter his source." So no, the simple act of an undercover cop asking you if you'd like to commit a crime isn't entrapment on its face.
> In late February 1974, Hampton and a DEA informant known as Hutton were playing pool at the Pud bar in St. Louis when Hampton noticed the needle marks on Hutton's arms. He said he needed money and could obtain heroin to sell. Hutton responded that he could find a buyer. After the conversation, he called his handler, DEA agent Terry Sawyer, and reported the proposal.
It was under his own will, the DEA just supplied him the means to do so.
It's basically as if I was in a seedy bar and spot a pistol on an undercover agent, and I tell them I know an easy spot to rob near the bar. Then the undercover agent gives me the pistol, asking for 20% of the take. It only turns into entrapment if I was talking about money problems and the undercover agent would have told me robbing a nearby convienence store could be an easy solve to my money troubles.
My understanding is that they did not charge him with the attempted murder because it was later found that both parties/witnesses (other than Ross) later turned out to be corrupt and financially benefitting from the situation (keeping his murder payment for themselves) and the Silk Road in general.
Entrapment requires some coercive/persuasive force by the government to push you to commit the crime, the government is allowed to setup entirely fake scenarios and let you choose to do a crime.
Not that it's a perfect source, but reddit lawyers used to describe the difficulty of proving entrapment by laying out two requirements: (1) you wouldn't have committed the crime if the instigator wasn't law enforcement, and (2) you only committed the crime because the instigator was law enforcement. One or the other is not enough. Like an 'if and only if' deal.
If you aren't aware that it's an LEO urging you on, I don't see why you should be able to argue impropriety. You made the decision as if it were real and would have real consequences.
If someone comes to you and offers you a fictional job to illegally move a lot of drugs for cash and you agree - that's not entrapment, you agreed of your own accord. That the whole thing was a fake setup is not materially relevant.
If you first refuse, and then the undercover officer says "if you don't do this we'll come after you and kill your family" and then you agree under duress - that's entrapment.
It has to be something that's compelling you to do something you would not have done otherwise. Presenting you with the option to make a bad choice is not itself enough because had the situation been real you would have done it.
On one hand I'm sympathetic to Ross in that I can empathize with his youthful ideals and ego that drove the marketplace, but I also think he genuinely would have authorized that person be killed had it been real and people are in prison for a lot less. His market was also a lot more than drugs iirc.
I find his supporters downplaying the assassination bit irritating - I suspect they do it because they know it's the least defensible bit and they can argue it on technicality. I think it'd be better if they just accepted it.
I also think he's very unlikely to commit another crime now that he's out, but still - a lot of people are in prison for a lot less.
Depends a lot on the exact setup. He still chose to try to hire a hitman allegedly. The standard is fairly high, "that man is informing on you" isn't entrapment, without knowing a lot of details it's hard to know and it's rarely actually entrapment.
Built on naive yet admirable ideals? Special community? It was the world’s largest drug market, selling things like fentanyl in large quantities. What admirable ideal is this?!
You really cannot stop illicit drug use. A hard approach to prohibition not only makes people less safe, it’s a massive waste of spending. On just a pragmatic level- Fentanyl and analogues are by weight hundreds of times more potent than morphine. How do you even effectively stop that from getting across borders? Silk Road provided a brief counterpoint, and ideally wouldn’t have had to exist. The ideals it represented were more broad- for drug regulations/spending that focus on safety, and respect individual rights / bodily autonomy (ofc limited to not harming or endangering others).
The Silk Road represented a tiny fraction of illicit drug revenue per country. Some report-skimming would indicate less than a single digit. A series of more profit-oriented darknet markets replaced it. I don’t know what the costs were associated with its takedown but they must have been enormous. I doubt it became large enough for cartels to care much, but the effect of shutting it down is certainly good for them.
I don’t personally hold the opinion that Ross Ulbricht shouldn’t have been pursued according to the law- or support his pardon- or even that darknet drug markets should exist! I’m also not really interested in crypto.
However I strongly believe that a completely different approach to drug laws & regulations is necessary to make people safer and reduce crime.
Oh, I like that, tough on crime! It's a novel idea. I wish the Nixon and Reagan administrations had thought of that a few decades ago, maybe if they did we could be witnessing the brilliant effects of that sort of policy today!
Amazing idea! After all, giving long term prison sentences to drug dealers, and even drug users, has totally eliminated drug use, it's not like it has exploded over time...
Separating the drugs from the adjacent crime and problems that come with an illicit industry by finding a way to make it run kinda like normal business seems pretty admirable to me.
It’s cheaper than the alternative, though, if there is rat poison in it, there is nothing you can do!
Caveat Emptor is a shit way to run a society. It incentivizes the sociopaths.
Both Hippies and Libertarians fail to understand that if your organizational principles don’t account for sociopaths, they will take over and ruin everything.
>It’s cheaper than the alternative, though, if there is rat poison in it, there is nothing you can do!
Sure there is, I can take you to court.
>Caveat Emptor is a shit way to run a society. It incentivizes the sociopaths.
Bureaucracy and nanny states do that too.
>Both Hippies and Libertarians fail to understand that if your organizational principles don’t account for sociopaths, they will take over and ruin everything.
I don't think the latter are against locking people up. Or executing them even!
And the former, I dunno, perhaps they handle them Midsommar style!
Not to mention the issue is quite solvable: sellers can sell whatever, but need to specify the contents and whether they match a specification (e.g. same contents as aspirin). If you want to buy rat poison drug or heroin cut with sawdust, it's on you.
Courts can do very little to remedy the harm of dying from rat poison. They can address, in an imperfect way, the incidental harm your death by rat poison causes to other people, but, I think most people would strongly prefer not to die of rat poison, than to die of rat poison but have their dependents compensated financially for the loss of their future income, etc.
Something anyone with an addict in their life needs to know:
While substances can efficiently help someone destroy their life, keeping them away from drugs won’t stop them from destroying their lives. There’s something already broken in these people that they need to fix before it’s too late.
There are perfectly legal alternatives that can be just as effective with a little more effort. Putting heroin in your arm is just quicker than downing a fifth of vodka, or chasing dopamine at the dog track.
I think you're advocating for better mental health care and rehabilitation of addicts, which I agree with. However, the idea that addicts will destroy their lives regardless of whether they stop using, or are forced to stop using, their drug of choice is an extremely dangerous statement. Many addicts get better by changing their environment and quitting/going to rehab/etc.
Furthermore, heroin != vodka in terms of how addictive it is for the average user, and that's partly why only one of them is legal for recreational use.
Controversies about decriminalization aside, harm reduction exists as a studied component in addiction, public health, and psychology circles for a reason.
The important question isn't raw numbers, it's which destroys a greater percentage of lives out of those who consume it. If heroin were as widespread as alcohol, would it still be true that alcohol destroys more lives? We obviously can't know for sure without trying it, but preliminary results aren't promising.
Yeah, I don't know. There's certainly people that are just broken, but reading other examples, I think there are plenty of people who just happen on to a perfect addiction(, or maybe an imperfect one that fills the spot). The manifest destiny stuff is kind of a mix that soothes a lot of people with various motives whether or not it is representative of the median case.
> I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel.
He's the candidate that was preferred by Christians, yet probably he was the least Christian-like candidate. Just today/yesterday he criticized a Bishop for values that are clearly Christian, people seem to swallow it. I'm pretty sure trying to add logic/reasoning to the choices he makes is a lost cause.
> Ulbricht stopped selling them because it wasn't lucrative enough.
While technically accurate, the tone of the Ulbricht quote differs somewhat:
The volume hasn't even been enough to cover server costs and is actually waning at this point. I had high hopes for it, but if we are going to serve an anonymous weapons market, I think it will require more careful thought an planning.
There's a reason Wikipedia doesn't accept "I saw it" as a citation.
Wikipedia isn't perfect, but if I had to put odds on Wikipedia vs "rando on internet forum who claims to remember something from years ago", I'm going with Wikipedia 10 times out of 10.
"Facebook is a communication tool for friends and family that is sometimes used for illegal activity" is categorically different than "Silk Road is a tool created to facilitate illegal activity."
There are many Christians who would happily to get in long arguments over which values are “clearly Christian.”
If you really want to understand, it’s not hard. It just requires making an honest effort to try, without judging. And that’s what stops people who don’t understand it. Try chatting with an LLM sometime about what it looks like from their perspective. Knowing it’s not a human makes it easier to avoid getting upset.
> If you really want to understand, it’s not hard. It just requires making an honest effort to try, without judging
I was brought up Christian, sealed my religiousness with a confirmation when I was 15 (which required studies and field trips), and been around religious people for a lot of my younger life. Oh, and my mom worked at a church where I grew up, spent a bunch of time in the church, for better or worse.
I'd like to think that the values of compassion and mercy are two of the most fundamental Christian values, at least from the protestants I spent a lot of time with. It seems to me, that the American bastardization of Catholicism, might not actually be very Christian if those two values aren't include in there.
I'm not religious anymore, but if I learned anything from (truly) religious folks, then it would be that you should treat your fellow humans as just that, fellow humans.
Well, he just did an executive order to label cartels as foreign terrorists, and has spoken at length about drugs in many of his speeches. Not sure why you think such a statement is controversial.
Because I don't think he has a honestly held belief about anything. I think he's happy to do whatever is most expedient for his interests.
He wants to be known as a guy who trades favors, so here, he ignored all the previous fear mongering about [scary thing], and is repaying the favor to the "libertarian party" who wanted this, and voted for him.
Almost everything he says is just for show, fits his pattern of behavior better than, "he believes [thing he said]" does.
I just read another article about how the person who says we need to follow "law and order" and "respect police" just pardoned everybody convicted of violence against police... again, trading favors instead of consistently following something he said.
I replied with more details in a sister thread but calling it a schtick is more accurate that I think you meant. It's exclusively a shtick; he doesn't actually believe it, or care about it.
Historically, many anti-drug / anti-cartel leaders are actually members of a rival cartel, and want to use law enforcement to fight their wars for them.
The Mexican government has a long history of this. The LAPD’s (well documented for over 50 years) do the same thing.
Trump is a convicted felon with lots of ties to organized crime. Nothing about him pardoning members of some criminal organizations but not others is surprising.
In related news, he signed an executive order forcing prosecutors to seek the death penalty when police are killed, and in the same day pardoned 132 of his supporters that were convicted of assaulting police officers during an event where officers were killed.
>he signed an executive order forcing prosecutors to seek the death penalty when police are killed
He also pardoned a drug dealing cop killer at the end of his last term. Said cop killer has since been arrested for attempting to strangle his wife to death.
> Historically, many anti-drug / anti-cartel leaders are actually members of a rival cartel, and want to use law enforcement to fight their wars for them.
For reference, Rudy Giuliani was lauded as the anti-organized mayor that brought down the Italian mob in New York, but ultimately was flagged as actually being an upper echelon of Russian organized crime who worked to establish it by eliminating competiton.
The Wikipedia article does not flag Giuliani as being a member of Russian organized crime, but someone who Giuliani's law firm represents, an individual by the name of Dmytry Firtash.
Furthermore the timeline for this is over a decade after Giuliani was mayor of New York.
The link doesn't say that. The phrase you use is a reference in the Wikipedia article to the DOJ's characterization of Dmytry Firtash, "a Ukrainian oligarch who is prominent in the natural gas sector", not Giuliani.
Well, now you probably understand that Trump is not really anti-drug/anti-cartel. Nor do I think he's pro-drug/pro-cartel. I think he doesn't actually care except in how those issues affect his political career and public profile. Many of Trump's more ... let's call them "random" seeming statements and actions make much more sense if you look at them through the lens of "he doesn't actually care one way or the other".
Ulbricht's career represents many core values of a certain wing of today's Libertarians.
* unfettered and unregulated and anonymous weapons sales.
* willful ignorance and rejection of any of the social costs of buying and selling hard drugs.
* commerce that operates in a world that is difficult to be taxes by government entities, and ideally anonymously (even though bitcoin is the least anonymous thing in the world)
So are libertarians fighting for complete legalization of drugs? If so, why aren’t they pressing on Trump for that? Why wasn’t that an executive order vs pardoning this guy?
> I think it's a belief that a lot of us arrive at early in our lives, many eventually grow out of it.
Very astute. What’s interesting to me is the ability for youth to discount this potential change, mostly because they just see the end result vs the journey. I know I was like that.
> I would take issue with assuming that it was net positive with ratings.
I know this is probably as minority view, but I think if adults consent to buying and using any drug, that should be both fully legal, and their right and responsibility- any negative consequences are 100% their own fault, not the person who sold them. It's probably true that making drugs easier to buy made more people buy them, but I was only considering the ill effects of fraudulently adulterated products. Do the math differently if you don't see it this way.
I don't know how Silk Road was designed, and have never actually used it or anything like it- but I imagine it would be possible to eliminate fraudulent reviews with proper design, and they may have done so. eBay, for example, is almost free of fraudulent reviews because posting a single review is very expensive- you'd need to sell an item to yourself for full price, and then pay eBay their full (rather large) cut to post a single fraudulent review.
As a buyer, you should be able to take a single high effort review that contains something like mass spec chemical analysis results, and further confirm that the reviewer themselves has a credible history of making purchases and reviews broadly across a lot of different sellers. An impossibly expensive to fake signal. This could also be done automatically by the platform- by making the more credible reviews display first.
> I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel.
Trump is not an idealist- he will promise anything to anyone if it gets power and attention. Previously, he had attempted a political career as a leftist, and switched to the right because it was getting more traction.
> I know this is probably as minority view, but I think if adults consent to buying and using any drug, that should be both fully legal, and their right and responsibility- any negative consequences are 100% their own fault, not the person who sold them. It's probably true that making drugs easier to buy made more people buy them, but I was only considering the ill effects of fraudulently adulterated products. Do the math differently if you don't see it this way.
I'd agree with you if the people that used these drugs did so rationally. That's not the case mostly though from what I've heard. Trauma is often the root cause and that's out of many people's control. From then on it's ub to society to help them.
If a high performing exec wants to buy drugs to function better, sure maybe that's ok but I doubt that's the majority of people.
I proclaimed nearly this exact opinion in the jury box after being summoned between 15 and 20 years ago. They didn't pick me for trial, which was the intended effect. I really did believe it at the time. Nowadays, I just think it's way more complicated and there are no simple or blanket answers.
Re-consenting: this is a different argument than saying more lives were saved because the reviews would remove adulterated products. Again, just look at opioid addiction for very clear evidence of the opposite effect.
It is very clear from what you’ve said that you haven’t used it :) I have browsed it when it was active and I was very pro tor. You’re making a lot of assumptions that simply don’t hold for silk road.
> Again, just look at opioid addiction for very clear evidence of the opposite effect.
I was playing devil's advocate, but agree there is more culpability to a seller if the drug overwhelms your ability to make the choice in the first place- however a lot of very illegal drugs do not do this. More so if you're using emotionally manipulative ads and selling methods as the alcohol and pharma industry do.
No doubt people were buying weed and hallucinogens on Silk Road, but there was A LOT of opioids, Xanax, cocaine, meth, and other highly addictive drugs that change people’s brain chemistry for the worse.
silk road was on the dark web, a place that is oriented 100% around anonymity. This precludes any sort of "elimination of fraudulent reviews" since there's no reasonable way to build any sort of chain of trust.
I explained several ideas to eliminate fraudulent reviews in my comment, that you didn't address. The main thing is to make a review coupled with a purchase that involves a large cut to the platform, so each review is very expensive. Secondly, don't take reviewers themselves seriously unless they've also made a large overall number of purchases to a diversity of sellers- making becoming a credible reviewer also expensive.
> Trump is not an idealist- he will promise anything to anyone if it gets power and attention. Previously, he had attempted a political career as a leftist, and switched to the right because it was getting more traction.
This is a critical point. His explicitly goal is to be an autocrat, there is no other ideology other than what works.
That's why I think the only real bit of him is the one that admires Putin. That is who he wants to be.
The cybersecurity podcast Risky Business interviewed an FBI agent who was deeply involved, I'd highly recommend listening to it if you want that perspective. If I remember correctly, the agents who were investigating the murder for hire stuff were later found to have been stealing some of the bitcoin they were confiscating and the prosecutors fro the Ulbricht case decided they didn't need to bring up those charges to get a conviction (which they obviously didn't).
That is interesting. I'd suspect he could possibly be found guilty of attempted murder, and have the sentence reduced or eliminated by arguing that his previous sentence unjustly assumed guilt for this as well, and factored it into the sentence he already served.
If I remember correctly, there were comments from both the prosecution and judge that would basically prove that point- and they allowed evidence related to those other crimes in the trial. If they could prove this misconduct, they may even be able to argue double jeopardy.
There was deliberately no mention of the alleged murders-for-hire during the trial.
The judge said during sentencing that she was giving Ulbricht an incredibly harsh sentence to make an example of him to others who think that facilitating selling drugs is a victimless crime, and she was also angry at the huge stack of nice letters that people sent to the court in support of Ulbricht.
"for the crime he was actually found guilty of, the sentence was unfair and unreasonable."
Was it? Based on current law in the US?
While I do not know English Common law well, in many jurisdictions, every part of the drug dealing is drug dealing. Even if you never touch a drug and just provide payment processing services, transport or whatever, as long as you are aware of it and profit from it, it is drug dealing. So every transaction on Silk Road would also be his crime. And there were many, many many. On the other hand, for non-first degree murder, in several jurisdictions his sentence would have maxed out at 15 years. First time offender, he could have walked after 10.
> I'd also argue he almost certainly saved a huge number of lives with Silk Road: the ability to view eBay style feedback and chemical test results makes buying illegal drugs far safer than buying them on the street.
So will the Trump admin be making any moves on legalization or safe supply? Especially since between Musk and Kennedy's admitted drug use, the white house pharmacy report, and the allegations about the Trump family itself, it seems obvious that the White House appreciates the usefulness of illegal stimulants?
Or is this another case of "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect"?
the benefit wasnt really unique to silk road or ross. it was just a very convoluted, roundabout demonstration of how safe drug use can be when its done in the right environment. legalization would be even safer…
Safer for buyers and users I guess. Based on being able to smell marijuana coming from so many car windows just walking around town, I'm not sure it would be safer for the public. I'm not anti-legalization by the way - I think it's similar to gambling: a mixed bag.
What are you talking about? I specifically said it was unethical that they seem to have sentenced him for crimes he was never even tried for- but deserved a fair trial for. You appear to think I was saying the opposite of that?
I just can't fathom the lack of self-awareness of people who championed Ross Ulbricht's cause, seemingly because he looks like them, codes like them, and sat in the same public library they frequent or became associated with a techno-libertarian identity. Hundreds of drug and gun dealers are sentenced every week, some certainly unjustly. Where is the outrage for them?
Those people that championed Ulbricht's cause are for the most part also the people championing the cause of drug dealers and other victims of New Prohibition. If you genuinely care about this cause, you might ask yourself whether alienating other supporters is the best approach.
If you're just looking for someone to feel superior about, find another forum.
My impression is that a big part of the outrage is directed not at the conviction, but at the disproportionate sentence.
I'm not surprised or upset at all that he went to prison, but unless I'm missing a ton of details (and I probably am), 12 years is plenty for what he did.
It's the scale of the crime (he facilitated 10s of thousands of transactions), the judge clearly stated she wanted to make an example of him and give pause to anyone thinking about doing something similar in the future, and she was angry at the many of the letters of support Ulbricht's fans family and friends sent the court.
My memory is she started the sentencing hearing by disdainfully reading a few of them from a pile of them she brought to the court that day.
As for the murder part Christina Warren knows best:
The murder for hire bit was always the most bullshit of all the charges. Not only were the fbi agents that were part of that later jailed for their own actions related to the case (including theft and hiding/deleting evidence), it was never real and no one was ever in danger.
> it was never real and no one was ever in danger.
Because one of the hitmen he hired was a scammer, and another was an FBI agent. Still clearly a crime to hire them for murder.
Ulbricht's right-hand-man Roger Thomas Clark, who was involved in one of the murder-for-hire conversations, admitted the conversation was real during his trial:
"In his own remarks, Clark didn't comment on that murder-for-hire conversation—which he at one point claimed had been fabricated by Ulbricht but later conceded was real."
Chris Tarbell states that there are logs about 6 imaginary "murder of hire"'s .. none of which actually took place, two were faked by the FBI(?) and four were scams run by third parties outside the USA.
In the absence of any other context it's assumed these were acts of "intent to murder" but that's about it .. logs that look like a duck and probably were a duck.
But no actual murders that anyone could find, no bodies, etc.
Okay, another comparison would be, everyone who wants Luigi Mangione exonerated also is feeling what some people felt when they wanted OJ Simpson to be exonerated. Do you see now?
Luigi is a symptom of an overly inactive justice system, if you don't prosecute crimes then some people take the law into their own hands (as a matter of fact). Preventing vigilantism is why having a working justice system is important to a functioning society.
DPR is according to his defenders a symptom of an overly active justice system prosecuting crimes that shouldn't be prosecuted. Though I'm not sure I personally agree with that.
The Luigi some people have constructed in their minds is a symptom of an overly inactive justice system. The Luigi of real life is the symptom of a man suffering a psychotic break.
See, you are one of the people who feels about Luigi Mangione what some people felt about OJ Simpson. You’re getting it. You can read about how some people talked about OJ Simpson’s supposed innocence, it is exactly the same energy.
Almost nobody thinks Luigi Mangione or Ross Ulbricht are innocent, or were falsely accused. Neither of the 3 cases are remotely comparable beyond being "people charged with crimes that there is some public sympathy for."
Most people seem to think Ulbricht was guilty, and deserved to be found guilty and go to prison, but that the full sentence didn't fit the crime.
I don't see how those are remotely comparable, the OJ people believed he didn't do it and was set up by the racist LAPD while the Luigi people think that what he did was good actually. I guess the Ross Ulbricht people are more like the latter but they still seem pretty dissimilar.
The lengths the FBI went to in one of the murder for hire cases is interesting.
After Ulbricht ordered the hit on one of his forum moderators, the FBI visited him, took all of his computers, told him they were going to be "him" from now on online forever, had him "pose" in a bathtub where they hosed him off and doused him in ketchup to take fake trophy photos, had the "hitman" send the photos of Ulbricht, who famously commented "It had to be done."
Did you just make that up? I have never heard that claim before and searching for Ross Ulbricht ketchup just leads back to your comment, so you seem to be the first person to ever claim this.
>Force got Green to sign a waiver, thereby commencing his role in an impromptu staged torture sting against DPR. Soon Green was being dunked in the bathtub of a Marriott suite by phony thugs who were in fact a Secret Service agent and a Baltimore postal inspector. Force recorded the action on a camera. “Did you get it?” Green asked, wet and wheezing on the floor. He’d felt like their simulation was a little too accurate. They dunked him four more times to get a convincing shot.
There used to be an online archive of every little bit of public information known about the Silk Road's administrators and their court cases. I can't find it anymore. It was over 10 years ago. All I can remember is the site had a weird url.
This is wonderful. I've never argued that Ross shouldn't have served time but it's always been clear his prosecution and sentencing were excessive and unjust. The prosecutors asked for a 20 year sentence, which seemed disproportionate given the sentencing guidelines for a first-time offender and the non-violent charges he was convicted of. But the judge sentenced Ross to TWO life sentences plus 40 years - without the possibility of parole. There's no doubt Ross made a series of unwise and reckless decisions but serving over ten years of hard time in a FedMax prison is more than enough given the charges and his history.
It's just unfortunate that Trump, and now, excessive pardons are politically polarized, which could cloud the fact that justice was done today. I don't credit Trump in any way for doing "the right thing" or even having a principled position regarding Ross' case. Clearly, others with influence on Trump convinced him to sign it. It doesn't matter how the pardon happened. Biden should have already pardoned Ross because that crazy sentence shouldn't have happened in the first place.
Madoff stole $20-35B, but by some measures a human life is only worth $10M. I am not really asserting those figures are comparable, just that Madoff stole a lot of money.
Nah, it's more that you do not fuck with the money system. SBF is learning that same lesson.
Jeff Skilling (Enron) served 12 years in jail for insider trading and securities.
Not saying that Skilling, Maddoff or SBF shouldn't have gone to jail. They deserved it. But I do find it interesting that financial crimes can tend to be the most harshly judged, likely because of who they impact (the people with money) and because they cause distrust of the financial system as a whole.
> Madoff stole $20-35B
Not to defend Madoff, but it's not like he made off with that money himself, so I'm not sure "stole" is the correct term. Most of that money went to investors -- it just went to a different set of investors than the ones who had put that money in (the nature of a Ponzi scheme).
yes, unless you're a big enough finance scammer that you stole from really rich people (most scammers who steal millions don't get it from the very rich)
But even then the times aren't longer than someone who gets caught with a 100 grams of coke. Skilling got 12 years for a financial fraud so heinous the whole system was re-regulated. You get that for selling crack on the corner.
There’s no question that the “war on drugs” sentencing is ridiculously out of proportion with the actual harm done, especially if you’re not white or upper class. I was making a comparison between types of financial crimes.
Hasn't the Trustee recovered 90% of the money invested? Phantom returns were ignored; at the time of the arrest the phantom returns were considered money lost.
> Not to defend Madoff, but it's not like he made off with that money himself, so I'm not sure "stole" is the correct term.
What else would the term be? Did you always feel that Robin Hood was being unfairly maligned when he was described as robbing from the rich and giving to the poor?
It's the same level as saying "tech companies stole from the populace". Which is ethically correct but legally wrong. I guess that's the distinction GP wants to make.
I think there's almost no chance. SBF is a perfect example of someone to throw the book at. He's effectively Madoff 2.0, the people everyone from the lowly to the elite hate.
Ross Ulbricht is a very unique, interesting case. I don't for a second believe that Trump has any moral imperative with pardoning him, but his sentence for the crimes he was prosecuted for was very clearly unjustly large in an extensively murky case. There's also a whole slew of benefits to Trump for pardoning him - it's largely perceived as very pro-crypto, pro-libertarian (ironic), etc.
In any sane democracy I would agree with you. But this POTUS has pardoned 1500 people that actively participates in an insurrection, some of who hurt and even killed police officers. He's pardoned a the Dread Pirate Roberts.
All of those people were perfect people to throw the book at.
From what I read, the Ulbricht pardon was part of a deal at the Libertarian National Convention. So it's just business as usual.
Broken clocks and all that. I entirely agree that he may have a potential muder conviction on his case, but they instead threw the book at him for a much lesser crime for a way too large sentence. Especially if we compare it to the War on Drugs.
If someone robs a bank, or steals a wallet, they're probably hoping to get as much money as they can. If that wallet happened to $1B in it, I don't think it makes the thief more heinous. If we sentence people based on the amount of money they manage to steal, we're sentencing them largely based on luck.
If you shoot someone and hit their head killing them or just their ear, its a matter of luck (and possibly skill), the charges are different. The justice system judges based on intent as well as outcome (i.e. execution X luck).
well you're not wrong. That attempted Trump assassination was a few inches away from being in the same books as John Wilkes Booth, instead of being talked about for less than a week and then forgotten. Sentences would have been night and day.
Many jurisdictions have the same punishment for attempted murder and murder though.
I get that there are different views on how much punishment should be based on intent vs outcome. My opinion is factoring in outcome in criminal sentences is often pragmatic, but if we had omniscient judges, judging on intent would be ideal.
You're either not understanding or refusing to engage with the hypothetical. When you steal a wallet, you don't get to choose how much money is in it. It could have $5, or $500.
You're imagining something like a thief who just intends to steal $X, robs a bank, counts out $X and leaves the rest of the money untouched. In reality, most thieves are opportunists: they will take as much money as opportunity allows without getting caught.
Obviously you couldn't physically fit $1B cash in a wallet, but assuming this hypothetical wallet did have $1B, does that make the thief more heinous or just luckier?
(If you must insist on a literal and physically accurate wallet in the hypothetical, just imagine it held $1B in Bitcoin.)
But if the wallets each only contain $100 and you steal enough of them to get to $1 billion, that is qualitatively different from stealing a single wallet. The man committed fraud repeatedly and caused financial hardships for tons of people. He wasn't lucky in how much he managed to steal, that was a combination of effort, skill, and reckless disregard for the wellbeing of others.
Sure, but that's an entirely different metric to judge him on than the comment I was replying to. Instead of trying to judge the heinousness of his crime by comparing the raw amount stolen ($20-35B) to the value of a human life ($10M), you're judging based on the number of times a crime is committed. That makes intuitive sense; more crimes committed gets a harsher punishment.
The hypothetical is there to try to tease out a principled stance from our intuition. If someone stole a wallet that contained $1B, should their punishment be a million times harsher than someone who stole a wallet with $1000? Should it be 5x harsher? The same punishment?
If your stance is that luck would not ideally affect one's punishment then the amount stolen isn't itself a factor in determining the punishment. It's downstream of the true factors, such as the number of thefts committed. The amount stolen is correlated but not causal.
> If your stance is that luck would not ideally affect one's punishment
I don't think this is generally the stance. If you give someone a little shove, they bump their head, and they get a bruise, you've committed assault, you're facing up to a few months in jail. If you give someone a little shove, they bump their head, and they die, you've committed murder, you're facing potentially years in jail. According to the eggshell skull legal doctrine[0], it doesn't matter that some people are especially more vulnerable than others (ie that you were particularly unlucky and pushed someone who happened to have an eggshell skull), you take responsibility for the consequences when you do something illegal.
Now in our world, no one is going to steal a wallet with $1 billion in it - there is some reasonable assumption that when taking a wallet you are at most stealing a few thousand dollars, and never more money than a person would be comfortable keeping in their wallet. While that's against society's rules for various reasons, it's not a particularly damaging crime. The victim will be perhaps very inconvenienced, but no worse.
However if we lived in a world where a wallet might contain 1 billion dollars, that would be a different story. Now you might very well be causing life altering damage to large numbers of people when you steal a wallet. The decision to do so, knowing the risk, is a much more serious offense. The metaphorical wallet Madoff stole was not only possibly filled with an enormous sum of money, it very likely contained that much. Beyond the much greater and repeated effort that Madoff employed to steal this money than would be needed to snatch a wallet, the very fact he was willing to cause so much potential damage for his personal gain is a much more severe breach of the social contract than a petty thief.
There definitely shouldn't be a simple linear relationship of dollars stolen to days in prison; but that doesn't mean the punishment should be completely agnostic either. These relationships are complex and need to be looked at in context with other relevant factors like pre-meditative effort or degree of remorse. Regardless of one's stance on rehabilitative vs punitive justice, I think we can all agree someone who effortlessly broke core parts of the social contract and would gladly do so again needs to be treated differently from someone who made a bad call in a moment of weakness.
> If you give someone a little shove, they bump their head, and they die
What you're describing is manslaughter or possibly not a crime in most jurisdictions, but your point stands. Generally, murder is an intentional killing, and manslaughter is an accidental killing. But if, say, you give an aggressive drunk a little shove and they bump their head and die, you probably haven't committed a crime. Nonetheless, luck absolutely plays a role in punishment in our current justice system in a thousand different ways. I don't think most people consider the element of luck to be ideal so much as an unfortunate but necessary reality.
With the eggshell skull doctrine, you're talking about paying for damages in a civil case. I think most people see reparations differently than punishment. In civil law, you pay to fix the damage you caused, even though the exact amount comes down to luck. But criminal punishments require some criminal intent. It's a higher bar.
> there is some reasonable assumption that when taking a wallet you are at most stealing a few thousand dollars
I think you're giving thieves too much credit here. They may not expect most wallets to have more than $1000, but I don't think most thieves have some innate goodness in them that makes them want to get a wallet with less than $1000. I think it's the opposite: if thieves knew someone had $1B in their wallet, and the chance of getting caught was the same as stealing any other wallet, I think most thieves would want to steal that wallet more, not less. And I don't think most would care if the money in that wallet rightfully belonged to the investors of Madoff Investment Securities either.
> factors like pre-meditative effort or degree of remorse ... moment of weakness
With these factors, you're judging the thief based on their character. We're both advocating this. The difference is you're arguing someone who steals a larger amount of money has a worse character while I'm arguing they just had greater opportunity.
Madoff stole from the rich. That is a sure fire way to have the book thrown at you. Smart criminals steal from the poor, because they don’t fight back as much and the justice system doesn’t care.
It is wildly harmful and an escalation of monstrous practices to look at one or several unjust actions and/or sentences and declare that those who do worse than the person who was dealt out such a retribution should receive an even longer sentence.
If someone gets 10 years for smoking weed, the solution is not to put someone in prison for 20 years for punching someone.
On the same principle, noting that someone who punched someone got one day in jail is not a good justification for why someone shouldn't get two days in jail for smoking weed.
It is interesting but, if I'm understanding the stats being tracked there, it's about petitions received and granted. However, many of the recent pardons by both Biden and Trump were unusual and controversial because they were either never petitioned, preemptive (in the case of Biden's family, staff & political allies) or granted to broad groups (in the case of Trump Jan 6th protesters). I'm not sure they are reflected on the site, or at least not yet, and if/when they are, how the site would reflect one pardon impacting dozens or hundreds of people.
In general, the recent wave of pardons in the last month reflect the trend over the last 20 years of pardons by both parties being increasingly political, self-interested and granted to connected donors who mount targeted campaigns. Sadly, it's not a great look. Yet I believe the pardon process can, and should, serve an important function of being a final check and balance to correct prosecutorial and judicial excess when it occurs. I'd be happier if the majority of pardons were commutations of grossly excessive sentences in cases most people have never heard of.
Hopefully, many of the more unusual and controversial recent pardons were a final paroxysm in response to the increases in politically-related prosecutions or threats of such prosecutions by partisans on both sides. Regardless of the validity (or lack thereof) of these prosecutions (or threats), it's clear many were pursued more aggressively, timed or conducted with at least one eye on either influencing political optics or retribution. Overall, it's certainly not been a shining moment for our republic. Both parties share the blame and need to do better.
Your math is wrong at least for Biden, I didn't recheck the others. Biden has 1736 pardons commuted or granted in 46.5 months or 37 pardons per month. I suspect all your other ones are wrong since Biden was so off. The recent trend is Biden and Obama being "off the charts" compared to the republican presidents. From my understanding this is due to weed related charges where they did mass pardonings. It's besides the point ones feelings about it, just commenting on the math.
Although the murder-for-hire charges were dropped, transcripts published by Wired in 2015[0] show Ross Ulbricht openly discussing contract killings: he haggles over price, suggests interrogation, and even provides personal details about a target’s family (“Wife + 3 kids”). These charges were dismissed partly because he had already been sentenced to life in New York, making further prosecution moot—but the transcripts themselves factored into his sentencing. No killings occurred (he was likely scammed), yet the conversations challenge the notion that his crimes were purely non-violent. He was willing to have someone killed to protect his idea.
> These charges were dismissed partly because he had already been sentenced to life in New York
It was further complicated because a couple of the law enforcement officers involved with setting up one of the six murder-for-hire scams* stole the Bitcoin Ulbricht paid and it was also felt that trying to prosecute based solely on the other chat logs would have been difficult. The FBI agent who arrested Ulbricht was interviewed about it recently[1].
* The other five are said to not have been law enforcement, which makes it curious the number of times Ulbricht was scammed in this manner.
The murder for hire was done with the admin account which was called "Dread Pirate Roberts" from the novel "The Princess Bride". The thing about the name is that is passed on over and over. The admin has claimed multiple times that he is not the original nor first administrator (Ross) of the silk road.
In addition you have the guy that was supposed to be murdered also claiming that it could not have been Ross.
The murder for hire case was very weak and then in addition you had the two federal agents working the murder for hire case charged for stealing bitcoins.
This is silly whataboutism. They have plenty of evidence, including PST/PDT timestamps and proof he logged out of other personal accounts when he logged into that account, that suggested it was him. Despite his claims, they watched him extensively and found no indication that anyone else was posing as DPR.
Not to mention that he was caught in part because the first public advertisements for Silk Road were traced back to his personal accounts, and there's strong evidence that he personally grew the first batch of shrooms that launched the market. It was all him from the beginning.
First time offender?!?!? Applying that term to a guy who spent years traveling around the world under multiple fake IDs while using state-level security on his hardware and racking up law violations every single day seems like an absurd stretch.
I mean, come on. By that logic, Al Capone was a first time offender when the feds finally nailed him for the first time. Pablo Escobar was a first time offender when he finally got nabbed. Good lord.
"First time offense" applies to your _first offense_. Not relevant when you've committed thousands of offenses over years while living on the run.
> I don't credit Trump in any way for doing "the right thing" or even having a principled position regarding Ross' case.
This is probably the most ridiculous comment in this thread. Trump even spoke at the Libertarian convention and specifically mentioned how unjust the sentence was and that he would pardon Ross as one of his campaign promises and he delivered. Trump saw parallels between the attack on Ross and the politically motivated law fare the democrats attacked him with. I think the real issue you have with this pardon is that Trump did it and not some democrat.
I think he's referring to the NY state case, which is difficult to dispute that it was done for political purposes. Although I'm sure Trump would say it applies to the federal classified documents case, as well.
Actually, I support neither major political party. I'm probably closest to a moderate "free markets, free minds" libertarian (note: the small "l" means I'm not in, or aligned with, the national Libertarian Party). I haven't voted for any candidate from either major party for decades. I greatly disapprove of Biden, Harris and Trump equally, along with almost all state and federal politicians of both parties. There are less than a handful of national-level politicians I would trust to dog sit, much less run my country.
Interestingly, I get hate from nearly everyone whose bought into either side of the political mainstream, and not because I dislike their candidate (few serious people would argue even their favored candidate doesn't have significant negatives). No, people can't stand that I don't dislike the other candidate/party more than I dislike their preferred candidate/party. It's bizarre because it seems entirely reasonable to have concluded that all the major party presidential candidates are so flawed, each in their own uniquely terrible ways, that they are beneath any serious comparison of which may be less bad. It's simply beyond reasonable discourse to engage in evaluating whether a dog shit sandwich might taste better or worse than a cat shit sandwich. They are all animal shit sandwiches.
I'm responding because you're objecting to my mild statement about Trump's likelihood of having a principled position regarding Ross' case and thus you may have assumed I favor the other candidate or party. Hardly! This is especially galling because I've had to defend Trump, who I dislike as much as Biden/Harris, against reflexive "Orange Man Bad" attacks - if only to point out, sometimes Trump does things which are good. And the same was true of Biden. Both of them have done good things - even if only in the sense of a broken clock being right twice a day.
To be clear, my observation about Trump not basing many of his political positions on long-held, fundamental principles applies equally to both major parties. Neither party is grounded in principle. In recent decades, both parties have abandoned so many of their own long-held, traditional "left/right" pillar positions judged by how they actual govern when in power, if not in their campaign claims, as to now be mostly incoherent. Neither party can seriously claim they arrive at their current political positions by deriving them from deep, unchanging principles. Once again, I'm not making a partisan judgement for or against either. This is simply a factual statement. Neither party's platform positions or political actions over time are self-consistent enough to be grounded in principle. At most, they try to later market the political calculations they've made for pragmatic, contextual reasons as aligned with some principle - but that's just transparent retconning to pander to their base. This is obviously true because no voter can reliably predict what their own party's (or candidate's) position might be on some enitrely new issue in advance.
In the case of Ross, Trump came very close to granting a pardon at the end of his term in 2020. He ultimately didn't pardon Ross due to the uncharged, untried allegations of Ross hiring an online hitman. Trump pardoned Ross now despite the same things still being true. The reasons Trump cited for the pardon were the excessive prosecution and sentence, but those things were also equally true in 2020. So, while I think it's just that Ross is free after over 11 years in a FedMax prison, that's why I don't believe Trump's reasoning was grounded in principle. And it has zero to do with liking Biden/Democrats more or Trump/Republicans less (because I dislike both equally). If Biden had pardoned Ross it would also not have been for principled reasons.
I personally believe that having lots of parties founded on concise, coherent principles would be very nice from a voter point of view (to express preferences), but those would be completely unable to actually govern-- because there are a lot of decisions to make and compromises to find, and trying to do this solely based on a small set of principles is just not possible, because you would need to abstain from all decisions that your founding principles can not answer clearly (and no current democracy is set up in a way that enables this).
I can picture a system where this could work in theory (lots of parties forming the government, but most parties abstain from voting on any single decision), but I can see no way of preventing scope creep/consolidation...
Regarding the "both main parties equally bad" aspect:
What are your main pain points with the previous administration? As an outsider, to me it appears that despite getting dealt a rather bad hand (Covid/Ukraine/Middle East chaos), they made a lot of correct decisions (in hindsight).
Post-trump republicans, on the other hand, appear irresponsibly selfcentered to me in many ways (climate/emissions, Covid policies, foreign/trade, anti-pluralism). I also think that (2016) Trump poisoned political discourse in a insidiously harmful way, by basically forgoing any form of factual debate in favor of spewing insults at every opportunit (lying Hillary, sleepy Joe, ...)-- this alone I feel almost requires opposition...
> TWO life sentences plus 40 years - without the possibility of parole
IMHO convicting somebody of such a thing is a crime in itself. Simply not excusable. Especially when the crime is essentially a form of white collar crime at best. Bank robbers, drug dealers, and some actual murderers often get more lenient sentences than that.
I think this was a case of the justice system being abused to make a political point. Casually destroying somebody's life to make a political point should be criminal in itself (with appropriate sentences and public disgrace). I don't agree with Trump's politics. But this seems like he's righting a clear and obvious wrong; so good for him. Regardless of his motivations.
> Biden should have already pardoned Ross because that crazy sentence shouldn't have happened in the first place.
Biden did commute the sentence of several other non-violent cases just last week or thereabouts, and Trump has been talking about Ulbricht for quite some time so it's not a complete surprise.
I guess the whole "murder for hire" thing excluded him from the "non-violent" category. But how that got tacked on seems very odd; the judge basically said "we didn't really handle it in the court case and it wasn't a charge, but it was mentioned a few times and it seemed basically true, so I included it in the sentencing". Like, ehh, okay?
To be honest, I don't really understand much of the logic ("logic") of the US justice system....
Judges are allowed to consider some evidence during sentencing which was not presented at trial. The standard for this evidence is lower than the "beyond a shadow of doubt" standard required for a criminal conviction. This is allowed because during sentencing the judge is considering information related to the history and character of the defendant. The 'hiring an online hitman' (who was an FBI informant) allegation was never charged or tried. Even if it hadn't been obvious entrapment, it might well have evaporated under discovery and cross-examination by a competent defense.
Including such evidence in sentencing consideration is not uncontroversial in the U.S. However, it can cut both ways, in that a judge can consider extenuating circumstances in a defendant's life to reduce sentencing. We want judges to evaluate cases and make sentencing adjustments where appropriate. So, I don't think I'd do away with the practice. The real issue is that this specific judge went absolutely bonkers far beyond the 20 years the prosecution asked for during sentencing (which was already very high) and sentenced Ross to two life sentences plus 40 years without parole.
Most of us who are happy that Ross was pardoned agree that he was guilty and deserved a jail sentence for the crimes he was convicted of. The only problem is the sentence was so wildly excessive for a non-violent, first-time offender. Compared to guidelines and other sentences it was just crazy and wrong. Ross has served over ten years. Now he's free. That's probably about right.
Calling him a non-violent first time offender is very odd given the magnitude of what his crimes were. He created a very large scale marketplace for all things illegal. Independent of his own hiring of hit men (hello non-violent?), selling substances that lead to overdoses, guns, bomb making materials, etc is certainly my definition of violent. Then add the scale; I fully agree with life sentence without chance of parole. This pardon is shameful.
Yup. And just for some context regarding guns at the time; during the years Silk Road was active it was perfectly legal for me (in the state of Virginia) to buy a gun from another citizen cash in hand without ever showing an ID, filling out a BoS, or any paperwork whatsoever.
On the one hand you say we should retain judges making sentencing adjustments where appropriate, but who judges the appropriateness of the adjustments?
It sounds like if an extenuating circumstance resonates with a judge, then the sentence will get modified. Sentencing shouldn't be based on a single person's "feelings."
Ultimately responsibility lies with the people electing either judges directly or representatives who appoint judges. We must choose people of proper demeanor who will make sound decisions when required. It takes effort on our part to be knowledgeable and vocal, but it's the price for living in a world where we are not at the mercy of unfeeling automatons.
I was at the sentencing, I do not remember the judge mentioning the murder-for-hire cases. To me it was obvious that the prosecution defense and judge had agreed beforehand to not mention it. The judge gave plenty of other reasons for the harsh sentence.
But he’s only served a tiny fraction of what you say was an unjust sentence. So the jury’s still out as to whether he’s served enough time. Other hard drug dealers get way more time than Ross has served.
Its astonishing that granting pardons to drug dealers and attempted murderers is something Trump sees as one of the more urgent matters affecting the most powerful nation on Earth.
If you value societal order above all else, then you want extremely horrific punishments for crimes, you want near-absolute certainty that you'll be punished for criminal acts, and you want capture and trial to be swift, so that people know that breaking the law results in:
Swift capture
Swift trial
Swift execution
And with those three things, you get a highly ordered, law-abiding society, because it becomes common knowledge that breaking the law results in death, guaranteed, so unless you're just stupid or insane, you don't break the law.
If you don't value that kind of clockwork societal order, then you get... Western civilization.
Frankly I'll take the chaos of our Western civilization over the stifling draconian societal order of places like Singapore any day of the week.
> If you value societal order above all else, then you want extremely horrific punishments for crimes, you want near-absolute certainty that you'll be punished for criminal acts, and you want capture and trial to be swift, so that people know that breaking the law results in:
You're ignoring the issue of which acts are criminalized.
The United States incarceration rate is 4x higher than of the rest of the world, in part because it hands out much longer sentences than most other countries. You're not wrong, but it's still the US that is the outlier in terms of sentence lengths [1].
The US is wholly inefficient with the Death Penalty, so I'm against it from a purely financial point of view. By the time many cases get to a point of being convicted they will have already served years, maybe even a few decades in prison already.
And yes, there is the open secret that the US uses its prison system as a form of soft slave labor. Many people don't want to reduce that supply.
Highlighting the polarization and weaponization of the justice system is worthy subject matter for the most powerful nation on Earth. It needs to be set onto a new path that is fair to all involved.
Trump owed the libertarians for their support. This is what they got in return. It's bizarre seeing Trump designate the Mexican drug cartels as terrorists a few hours earlier while Ross facilitated billions in sales of the same products.
I think the attacks on some of these black and gray markets has increased violent crime in the real world. I wish the federal government would stop shutting them down and instead use them as tools to build cases against people breaking the law.
For example, for a while most prostitution and sex work seemed to be online, on places like Craigslist right next to ads for used furniture and jobs. And it seemed to be really effective in getting prostitutes off the streets.
Now that those markets were shut down, I'm seeing here in Seattle we're having pimp shootouts on Aurora and the prostitutes are more brazen than ever. Going after Craigslist has had a negative effect on our cities and has increased crime, and I suspect going after SilkRoad has had a similar impact.
I wish instead of criminalizing addiction we'd fund harm reduction centers and rehabilitation services.
I would much rather the police be focused on stopping violent crime rather than these victimless crimes.
Legitimizing drugs/prostitution makes is easier to regulate and ultimately make safer. Shoving this stuff into a black/gray market is what ultimately creates violent crime.
> I wish instead of criminalizing addiction we'd fund harm reduction centers and rehabilitation services.
We tried that in SF, I was a supporter. Seeing it first hand with a with a family member in public school flipped me. Dumping money into people who aren't ready to convert back into tax payers (even in the most basic sense) while schools got the back burner was enough. Not to mention the tents.
> Seeing it first hand with a with a family member in public school flipped me.
Why is this an either or?
SF spends about $1 billion dollars on schools [1] and while the program ran it had around a $40 million dollar budget [2]. For an area that houses huge tech companies, this doesn't seem like an extreme budget to be working with.
> Not to mention the tents.
Ok? And what options would you give these people, just be homeless somewhere else where you can't see them?
correct. my comment was intended to point out the disturbing misplacement of priorities, given that the budgets for educating the citizens of the future and for fetty smoking bums are comparable.
While I think anecdotes are valuable and should not be easily dismissed, we have decades of research and evidence supporting the benefit of harm reduction centers. They reduce risk of overdose morbidity and mortality while not increasing crime or public nuisance to the surrounding community.
It's just really hard to swallow the findings in this paper (all non-US cities) when you can see such a visible change on the streets in SF since the pandemic.
By all official accounts crime is down in SF, but many agree something has changed in the way homeless carry. I would dare to use the word "entitled" to describe the cavalier way large encampments and bicycle chop shops are set up.
I never did any drugs but when I was growing up, it was understood that you needed to keep your drug use somewhat secret, behind closed doors, hidden from the public, I expected there would be consequences from the police if I decided to do drugs out in the open.
Now I see guys doing extremely hard drugs out in the open on the street and on buses. it is a jarring. They're usually not trying to inject or exhale on me ( though the meth smoke guys on some buses don't seem to care ).
Yeah although this is more a consequence of how SF decided to handle it. Rather than decriminalising they're just enabling users.
Look towards other countries with similar policies (Portugal, Netherlands, etc.) in their cases they saw a decrease in drug usage and fatalities. The difference is they decided to not encourage their behaviour by allowing open air drug markets to flourish, with kiosks just down the street handing out the necessary paraphernalia.
no victim means no crime. victimless "crimes" are just 'arbitrary rule' violations (like going 56mph in a 55mph zone) or infractions. the twisting and distortion of language by the state is counterproductive to society.
How does that make any sense? So you could never pass a law to reduce risk because in most cases, breaking it won’t create a victim?
Speed limits are done to reduce the risk of you killing someone. Do you really think you should be able to drive however you want and until you actually have an accident, it’s fine?
if you cause no harm, how could it be a crime? an infraction, sure. a rule violation, sure. but calling a small rule violation which never causes any harm to anyone the same thing as rape, murder, assault, carjacking, etc, is just pure degeneracy of language.
The crime is increasing the risk to other people. Why does that not make it a crime in your opinion?
If I try to shoot someone but miss and they never even notice, is that fine because there’s no actual victim?
Edit:
To be more precise, the crime doesn’t even need you to increase the risk to anyone. Just thinking that you’ll increase the risk is already a crime, even if you’re wrong. If you buy a prop gun but think it’s real and try to shoot someone, that would still be attempted murder, even if it couldn’t even have worked. But you’re punished for trying to kill someone, it doesn’t matter wether you’re incompetent at it (well you get a bit less for the attempt compared to the actual successful act but it’s still a crime).
And another edit because coming up with weird hypotheticals is fun:
Imagine planting a bomb with a one hour timer on a marketplace and when it goes off, the marketplace was empty of people by chance.
Does that mean that the worst punishment you should expect should be for property damage because someone needs to clean up the ground? Obviously you committed a crime, even if there’s no specific victim this time.
an attempted crime is an intent to harm another. even my autocorrect could finish that sentence.
but we have a separate crime category for those already. "attempted murder" etc. those are crimes because they intended to be a crime, but they just failed for incompetence. it's a lot harder to prove in court (rightfully so).
i would say that i agree with you about attempted crimes, if that helps.
So what’s the problem? Attempting crimes is a crime too.
Edit:
You initially wrote:
> no victim means no crime. victimless "crimes" are just 'arbitrary rule' violations (like going 56mph in a 55mph zone) or infractions. the twisting and distortion of language by the state is counterproductive to society.
So you think not being allowed to bomb someone while being unsuccessful is ab arbitrary rule and should not be called a crime?
The inflow/manufacture of narcotics won't be affected at all. You'll still have a constant new influx of junkies, and it you'll essentially by funding this widescale and expensive solution forever.
Much better to simple make drug trafficing and manufacture a capital offense. It's been extremely effective in a lot of jurisdictions. Even if you're squeamish about the death penalty, a back of the envelope calculations will tell you you're saving a lot more lives than you spend due to decreased overdoses, drug wars etc,
It's a tiny island nation with a single sea port, single bridge, and single airport. Meanwhile western nations are so porous they can't keep millions of undocumented people out.
Having garbage bins in my neighborhood, keeps garbage from being put on the ground.
There are other neighbourhoods where the garbage bins don’t help at all
I don't think much changed, really. The contraband and services offered on these marketplaces has always been backed by criminal enterprises. Mostly the markets provided level of indirection that made purchasing palatable and gave a false sense of safety.
Online markets for sex work allowed women to operate far more safely than "the street" allow. I had friends who were affected by the crackdown on craigslist etc.
I sincerely didn't mean to minimize the harm to sex workers, which is devastating.
My point is rather that an online marketplace in the absence of decriminalization and reform can only provide a marginal increase in safety. Sex workers marketing on Backpage, Craigslist, Onlyfans, and IG still face a great deal of risk of violence, pressure from pimps, and prosecution by law enforcement. It's a deeply complex systematic issue which can't be fixed by a website.
For drugs in particular, darknet marketplaces primarily rely on unspeakably violent criminal enterprises upstream. The consumers, sellers, and communities implicated in this supply chain are all losers in this system. The cartels are the winners and the global "war on drugs" establishment are a close second place.
Still, in the case of sex work, I think you are simply wrong. Your overall sketch is the "movie version" or police/puritanical version of sex work, a version that equates trafficking and voluntary transactions (not that those transactions can't exploitative in other ways). The majority sex work isn't filled with violence except on the level of the literal street. Notably, my friends and acquaintances who used Craigslist back in the day didn't deal with any pimps and a moment's thought would show pimps are only needed when someone sells sex at a physical location.
Also, afaik, onlyfans is a virtual only platform so workers there face the same physical dangers as people on zoom calls.
> a moment's thought would show pimps are only needed when someone sells sex at a physical location
Pimps are needed whenever there is coercion involved. It seems unlikely to me that only street prostitution requires coercion. I think we'll soon learn that most of the women on OnlyFans are there because of a violent and manipulative man.
Thank you for the kind elaboration. I wonder if you could share any writing on the social justice issues surrounding sex work? My knowledge is limited and informed by only a few pieces I've read over the years.
Illegal online marketplaces absolutely do reduce "turf wars". It's argueable that there is harm reduction compared to street dealing. Then I suspect it creates new consumers so there is that too.
Sure, but the point is about secondary effects. If pimps are "competing" online then they need to compete on, well, marketing and UX. If they compete in real life then it is about who controls physical territory.
There are lots of studies about the unintended consequences of prohibition.
By this, do you mean "reducing the total amount of prostitution occurring" or "making prostitution less visible"?
Your third paragraph implies the former, but I suspect the answer is actually the latter. There is probably less total prostition now, but what's there is more visible.
You talk about "increased crime" in reference to pimp shootouts, but you know prostitution and sex trafficking are crimes too, right? If thousands of women and girls are suffering but you can't see it because it's all organized online, that's not necessarily better.
Coming from a country where prostition is legal and drugs heavily decriminalized, all with plenty of help programs for people who need it. I can only say that the problem is not the platforms but forbidding things that people won't stop using is simply delusional.
Well, I think that justice has been served. The feds' prosecution of Ulbricht was the epitome of throwing the book at someone to make an example, when the government's case was pretty flawed, in my opinion. 10 years is enough time to pay the debt of running the silk road.
I am glad that Ulbricht has been pardoned and I feel like a small iota of justice has been returned to the world with this action.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading the comments on this thread. Multiple teenagers (one in Australia) died from the drugs distributed on Silk Road. Ross was ok with selling grenades, body parts, etc on there. But everyone is saying he served his time ???
If the liquor store owner knows that some of those bottles might contain pure methanol, and people end up dying from drinking said methanol...then, yes, I do think the store owner should do some serious jailtime.
Which is what this boils down to. Ross didn't know what people were selling. Could be pure high-quality stuff, could be contaminated stuff, could be stuff that was cut up with fent. He made money either way.
> It also allowed the long string of shady middlemen to be cut out
Based on what? This sounds completely made up. Anyone could sell on Silk Road, and faking reviews would be trivial on an anonymous platform. And if someone died from drugs they bought, they're not exactly leaving a review, are they?
Sellers have reputations in real life, but it can actually be difficult to link a death to a specific dealer without a thorough investigation. Even more so on an anonymous platform. Would Silk Road have cared if the police linked deaths to a specific seller? Fuck no.
For the record, I am not anti Silk Road, I'm actually for legalizing drugs. I just find the notion that drugs online were inherently cleaner to be naive Libertarian propaganda.
Selling drugs vs. selling alcohol, this is beyond morality matter but a matter regulated by law, sorry.
There was no equation there actually. Let me unwrap it for you, probably this way it will be clear: first line was a satire of the parent comment along the line of depicting deadly but permitted matters; second line was the unpacking the satire higlighting that the fella hopelessly confused (now, this was more like the equation you sought) a socially permitted activity with an illegal one.
>Selling drugs vs. selling alcohol, this is beyond morality matter but a matter regulated by law, sorry.
There's nothing beyond morality. Laws are an application based on morality.
And as we know with the 18th and 21st amendments, even the law can have shakey morality based on more factors than "what is good for the populace". That's more or less why I'm against most drug laws. They were not made with "the good health of the people in mind", they were a scapegoat to oppress minorities. It's all publicly declassified, so no one can call me a conspirator anymore.
I don’t think that’s true. Maybe in its infancy law really looks like that, but as societies grow their law books get more complex and can very easily become separated from majority perception of morality. Does morality explain zoning laws, or is it more about the equilibrium point of a pluralist conflict, everyone looking out for their interests, etc.
Roughly. But always read between the lines and follow the money. We didn't selectively ban Tiktok because government finally woke up to the dangers of social media.
Doctors can be arrested for malpractice. I sure do wish we could arrest some of these car makers for telling staff to skimp on details and taking "recalls" as a cost of doing business, but that's an issue for another time.
> unable to comprehend the concept of illegal activity.
There's illegal activity on popular forums all the time. How much should Facebook/X/Reddit be accountable for those?
The comment you replied to referenced "multiple teenagers" - the very people that liquor stores cannot sell alcohol to since they're not recognized as mature enough to be freely allowed to drink.
SR allowed children to buy addictive poison without any regulation whatsoever, and Ross profited off of those transactions.
You're right. Ross should have been granted a drug selling license, analogous to a liquor license, and it should have been revoked if he failed to check ID before allowing people to make purchases on his marketplace.
Doing business in, or running, a marketplace without established legal regulations opens you up to undefined consequences. Without laws to bind you, there are no laws to protect you.
Idk about silk road, but hydra (russian online marketplace) was the best thing that happened to russia drug market. It had very good reputation system and even labs that did random testing of drugs being sold
Existence of big marketplaces definitely lower chances of people dying from drugs
I don't think those types of hypotheticals are taken very seriously in court rooms. One, they are effectively unfalsifiable, because it's a about harm that could have happened but didn't. Two, they can be applied universally. Any action might have prevented a catastrophe, after all. Courts persecute based on laws broken and harm done.
Ironically our justice system sometimes does persecute based on hypotheticals. For example persecution for driving recklessly, which is inconsistent with the principle above.
As an Australian who had friends who bought product on silk road my understanding was:
1) It's safer to buy something online and have it mailed to your house than go pick it up from some shady dude.
2) On the street you would often get duds or spiked product, online reputations were built up over time and important to be maintained (think uber/ebay stars).
Overall silk road probably increased the amount of drug activity but made each incident safer. Not sure what the overall impact would be.
An 18 year old lad from my village, who had just started a job programming, bought a drug from an online “pharmacy” and it turned out to be spiked with a synthetic opioid (N-pyrrolidino-etonitazene) and he died in his sleep at home, alone.
On your point about spiked products - it’s clearly a problem for online illegal drugs as well as those bought on the street.
The problem is, you don’t get to leave a bad review if you’re dead.
If you knowingly operate a marketplace where unsafe products are being sold, you very much bear some responsibility of those injuries.
If Ross let drug dealers sell fentanyl-laced drugs, which ended up killing someone, he absolutely should be charged.
Those deals wouldn't have been possible without his platform. Sure, maybe the same drug dealer would have sold the bad stuff to some other poor user outside silk road, but those dealings that ended up happening on silk road are his (Ross) to own.
You can clearly see that "deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone (primarily illicitly manufactured fentanyl)" didn't particularly alter or rise until after the 2013 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shut down of the Silk Road website and arrest of Ulbricht.
If the Silk Road Marketplace had any influence on fentanyl deaths Then some kind of spike would be expected during the years of operation, 2011-2013.
So I could bring down eBay by opening a store; selling something that I know (but eBay doesn't) is dangerous / broken / false. If that sale goes through, should eBay be taken down since they operate a marketplace where unsafe products are being sold ? eBay cannot reasonably test every single item that is sold through their platform. Same goes for every second hand marketplace in the world. They need to take some measure to address this, but cannot reduce the risk to 0.
As far as I know, SilkRoad had a whole reputation system in place to allow users to flag untrustworthy sellers; that system was inline or even ahead of what many "legal" marketplace had put in place. A part of why SilkRoad was so successful is precisely because overall that reputation system allowed users to identify trustworthy sellers.
This theory was actually tested last year and...eBay won.
The DOJ filed a lawsuit on behalf of the EPA against eBay in 2023, seeking to hold them liable for prohibited pesticides and chemicals as well as illegal emissions control cheat devices sold through the platform that violate multiple federal laws and environmental regulations.
There wasn't even really an argument about whether or not the items were actually illegal to sell - all parties including eBay basically stipulated to that and the judge even explicitly acknowledged it in her ruling - the entire case came down to whether or not eBay could be held liable for the actions of third party sellers on their platform who they failed to proactively prevent from selling illegal items.
In September 2024, U.S. District Judge Orelia Merchant granted eBay's motion to dismiss the case, ruling that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 provides eBay immunity for the actions of those third party sellers.
DOJ filed an appeal on December 1st so we'll see where that goes but as it stands now - no, you couldn't take eBay down even by listing stuff eBay does know to be illegal, based on current precedent.
Why the courts applied Sec230 that way in one instance and not another is the real question and the more cynically minded might also wonder how eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's various philanthropic and political endeavors (including but not limited to being the $ behind Lina Khan's whole "hipster antitrust" movement) could be a factor too. He's no longer an active board member but still a major shareholder whose existing shares would likely be worth a lot less if a case with a potential ~$2 Billion in fines had been allowed to proceed.
Ebay tries to prevent you from selling illegal stuff though. Silk Road didn't. The reputation system was to prevent scams and bad quality products, not to prevent illegal transactions, right?
A large minority of the population (and in some cases, like weed, an overt majority) of the population don't think those transactions should be illegal. "The law is wrong" is sort of the whole point, and why Ulbricht is a quasi-folk hero.
It's a philosophical difference. As someone running a market where buyers and sellers meet I think it's valid to let the buyers and sellers participate in the exchange among themselves at their own risk. The person running the market doesn't need to treat the participants like children. Plus, if you're on the TOR network and buying obscure research chems using crypto in the early 2010s I think it's safe to assume you're more sophisticated and aware of what you're getting into than the average person.
I think there is some difference between running a marketplace which you intend for people to sell products legally on, and a marketplace which you intend and know people will sell products illegally on.
Whether I agree with it or not, the law often recognises differences like this. It's not illegal to lie, but it is illegal to lie in the aid a murder. The lier themselves might not be a murderer, but the lier is knowingly facilitating murder.
Ulbricht was knowingly facilitating crime in the case, and sometimes this crime would result in the deaths of people. And despite knowing all this he took no action to address it.
Perhaps your point was he just didn't deserve the sentence he receive, which is fair, but he clearly did something that most people would consider very wrong.
I also wonder how people would feel if Silkroad was associated more with the trading of humans, CSAM, biological weapons or more serious things rather than just drugs. I doubt the "he's just running a marketplace" reasoning would hold in most people's eyes then.
This is why people only blame the DZOQBX brands that sell on Amazon for review fraud and not Amazon themselves, who are blamelessly hosting all those fraudulent sellers.
Smart people can differentiate between a transparent marketplace which provides a net economic benefit to society from an obfuscated one which by design enables illicit activity.
So much corporate/gov negligence leads to permanent environment damage, cancer, death. In most cases it's a slap on the wrist. Maybe some exist, but I'm having a hard time finding an example.
Show me one executive that served this kind of jail time despite direct links to the deaths of multiple individuals and evidence of negligence leading to those deaths.
You can certainly make an argument that the sentencing was warranted but there's a whole lot of history of being sentenced, if at all, to far less for far more egregious crimes.
The government should have investigated the people that listed and sourced the drugs
this isn't controversial to say, the governments just go for the laziest intermediary lately
but there is the choice of doing actual investigations for time tested crimes. those dealers just went to other darknet markets, which are far far bigger than Silk Road ever was
People die when they take drugs all the time, whether brought online or not.
But the war on some drugs are a failure, but also impossible to change due to stupid people, so Silk Road and crypto was a means to work around this, while lowering crime and turning it into an iterated prisoners dilemma so that quality etc could stay high.
He wasn't dealing them. He's not exactly culpable for the effects of his platform any more than Zuckerberg is responsible for mass hate speech coordinated by third-world dictators or Evan Spiegel for facilitating millions of nude images of children and teenagers.
Hard disagree - Zuckerberg absolutely is responsible for inadequately policing calls for genocide on his platform. Just as every social network is responsible for policing child abuse materials. Should they be punished for such content being uploaded? Of course not. They should face punishment where their wilful failure to police such content results in active harm. Facebook's utterly irresponsible behaviour in Myanmar is a great example - https://systemicjustice.org/article/facebook-and-genocide-ho...
In the case of the Silk Road of course, it's much worse, since the platform specifically existed to facilitate illegal behaviour. I couldn't care less about the drug dealing aspect per say, but absolutely facilitating sale in these quantities with no protection from outright poisoning from contaminants is immoral. But he also sold weapons via 'the armory' https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/not-ready-silk-roads-the...
I didn’t say Zuck isn’t responsible for the ills of his platform. I said DPR is no more responsible than Zuck or Spiegel. That is, that there’s a distinction between facilitating a drug deal and dealing drugs, just as there is a distinction from managing a communication platform that promotes hate speech and violence.
That distinction wasn’t recognized, and I called attention to it. And also to the fact that Eva Spiegel very strangely isn’t catching any shit whatsoever for knowingly running the nation’s most prolific child porn brokerage platform, with a product tailor-made to do so.
drugs is one part, but silkroad facilitated more than drug, guns, fake documents, stolen data, money laundering, fake currency, contract killers... the list goes on.
Are you confusing SR with other darknet markets? SR explicitly banned most of these things (guns, fake currency, stolen data, contract killers). Yes, fake documents were allowed.
People are usually jailed for hiring contract killers, even if the contract killer happens to be a FBI informant and the murder does not end up getting done.
There wasn't any evidence that actually happened. It appears that it may have been fabricated by the same investigators that later robbed him of some millions of dollars worth of bitcoin. Then when it went to trial the murder-for-hire charges were completely dropped due to lack of evidence.
He was convicted of:
1. Conspiracy to traffic narcotics
2. Continuing Criminal Enterprise (CCE) (sometimes referred to as the “kingpin” charge)
3. Computer Hacking Conspiracy
4. Conspiracy to Traffic in Fraudulent Identity Documents
5. Money Laundering Conspiracy
I think they were dropped because in 1 out of the 6 cases, the investigation was tainted because the associated government agents committed their own crimes, and also maybe but I can't prove it everyone thought that prosecuting someone who has been sentenced to 2 life sentences + 40 years is a waste of time.
The hitman was a conman for a murder on a fictitious person. While he fully believed he was committing a real assassination, you can't convict people for killing imaginary people.
I'm not convinced that you looked at the article you linked.
> That’s because he was the Silk Road employee implicated in an elaborate, and fake, murder-for-hire scheme, created in part by a corrupt Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent.
>DPR contacted one of his trusted drug dealer contacts, Nob, and asked him to kill Green for $40,000. Shortly after, Nob sent DPR photos of Green covered in Campbell’s Chicken & Stars soup and victim of an apparent asphyxiation, to prove the murder had been carried out.
> Unbeknown to DPR, Nob was no drug dealer. In fact, Nob was Carl Mark Force IV, the very same DEA agent who had arrested Green.
Both were fake. One was a con by the DEA and the other one a con by a single guy posing as executioner, victim and a slew of other colorful characters.
Real justice would be changing the laws and sentencing guidance (through a democratically legitimate process), and re-evaluating the sentences of everyone affected.
Whatever you think about the outcome in this case, it is the moral equivalent of vigilante justice. It is unfair to others convicted under the same regime, who don't happen to be libertarian icons who can be freed in exchange for a few grubby votes.
I think his original sentence was absolutely deserved—even though the charge of hiring a contract killer to assassinate his business competition may have been dropped, I think it's clear he did many things in the same vein. Even if you support his original pursuit of a free and open online marketplace, I think most people would agree he took it a bridge too far in the end.
That said, I do think he absolutely deserved to be released, not because he didn't deserve to be locked up in the first place, but because he's clearly been rehabilitated and has done great work during his time in prison. All that considered, ten years seems like a not unreasonable prison sentence for what he did. I hope he'll continue to do good when he's released.
"he took it a bridge too far" is a massive trivialization.
The guy operated a marketplace for illegal goods in order to enrich himself. The illegality wasn't just incidental, it was literally his business model -- by flouting the law, he enjoyed massive market benefit (minimal competition, lack of regulation, high margins etc) by exploiting the arbitrage that the rest of us follow the rules.
Said a different way, he knowingly pursued enormous risk in order to achieve outsized benefits, and ultimately his bet blew up on him -- we shouldn't have bailed him out.
The state hates more than anything someone who operates on first principles that the empire is wrong.
A serial rapist, even one that would happily do it again, will often repent and quickly admit guilt. They have no interest in undermining the philosophical basis of the state. They will posture themselves as bound but imperfect citizens under the law.
Ross violated the only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law. He was sentenced for being a heretic.
> Ross violated the only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law. He was sentenced for being a heretic.
Good.
Let's keep in mind that the shared faith in this "holy religion, the rule of law" is the only thing holding together your country, my country, everyone's countries, and civilized society in general. Take that away, and everything around us will collapse, regressing the few survivors of that event to the prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other for what little scraps the land has to give.
I'm from Germany. I could tell you something about blindly following the "rule of law". If you throw morality out the window the law can become a very ugly instrument.
Yes, Rechtsstaatlichkeit only means that the state and its organs have to follow the law themselves. It doesn't say anything about the moral quality of the laws.
The Nazi state had to follow its own laws. They just had such laws that enabled the total lunacy that the 3rd Reich was.
All I'm saying is: If you decouple laws from morality you get a really bad time.
> The Nazi state had to follow its own laws. They just had such laws that enabled the total lunacy that the 3rd Reich was.
This is false. Even if you take the Nazi propaganda that their laws were themselves lawful (which they were not, beginning with the clearly unlawful capture of power) at face value, the Nazi regime did not adhere to its own laws and regulations. While in some cases the Nazi regime did codify a basis in law for their atrocities (i.e. excluding and expropriating jews), much of the Nazi terror both in a civil and military context would have been explicitly illegal under the law at the time.
This includes the November Progroms of 1938 (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novemberpogrome_1938), large parts of the Nazi's approach to warfare, as well as the entire Holocaust (the murder of more than 6 million jews and other "undesirables"), for which the Nazis did not bother to create any legal justification.
While the Nazi regime was deeply bureaucratic (in that it documented its policies, orders and their results in high detail) this is not the same as "following the law". Most of the Nazi's atrocities evolved not through a process of lawmaking, but from their racist ideology and were given legitimacy through the highly personalized nature of the regime: Hitler was explicitly above the law, as were his orders, not matter if expressed through him personally or in his name by his followers.
Not sure why this comment got voted down; it's absolutely true.
The rule of law means that nobody is above the law, not even the Fuehrer or president. Clearly this is not the case in many countries, but it is in some, and it should be.
> The rule of law means that nobody is above the law
If the stats from the Innocence Project are correct[1,2], then it would also mean that nobody is above being a victim of the rule of law, either.
The rule of law is not infallible - and any sort of blind "rule of law" worship is akin to the worship for a dictator; its just merely dressed in different clothing.
This has nothing to do with the concept of "rule of law". This is simply about how the law is applied and appealed. If anything, the rule of law should protect against these miscarriages of justice, because the law should be applied equally to everybody, and therefore the poor should have the same access to the processes of appeal as the rich and powerful.
Very insightful answer indeed. I found this part particularly interesting:
> One of the most interesting theories however is Ernst Fraenkels "The Dual State". Fraenkel asserts that Nazi Germany is a dual state where the normative state (the state based on the rule of law) coexists with the "prerogative state" (the state not bound by law). While some swaths of society such as the relation to private property, the civil law etc. continue to function on the basis of codified norms (think the building code, neighbor disputes, companies suing each other, "ordinary" criminal law, stuff in relation to ownership of private property), some parts of the state were unbound by the Nazis such as the prosecution of political opponents, the camp system etc. Fraenkel further asserts that once the prerogative state is established, it has a very strong tendency to expand into the territory of the normative state and that state actions once unbound will cause enormous havoc in a certain sense.
This theory kind of generalizes my statements upthread, expanding them to cover authoritarian states. Any kind of society we could label as authoritarian state is by definition already way too large to be fully micromanaged by the people at the top. Such a state has to retain a quite substantial "normative state", as Fraenkels calls it - and this state is what my arguments about intersubjective beliefs apply to. When people stop having faith in the "normative state" - whether because of "prerogative state" overreach or other forces - the whole thing collapses, and not even the strongest tyrant can hold it together.
The issue is that we're used to think in terms of Legislative, Judiciary and Executive. That's what most modern democracies are based on.
If you look at this the old way, Hitler wasn't above the law, he was the law, because there was no real split of powers.
Your comment, though, is very interesting because it defies the stupid idea that back then people respected laws, while today....
Somehow this got idolized, which is why (young!) people tend to feel nostalgic about such times. In reality, there was a lot of corruption, Hitler himself evaded taxes, used Party money to fund his own Mercedes etc.... yeah like today!!! :)
Edit: somehow this propaganda of people of law lasted until today. In reality, the guy was a fraud that collected millions over the years. While everyone else had to live in fear of deportations or worse. I don't understand why journalists don't focus on things like this to dismantle idiotic extreme parties.
> Even if you take the Nazi propaganda that their laws were themselves lawful (which they were not, beginning with the clearly unlawful capture of power)
What definition of the laws lawfulness are you using? Capturing the power - it is what makes law lawful, otherwise any law is unlawful.
This is a very crude and on every level incorrect understanding on how laws work, both in a formalistic, as well as a societal way.
When the Nazis captured power, they did so by excluding the legitimate (and lawful) parliamentary opposition from key votes in parliament by (unlawfully) imprisoning opposition parliamentarians. In a strictly legal sense, this made their entire regime illegitimate from the outset.
What you fail to grasp is that a regime like Hitler's is constitutionally and ideologically incapable of being "lawful", i.e. having any set of laws and norms that would apply consistently, even if these laws were shaped by their own ideology. The whole point of Hitler's leadership was that laws were irrelevant and completely subservient to facilitating his twisted idea of Arian racial domination, with even the "German" society being completely dominated by the "Ubermenschen" that he hoped to create out of the murderous struggle of war.
Even the ancient Romans and Greeks would have recognized the Nazi regime as "unlawful". While the roman empire was a dictatorial regime, it had a mostly consistent set of laws and norms that even the Cesar had to abide by (though these laws gave him tremendous power in comparison to modern democratic executives). "Personalized" regimes in contrast are not build on laws, but revolve around the whims and/or ideology "the leader". You can see some aspects of this in Trump's approach to governance, though the US is obviously still a long way away from the extremes that the Third Reich went to.
You are absolutely right saying that rule of law is not sufficient condition for the existence of modern society. It was a bit confusing still, because nobody claimed the opposite: the comment you replied to was saying rule of law is a necessity.
You may have been saying this but the parent comment that spurred the discussion was making the explicit assertion that "the rule of law is the only thing holding together [...] everyone's countries, and civilized society in general".
Saying that law is 'the only thing' necessary for the existence of modern society effectively means it is also a sufficient condition. So yes, someone did claim the opposite.
I doubt that modern society does fulfill the sufficiency criteria [1], so „the only thing“ can be right, but also it is not the claim that it is enough for survival.
[1] USA regressing to a globally disrespected oligarchy under Trump is a good example.
Not in my wildest dreams I imagined Brazil would give the good example for prosecuting a former president who attempted a coup and that the US would fail to do the same.
Ah, but legal positivism is the norm in liberal societies, and not by accident. This follows directly from the demands of liberalism which privatizes discussion of the objective real and relegates it to individual sentiment. One of the paradoxes of liberalism is that the maximization of individual liberty necessarily demotes authority and elevates power, leading to tyranny.
So any appeals to the contrary are rooted in appeals to beliefs held in parallel with the liberal doctrines of the state. When Protestants ruled the US, that means some residual (often warped) Christian sensibility, because they were able to attain that consensus. But with greater competition today, that old consensus is no longer possible. Liberalism ensures that.
The Nazis did anything but blindly followed the rule of law. They did the opposite - they used law as a cudgel to beat their enemies with, while somehow magically, not being held responsible for any of their own violations of it. It's how they rose to power, and it's how they liquidated all of their internal opposition in the pre-war years.
We are seeing this play out again. The brownshirts have all been pardoned (with a clear message to the ones who will be involved in the next act - that as long as they break the law in support of the regime, they'll get bailed out), while everyone else is getting in line to kowtow and kiss the ring - because if they don't, they might be targeted.
It's actual insanity that people are looking at this and saying it is fine.
Then again, the whole country has gone insane, it looks at a video of the richest main in the world giving a fascist salute, and insist that he's just giving a confused wave, or that it's the same thing as a still of some other person with an outstretched arm.
I thought everybody knew the first thing the Nazis did was eroding the rule of law, with the help of Hans Frank, before even taking power.
The fact that everybody is equal in front of justice and that justice should be independent, two of the basics tenet of the rule of law, were hated by the Nazis and called 'jewish law', and were targeted. Lawyers and judges were increasingly close to the Nazi party. The same crime by a party member didn't had the same consequence.
I think the Nazis pamphlet said that 'roman law follow the materialistic world order, and should be replaced by German law'. Where materialistic was a dogwhistle for Marxism, and world order for Judaism.
What did help Nazis was that older judges and lawyers were often aristocrats who didn't really love the republic, and new one were petty bourgeoisie where Nazism had a lot of supporters. They helped put a staunch conservative (who later joined the Nazis) at the head of the German supreme court before 1933. The man blocked socdems appointments, and changed how the German law was interpreted (basically pushing intent of the law vs letter of the law, where intent weirdly always aligned with Nazi ideology).
Then, once they had power, the first thing they did after the conservative Hindenburg (may he be remembered as Hitler first collaborator) declared a 'state of emergency was to suspend judiciary oversight over arrest and imprisonment.
I learned so much from reading this, thank you. Is there more of this same style dense history writing somewhere? (Of course there are caveats and narratives etc., I hope people understand that...)
I bought it as an audiobook and listened for about 30 minutes already. It's been fascinating. It is quite long. But I have definitely learned a lot. Thank you!
I guess the psychological aspect of clamoring for a strong leader would need more deep diving. Serhii Plokhy and Martti J Kari have talked about this in regards to Russia, those are available as Lex Fridman interview and youtube lecture: a strongman, even with downsides, is still preferrable to a weak leadership that is unable to defend against external threats or internal chaos.
The reader's pronounciation of German is quite incomprehensible though (book is in English). Völkischer Beobachter is not easy.
> a strongman, even with downsides, is still preferrable to a weak leadership that is unable to defend against external threats or internal chaos
What's interesting with that is that I think it is wrong, the part against 'external threats'. France during the revolution was attacked by everyone, and despite absolutely no leadership, managed to beat back, well, everyone. By deferring power, it made its army stronger. Yes, then some the people the republic deferred power to then took the rest of it by force, but the laws were weak and the culture not set yet.
Certain discourse in other languages sometimes like to underline the difference between "rules" and "law" as in "we must aspire to be a state built on law, not a state built on rules." (not necessarily claiming English is such a language either)
Everything done without consideration is very quickly evil. Free tragedy of the commons with every free market; equivalents of Malthus for poverty wages and zero profit margins in the economy; Nash games where all parties want to defect and want the other not to; AI optimising for paperclips.
Rule of law is a pillar, but not the only one — in an ideal case the laws themselves are bound by constitutional requirements, and the constitutional requirements are bound by democratic will, and the democratic will by freedom of speech, and the freedom of speech by a requirement for at least attempting to be honest.
> Actually they didn't. Everything the Nazis did they had a law for. The mass murder was all lawful according to the 3rd Reich's laws.
This is false. Even if you take the Nazi propaganda that their laws were themselves lawful (which they were not, beginning with the clearly unlawful capture of power) at face value, the Nazi regime did not adhere to its own laws and regulations. While in some cases the Nazi regime did codify a basis in law for their atrocities (i.e. excluding and expropriating jews), much of the Nazi terror both in a civil and military context would have been explicitly illegal under the law at the time.
This includes the November Progroms of 1938 (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novemberpogrome_1938), large parts of the Nazi's approach to warfare, as well as the entire Holocaust (the murder of more than 6 million jews and other "undesirables"), for which the Nazis did not bother to create any legal justification.
While the Nazi regime was deeply bureaucratic (in that it documented its policies, orders and their results in high detail) this is not the same as "following the law". Most of the Nazi's atrocities evolved not through a process of lawmaking, but from their racist ideology and were given legitimacy through the highly personalized nature of the regime: Hitler was explicitly above the law, as were his orders, not matter if expressed through him personally or in his name by his followers.
"Everything the Nazis did they had a law for. The mass murder was all lawful according to the 3rd Reich's laws."
Can you cite those laws?
I doubt you can, because they do not exist. There were laws for removing jews from academic positions and to confiscate their belongings - but no law allowing to kill them based on them being jews.
The Nazis operated from the very beginning on the principle do things and later maybe add a law about it, if necessary.
"the mechanism, process, institution, practice, or norm that supports the equality of all citizens before the law, secures a nonarbitrary form of government, and more generally prevents the arbitrary use of power."
You ought to distinguish 'the law' that can be discriminatory, unjust, imperfect, and 'the rule of the law', which in theory cannot. In practice, the 'rule of the law' was never truly achieved, nowhere, and recently (post 9/11 it seems) the US might have gotten further from the hypothetical 'perfect state'. Presidential pardon, Guantanamo, or I think closer to everyday life civil forfeiture, or arrest without cause, interrogation without a lawyer...
Some exceptions to the rule of law are just good practice: immunity to the executive power from executing a voted law, immunity for the legislative power (in some countries like France this immunity have some caveats) while elected. Sadly it breeds corruption.
That's not what rule of law is. Rule of law requires following the established constitutional order which the Nazis did not. A feudal king ruling on his whims has many laws, but there is not rule of law.
>The rule of law is a political and legal ideal that all people and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers, government officials, and judges.
But the Nazis themselves were accountable to their own laws. It was a highly lawful state. Only the laws were pretty fucked because the society lacked any morality.
I know what you mean, and I do agree with your main point about not blindly following orders. I hope most people do. It's just the way you phrase it, I also have to disagree. The Nazis at their core were not "lawful", not even "lawful evil". Not unless the one law is "as long Hitler says it's fine, it's fine".
> Any hierarchy, no matter how authoritatively managed, and any communication of orders, no matter how autocratically and dictatorially issued, would stabilize and thus limit the total power of the leader of a totalitarian movement. In the language of the Nazis, it is the dynamic, never-resting "will of the leader" (and not his orders, which could be given a definable authority) that becomes the "supreme law of total rule".
> Hitler did sign an order for the T-4 euthanasia program. In the T-4 program as many as 100,000 German citizens who were thought to be ‘unworthy of life’ were murdered by Nazi party authorities and other German collaborators. When the German population caught on to what the Nazis were doing with T-4, they protested and Hitler was forced to publicly back down and cancel the program (although it continued secretly in the camps). Having been embarrassed by a written order once, Hitler became wary of doing it again. Important Nazi officials confirmed the oral transmission of Hitler’s secretive orders.
The controlled substance act violated the constitution as it regulates even intrastate trade of drugs. It relies on the tyrannical Wickard V Filburn ruling which says intrastate commerce is actually interstate commerce. The charges against Ross relied on law that flagrantly transgress the 10th amendment of the US constitution as written and as enforced.
This is why they needed an actual amendment to nationally ban, say, home made liquor.
It was 'accurate' until the 1930s when a certain lawyer with initials FDR found his programs unconstitutional, so he threatened to pack the Supreme Court until they were willing to shit can the 10th amendment.
I'd argue more have died from drug regulations than the Nazis, particularly when you factor in how DEA licensing and FDA approval corruption stifles access to medicine, and how prohibition fosters violence without meaningfully curbing harmful drug use.
Can you hear yourself? Are you really saying that "drug regulation" has caused more death than the tens of millions who died in ww2? Not to mention the millions and millions of people whose lives have been saved by drug regulation as they are not exposed to harmful drugs from charlatans.
39 million people died on the European theater of WW2 alone. Estimates of Jewish deaths during the holocaust range from 4.9 and 5.9 million people. Are you seriously suggesting drug ~regulation~ caused more deaths?
Silk road was not primarily used for "unregulated medicine" but for recreational drugs, weapons and other quite unsavory illegal things.
The bodies dead from the Holocaust are somewhat countable.
The bodies dead because of worldwide drug wars, because it is insanely costly to sell new medicines, and because some poor African child could not get a medicine because a company spent 500 million to get it approved and needs to recoup their costs in the inflated US market is much harder to count.
It's easier I guess to just frame the counterparty as downplaying the Holocaust. I am just not taking the death of the Jews seriously enough, perhaps I am some kind of racist or culturally insensitive person.
In Germany it is currently illegal to criticise Israel. You'll pardon me for being a bit skeptical about rule of law. Rule of good law is good, but rule of bad law is bad.
one of the German states foundations is responsibility for the Holocaust, which led to the founding of the state of Israel.
There are laws in Germany that make it a crime to condone a crime (forgive, overlook, allow, permit )
Some German courts have ruled that the slogan "between the river and the sea" is condoning the unlawful removal of Israelis or that the slogan is firmly attached to Terrorist Organization Hamas (therefore is by default a criminal statement )
Plenty of people have been fined for chanting the slogan at German protests against the current conduct of Israel in Gaza and West Bank.
There isn't a German law that states "it is illegal to criticize Israel" but laws like the following have been used to punish people criticizing Israel, in Germany:
Some German courts have thrown out some of these cases, they don't agree the Condone Crime laws can be applied to chanting 'between the river and the sea'
I understand that you could face charges if you criticized a group of people and expressed something that can be interpreted as a call for their elimination.
Pretending that those charges are for the criticism doesn't seem right, though.
Grossly excessive sentences for non-victim crimes while letting rapists, murderers and corrupt politicians go free with at best a slap on the wrist, is why people are abandon your "holy religion" in droves
Never read it, but I watched its recent adaptation as a Strange New Worlds episode called Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach, and if it's in any way representative of the source material, then I'd say the ethical problems there are nontrivial.
Ironically, by sentencing him more harshly on the basis of ideology as opposed to on the basis of the criminal code, you are undermining the rule of law, which requires sentences to be based only on statutory law.
It makes me very sad when people act as if the rule of law wasn't important, or worse in case like this they do as if the rule of law was only a limitation of freedom.
One cannot be more wrong: there cannot be freedom without the rule of law and without the existence of a state that enforces it.
Yeah, it's pretty clear that the rule of law is not particularly strong in the US. The past few years have made it clear that some people really are above the law.
That's comparing apples and oranges. One spent 10 years in a jail for making himself rich (and some others), the other never spent a day in a jail for committing at the highest level election subversion, retention of classified information, hush money payment (and more) - and was caught on the latter, eventually. It was arguably "exceptional prosecution" for that hush payment, like Al Capone was caught on a mere tax fraud
>One spent 10 years in a jail for making himself rich (and some others), the other never spent a day in a jail for committing at the highest level election subversion, retention of classified information, hush money payment (and more) - and was caught on the latter, eventually.
What an interpretation!
Another one might be: they tried to throw all kinds of things at Trump, and they all failed because they simply aren't true, until they managed to catch him on some triviality.
The fact that you "rule of law" people keep putting out accusations as if they were convictions, and insinuating people should be judged on these accusations is truly horrible for the system.
> the rule of law" is the only thing holding together your country, my country, everyone's countries, and civilized society in general. Take that away, and everything around us will collapse, regressing the few survivors of that event to the prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other
I've seen this sentiment expressed before, including with the movie "The Purge" (that I admittedly haven't seen, but I understood the concept as law becomes suspended for a day and everyone becomes violent). That idea that the only thing keeping people safe is the rule of law seems absurd to me.
There's a sense of empathy, there's religion (e.g. desire of heaven and fear of hell), there are family values (keeping extended family ties together which can induce pressure to do what's considered right), a concern over reputation, a sense of unity with one's culture and wanting the betterment of one's people, collectivism (the psychological/social tendency to put others before oneself), stuff like not wanting to bring shame to one's parents and extended family, a hate for hypocrisy, a simple lack of any desire to be violent, etc. etc.
I like to believe that between most people and their potential for violence, there's a lot of things besides the rule of law. Law enforcement is for outliers that have a desire for violence and nothing else to stop them.
If law enforcement would disappear from one day to the next, people would be less safe, but I don't think to the point that you'd have "few survivors of that event", especially if you consider just a single country/culture going through that experiment, since this probably depends somewhat on culture and its particular values. I'm more inclined to think that life would mostly just go on as normal, carried by habit/convention and the values we instill in offspring.
Maybe. Or maybe the arbitrary lines drawn and maintained that define "country" and "society" are the only things allowing hate to prosper. Get rid of the lines and become one people.
He was punished for his visible actions, not his private beliefs.
Also, I was focusing less on Ulbricht, and more on what 'ty6853 wrote in the comment I replied to. Quoting another part of it:
> The state hates more than anything someone who operates on first principles that the empire is wrong.
My point is: the state is absolutely right to hate such people. This is true regardless of whether the "empire" is North Korea or the United Federation of Planets - it's not an ethics issue, it's a structural property of stable social organizations.
As for people living today, unless you really suffer under the yoke of an evil empire, it's worth remembering that, were the state to suddenly break down, things will get much, much worse for everyone in it, yourself included.
It's too easy for all of us to take our daily lives for granted.
Many were convicted of the same acts and received far lighter sentences. They specifically sought to make an example out of him. That is contrary to the rule of law.
I think you may be overstating this. The archeological evidence is pretty clear that prehistorical lifestyles weren't just small tribes slaughtering each other, and that there was a lot of variety and complexity in the way prehistoric societies organized themselves. Also, there are some societies that exist in 2025 which proved scary enough examples of what's possible.
There are also societies which have blatant arbitrary authoritarian rule which seem to be well in the 21st century. I doubt that faith in the rule of law is the only thing keeping our societies together.
> pretty clear that prehistorical lifestyles weren't just small tribes slaughtering each other,
Well, that's sounds quite logical. When you kill people, they usually fight back. Very strongly fight back. So you have to expect something big to make it worth it. But small very undeveloped tribes had nothing of such, so they have no incentives to slaughter each other.
> But small very undeveloped tribes had nothing of such, so they have no incentives to slaughter each other.
With neither size nor technology to make a lasting impact, the ones that got slaughtered didn't exactly leave much in archeological evidence behind for us to find.
As for GP's point, obviously those people weren't bred for battle with others. All the tiny tribes would happily frolic in the forest or whatever small prehistoric tribes did when they weren't starving, but eventually they'd grow in size, hit a size limit leading to a new tribe splitting off, etc.; over time, the number of tribes grew to the point that they started to bump into each other and contest the same resources, leading to the obvious outcome.
It was later, when humanity accumulate knowledge about resources gathering and processing, about nature and how to deal with it to not to die all the time. Then yeas, tribes were becoming larger, wealthier, more stationary. But before that there were very few people, the tribes were nomadic with virtually no alternatives and had nothing of value. At least nothing so valuable that it would be easier to get it by attacking another tribe, rather than by simply moving a couple of dozen kilometers away.
I'm genuinely convinced that prehistoric humans, being literally the same species as us, were just as capable as us in the ability to thoughtfully construct their societies. Like, why, when they bumped into each other, couldn't they have formed a confederation?
I think instead of labeling them as children of nature or starving savages warring with everything in their vicinity, it makes most sense to see them as more or less similar to ourselves.
Editing in a TL;DR: imagine you and your friends are thrown back in time to year 20 000 BC or thereabout. Imagine you find the nearest tribe of humans, and by magical means are able to understand and speak their language. Imagine you go to their chief and propose to form a confederacy, and ponder what would stop them from replying "ugh" and bashing your head in with a club. Compare with a closest analog to today, and where the difference comes from.
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> I'm genuinely convinced that prehistoric humans, being literally the same species as us, were just as capable as us in the ability to thoughtfully construct their societies.
I agree. We're basically the same people as we were before, hardware and firmware, +/- lactose intolerance and some extra mutations that, without modern medicine, would prohibit one from successfully reproducing. With that in mind...
> Like, why, when they bumped into each other, couldn't they have formed a confederation?
Because they most likely couldn't have even conceptualized this that long ago, much less make it work.
A "confederacy" isn't some built-in human feeling. It's advanced technology. Social technology, but technology nonetheless. In a way, it's merely a more advanced form of a bunch of elders getting together to deal with a problem affecting all of their tribes - but this is like saying passing around crude drawing on stones is basically a bit less advanced e-mail or international postal network. As an advanced social technology, a confederacy has a lot of prerequisites - including writing, deep specialization of labor (allowing for both rulers and thinkers to thrive), hierarchical governance, a set of traditions (religious or otherwise) that solidify the hierarchical governance structure and some early iteration of a justice system, literate ruling class, etc.; all of those are but a few nodes in the "tech tree" that leads to a confederacy, and more importantly, enables scaling the society up to the point we can even talk about a confederacy as we define the term today.
> I think instead of labeling them as children of nature or starving savages warring with everything in their vicinity, it makes most sense to see them as more or less similar to ourselves.
We still are children of nature. We're not starving because of all the advancement in science, technology and social technologies we've accumulated over the past couple millenia.
Consider that it is only recently - within the last 150 years - we finally stopped going to war over land and natural resources. Human nature didn't change in that time. What changed was that we've expanded to the point every place on Earth's surface has someone staking a claim to it, that the knowledge of these claims quickly becomes known to other groups; we then fought it out in 1914-1918 and then for the last time, in 1939-1945, then most countries accepted agreements to keep the borders as they are, and then we invented nuclear weapons and froze the borders via MAD.
The modern world is a beautiful but fragile place. If we let any of the supporting structures - whether social or technological or military - snap, the whole thing will collapse like a house of cards, and the few people that survive it will be back to prehistoric savagery. Not because they'd suddenly get dumber, but because they'd have lost all the social and technological structures that makes humanity what it is today, and they'd have to rebuild it from scratch, the hard way.
Look at every society before the modern state monopoly on violence. Basically none of them were in danger of regressing because of it. The evolution of the modern state is a result of inter society competition for who can apply the most massed violence against a competing state.
We've seen what happens when empires fall apart (Rome for example) and things don't revert to "prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other for what little scraps the land has to give".
I'm not gonna go too far into this because like you say, it's a religion, and I'm not gonna waste my time trying to convert anyone.
Depends on the time scale. I mean the early middle ages (500 to 1000) could be described as "(smaller) tribes fighting over what is left" (considering all the barbarians from the north pillaging the roman empire while the Arabs conquering it from the south).
The evolution of modern society is as much a result of religion (centralizing a purpose and limiting inner fighting) of science (do things more efficient) as it is to violence.
Violence might be one way to progress, everybody is entitled to an opinion. I just hope you experienced it yourself if you believe it is the way you prefer personally. I am saying just because I thought some things would be great, only to be quite disappointed when I actually tried them...
> Look at every society before the modern state monopoly on violence. Basically none of them were in danger of regressing because of it.
They were too small. But they had their own social orders of equivalent importance, and breaking those would break them apart. There's a reason religion and tradition played bigger role in a distant past, and going against them was severely punished. It's not just out of spite or "us vs. them"; people take threats to stability of their group personally. It's definitely in part a survival mechanism.
> The evolution of the modern state is a result of inter society competition for who can apply the most massed violence against a competing state.
Yes. More specifically, it's the result of growth. It's the same thing as small tribes fighting each other over some small areas of land, except scaled up. Bigger groups have a competitive advantage over smaller groups, but there's a limit to the size of a group beyond which it ends up splitting apart; increasing that limit requires stacking more layers of hierarchy and associated social technologies. "Rule of law" and the legal system in general is one of such technologies, and it looks like it does today, at scales of groups we have today.
A group of dozens can just work on instinct alone. A group of hundreds requires some rules and specialization and designated authority. Scale that 100x, and you need another level of leadership hierarchy just to keep sub-group leaders coordinated and aligned. Scale that 100x further, and you kind of have to get something looking like a modern nation state, as anything else would either break apart or be defeated by another group that is more like a modern nation state.
See also: Dunbar's number.
> We've seen what happens when empires fall apart (Rome for example) and things don't revert to "prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other for what little scraps the land has to give".
Nonsense. "The rule of law" isn't one cohesive thing--sure, some parts of it are important for holding together a country/society, but in a sufficiently complex legal system (like the US') there exists a plethora of laws which are irrelevant to holding together society. Every such society has laws which are on the books but are not enforced, weakly enforced, or unevenly enforced. In fact, an implicit part of British Prime Minister Harold Wilson's theory of government was explicitly having laws which only existed to be broken, to allow citizens to exercise their rebellious impulses without causing harm--Wilson believed that turning a blind eye to the breaking of a certain subset of laws actually minimized the harm of unlawful action. An example of this is rules against walking on the grass in many public areas in London, which is enforced by security guards whose only recourse is to tell you to stop.
The US also has laws which we don't care if you break, and the laws we place in this category say a lot about our society. For example, it's widely accepted that people can drive up to 10 MPH above the speed limit and consequences will be rare. Even more severe moving violations are met with a slap on the wrist which primarily effects the poor (fines).
Drug laws were already within this category before Ullbricht started the Silk Road. The was on drugs was explicitly started by Nixon as a war on the antiwar left and black people, and if you didn't fall into one of those categories, you were/are largely above drug laws, since enforcement generally targets those categories, while the social acceptability of popular drugs means that crimes of this nature are rarely reported.
Ullbricht's primary offense was breaking a law that was already broken ubiquitously. Society did not collapse before Ullbricht when these laws were broken, it did not collapse when Ullbricht broke them, and it does not collapse because of the myriad of darknet sites which immediately filled the void left by the Silk Road's closure. Ullbricht's arrest didn't end the blatant disregard for drug laws on the darknet, and yet somehow in the 11 years since his arrest, society still hasn't devolved into small tribes slaughtering each other.
In short, if people breaking drug laws was a real threat to society, then society would have devolved into tribes slaughtering each other already. We have had over 50 years of people ubiquitously breaking drug laws without societal collapse.
I'm not talking about any particular law, I'm talking about the general idea of laws as things that apply to everyone, that everyone should obey, and that everyone expects everyone else will obey, and that everyone knows they're expected by others to obey. That's the self-reinforcing structure of intersubjectivity, that allows us to invent and maintain imaginary entities such as "dollar", "law", "justice system", "contract", or "limited liability corporation", etc. Underlying all such entities is the set of shared beliefs about how others will behave.
This structure is self-reinforcing and very resilient: few people here and there rejecting faith in rule of law, or authority of the courts, or money, don't make a difference - we write such people off as weirdos and carry on with our days, secure in knowledge our world will continue to work as it worked the day before. But if sufficient amount of people have their faith falter, that's where the trouble starts.
For example, if enough people stop trusting in the justice system to deliver something resembling justice most of the time, you'll see people ignoring courts and laws and taking justice into their own hands[0]. People start lynching and killing each other, others see them getting away with it, which quickly destroys their trust in the system, and now you're at the precipice. If shooting a (person accused of being) thief is fine, if shooting a billionaire is fine, then why uphold a contract? Might as well get your own at gunpoint, etc. At this point everything stops working - banks, healthcare, fire services, stores. Your country collapses. You probably die.
That is why threats to our shared belief system are so dangerous, and need to be dealt with swiftly and aggressively. It's not about elites in power wanting to stay in power (though it's no doubt part of it for them) - it's because should we all start thinking our social structures don't work, and that everyone else thinks this too, and start acting on this expectation, they'll all collapse in an instant.
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[0] - No, whatever it is that America has with its police is still far from that point.
> I'm not talking about any particular law, I'm talking about the general idea of laws as things that apply to everyone, that everyone should obey, and that everyone expects everyone else will obey, and that everyone knows they're expected by others to obey. That's the self-reinforcing structure of intersubjectivity, that allows us to invent and maintain imaginary entities such as "dollar", "law", "justice system", "contract", or "limited liability corporation", etc. Underlying all such entities is the set of shared beliefs about how others will behave.
You can talk about whatever you want, but you don't get to limit what other people talk about.
If you think there's anything like "everyone should obey, everyone expects everyone else will obey, and everyone knows they're expected by others to obey" around drug laws, you're living in a fantasy. You can talk about that concept if you want, but I'm saying that concept doesn't apply to drug law, which is, in case you noticed, the primary group of laws Ullbricht was convicted of breaking.
> For example, if enough people stop trusting in the justice system to deliver something resembling justice most of the time, you'll see people ignoring courts and laws and taking justice into their own hands[0]. People start lynching and killing each other, others see them getting away with it, which quickly destroys their trust in the system, and now you're at the precipice. If shooting a (person accused of being) thief is fine, if shooting a billionaire is fine, then why uphold a contract? Might as well get your own at gunpoint, etc. At this point everything stops working - banks, healthcare, fire services, stores. Your country collapses. You probably die.
You're picking unrelated examples and ignoring the issue at hand.
If selling drugs is fine, why uphold a contract? If driving faster than the speed limit is fine, why not get your own at gunpoint?
Sure, generally people agree murder is bad, but that's very little to do with the law or any sort of trust in the law. Your ivory-tower ideals have nothing to do with it: as it turns out, people don't want to be murdered, so we're all pretty happy when the cops enforce that law, whether we trust them or not.
I'll further add: banks, healthcare, fire services, stores, all only work for a segment of our population in the US. By your definition of collapse, large portions of the U.S. collapsed decades ago.
> That is why threats to our shared belief system are so dangerous, and need to be dealt with swiftly and aggressively. It's not about elites in power wanting to stay in power (though it's no doubt part of it for them) - it's because should we all start thinking our social structures don't work, and that everyone else thinks this too, and start acting on this expectation, they'll all collapse in an instant.
"Our shared belief system"?
Let's be clear, this is your belief system, and what you're trying to do is justify ramming it down other people's throats with the physical violence performed by police. Your belief system is probably the majority opinion within the upper-middle-class and richer demographic of Hacker News, and might even be the majority opinion nationally, but it's not unanimous or even close to unanimous. Drug use is well within the mainstream in 2025.
> Ross violated the only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law. He was sentenced for being a heretic.
That's a weird way of talking about that. The rule of law is what keeps rampant corruption and government abuse at bay. It means the law also holds for the ruler, and not just for the subjects. The rule of law has already been significantly weakened in recent years by openly corrupt judges and politicians, and traitor being elected in defiance of the 14th amendment.
None of this is a good thing. Without the rule of law, it's the people that lose, because then you get the rule of those in power, who will be above the law.
Also his opsec was sloppy. If you want to believe that the spooks were doing full ipv4 scans to DDoS all his legit exit nodes that would make a better movie. But really, he was just in over his head.
Predictably, dark web market operators adapted afterward. The state got lucky and they knew it, so that also factored in to their sentencing recommendations.
Ten? Oh man. Have you read about the FALN commutation? Iran-Contra? Watergate? The 1960 presidential election? Roosevelt (both of them)? Wilson? Lincoln? Those are just a very few of the instances of disrespect for the rule of law that come to mind immediately.
> Ten? Oh man. Have you read about [list of older historical events I suggest you were foolish to ignore]
Slow down there cowboy, it's "ten" because the other poster is referencing a conviction which occurred on February 5th 2015, uncannily close to exactly ten years ago.
But that's what "rule of law" means: that the rules also apply to the leaders. The fact that leaders in the US aren't held accountable for their crimes means the US does not have the rule of law, but the rule of power. Or the rule of money, probably. The rich are above the law and can buy the government.
> The site's terms of service prohibited the sale of certain items. When the Silk Road marketplace first began, the creator and administrators instituted terms of service that prohibited the sale of anything whose purpose was to "harm or defraud." This included child pornography, stolen credit cards, assassinations, and weapons of any type
Yes, but so are a lot of sentences in the US. I've heard of people being put away for decades for mere drug possession.
That said, rapists surprisingly often get just a slap on the wrist, or not even that. The US absolutely needs some balance and consistency in its sentencing, but pardoning this one guy sends a really weird message in that regard. At the very least, just commute the sentence so at least the conviction still stands.
Pretty much all criminal laws are like that since only a fraction of crimes will ever lead to an arrest we make examples out of those are caught to make others less likely to commit crimes in the future when they see the punishment. The deterrence effect is basically "risk of getting caught" * "punishment if you get caught".
It's not just the deterrence but to publicly condemn the act. Condemnation needs to have teeth and the perpetrator needs to feel the burden, otherwise it's just empty words on paper. The burden is necessary to establish social balance. The punishment can't be enjoyable, it needs to take away the unfair advantage gained by the criminal act, it provides a way to repay moral debt back to society.
> A fourth feature of punishment, widely acknowledged at least since the publication of Joel Feinberg’s seminal 1965 article “The Expressive Function of Punishment” is that it serves to express condemnation, or censure, of the offender for her offense. As Feinberg discusses, it is this condemning element that distinguishes punishment from what he calls “nonpunitive penalties” such as parking tickets, demotions, flunkings, and so forth. (Feinberg, 1965: 398-401).
In the UK, the police helped hide the crimes of non-british child rapists.
The axiom of their "rule of law" was that racism is the worst possible sin, and that anything done to appease people calling you racist was mandatory. The below link MASSIVLEY understated the number of victims.
Enoch Powell explained all this nearly 60 years ago, and was sacked the next day by Edward Heath. The term "racist" is at best useless and at worst dangerous. It doesn't differentiate between judging people based on their physiology and judging them on their culture and values. By going out of their way to avoid appearing to judge by physiology, people allowed into their society millions of people with cultures and values fundamentally opposed to their own (e.g. Christians using the British common law vs Muslims using Sharia law). The result is a slow destruction of society that Enoch Powell predicted so long ago in his 1968 speech.
Well, maybe Britain shouldn't have colonized large areas of the globe and exploited them for resources while keeping the indigenous inhabitants oppressed for centuries, all while preaching the absolute supremacy of British civilization and culture. Hardly seems surprising that some of the people you colonized might want to see what all the fuss is about.
Indeed, Britain should have known this and realized that the only way forward was complete and total separation from the post colonial states. Any sort of immigration or pseudo integration was bound to lead to this. Other countries, such as the US, should look to what has become of Britain as an example of what not to do, what ideas do NOT work, and what ideologies lead to such betrayals.
Silk road had a policy against selling items with intent to harm like guns. While occasionally some weapon listings would slip through, they would be taken down. The focus was drugs (and a lot of legal media). There were plenty of other black market sites on the dark web that sold everything, but that's not what the silk road in particular was about.
Selling say drugs that kill people (kids including) and illegal weapons that are often used for murders. Such activity is by western standards one of worst crimes, especially in massive scale and run for profit. Even ignoring all other criminal activity, 25 to life seems like a adequate sentence.
It seems that from day 1 US is moving quite far from the place it was and projected itself to others for past decades. More ruthless, money above all, not much fairness in international dealings. Maybe US will be richer after those 4 years, but at current trajectory it will lose a lot of friends and partners.
Please realize this - for Europe, China starts to look like a great not only business but also military partner, much more reliable long term. This is how much such moves can fuck up things.
That's mainly because it cuts into the US government profit margins. They and their favored contractors have been selling arms for profit and love drug running when it suits their aims as they showed with eg support for the Contras.
It is important drugs stay illegal so powerful connected interests can maintain high profit and control. Without that, simple cocaine/meth/marijuana is just an agricultural or chemical commodity with essentially the margin of generic OTC drugs.
Yeah I meant more like some shady fentanyl that overdoses people en masse, not some rather harmless and sometimes even beneficial weed.
The worst part are weapons, there is no way to spin it as something benign. Victor Bout for example got 25 years and there was no drug smuggling nor contract murders.
Victor Bout is free and selling weapons again with the blessing and release of the US government. Always was about profiting off of weapons. Don't believe what the US really got from it was one ditzy WNBA player.
They might be alluding to regulatory capture by groups such as the NRA, big pharma, and the defense industry, which, for all purposes, are an unelected part of the government.
In terms of money they really aren't that big, but they don't need much money to wield influence because their cause is very popular with a lot of voters and politicians know that.
He was serving 2 life sentences + 40 years, not one. Even the prosecutors only asked for 20. What he did was wrong, but the sentence was disproportionate. The judge intended to throw away his life to make a point.
China seems to understand the concept of soft power, something the US has been neglecting for many decades in favor of less subtle military intervention.
It could start helping finance infrastructure projects, schools, hospitals, universities, and so on. Along that comes the opportunity to exercise cultural influence and develop consumers and suppliers for your own industry.
It’s far less nasty than invading, freeing the people from their government and installing a puppet in its place. Also a lot cheaper. Any missile could pay for a school.
So, which countries did China liberate from oppression? What did the CCP/its predecessor movement actually do? Standing aside while the NRA fought the Japanese. Instead of helping and preventing some major bloodbaths, Mao and his army just abided their time. After the power change, the Long March, the Cultural Revolution and whatever havoc I forget, China was too weak to do anything, let alone invade countries. Now it's stronger, and seems remarkably poised for war.
Your "US bad because invasion" is a tankie frame. Yes, that refers to the Tiananmen tanks.
>So, which countries did China liberate from oppression?
My friend, what are you babbling about? Did you hallucinate me saying that China is my model of a utopian society?
Again. Which countries has China invaded or toppled, outside of the imaginary ones you yearn for in your head? Is the list close to that of the US?
>Your "US bad because invasion" is a tankie frame. Yes, that refers to the Tiananmen tanks. (??)
I'm a tankie because I think invasions are bad?? What does that make you, a frothing bloodthirsty hawk? A despotic militarist?
Or will now attempt to argue the tired and ahistorical trope that those other invasions were good actually because Pinochet or Suharto were actually secretly democratic and the thousands they murdered aren't important, and it was good that Arbenz was toppled because he actually wasn't democratically elected and was infact a rabid communist in disguise and the United Fruit Co. lobbying was just a coincidence etc. etc.
If so don't bother. I'm not wasting anymore time talking to one bereft of ordered thought, spinning baffling word associations and tired tropes. I'm not interested in discovering to what extent daily life presents a sisyphean ordeal to you.
>minimal competition, lack of regulation, high margins etc
Those benefits don't come from nowhere. You're basically getting compensated to take on the risk, same as any other business. The difference in this case is that the risk is that a bunch of thugs with guns will show up and either kill you or put you in a cage in addition to the usual financial ruin.
Many criminal gangs from biker groups to foreign cartels are doing the same thing and reaping profits in the $100Bs scale annually.
Your argument is not an argument for incarceration, it is an argument for abolition of prohibition and regulating the sales of some psychoactives.
The same stone would hit the fentanyl epidemic, it would hit the pushers of ”zombie drug” laced cocktails, it would hit cross-border trafficking, to name only a few. Society would massively benefit. So would the economy.
Bailing him out comes at no cost? That's one way to see it.
In my opinion, it sends a message that as long as you can provide value to this new administration, you get preferential treatment - no matter how shady and unethical your business ventures are.
Not sure it was high margin as much as it was low fees on a large number of transactions, coupled with bitcoin appreciation this meant he made a lot of money.
The illegality of drugs is a government reaction, since governance failed to do anything with the problem by action. No-one deserves a life-long sentence in prison for that. This market, as well as minimal competition, lack of regulation, and high margins was created by the same power which sends people to jail.
Trump is a bit of an agorist is well. It's part of the American wild west mythical psyche, to the point America made a sport from moonshine running cars. Not hard for me to see how he half won and walked away with an unconditional pardon.
> In the 1920s, moonshine runners during the Prohibition era would often have to outrun the authorities. To do so, they had to upgrade their vehicles—while leaving them looking ordinary, so as not to attract attention. Eventually, runners started getting together with fellow runners and making runs together. They would challenge one another and eventually progressed to organized events in the early 1930s.
I don't have a horse in this race but the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear "we shouldn't have bailed him out" is silicon valley bank and its depositors. That to me was the biggest show of hypocrisy by silicon valley.
The idea that possession of drugs is or should be illegal is purely arbitrary, and is used thus to justify massive violations of human rights. It is literally insane that the state claims authority over what you are allowed to do to your own body.
While you might argue which drug is dangerous and which isn't, ban on drugs is not arbitrary decision. You can't do whatever you want with your body, because you might loose control and hurt others. Drug abuse affects others as well (financially, mentally, physically...). I am victim of someone's drug abuse. I never took any drugs. So if you are looking for victims of drug abuse, here I am.
Some of the decisions were rather arbitrary at best, and racist at worst, though. The sentence disparities regarding, for example, cocaine depending on how you are using it was designed to punish black people more harshly. Opium bans had as much to do with anti-Chinese sentiment than anything.
I'm not arguing that drugs should be legal, but we do have to be clear that the reasons for banning them and the punishment are not necessarily rational.
That’s pure historical revision. The sentencing difference was created in 1986 based on the belief that it was more addictive. It wasn’t until a decade later that research showed the causation had been reversed (more addicted people were more likely to use crack). If you look at the timing, there was a huge increase in drug crime that occurred as a result of the crack epidemic: https://www.nber.org/digest/oct18/lingering-lethal-toll-amer....
The recent change in policy simply reflects the prevailing trend of reducing disparities in sentencing for criminals while increasing disparities in crime victimization by failing to enforce the law.
It is legal if you're in good shape and therefore the risk of that happening is minimal. It is illegal to drive a car under an altered state that makes it more likely to happen. It is a balance between the benefits of permitting something and the likelihood of something bad happens. In normal conditions, the benefits are believed to outweigh the risks, so it is generally permitted to drive a car. But it is not permitted to drive it if you're under the effect of some substance that can alter your perception of reality.
Alcohol is in fact heavily regulated and controlled in most countries, and we have cultural practices in place that largely manage the risks for the vast majority of people that consume it.
Personally I'm in favour of further narcotics legalisation, but with regulation to manage it's social effects and taxation to fund the expensive mitigation measures it would require.
It's clear you don't personally know anyone who has been affected by a serious drug addiction. It is devastating not just for them, but their family and everyone that cares about them. It's unbelievable to me anyone could claim that dealing drugs is a victimless crime.
Almost everyone I know has been personally affected by serious drug addiction. Alcohol, opiates, cocaine, marijuana, cigarettes, even gambling if you count such things.
I still support the abolition of all bans and controls on access to drugs.
Destroying one’s own self has no victims, any more than bodybuilding does. If we should be free to build ourselves, we should be free to destroy ourselves.
Please don’t assume anyone who disagrees with your philosophy is naive or lacks empathy.
I'm not assuming. Your position on this issue simply lacks empathy.
If you've known anyone addicted to the list of things you mention, you should know that at some point, they are no longer "free to destroy themselves". They are continuing to destroy themselves out of a chemical or phycological necessity. The people who deal drugs or own casinos are running predatory businesses and it should be illegal, just like other predatory business practices are.
Chemical addiction is not comparable to overeating/lack of exercise. You could theoretically be "addicted" to McDonalds and still live a fairly healthy and balanced life in other respects. It's really not possible to be addicted to heroine and live a balanced lifestyle. Even though drug addicts are largely personally responsible for their actions, that doesn't make it less true that drug dealers are knowingly profiting off of vulnerable individuals and actively encourage them to ruin their lives.
Drugs weren't the only items sold there, there were also weapons. If you illegally sell weapons in a country where it is already much easier to legally get a weapon than most other countries, you can be sure that those weapons aren't going to be purchased by a layperson trying to defend themself but by criminals going to use those to harm other people.
The crime being not selling the weapons, but failing to keep appropriate records that ensured the use of the weapons was responsible and that users would be held accountable for their use.
Ross Ulbricht was not sentenced for murder-for-hire charges.
Those allegations were used to deny him bail and influenced public perception, they were not part of his formal conviction or sentencing.
He was convicted on non-violent charges related to operating the Silk Road website, including drug distribution, computer hacking, and money laundering.
Does this change your opinion of sentencing being well-deserved?
This opinion [1] from the judge in his case indicates that the murder-for-hire evidence was admitted during his trial. The document outlines the evidence for all 6 murder for hire allegations and explains why, although not charged, the evidence is relevant to his case.
It's surprising to me that the prosecutor is allowed to essentially insinuate crimes to influence the jury, without the need to prove them. That seems to undermine the process because it creates a "there's smoke so there must be fire" mentality for the jury.
There was plenty of evidence that he ordered the hits, and the defense had the opportunity to address the evidence in court. The chat logs go far beyond "insinuation"
It's ridiculous that people are pretending there is any doubt about his guilt because they like crypto and/or drugs.
Do you not think the optics are a bit weird when you sentence someone to life for something relatively small, but the reason is another crime you’re very sure he did but you didn’t bother to charge him with?
Prosecutors often choose not to pursue additional charges against someone already serving a life sentence. This approach helps avoid wasting court time and resources on cases that are unlikely to change the individual’s circumstances or contribute meaningfully to justice (none of the murders for hire resulted in victims).
I actually wonder if those charges may still be on the table now that a pardon has been granted.
If I understand correctly, only one of the "murder-for-hire" allegations was dismissed with prejudice[0]. However, he was suspected of orchestrating a total of six "murder-for-hire" plots.
Comically (horrifically sadly?) they were dismissed that way because he was already in prison for life with no possibility of getting out, so the court did not want to waste time on it.
Being a drug kingpin is not considered "something relatively small" under US law, as you can see from the sentencing. Being the leader of a large drug operation and ordering hits to protect your business would be considered worse than trying to take out a hit for whatever "personal reasons".
Obviously the hits are a lot messier to prosecute as well with the misconduct of the FBI agents, maybe you could hammer that enough to confuse a jury. But people are commenting like the evidence outright didn't exist - I can only think they have either heard it told second-hand, or are employing motivated reasoning.
Of course it is. Throwing in potential evidence of unrelated crimes to sway other people's (specifically jury's) opinion about the defendant without formally charging him is exactly what the word "insinuation" means[0]:
the action of suggesting, without being direct, that something unpleasant is true
> There was plenty of evidence that he ordered the hits, and the defense had the opportunity to address the evidence in court
Clearly not that much evidence if the state didn't bother to prosecute those charges. And why would they? The judge sentenced him as though he had been found guilty of them.
Coincidentally, on the same day, SCOTUS confirmed in Andrew v. White ruling [1] that admitting prejudicial evidence violates due process rights under the 14th Amendment.
That's a nice end-run around “innocent until proven guilty”: they didn't have to prove anything about those allegations beyond making them, because he wasn't charged with them.
The first person in the murder-for-hire allegations 'FriendlyChemist' was an undercover DEA agent or informant, and it's strongly possible none of the other people existed. It's also conjectured the hitman account 'Redandwhite' was being operated by the same DEA agent [*]. Moreover the bitcoin DPR sent the supposed hitman 'Redandwhite' sat in the wallet from 3/2013 till 8/2013, "which alone should have tipped out DPR about a possible scam" ie. that the killing never happened [0]. DPR never requested any confirmation pictures of at least 5 of the (fictitious) killings, nor was there any Canadian media coverage to suggest anyone got assassinated on the supposed dates.
The US Attorneys made a lot of publicity out of the murder-for-hire conspiracy allegations against Ulbricht in their indictments and in pre-trial media ("although there is no evidence that these murders were actually carried out." as the indictment itself obliquely says).
Ulbricht's defense could have come up with a plausible alternative explanations that he knew redandwhite was a scammer trying to extort him with a story involving nonexistent people, and was just playing along with him for whatever reasons.
[*] If the prosecution had not actually dropped those charges at trial, it would have been confirmed at trial which of the six identities were fictitious/nonexistent and whether all the accounts were managed by the same DEA agents. Hard to imagine that at least one juror wouldn't have formed a skeptical opinion about government agents extorting a person to conspire to kill fictitious people (why didn't the indictment just focus on nailing him on the lesser charges?). If this wasn't a Turing Test on when is an alleged conspiracy not a real conspiracy, then someday soon we'll see one.
To my mind, it doesn't matter whether a murder actually occurred for Ulbricht's culpability. He thought he was ordering a murder, he solicited proof, he got proof, and he asked for more hits. In his frame, someone was murdered on his orders. It's a burden to prove for sure, but the fact that he paid substantial cash equivalents in bitcoin to me mean he didn't think he was playing some fantasy game with scammers.
The chat logs show that he was quite stoic about the whole thing and treated it as a mundane business action to protect himself ("is a liability and I wouldn't mind if…"; "I've received the picture and deleted it. Thank you again for your swift action.").
Given that he is now free, and may have access to substantial cryptocurrency wealth, I think it would probably be best under the circumstances if everyone forgot about these allegations and just left him alone to live a quiet life.
FWIW, the two agents in the Ulbricht case, Shaun Bridges and Carl Mark Force IV, both subsequently went to prison for corruption, money-laundering etc. which they were perpetrating at the same time as the Ulbricht investigation, and tainted a lot of other prosecutions.
[0] gives a timeline and fills in lots of details.
Article [1] describes Bridges:
> Bridges was a cryptocurrency expert [... with offshore entities, including one that he had created after pleading guilty in this case]. According to AUSA Haun, his involvement with digital currency cases across the country caused a “staggering” number of investigations to become tainted, and subsequently shut down. She told the judge at Bridges’s sentencing that the corrupt agent had been looking out for opportunities to serve seizure warrants and somehow profit from it.
> The prosecutor also said that bitcoins were still missing, and they weren’t sure if he had worked with other corrupt agents. The US Attorney’s Office seemed to imply that there had been a lot of weird (but not necessarily chargeable) stuff that was still unaccounted for.
Article [2] describes Force:
> [Force's mental health issues]... his previous undercover assignments had ended disastrously. An assignment in Denver in 2004 had ended with a DUI. A second undercover assignment in Puerto Rico had ended in 2008 with a complete mental breakdown. Force was institutionalized, and did not return to his job until 2010. He was on desk duty until 2012, when he was assigned to investigate the Silk Road.
You missed that the "victims" did not exist and were invented (and Ulbricht's defense could have claimed that he was aware of that, and it would only need one juror to find that credible). I'm pointedly asking what a "real" plan is if it involves fictitious people invented by the two govt agents - both of whom (Bridges and Force) subsequently went to prison for corruption. If the conspiracy-to-commit-murder charges hadn't been dropped, cross-examining Bridges and Force likely would have destroyed the prosecution case (for conspiracy to commit murder).
UPDATE: apparently I'm wrong that "factual impossibility" is not a defense [0]. But Bridges and Force's criminal behavior tainted the prosecution case on this charge. Presumably why the prosecution made sure those two agents were not mentioned in the trial.
> You missed that the "victims" did not exist and were invented (and Ulbricht's defense could have claimed that he was aware of that, and it would only need one juror to find that credible).
But now we're playing legal tricks here. The real question would be if Ulbricht was willing to have people killed or not, regardless of what the defense can claim.
EDIT: just to be clear. Legally, I think it makes a big difference if someone decides to have someone else killed, tries to hire an hitman and that hitman turns out to be a policeman in disguise vs a policeman in disguise telling you "there are people doing something that is bad for you, should I kill them?". And it is perfectly right that the second case is crossing a line. But form a moral perspective, if someone answers "yes" in the second case, that still tells us a lot about that person, regardless of whether those people existed or not. The important thing is that those people were real in this person's mind.
" I would like to put a bounty on his head if it's not too much trouble for you. What would be an adequate amount to motivate you to find him?
Necessities like this do happen from time to time for a person in my position. I have others I can turn to, but it is always good to have options and you are close to the case right now. [...] As you don't take kindly to thieves, this kind of behavior is unforgivable to me. Especially here on Silk Road, anonymity is sacrosanct.
It doesn't have to be clean, and I don't think there are any funds to be retrieved [...] Not long ago, I had a clean hit done for $80k. Are the prices you quoted the best you can do?
I would like this done asap [...] I've only ever commissioned the one other hit, so I'm still learning this market. I have no problem putting my faith in you and I am sure you will do a good job. The exchange rate is above 90 right now, so at $90/btc, $150k is about 1670 btc. If the market tanks in the next few days, I will send more. Here are some random numbers for a picture: 83746102
Here is the transaction # for 1670 btc to 1MwvS1idEevZ5gd428TjL3hB2kHaBH9WTL4a0a5b6036c0da84c3eb9c2a884b6ad72416d1758470e19fb1d2fa2a145b5601
Good luck"
lmao
If that isn't conspiracy to murder, I'm not sure there is anything that would qualify.
I don't have knowledge of how the message exchange went. But if it was Ulbricht to contact the supposed hitman in the first place, then you're right that there isn't much to discuss about. Policeman in disguise or not, it is an attempt to murder someone.
He was found during sentencing to be guilty of hiring a hit on a competitor using a preponderance of evidence (lower then presumption of innocence). While this is a lower standard than a conviction, it is still a higher standard than most apply in public discourse.
That isn't fair, the point of the trial is to test whether something is to be acted on. To act on something that wasn't directly part of the trial is a bit off. I'm sure the judge is acting in the clear legally, but if someone is going to be sentenced for attempted murder then that should be after a trial that formally accuses them of the crime.
He wasn't sentenced for attempted murder, the sentence Ulbricht received was within the range provided by statute for the crimes he was convicted of. Judges have discretion in sentencing and they are allowed to consider the character of the defendant. The fact that Ulbricht attempted to murder people was demonstrated to the judges satisfaction during the trial and influenced her to sentence at the higher end of the range allowed for the crimes he was duly convicted.
The range allowed for those sentences is way too wide. Life without parole is nowhere near reasonable for hacking, money laundering, and drugs. Being within the sentencing range is meaningless when the range encompasses any possible sentence.
Well, just selling some drugs and laundering the money is one thing. Being some much a drug lord that you start a war on other drug lords is so much on a different level of severity that it could have been it’s own article in a criminal code
His sentence was severe in part because he fell under the "kingping statute". This is based on the amount of drug trade he facilitated, the amount of money he made, and the actions he took as an "organizer". The hits didn't help.
> For conviction under the statute, the offender must have been an organizer, manager, or supervisor of the continuing operation and have obtained substantial income or resources from the drug violations
> Being some much a drug lord that you start a war on other drug lords is so much on a different level of severity
Is this a hypothetical or did I miss a big chunk of this story?
If the war involves people being hurt, then conspiracy and instruction to injure and murder sound like great things to charge the drug lord with. If it doesn't, then I don't see the severity.
This cuts both ways as judges often adjust their sentencing downward based on mitigating evidence. For both aggravating and mitigating circumstances evidence does need to be submitted, and there are standards of proof to be applied. It's just that the procedural rules can be different and, depending on the context and jurisdiction, sufficiency can be decided by the judge alone. In some jurisdictions, for example, aggravating evidence may need to be put to the jury, while mitigating evidence need not be.
The U.S. is rather unique in providing a right to jury trials for most--in practice almost all, including misdemeanor--criminal cases. And this is a major factor for why sentencing is so harsh and prosecutions so slow in the U.S. In myriad ways the cost of criminal trials has induced the system to arrive at its current state favoring plea deals, with overlapping crimes and severe maximum penalties as cudgels. Be careful about what kind of "protections" you want to impose.
> This cuts both ways as judges often adjust their sentencing downward based on mitigating evidence.
It isn't supposed to cut both ways. The prosecution is supposed to have the higher burden, and admitting unproven allegations is excessively prejudicial.
> In myriad ways the cost of criminal trials has induced the system to arrive at its current state favoring plea deals, with overlapping crimes and severe maximum penalties as cudgels. Be careful about what kind of "protections" you want to impose.
The lesson from this should be to make the protections strong enough that they can't be thwarted like this. For example, prohibit plea bargaining so that all convictions require a trial and it's forbidden to impose any penalty for demanding one.
It's not supposed to be efficient. It's supposed to be rare.
In common law, you are found guilty, and then sentenced. The judge does the sentencing, the jury finds you guilty or not.
Then there is precedent. Guidelines are created based on caselaw, so if a simular type of case arrises, that forms the "expectation" of what the sentence will be.
This means that you don't need specific levels of a crime. For example drug trafficking can be a single gram of coke for personal use, vs 15 tonnes for commercial exploitation. hence the range in sentences.
Suppose you're charged with two crimes in two separate courts. The first is jaywalking, the second is murder, but the judge is given unlimited discretion to determine sentencing.
To try to prove their jaywalking allegations, the prosecution in the first case claims that you were in a hurry to cross the street because you were trying to kill someone, and present some evidence of that from a questionable source. They also have separate video evidence of you crossing the street against the light. The jury convicts you of jaywalking.
The judge in the jaywalking case then sentences you to life without parole, because jaywalking in order to murder someone is much more serious than most other instances of jaywalking. The prosecution in the other court then drops the murder charges, so the murder allegations were never actually proven anywhere.
Is this reasonable? Should we be satisfied with how this works and not want to change anything about it?
You can only be given a sentence for the crime you have been convicted of, otherwise you could easily appeal.
> Is this reasonable? Should we be satisfied with how this works and not want to change anything about it?
It doesn't work like that, and I wouldn't be satisfied by a court system that does work like that. It'd fucking disastrous. If anyone convinces you that it does work like that, they are either a scammer, or want to make the law system _very_ scary.
> You can only be given a sentence for the crime you have been convicted of, otherwise you could easily appeal.
If you're convicted of a crime, let's say selling drugs, that carries a penalty of up to life in prison even though most people get 5-10 years, and then you're sentenced to life in prison after the person doing the sentencing is prejudiced by these murder allegations you've never been convicted of, what's your basis for appeal?
> If you're convicted of a crime, let's say selling drugs, that carries a penalty of up to life in prison even though most people get 5-10 years, and then you're sentenced to life in prison
you can appeal the sentence as being "too harsh" or out of the normal bounds. That's fair game and quite common.
However, if you are convicted of drug trafficking, money laundering and criminal enterprise, and you are appealing the length of the sentence, its very difficult to appeal if your system/company organisaiton to which you admit to being the head honcho of, uses a very traceable currency to launder money, and therefore can reasonably prove spectacularly large amount of drug trafficking.
The criminal enterprise charge has a minimum of 20 years, adding in drugs to the mix adds an additional 10.
the whole "judge was biased because of unfounded ordered assassination" is plainly wrong.
Sure you can argue that drugs should be legal (but you need support and money to help people escape, see opioid explosion)
but thats not the same as Roos Ulbricht got the wrong sentence. What he did was really obviously illegal, and at industrial scale. industrial scale illegality is going to get you a long sentence.[1]
[1] yes rich people manage to escape justice, this is an affront to justice, but arguing that Ulbricht was wrongly convicted only enables rich people to get off more, because it wrongly states that the law was wrong in this isntance.
Mark my words, the US legal system is going to get a huge shakeup. most constitutional checks and balances for the executive have been dismantled, because of a failure of congress. You don't want that new legal system, as thats going to be injustice for many, control for the few. A central plank of libertarianism is a fair and equitable legal system, we are straying further from that.
> if you are convicted of drug trafficking, money laundering and criminal enterprise, and you are appealing the length of the sentence, its very difficult to appeal
That's what I'm getting at. The premise is that this guy is Al Capone. But if he was actually guilty of murder then they should have convicted him of murder, whereas if he was only guilty of running a website, those penalties are crazy. Not because they don't ever get handed out or Congress didn't put them in the statute, but because they have within them the assumption that you're a drug cartel. And then because drug cartels are murder factories, the penalties are extreme and inappropriate outside of that specific context.
But the courts are bound to follow the law, which is the problem, because those laws are nuts. They're even nuts in the context of the actual drug cartels, because what they should be doing there is the same thing -- getting severe penalties by charging them with the actual murders, not putting life sentences on the operation of a black market regardless of whether or not there is any associated violence.
It's the same reason people are so eager to lean into the unproven murder allegations to justify the sentence -- it's intuitively obvious that without them, the penalties are excessive.
> whereas if he was only guilty of running a website,
Yes, he was guilty of running a website, which on the face of it seems innocent right? Sure thats an argument. "i'm just providing an online location for this to happen, but I don't know whats going on"
Apart from he was _also_ running an escrow service, Now to run an escrow service you need to create a contract with conditions to allow money to be released. The problem is that to say "oh he didn't know what was going on" is a provable lie, because to keep the escrow trustworthy, you need to arbitrate, to arbitrate requires knowing what was supposed to be delivered and why it didn't get delivered.
Now, escrow isn't free, you're taking a risk holding that money. So Ross takes a cut.
But the problem is, that money comes from illegal activities. He knows this, so he needs to find a way to make the money legit. This means fraudulently laundering it.
> Those arrested face sentences of 10 years to life in prison for the narcotics violations and up to 20 years for the money laundering violations.
However
I want to find agreement, because I want to make sure that understand I'm not saying your viewpoint is wrong, I think your anger is directed in the wrong place.
The sentence is within tolerance for the scale and combination of offences, the murder allegations are a red herring, and didn't materially affect the sentence.
For a large number of drug users, silkroad provided a safer way to obtain drugs, both in terms of violence and quality.
The people that ultimately set the bounds for these sentences are congress. They have chosen the war on drugs, which I think we can agree has caused more violence that it has stopped. The courts did exactly as they are supposed to do with the laws that they had at their disposal. The way the court operated was correct.
What is not correct is the federal governments approach to drugs.
> "i'm just providing an online location for this to happen, but I don't know whats going on"
It's not even that. It's a matter of, okay, there is a gas station next to the highway. They sell gas to anyone who shows up. "They don't know those people are speeding", wink.
They know those people are speeding. If you went up to the average gas station attendant and asked them if they knew their customers were speeding, they would probably admit they know, because the speed limit is below the speed of the median car and everybody knows it. You may also have other ways of proving they know. They may even know in specific cases rather than just in general. So they're knowingly making money from all of this illegal activity. A dangerous offense that causes thousands of fatalities. Literally making more money than they would otherwise, because cars use more gas at very high speeds, and knowingly enabling the unlawful activity, because those cars don't run without gas.
Should gas station workers all be in prison for life, or is that a crazy penalty for that type of offense?
> The sentence is within tolerance for the scale and combination of offences, the murder allegations are a red herring, and didn't materially affect the sentence.
There can be more than one source of the problem. I'm not disputing that Congress has passed some bad laws.
The issue is, there is still a range of penalties for that offense, and he got the very top of the range. For some reason.
That's not possible because jaywalking has a maximum penalty, and the judge can't exceed that maximum penalty.
A proper analogy would be something like two crimes, A and B, both with the same statutorily defined maximum penalty--life imprisonment--but where the typical sentence for A is much less for B. The defendant is found guilty of A, but the judge uses aggravating evidence to sentence them as-if it were B. But that highlights the fundamental problem: why would we have both A and B with the same maximum penalty, both covering the same or similar behavior? Often the point of A is to make convictions easier because proving B proved too onerous in practice.
What we want to get back to, and which almost every other jurisdiction implements around the world, including both systems thought to be far more fair than ours as well as less fair (for different reasons), is to have better tailored crimes, including penalties. One of the reasons we have so many felonies these days is because sentencing someone to jail for a single day on a misdemeanor offense for stealing a pack of gum for the 20th time can require a jury trial just as onerous as a felony offense with a 20 year sentence. Thus, if you want a more fair system, we probably may need to make it easier to sentence for smaller crimes with lighter sentences. IOW, lower the stakes so there isn't an arms race between punishment severity and procedural protections.
Most countries don't even require juries or panels for serious crimes, let alone light (i.e. misdemeanor) offenses. The shift to granting jury trials for any offense carrying possible jail time started in the early 1900s via Progressive Era reforms. Today only NYC (just NYC, not New York state) and, I think, South Carolina are the only jurisdictions[1] that don't grant a right to jury trials for misdemeanor offenses with jail time as a permitted punishment. Some other states nominally only provide for juries for 3+ or 6+ months of jail, but procedural precedent has resulted in courts effectively extending the right to any offense carrying jail time.
Note that the city of San Francisco has had for decades a public defender's office with equivalent or better resources (time, money, expertise) as the prosecutor's office, but the city sees the same interminable cycle as everywhere else.
[1] Also I think Federal jurisdiction, but purely misdemeanor cases without the threat of felony charges at the Federal level are pretty rare.
> That's not possible because jaywalking has a maximum penalty, and the judge can't exceed that maximum penalty.
That's part of the point. The maximum penalty for many nonviolent offenses is absurd.
> One of the reasons we have so many felonies these days is because sentencing someone to jail for a single day on a misdemeanor offense for stealing a pack of gum for the 20th time can require a jury trial just as onerous as a felony offense with a 20 year sentence.
But why is this a problem? The purpose of the trial is to deter the other million people who would have committed petty crimes if they weren't prosecuted. It doesn't matter if the trial costs ten thousand times more than the value of the stolen goods. Moreover, if the sentence would actually be one day then guilty people would just plead guilty without coercive plea bargaining because it's less trouble to serve one day in jail than to waste two weeks of your life going through a trial and then serve one day in jail anyway.
Whereas if you're innocent you may very well be willing to spend two weeks at trial to clear your name, vs. the status quo where if you try to do that you'll be charged with a dozen vague offenses that everyone commits in the course of an ordinary day but are only charged against people who demand their day in court instead of accepting a plea for some other offense the prosecution isn't sure they can prove, all of which have coercively onerous penalties.
So e.g. >90% (or whatever it’s now multiplied by several times) should be entirely ignored because the legal/judicial system won’t have enough resources to prosecute them?
So police should ignore all crimes other than murder? Because that’s what you’re going to get…
e.g. nobody will prosecute any property related and others low level crimes (e.g. damage is less than hundreds or at least tens of thousands). Crime rates will increase and the system will collapse at some point.
If you prosecute property crimes, you don't get a lot of property crimes, because prosecutions for that crime act as an effective deterrent and then the courts aren't overwhelmed with property crime cases even if the few cases they do get are full jury trials. You only get widespread property crime cases when you don't prosecute them.
By contrast, drug use has no theft victim to report the crime and then even harsh penalties don't act as a deterrent because detection rates are low and addiction is a stronger motivator than the spoils of petty theft. So you would stop prosecuting recreational drug use (compensating by increasing addiction treatment programs etc.), and thereby also eliminate all of the associated crimes as drug cartels murder over territory and drug users commit serious robberies to afford street drug prices that otherwise wouldn't cost more than a bottle of aspirin, avoiding the need to prosecute those either.
At which point crime goes down and you can spend more resources prosecuting the remaining cases.
> You only get widespread property crime cases when you don't prosecute them.
Which you won’t be able to do if the cost of prosecuting someone increases several times (i.e. no plea bargains anymore).
> you would stop prosecuting recreational drug use
Aren’t these already (realistically) misdemeanors at most in a lot of places?
Even in the best case e.g. lets say case load decreases by 25% that doesn’t seem enough to balance things out.
I’m confused, though. Are you suggesting legalization? Or just saying that law enforcement should ignore drug traffickers and dealers (because they will certainly continue engaging in violent crime if it’s the latter)
To truly minimize drug related crime you’d need legitimate drug companies to start selling OxyContin/etc. in the candy section at Walmart.
> Which you won’t be able to do if the cost of prosecuting someone increases several times (i.e. no plea bargains anymore).
Well sure you can. It just costs more. But since you're still doing it, the deterrent is still present and then the expensive cases you have to prosecute remain rare.
> Aren’t these already (realistically) misdemeanors at most in a lot of places?
Not for the sellers they're not.
> Are you suggesting legalization?
Yes.
If you could go buy codeine or lisdexamfetamine for $5/bottle from the pharmacy counter at Walmart then there are no more drug cartels, no more drug cartel murders, no more street pushers lacing what was supposed to be MDMA with fentanyl that causes people to OD or get addicted to opioids, fewer addicts robbing people for drug money, higher deterrence for other crimes because police aren't spread so thin, less poverty and desperation because fewer kids have fathers in prisons or coffins, fewer neighborhoods held hostage by drug gangs.
That's a whole lot of crime that just goes away.
More to the point, consider where we are in terms of efficiency. It costs on the order of $100k/year to incarcerate someone. Every one of those drug murders you prevent is saving twenty million dollars worth of keeping someone locked up for two decades. That pays for a lot of two day jury trials for petty theft.
And what dictator is going to implement this perfect solution?
Here's how things have manifestly played out over the past 150 years: procedural rules are strengthened because citizens are afraid of unjust prosecution. Some high profile bad guys, or parade of run-of-the-mill criminals, get off because of said procedural loopholes, after which voters demand politicians expand substantive criminal law to re-balance the equation. Upon which more unjust prosecutions enter the public consciousness. Wash, rinse, repeat.
This is what systemic injustice looks like, and the cycle continues as unabated as ever. On the one hand, you have movements like BLM, which have indeed effected change even in the most conservatives jurisdictions, largely by changes in procedural rules by courts and in policy by prosecutors and municipalities. At the same time, you have #MeToo, Harvey Weinstein, etc, which has resulted in the expansion of sexual crimes and punishments, and elimination of statutes of limitations, partly because procedural protections have made it extremely difficult to prosecute past behaviors, not because they strictly weren't already cognizable crimes.
Nobody is going to lose sleep over Weinstein, but long-term which demographics will bear the brunt of this tightening of the screws through the substantive law? You see the fundamental contradictory behavior here? There's tremendous overlap between the #MeToo groups and the BLM groups, and for both their demands are premised on empathy and justice, but at the end of the day we're going to end up with a harsher system that will further disproportionately punish some segments of the population over others. That's what systemic racial injustice looks like, yet nowhere can you find ill intentions or a desire to oppress anyone.
There's an alternative path, here. Notice how the legal screws have taken centuries to slowly but inexorably tighten without any concerted effort, yet in less than a single generation the normative behaviors of individual judges and other legal professionals, both as regards defendant rights (BLM) and victims rights (#MeToo) has seen a sea change. That suggests that by giving back more discretion to the system, not less, it's possible and, IMO, much more likely we could end up with a more fair system all around. Not guaranteed, of course, but neither is it guaranteed that just throwing more money and resources at the existing system would, even assuming we could even achieve let alone maintain that degree of attention from society. The difference between these two approaches, though, is that one requires trusting our fellow citizens, while the other holds out the (fantastical) prospect of an engineered solution.
> And what dictator is going to implement this perfect solution?
Nothing about it requires a dictator. You vote for politicians who repeal laws that don't have widespread consensus, when enough people vote for them they get repealed. Ideally you then do something that makes it more difficult to re-pass them.
> Some high profile bad guys, or parade of run-of-the-mill criminals, get off because of said procedural loopholes
The procedures aren't loopholes. They're prerequisites for a conviction. They by no means make a conviction impossible, but you have to do the work.
> At the same time, you have #MeToo, Harvey Weinstein, etc, which has resulted in the expansion of sexual crimes and punishments, and elimination of statutes of limitations, partly because procedural protections have made it extremely difficult to prosecute past behaviors, not because they strictly weren't already cognizable crimes.
The problem here is not procedural rules at all. It's evidentiary difficulties. How do you distinguish between someone who consents but then has regrets and changes their story, or someone who has sex with someone wealthy in order to extort them for money, and someone who was actually sexually assaulted?
There is no perfect solution to that, but "innocent until proven guilty" is the only sane one. What you then need is a system that can uphold that standard even when there is pressure not to.
> That suggests that by giving back more discretion to the system, not less, it's possible and, IMO, much more likely we could end up with a more fair system all around.
It suggests that when you give more discretion to the system and the system favors you at this moment in time, you get what you want, for now.
But then there is another election and you may not like what someone else does with that discretion.
> Also how exactly are jury trials superior to e.g. Magistrates Courts in the UK?
The purpose of the trial is to separate the innocent from the guilty, and there is intended to be a presumption of innocence. But because the prosecution has to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt, they'll tend to only bring cases when there is a high probability of guilt -- a good thing -- so then let's say 90% of the defendants are probably guilty and 60% are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
A judge is going to become intimately familiar with that. ~90% of the defendants are actually guilty, so the judge develops the intuition that a new defendant is very likely guilty. That's a presumption of guilt. Soon even the innocent ones are getting convicted, when the whole point of the process was to prevent that.
A jury is a fresh set of eyes who look at the defendant as the only case they're going to be deciding for the foreseeable future and haven't been prejudiced by a parade of evildoers sitting in the same chair. It's also twelve separate people who each individually have to be convinced.
Yet the conviction rate in England was 84 % in magistrates courts (misdemeanors and low level felonies) and 78 % in crown courts (more serious crimes) which is not that different. Especially if we consider how a lot of crimes like DUIs are somewhat open & shut compared to more serious offenses.
> so the judge develops the intuition that a new defendant is very likely guilty.
A good judge wouldn’t do that. Also by and large random people are relatively dumb and biased. Why exactly are they less likely to convict an innocent person? (Let’s assume that the conviction rate is the same in both cases)
> Yet the conviction rate in England was 84 % in magistrates courts (misdemeanors and low level felonies) and 78 % in crown courts (more serious crimes) which is not that different.
The conviction rate can't really tell you anything because prosecutors will calibrate to bring cases they think they can win in a given system. Systems willing to convict more innocent people will have similar conviction rates but more innocent defendants.
> A good judge wouldn’t do that.
What about a human judge?
> Also by and large random people are relatively dumb and biased. Why exactly are they less likely to convict an innocent person?
So make the system (that’s already inefficient) several times more inefficient and then increase funding by a magnitude or two? Certainly seems like a reasonable option.
I bet all problems could be solved using this approach. What could go wrong..
> For example, prohibit plea bargaining so that all convictions require a trial and it's forbidden to impose any penalty for demanding one.
Many in jail awaiting trial are very guilty and the outcome of the legal proceeding is effectively a foregone conclusion. Exchanging a shorter sentence for a plea makes sense for all parties. Prosecutors can then spend their court time arguing more important cases, judges don't have to patiently direct clown shows where guilt is extremely obvious, and the defendant gets a lesser sentence. There is plenty of abuse in the plea system, and no shortage of outrageous prosecutorial misconduct. But that doesn't invalidate the principle of plea bargaining. No justice system is perfect and without plea bargaining every defendant would have to spend a decade in jail, maybe two, before their case makes it in front of a judge. That isn't justice. Unless we assign everybody chatgpt lawyers, judges and juries giving everybody a trial is a practical impossibility.
> Many in jail awaiting trial are very guilty and the outcome of the legal proceeding is effectively a foregone conclusion. Exchanging a shorter sentence for a plea makes sense for all parties.
Suppose we're talking about a case where it's a foregone conclusion. 0% chance that the defendant will be acquitted, never going to happen. Then the defendant should plead guilty and save themselves some time and effort regardless of whether it leads to a lesser sentence, right? You don't need to coerce them because they can't possibly gain anything.
Now suppose that the chance isn't 0%, it's, say, 10%. Should we coerce these people into a guilty plea by giving them a 100% chance of six months vs. a 90% chance of five years? Out of a million of them, a hundred thousand would be found not guilty, so no.
> No justice system is perfect and without plea bargaining every defendant would have to spend a decade in jail, maybe two, before their case makes it in front of a judge.
This is why the right to a speedy trial exists, even though it has been eroded dramatically by basically making it a false choice between "you have your trial immediately with no chance to prepare a defense even though the prosecution has secretly been investigating you for months" and "you waive your right to a speedy trial entirely and rot in jail for years awaiting trial".
The way it ought to work is that the defendant has a right to set a "not after" date where the prosecution either has to proceed or release them from jail and drop the charges, which gives them enough time to actually prepare a defense without opening the door to being detained indefinitely awaiting trial even after they're prepared. The prosecution already has this up until the statute of limitations has run, because they can already wait to file charges until they've prepared their case.
> Unless we assign everybody chatgpt lawyers, judges and juries giving everybody a trial is a practical impossibility.
Or we could just have fewer laws and then assign the resources necessary to prosecute the remaining more important ones.
Notice that if you get rid of e.g. drug laws, you also get rid of all the murders and other crimes that come along with the existence of drug cartels, and the load on the courts goes down dramatically.
I agree with your criticisms of the justice system except that your proposed solutions haven't worked anywhere. Yes the plea practice is abusive and coercive. It has to be because otherwise suspects would exercise their right to a trial, which they can't have. Anything you do to make going to trial more attractive for defendants will result in the backlog increasing or charges getting dropped en masse.
The laws on the books today hardly get enforced. Ross Ulbricht is one of the very few people to go to prison for crypto-related crimes. You probably agree that many people involved with crypto deserve to see the inside of a courtroom, but they won't. So not only is the justice system not capable of processing the people currently in jail (despite copious plea coercion) the justice system has almost completely given up on persecuting many crimes (e.g. fraud), presumably for lack of manpower.
All countries struggle with this resource problem. We want to give everybody a fair trial but we can't. Some countries force pleas on people. Other countries rush trials. Other countries still beat confessions out of people. Different 'solutions' to the same fundamental problem. Unless fair trials get cheap there is no way out.
Sentencing is complicated in the US. Generally speaking, they have a huge range and a standard for computing where one falls in that range, but everything within that range is open to judge's discretion. Life without parole was within that range for the crimes that Ulbricht was convicted of.
This standard is an enormous document, https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines which lays out the rules for adjustments. Evidence is admissible (by both sides!) for sentencing, with a lower standard of evidence and burden of proof, to either raise or lower the sentence within the very wide numbers of what the conviction was for. So the Judge in this case found that the lower burden of proof was met for additional violent crimes being committed (with Ulbricht's legal team having an opportunity to rebut), and that impacts the sentencing calculations.
Not a lawyer, but I have listened to US lawyers on podcasts.
Other acts of those charged are routinely brought up in trials. Fir example, criminals being charged with crime A that already committed similar crimes in the past are used to show that the likelihood of crime A being committed this time is higher.
Sure, but then you should have to have a conviction on those other crimes. It’s strange to consider stuff that wasn’t proven. If the crime was committed and the state is sure, they should charge him and then use the first conviction in the sentencing for the second, if they want to.
That’s not what happens in practice. The other actions of those charged are absolutely brought in as evidence whether they were actual crimes or testimony from others that knew those charged. This happens all of the time.
Yea, and most public discourse is at the level of "I saw a post online about it once". Most people aren't doing deep research before their opinions about things that aren't actually that relevant to their day to day lives. 95% of the world, at best, still has no idea who Ross Ulbricht is even today.
What has always sat odd with me regarding this, is we don't truly know the extent of the fbi's corruption in this. They stole, so it's not hard to imagine they planted evidence too.
A 10 year prison sentence was apt. He did knowingly break the law (the marketplace defense doesn't really apply, since admins had to create the categories that were obviously illegal). A life sentence was ridiculous, and added punishment for unconvicted crimes, however likely, is a gross violation of constitutional protections.
Why this person specifically? And why at this time? Perhaps the discussion shouldn't be about the actual subject of the pardon, and perhaps more about the motives of the pardoner...
These two thoughts are incompatible though, aren't they? Politics and shenanigans around the case aside, the original sentence should have taken into account the possibility of rehabilitation. But he got life without parole.
That said, it was entrapment and everyone involved should be deeply ashamed and prosecuted. At least those two agents did get some wire fraud charges [0], but the entrapment angle got explored because the charges were dropped.
According to Reuters he was found guilty of "charges including distributing drugs through the Internet and conspiring to commit computer hacking and money laundering." In addition to running an illegal market bazaar for 4 years.
They dropped the contract killer charges - it appears that they were fabricated to try to turn public opinion against him and get him jailed. But as soon as they went to trial the charges were dropped for lack of evidence.
I personally find it ridiculous that people agree with the sentencing when you compare to sentences for tobacco industry practices, opioid epidemic, etc..
So many people are in jail for crimes they didn’t commit, or for non-violent offenses that were committed out of hardship and a need to eat.
They gave evidence he tried to have someone killed, and that he saw confirmation it had been done.
Even if the accusation is somehow false and he didn’t order that killing, how many people did he actually kill just by running Silk Road?
I’m so sick of the narrative that aww shucks he’s a good kid from a good family and he just made a boo-boo and didn’t mean to build a multi-billion dollar illicit fortune from trafficking deadly drugs and outright poisons all over the world.
If this dude wasn’t a money-raised white kid from California no-one would care.
What? - whatever nasty stuff happened because of those drugs being distributed and sold still falls back on that guy, and lets be real, some shitty stuff has to have happened with a direct link back to those drugs.
> I think it's clear he did many things in the same vein
It is clear as mud. We now know:
* At least four other people had access to the DPR account, by design.
* One of those people (the person whose murder was supposedly ordered, who has vehemently defended Ross!) asserts that he knew that Nob (who we know who was a DEA agent) was one of those four people.
* Nob is a serial liar, and is now in prison for having stole some of the bitcoin from this operation.
...what about that make clear that Ross was within a mile of this supposed 'murder for hire' business?
Ross Ulbricht was widely regarded by friends and family as a fundamentally decent and idealistic person—if admittedly naïve about the implications of his actions. Those who knew him personally describe him as thoughtful, intelligent, and motivated by a vision of a freer and more equitable society. His philosophical motivations were rooted in libertarian ideals, particularly the belief that consenting adults should have the right to make decisions about their own lives, including the substances they consume.
I just learned that he was an Eagle Scout.
Not exactly the résumé of someone getting locked up and the key thrown away.
Trump clearly values favoritism to a high degree. He is doing exactly as he has promised, running the country like a businessman. If you scratch his back, he will scratch yours. Principles take a back seat to "getting the job done". For other examples, see his changed stances on TikTok, various foreign interests, cryptocurrencies, EVs post Elon support, etc. And in the opposite vein, he abandons support for anyone who challenges his authority on principles.
Pardoning Ulbricht was a campaign promise he made at the Libertarian National Convention in response to it being a popular demand among the libertarians.
I don't think he knows who RA is, I'm betting the cryptobros who ran his rug pulls and NFTs for the last year have his ear after making him millions of dollars.
I mean, I don't know why it's a full pardon, IMO Ulbricht's sentence was far too long and harsh, I'm sure it was to make a point that others should not replicate it, but wouldn't a stay on the remainder of his sentence been a better option here ?
No no no, my friend. Ulbricht was not a lowly drug trafficker (also, incidentally, not black or latino). He was an _entrepreneur_ who built a _marketplace_ that would bring together buyers and sellers, cutting out the middleman, and driving _efficiency_! Basically trustedhousesitters.com, just for illegal drugs instead of pets ;)
He said he would do this during his campaign as a promise, a lot of libertarians voted for him based on this. He delivered on the promise after he won a convincing majority. I'm not sure why democracy offends you this much.
It’s always interesting to see how he’s become a folk hero to some people who can do a lot of mental gymnastics to downplay the fact that he tried to hire a hitman to kill people. It’s weird to read all of the comments trying to discount the attempted murder because it didn’t actually happen.
Me too. 12 years seems like enough, especially considering the sentence lengths other people get. If he tries again, they can catch him again. But running an illegal marketplace with clearly allowing whatever goes, and not receiving any punishment for it? That is wild.
He served 12 years. Feels about right for the crimes he committed. Depending on your political association feel free to put quotation marks somewhere in the previous sentence.
I’d argue the President should not be allowed to issue pardons that are:
(1) Preëmptive (i.e. absent conviction);
(2) To himself, his current or former Cabinet members, or to any of the foregoing’s current or former spouses or children or grandchildren (or their spouses); or
(3) Issued after the presidential election in the final year of their term.
Furthermore, pardons for violent offences or corruption should be prohibited; provided, however, the President should retain the power to commute such sentences, and the Congress should have the power to regulate the manner in which the President may commute such sentences.
(Notably, I don’t believe this would apply to Ulbricht. He wasn’t convicted of a violent crime.)
While I would tend to agree with the first one, and preventing someone from pardoning himself or herself, the rest is a bit much. But it's a moot point anyway. At this point amending the constitution is virtually impossible.
An example of someone who could be pardoned would be someone committing an act of violence towards police to prevent them from enforcing a law which was later considered to be unjust and worthy of revolt against.
I think this is necessary class of pardons. A hypothetical example of a good preemptive pardon would be Congress repealing an unjust law, and the president pardoning anybody who broke that law before the repeal.
>(2) To himself, his current or former Cabinet members, or to any of the foregoing’s current or former spouses or children or grandchildren (or their spouses)
Agree on not pardoning himself or cabinet members. Maybe could extend that to include all political appointees. Politicians shouldn't enjoy special privileges like these. But I'm less convinced about preventing family pardons. Those people (generally) aren't politicians. And, if they plan to abuse the president's pardon to commit crimes, they'd either be asking after the crime and risking the president refusing, or asking before and leaving the president open to conspiracy charges.
>(3) Issued after the presidential election in the final year of their term.
I've grown too cynical about the voters to believe this would matter. Most people don't follow politics closely enough to know who's been pardoned, what they did, and any political/personal connections they had with the president.
If I may suggest a limitation, how about allowing the House or Senate to veto a pardon with a 2/3 majority?
Regarding the substance of your comment, we do not have (IIRC) established judicial precedent for the constitutionality of preëmptive pardons. The practice originated with Ford pardoning Nixon, and has not yet been challened nor withstood judicial examination.
Personally, I'd like to see some of Biden's pardons challenged.
> (3) Issued after the presidential election in the final year of their term.
This is an interesting one for those who are seeking a second term but are at risk of losing
In one message, Ulbricht informed ELLINGSON that “[the murder target] is a liability and I wouldn't mind if he was executed.” In another message, Ulbricht stated: “[the murder target] is causing me problems . . . I would like to put a bounty on his head if it’s not too much trouble for you. What would be an adequate amount to motivate you to find him?” ELLINGSON responded, “[the p]rice for clean is 300k+ USD,” and the “[p]rice for non-clean is 150-200k USD depending on how you want it done.” ELLINGSON further explained, in part, that “[t]hese prices pay for 2 professional hitters including their travel expenses and work they put in.”
Ulbricht later sent ELLINGSON $150,000 worth of Bitcoin to pay for the purported murder. ELLINGSON and Ulbricht agreed on a code to be included with a photograph to prove that the murder had been carried out. In April 2013, ELLINGSON and Ulbricht exchanged messages reflecting that ELLINGSON had sent Ulbricht photographic proof of the murder. A thumbnail of a deleted photograph purporting to depict a man lying on a floor in a pool of blood with tape over his mouth was recovered from Ulbricht’s laptop after his arrest. A piece of paper with the agreed-upon code written on it is shown in the photograph next to the head of the purportedly dead individual.
Later in April 2013, ELLINGSON and Ulbricht exchanged additional messages regarding a plot to kill four additional people in Canada. Ulbricht sent ELLINGSON an additional $500,000 worth of Bitcoin for the murders. ELLINGSON claimed to Ulbricht in online messages that the murders had in fact been committed.
James Ellingson is a convicted federal criminal charged with numerous crimes related to this case.
Tasked with investigating Silk Road he ended up in jail himself, along with his co-workers.
There's a very good reason none of this stuff ever went to trial, it would be incredibly embarrassing for the agencies involved to see the light of day.
No, generally a pardon does not eliminate any civil liability or entitle you to refunds once the assets have been transferred to Treasury. He would still have to answer Yes to having been convicted of a felony and he would still not be entitled to vote in states that do not permit felons to vote.
> Where a person has paid a monetary penalty or forfeited property, the consequences of a pardon depend in part on when it was issued. If a monetary fine or contraband cash has been transferred to the Treasury, a pardon conveys no right to a refund, nor does the person pardoned have a right to reacquire property or the equivalent in cash from a legitimate purchaser of his seized assets or from an informant who was rewarded with cash taken from the pardoned person before he was pardoned.
I am not sure of the legality around his possessions but they are long gone. Even the ones stolen by FBI officers during the course of the investigation.
Until now I oddly never questioned how any government could seize someone's bitcoin and how a government keeps the private keys of their crypto wallets secure.
In 2021, Ulbricht's prosecutors and defense agreed that Ulbricht would relinquish any ownership of a newly discovered fund of 50,676 Bitcoin (worth nearly $5.35 billion in 2025) seized from a hacker in November 2021.[78] The Bitcoin had been stolen from Silk Road in 2013 and Ulbricht had been unsuccessful in getting them back. The U.S. government traced and seized the stolen Bitcoin. Ulbricht and the government agreed the fund would be used to pay off Ulbricht's $183 million debt in his criminal case, while the Department of Justice would take custody of the Bitcoin.[79][80]
Bingo. US always has been about commerce and money. It wouldn’t shock me if Ross has at least a few million hidden in some “lost wallet” printed out in a vault some where. He was smart enough to know he would get caught one day.
I’m all for the freeing him of his crimes when it comes to his crypto anarchic philosophy. But I find it hard to pardon someone for contract killing essentially. Also I’m not an apologist for the FBIs handling of this case either.
According to Wikipedia[1], he was convicted of charges related to hacking, narcotics, money laundering, and more.
But during the trial, evidence was presented that he made murder-for-hire payments, the court found that he did by a preponderance of evidence, and the court took this into account when sentencing him.
So, he wasn't convicted of it, but it is part of the reason he was sent to jail for a very long time.
Trump promised to do this at the Libertarian Party convention. This case is very important to the libertarian crowd. He is a martyr for many of their ideals. After Trump was so well received at the convention the LP, recently taken over by the right faction of the party, put forth a candidate specifically chosen to not get votes so that members would vote for Trump. Trump seems to be a man of his word.
"The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me," Trump said in his post online on Tuesday evening. "He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!"
They seem to be pandering to the more libertarian tech community. This guy appeals to that and to the more radical maga types who want a revolution. I’m sure we’ll see more.
The Biden DOJs bungling of the insurrection, turning a jail into a martyrs club, slow rolling prosecutions, etc is ultimately worse than the insurrection for democracy.
What do you mean? Trump just pardoned or commuted pretty much all of the J6 crowd. One guy convicted of crimes that don't require proving violence beyond a reasonable doubt is pretty tame in comparison. He is one of thousands.
I'm just shocked it was a full pardon instead of a commutation or something. I don't think the US is gaining a ton from keeping him locked up but he still did run an organization he knew was used for selling drugs and other illegal things and a full pardon for that seems weird. I feel like I mainly heard people talking about commuting his sentence
What do you mean "lightly?" He ran an illegal drug market and tried to assassinate a competitor. We gave him the punishment that society has determined one should receive for this. Revoking his punishment is "light."
Someone might have already pointed it out but for me, the sentence of RA is not the main issue, the issue is allowing a single person to stamp through an entire legal system and undermine all of the time and money that is invested in it, even if that person is a president.
I suspect that the idea originally was to give some safety valve but if it is used more than a few times by a President, it makes a mockery of it and it should be removed as a power. How can a President ever decide that the entire legal process is flawed and their opinion is right? If the sentence was too long then change the sentencing guidelines.
> I suspect that the idea originally was to give some safety valve
That reminds me of the early 2000s, where there were a lot of US debates around around terrorism and "harsh interrogations" i.e. torture.
A certain bloc of politicians and commentators kept bringing up a hypothetical scenario where there was a nuclear bomb counting down, and some guy wouldn't admit where it was hidden in a major city. My favorite response to that involved presidential pardons, something along the lines of:
1. "So what? If everything you say is true, then the authorities would simply torture the guy and seek a pardon afterwards. We already have an exceptional mechanism for those exceptional situations, meaning that's not a reason to change it."
2. "Conversely, any interrogator who isn't confident of a pardon is on who does not believe it's at ticking-bomb situation, meaning they cannot justify torturing someone anyway, they just want to do it to make their job marginally easier. That's bad, so it should stay illegal."
It's part of the separation of powers and the system of checks & balances against powers of branches of government.
Congress makes laws and impeaches presidents, courts judge constitutionality of laws and try cases of treason and presidents appoint judges and grant pardons.
You can't have impeachment without pardon, otherwise, there wouldn't be a check against judicial tyranny.
It's a system of checks and balances. The Presidential pardon power is specifically a check on the power of the Federal judiciary.
Regimes have toppled in response to popular uprising against imprisonments perceived as unjust. Having a system of governance without a way to rectify that seems unwise to me.
The check on Presidential authority, in turn, is impeachment. It's not a perfect system by any means, but in my estimation it's a good one.
They literally gave the power of pardons so that one person could right wrongs. Previously, it was used a lot more than it is now. There are lots of people in prison on unfair sentences which are technically legal but still wrong. Sentencing guidelines are just guidelines.
Legal system is very often at odds with public perception of justice, changing the law is slow and does shit for people currently in jail - having veto power for elected officials is a good safety mechanism and helps perception of justice.
Maybe the legal system shouldn't have been used to go after individuals based on political reasons? Wouldn't that be a good start? Fed always win, so send Fed after someone and they will be in jail soon. It doesn't matter what they did or didn't do, this is sadly the way it's done now.
1500 in jail for protesting in DC? Really, less than that in jail after months BLM riots afaik. Sure, jail a few bad boys, but 1500? No way.
Throw a rock at people in power and go jail. Rape and murder is fine, no threat to DC.
I know he wasn't convicted of hiring a hitman, and I know the attempt didn't succeed, but he still tried to kill other people. Moreover, during a Bitcoin conference, he gave a live talk from prison via phone and still lied, claiming they planted the log on his laptop. A full pardon is ridiculous. It's unfair to so many people, including his partners like Variety Jones, also known as Thomas Clark. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure he won't do anything like this again.
He did kill people. That factored into his sentencing[0]: the multiple overdose deaths from heroin and other things Ulbricht sold/facilitated/took a cut of the proceeds of.
He killed children.
- "During the sentencing hearing, Forrest heard from the father of a 25-year-old Boston man who died of a heroin overdose and the mother of a 16-year-old Australian who took a drug designed to mimic LSD at a post-prom party and then jumped off a balcony to his death. Prosecutors said the two victims were among at least six who died after taking drugs that were bought through Silk Road."
It's squarely within the Overton window to impose extremely harsh sentences for people who sell heroin*. Most (?) Asian countries *execute* people who sell heroin. Trump himself has proposed, multiple times over the years, executing US heroin dealers[1,2]—which underscores the incredible degree of hypocrisy behind this pardon.
*(It's also within some people's Overton windows to contemplate the opposite of this, in a framework of harm minimization. I can't steelman this argument in the specific case of Ulbricht. Is it harm reduction to sell heroin? Is it harm reduction to sell fatal drugs to high-school age kids?)
Actual murderers get out in the time that Ross served.
The concept of justice must include an element of proportionality, I would argue that Ross's sentence, for a first time non-violent criminal, was over the top. Without proportionality justice becomes arbitrary, based more on luck and your connections to power.
We punish those we can punish: the little guy. Whilst those running governments, corporations and networks that facilitate repression, hatred and genocide go scot free.
The issue is that so many of the officials that investigated him were corrupt.
How can we be confident any of the evidence was real. He is obviously not innocent but when at least 2 of the investigators went to jail for crimes committed during this investigation it casts serious questions on the validity of the case as a whole.
The police, DEA and Secret service have vast power they can use against the populace. If those same agents are committing crimes then it taints the entire investigation and prosecution. If a cop is found to have planted drugs on past arrestees, quite often a good portion of his other cases are thrown out as well as he has corrupted everything he touched.
It likely doesn't rise to the legal doctrine of "fruit from a poisoned tree" but its in the ballpark.
For the people downvoting me for some reason:
A DEA agent involved in the investigation "was sentenced to 78 months in prison for extortion, money laundering and obstruction of justice"
A secret service agent involved in the investigation "was sentenced to 24 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco following his earlier guilty plea to one count of money laundering."
Because the federal government would never plant a log on his computer in order to obtain a conviction. Next people will be saying the CIA killed JFK. How can we lose faith in the judicial system, fuck, the very government considering how consistently benign and trust worthy its been time and time again.
Genuinely thought we’d never see the day. My feelings on Ulbricht are mixed and have evolved over the decade he’s been in prison.
However, the Silk Road allowed me to try LSD as an 18 year old in a safe(r) way than those that came before me.* It was those experiences that revealed I’d been depressed most of my life, and that it also didn’t have to be that way, by way of experiencing what that would feel like. I went on to seek new experiences, make new friends for the first time in my life, engage with professional mental health support, went to university, and started multiple businesses. It also introduced my staunchly-atheist self to the experience of spiritual/transcendental experiences, and how those can exist separately from, and don’t require, belief in deities or religion.
It can’t be said where I’d have wound up without those experiences, but my own understanding of myself feels pivotally tied to something I couldn’t have gone through without Ross’ actions. Still, I acknowledge it appears more likely that not he tried to have people killed, and regardless of the circumstances surrounding this, that is condemnable.
*Had it not been for an anonymous group at the time, The LSD Avengers, posting reviews using gas chromatography mass-spectrometry and reagent tests of suppliers on the site, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to take the risk of trying what I’d received. LSD is physiologically safe, not to say anything of any psychological risks, but knowing the dose allowed me to enter into the shallow end of the pool, so to speak. Common substitutes however cannot have the same said of them.
If I’d lived in a time and place that allowed for state-funded drug testing (something my own state has in fact recently abolished despite wildly successful trials), perhaps things would’ve not required a Ross Ulbricht to exist in my case, but I see this as a failure of the system and of drug prohibition as a whole.
Ross would’ve existed one way or another I believe, for better or worse, by another name, had he chosen another path. Now he gets the chance to try his life again. I felt the same way.
I would find this easier to celebrate if it was a commutation and not a pardon, or if it was a pardon that went hand in hand with a change in the laws he broke.
I thought it was a ridiculously long sentence compared to what other people have received. 10 years was right. That's enough time. I know that he was accused of hiring a hitman, but he was never convicted of that. It should have never been used in his sentencing. I think the government tried to make an example out of Ross Ulbrich, and it was a miscarriage of justice.
So does this mean the war on drugs is finally over and we're going to stop mass incarceration for non-violent drug offenses? If so, that _would_ be good news.
He also just classified drug cartels as terrorist organizations so drug dealers are now technically facilitating terrorism. Apart from liberating this white collar drug dealer, all of his other actions have escalated the war on drugs. While he was signing these orders, he claimed that drug cartels were responsible for up to 300,000 American deaths annually (a completely fabricated number.)
Not going to post this link to every post where it's relevant, but:
Trump returned to that theme in November 2022, when he officially launched his 2024 presidential campaign. "We're going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts," he said.
You'll note there are comments here saying saying that he generally keeps his campaign promises. On the bright side I don't agree, but on the other hand I think he does often enough, especially for the "well of course he didn't literally mean that" ones.
Very striking to see how the sentiment has drastically shifted, while the facts of the case did not. There is a really cultural shift visible in how this issue is seen on here.
I'd be wary of drawing correlations like this. The people who commented on that thread are not going to be the same people commenting on this one. The topic isn't even the same; in the first thread the topic is his sentencing, and in this its his pardon.
The attraction for people to post on Hacker News is mainly to complain, and so in the first you get complaints the sentencing is too harsh, and in this one you get complaints that he shouldn't have been pardoned. Its not necessarily a cultural shift, just an artifact of the types of discussions people have online.
> Very striking to see how the sentiment has drastically shifted
I'm not sure. I have two questions on that. Is there the appearance of a sentiment shift? I see plenty of people arguing both against and for incarcerating him in both this thread and that old one.
And then if there is an appearance of a sentiment change (which I'm not sure about) is that evidence of a sentiment change or just selection bias? People who are okay with an outcome are much less likely to write a comment than people who are upset. That alone would change the bias of the comments.
To suggest there hasn't been a cultural shift is insane, imo.
I wouldn't argue that both sides have gotten more extreme, rather the political spectrum curve has flattened. There is much less rational discourse in general.
Reddit is a great example. Even 10 years ago you could have mostly rational discussions. Now its no better than Facebook. I saw a post today about people being upset the government is giving OpenAI half a trillion dollars. They didn't even realize it wasn't government money. They didn't want to be corrected.
As someone who's been following this since the beginning, the most striking difference is the assumption that Ross was in fact the DPR ordering hits, which he repeatedly denied. Obviously, he could be lying, but that's the main question for me. Since people now assume he was the one and only DPR (I wonder if people didn't get the concept from The Princess Bride), they assume DPR chat logs where murder-for-hire occurred must have been him as well.
Both threads seem to share a similar sentiment: he should not serve much time for the drug marketplace but should for the murders-for-hire. There's just a difference in how many people believe those allegations and to what extent they should factor into the sentence given the charges were dropped despite the allegations almost certainly being true.
This debate about IQ could have been had yesterday, and I‘m pretty sure I saw a pretty similar debate a few months ago on this site. Not much has changed there at least.
If you're wondering like I was why he is able to tweet from prison, this article explains that he's dictating tweets via phone to his family, and they are sending back comments to him via mail. [1]
Crypto currency proponents benefit from the existence of dark net marketplaces because they are some of the main places for the non-speculative use of crypto currencies. I think Ross and his pardon represent a sort-of metaphor in crypto-currency proponents' eyes for the government's toleration of these dark net crypto marketplaces.
I doubt Trump cares about Ulbricht as much as he cares (for whatever reason) about the continued support of various American libertarians (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and various crypto elites).
While he has made many promises this is significant for being one that he has kept.
Trump went around to a huge number of niche communities and promised to fix their core concerns in exchange for their support. The crypto and libertarian communities are obsessed with freeing Ulbricht. It was honestly a brilliant strategy, and probably the reason he won. Ironic that an authoritarian fascist was able to get elected by enlisting the help of anti-authoritarian communities with a single issue promise.
I am active in libertarian circles and Ulbricht was a cause celebre. The 2024 election was a game of inches, and many libertarians I know voted Trump purely on this issue. It is possible this was a key way Trump eked out a victory.
It's a trite thing to say, but when it comes to Trump it fits the pattern of inside dealing ... I'm guessing he personally will profit from this somehow / someone promised a donation / money.
Two life sentences was a bit harsh. 11 years seems about right to me.
I suspect the idea beyond "Free Ross" in some circles was that his conviction wasn't so much about drug dealing, but rather it was more a political prosecution for popularizing real uses of cryptocurrencies.
This might be a minor thing, but does anyone know if a full pardon will allow him to use an electronic device or access the internet? Often times, people convicted of crimes related to an online activity are forbidden this right, and I wonder if that's the case for him, and if so, what his life would be in this day and age.
It seems like a lot of the opposition to this I’m seeing online is because Trump is the one that granted it.
Ridiculous hyperbole about Ross ‘inventing the Dark Web’ or ‘Trump freed a sex trafficker’ is a great reminder that for some people, their ideological opposition can never do anything right and they’ll condemn anything they do without even a second of consideration.
I’m not an avowed Trump supporter (or even American) but believe this was the right call to make. The sentence was overly harsh and he has both served his time and reformed. I’m glad he has been released.
What’s the overall take of HN here? Was the government overstepping? Is everyone supporting this undoing of his sentence? Are we generally pro free drug trade? Or are we more anti-FBI?
The US constitution increasingly seems like the principles of the Roman Republic after Caesar — a quaint relic that gets regular ceremonial lip service but provides no checks and balances on the leaders.
Presidents of both parties abuse pardon power with monarchic glee. The president now has full immunity. The incoming president and his wife launched crypto-tokens whose only utility is to allow foreigners to send billions of dollars to them anonymously (of course with full identification of the buyer in private communications thanks to the crypto private key, so you can be sure of who sent the bribe).
People are obviously tired and overwhelmed. It's hard to pay attention because Trump has recently threatened so much more: invading foreign allies, military trials for political opponents, using the army against citizens, and so on. When he carries through with just 20% of what he said, it's supposed to be no big deal. But the institutions and norms are destroyed and they don't magically come back if the other party wins.
I laundered money on The Silkroad (sent birthday cards filled with cash for bitcoin). It was a level of criminality I was fairly comfortable with. I do retain some fear that my door would be kicked in some day. Lawyers of HN, Am I in the clear now too? Ross tried to have a guy murdered, after all.
I wonder if the decision to drop the "murder for hire" charges was originally influenced by his existing life sentence, and whether the pardon now alters that reasoning. Is it still possible for him to be prosecuted on those charges?
I think they were dismissed with prejudice, which if true, is a “no”. That said, all prior charges and attempts were federal charges, and nothing in a pardon or federal dismissal prevents an individual state from bringing charges, IIRC. Would be a heavy lift though without cooperation from feds to turn over investigation materials.
Given the farcical nature of those allegations and all that we now know, including that others with access to the Dread Pirate Roberts account assert that the DEA agent making the allegations (who is himself now in prison for attempting to steal some of the silk road bitcoin) had access as well, it will be wonderful if DoJ attempts to bring charges, just to further clear Ross' name.
There are not a shred of evidence that Ross ever had the slightest thing to do with those conversations, and it seems much more likely that the DEA used the DPR account to frame him.
I think that we have to agree that anyone doing this today will definitely go to jail, and is my personal opinion that there must be a punishment. Now, the discussion could be if a life sentence is a fair sentence or not. I personally feel that a life sentence is a disproportionate punishment, moreover if the subject shows a different attitude after being in jail for more than a decade. Ten years time to medidate about what you did is plenty of time to change someone's mind, obviously if you are a person willing to do things differently.
I know values and priorities change over time. that gets reflected in the party platforms. But ee are in a weird place politically... where Republicans are now soft on crime? It's weird.
This is a general question for any reader here who disagrees with the original prison sentence. (Ignore the Presidential pardon for a moment.) What is a reasonable prison sentence for his crimes? 10-20 years?
...and the chemicals he would have supplied are being sliced and diced (padded out, to make more money), and you have to (in my country) go to some pretty dodgy areas to get what you want.
He has admitted his wrong doings and made efforts to change whilst in prison. I doubt he will go straight back to a life even remotely close to before. He was doing good in prison for other inmates and I imagine he will continue doing the same now he has this second chance.
I'm wondering that too. I think there's three options: he either has secret money hidden away, is going to get a cushy job in tech by some fan, or he's going to be working as a walmart greeter in 3 years.
Honestly I'm hoping he gets an X account so I can follow him and see which it is lol
I don't think he should have done any time for the drug-related charges. And 10 years is more than enough for a murder-for-hire in which nobody got hurt. So this seems... just.
This is a rare Trump win. There are many things to criticize him for, but this pardon isn't one of them. I don't think anyone, after researching this case, would be okay with the life sentence handed down to Ross.
Most people in real life don’t even know who this guy is. This is a guy that online people know. I will agree it’s a win, he was unfairly sentenced. I just wish I would have been able to buy from SR. I did get to browse it before it was seized.
When Snowden, is my question. RFK put a lot of words into "if I am in charge that'll be my first thing". Yeah, he's not the president but he's also not nobody anymore.
NGL it would be pretty funny if Snowden gets to return to the west but we hadn't actually fixed any of the stuff he brought forward in the meantime. Not sure what I would do in his shoes... I guess a pardon is pretty impossible for future presidents to get around, TBF
The courage a lot of these whistleblowers have shown is admirable. How the American public outrages, though: Facebook has targeted ads. How they don't outrage: their government is illegally tracking their own citizens' movements and communications including overseas.
Not going to say Ulbricht is a hero like some of the others, but he trail blazed like none before him! And he deserves his freedom years ago.
Why? He did nothing to deserve punishment in Russia. If anything, if Snowden left, I think Putin would be relieved he doesn't have to treat a potential nuisance with utmost care anymore. At the moment he can't really disappear him and has to waste resources monitoring him.
I will take this opportunity to reflect on the fact that I spent some time considering a purchase of certain controlled substances on Silk Road, but failed to recognize that my own purchasing impulse was a pretty good indicator that the currency involved might be worth a casual investment.
Legalities aside, is it more evil to hire a dude to kill your enemy, or to go kill your enemy yourself? (I'd go with the former because if you go kill your enemy yourself you're at least accepting that it may go the other way).
I guess this is why he was upset about Mexico sending drug dealers and murderers - he didn't want competition for our homegrown drug dealers and murderers.
To be honest if Trump would've pardoned him in his first term it would've been way too short of a sentence for what he did. Though I hate the usual libertarian defense that makes him out to be an innocent martyr, I think that 10 years is somewhat enough for what he did. It would have been a normal sentence in a lot of countries outside the US.
Thanks. I appreciate your view on the sentence, but I'm interested in why Trump would issue a pardon.
I'm unconvinced that Trump in 2020 thought Ulbricht's total sentence was okay, but four years later has apparently changed his mind. So who's the client here? It doesn't seem to be Ulbricht - is it libertarians in general? Why does Trump, as a second term president, actually care?
There are credibility issues if you make promises you don't follow up on, especially very public promises that are completely within your power to carry out; there are no limits on the presidential pardon power, barring that it only applies to federal crimes.
I wish this thread were discussing how in America you can get drunk in a bar, step into a 4,000 motorized bullet, kill someone or an entire family, and get a slap on the wrist.
Or it could be different people commenting than on that original thread? And people might have changed their minds? HN is not a monolith. Humans are not static. You don't need to blame it on "politics being a mind virus".
I don't know. I personally know people that lost their minds because of an election. Completely well off people, whose lives are not affected at all by national politics, apart from slight changes in tax rates. They live in a state and city that shares their politics. They're isolated from everything on the national level.
Yet some of these people have rearranged their entire lives around a singular politician. Ended relationships, moved, started therapy or medication.
>Completely well off people, whose lives are not affected at all by national politics, apart from slight changes in tax rates. They live in a state and city that shares their politics. They're isolated from everything on the national level...
>What else would you call that?
This is one of those comments that accidentally reveals more than intended because I would call that "empathy". You are revealing that the only reason you think people should be concerned about politics is when it directly effects them. Some people actually genuinely care about other people and seeing someone elected who has promised to hurt people is a disturbing and troubling turn of events even if they themselves are likely to be safe.
So you’re saying people are making a rational estimation of the various harms caused to their fellowmen, determining that political actions in Washington are the primary component, and feeling bad about the harm?
I don’t buy it. Citing empathy is moral language to justify bad actions.
>So you’re saying people are making a rational estimation of the various harms caused to their fellowmen, determining that political actions in Washington are the primary component, and feeling bad about the harm?
Trump released an executive order yesterday that said some of my friends are no longer considered citizens of this country. Yes, sometimes it is incredibly obvious when Washington is to blame for people's suffering.
>This thread is about people whose well being and ability to enjoy life is ruined by politics
Another facet of empathy is being able to understand other perspectives besides your own. Maybe this was your interpretation of the bounds of the conversation. It doesn't mean that is the only interpretation.
Here are the exact words from the comment I replied to: "Ended relationships, moved, started therapy or medication." I don't think those are signs someone whose "ability to enjoy life is ruined". In fact, I see those as signs of someone enjoying life more by removing or addressing things that sap the joy out of life.
Yes. Needing medication because your friend has visa problems is crazy. They themselves are probably less anxious.
> another facet of empathy
Do you really think political obsession is just a sign of superior morals and humanity?
Empathy should make you less pessimistic about politics because you understand other groups values and incentives. (I don’t claim this description is me)
>Yes. Needing medication because your friend has visa problems is crazy.
There was an "or" in that list of possible reactions. I was not giving an example of a situation in which someone would or should have every one of those reactions. I was directly replying to you by giving you an example of a situation in which it was clear that "political actions in Washington are the primary component" of inflicting harm on people.
>Do you really think political obsession is just a sign of superior morals and humanity?
I never said anything about superiority. That is something you brought to the conversation. Is there a reason you view someone exhibiting more empathy than you as an insult?
>Empathy should make you less pessimistic about politics because you understand other groups values and incentives.
Understanding a person's perspective isn't necessarily paired with the ability to change that perspective. Does knowing a racist might be motivated by fear make their racism less dangerous?
I think you should manage your health and safety first and those closest to you.
You're not helping by inflicting harm on yourself and those around you. If you want to canvas for the other side, donate, volunteer, great. But these people are obsessed and inflict a lot of damage on themselves for no good purpose.
Most people empathize to those that are infected with a virus. It's often out of their control. You can only offer them help and suggest they touch grass once in a while. But you shouldn't feed into their self delusions that self harm and obsession with things out of their control is healthy and a good way to live their life
The empathy you are showing in this comment would feel a lot more genuine if you didn't reveal with your prior comment how little empathy plays into your overall worldview. I'm personally fine, you don't have to waste your time telling me how to live a better life. I was just trying to explain to you what you were seemingly misunderstanding about your fellow humans.
> Some people actually genuinely care about other people and seeing someone elected who has promised to hurt people is a disturbing and troubling turn of events even if they themselves are likely to be safe.
Ya but, it's all a bit silly isn't it? Realistically those people wouldn't be doing any of that unless they were addicted to media and perhaps by consequence emotionally volatile. If I chose not to be chronically keeping up with stuff on a moment to moment basis that only has vague intangible impacts on my life or those around me, specifically online, does that make me less empathetic or less tolerant of having all my time, energy, and attention stolen from me? That's not always the case, but it often is, and if it's actually relevant, you're opting into poor mental health despite having zero control over anything even if you care, so you might as well not be so tuned in; which part is the good part again?
It's a bit fatalistic perhaps, but I feel like the greatest trick social media (and Trump) ever pulled was convincing us we'd be pariahs if we opted out. If not for chronically keeping up with nearly literally every word the new batch of chronies has to say, they might not be saying it.
>If I chose not to be chronically keeping up with stuff on a moment to moment basis that only has vague intangible impacts on my life or those around me, specifically online, does that make me less empathetic or less tolerant of having all my time, energy, and attention stolen from me?
Some people view empathy as an active ability to "put yourself in someone else's shoes". Other people view it as a passive feeling along the lines of "it hurts to see other people hurt". If you can just stop being empathic by not thinking about it, you are in the first group. Some of us are in the second group and can't just decide to ignore it.
Weird part is that these two groups generally belive are not that different in the general. Most of the fight on the ideological side is on marginal differences.
This all is mostly idiotic tribal fight when you hate each other because you just must to hate someone.
I profoundly hope for star trek like civilisation in the future
It’s religious conflict. Nobody cares really about differences in tax rates. But differences in foundational beliefs about the world and humanity will do that.
People generally do not come up with absurd beliefs all on their own, those do spread like a virus and as a consequence of all that social contagion, they do not seem all that absurd anymore to the person who contracts them.
Talk like this is never apolitical. No political change can occur without discussion first and therefore preemptively dismissing political discussion is inherently an endorsement of the current power structures.
There is no way to actually discuss this specific story without discussing politics. A president pardoning someone is an inherently political act and that is only emphasized when it was done on his first day in office and with a statement that includes lines like "The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me." That is all part of the story of what happened here and it involves politics whether you like it or not.
Yes let's use word that need massive essays to explain what one person believes they mean... Like "woke". And not just stick to words we know the meaning of. That surely aid the discussion. /s
Not sure what you’re trying to say, and the (attempted?) sarcasm doesn’t help.
But yes, coining pejoratives like “woke” or “fascist” or “communist” and then going to war with the imaginary beliefs attributed to the enemies who themselves don’t even use the term is indeed not helpful. It’s just childish.
Exactly. If anything, the one thing that’s guaranteed in these types of threads is that someone will make this same tired argument of “aha, but HN back then said differently” as if it’s some kind of gotcha. I used to always look, and not only was it never the same people but the threads are largely more balanced than the original poster let on. It’s like the contrarian dynamic, which dang has to explain over and over and over and over and over again.
Any time a criminal is caught, people want them to do hard time, but people believe we're too hard on crime if you don't use examples. People think the government should spend less, but are far less likely too agree to any specific cut. People thought Musk was a genius until they realised he is also a jerk.
And while it's sometimes different people, it's suspiciously reliably consistent in what you see said and upvoted.
Based on the sheer number of posts that have misrepresented the charges or misunderstood why he was actually in prison, it appears to partially be a lack of knowledge on the case, likely due to time hazing some of the memories. Of course someone will change their mind, and some may have their view influenced by who happens to support him.
"Politics" is a dismissive word for crypto's evolution over the last decade. North Korea ransoming our hospitals, industrial scale gambling and scam enablement, wealthy kingpins buying self-serving policy. Crypto grew up. So did our opinions.
That doesn't change what Ross Ulbricht did, but we can now see him as continuous with a great evil that we couldn't see at the time. With more information, our opinions changed, and they were right to change.
Wow. I thought you were being glib, but the average comment length is noticeably higher in the linked discussion. While length isn’t necessarily a valid proxy for meaningful conversation, this was definitely an eye-opening contrast to the current thread.
Well, that thread is almost a decade old. HN a decade ago was a very different vibe than today.
You are insinuating one thing, but perhaps it is also possible reason is that the same people with those old views of the crimes have grown and their views changed. I know mine certainly have gone that way. I’d have to imagine other users have grown with me.
Nah social media is just about engagement. People who are happy with the article don’t bother to comment. Those who are outraged comment. It’s just two different groups of people commenting
At the time of sentencing, did we already know that the murder for hire plots were created by corrupt Secret Service and DEA agents on trial next door? and all of that was withheld from the defense and the jury?
because that's where the story really jumps the shark. I'm all for some accountability - such as the 12 years in prison already - but that particular case should have been dropped for several reasons, I've seen cases dropped for way less.
The craziest part about that thread is how much the attitude around drugs has changed in the past years. 10 years ago the comments felt a lot more optimistic about drugs and liberalization.
I guess since then, the fentanyl crisis has happened and shown that drugs also have more negative impacts
That people can't change their minds? That HN is a hivemind ? (news flash: it's not , it's more diverse than you actually think) or that everything is attributed to "Politics is a mind virus" ? if so, what do you mind by this term specifically?
I personally, find little substance in such comments. If you have an opinion on the matter (which seemingly you do), then please share it so that we can have a discussion about it.
I think this comment would have got less downvotes if you could have made it somewhat shorter. Walls of text like this just scream Unabomber manifesto to me :)
I’m confused as Trump said he wanted to be tough on crime and drugs and “kill drug dealers”, but he just pardoned one of the worlds largest drug dealers.
He was never a drug dealer, he provided a platform that was used to sell drugs. The pardon was a surprise, however his sentence was unfairly strict and he was clearly made an example out of that hasn't happened to any other platform provider.
Just as an example, there have been investigations in to the use of Snapchat as a method for drug dealers and gangs of drug dealers to access kids to sell them drugs However there has been absolutely zero discussion in the public domain even about shutting it down or requiring new laws to stop this, let alone considering charging the owners.
There is a huge difference between a communication platform that some users abuse for illegal purposes, and a platform whose primary purpose is a marketplace for illegal goods.
Actually the marketplace was just a marketplace, it then was primarily used for illegal goods. It hasn't really ever been proven that it was setup as a marketplace for illegal goods.
I mean I would agree regarding the user base, but it was originally built as a utopian concept for a free trade of goods, akin to the original world of warcraft marketplace.
I suppose it could be made consistent if we posit the existence of another hidden rule. For example, the skin-color or political-connectedness of the accused.
I think you need much more than "feels" to make claims like that, especially as they are directly contrary to HN guidelines, but also because making baseless claims, especially about other commenters, is a meaningless, inflammatory response.
So far you don't know what you are talking about and are making things up. If you do know what you're talking about and aren't making it up, please share your evidence and reasoning.
The two life sentences and 35 years extra that were given to Ross were most certainly abnormal and used to make an example of. I have yet to see this comparison made although if anyone could provide valid reasons in the difference I would be open to listening.
Secondly, the sheer number of posts on this site stating didn't he hire a hitman. No, and there was no conviction of that.
I distinctly remember listening to recordings of him hiring a hitman. It's been a long time and my memory is certainly prone to error, but that sort of thing does stick with you. I especially remember the irony because he also preached about non-violence at some point, obviously until someone's continued existence became inconvenient for him.
I don't agree with that and I don't understand why those charges were not taken to court (I don't believe it was purely because he already had 2 life sentences as when the appeals were going to the supreme court and there was a risk of him winning, it surely made sense to secure him if you had the evidence to proceed with another case). Whether that was true or not though, someone can only be sentenced and punished on what one was convicted of. Anything else is not based in justice or law.
I don't really believe that the US is a country ruled by law any more, but in some idealized land of the law you are probably correct. But you won't convince me that OJ Simpson walking on a double homicide he clearly committed is justice. For Ulbricht, it actually feels like things more or less balanced out, but he did try to have someone killed, and I don't think that's a nice thing to do.
Did the judge conclude, as part of sentencing, that hiring a hit (or two?) was likely?
What reasoning did the judge give for the sentencing? They might involve similar websites but the crimes can be much different. Two people can run the same drug cartel at different times, but that doesn't mean their crimes are the same.
It was pretty out of left field and seemingly uncharacteristic for the him to do this. It's fair to ask why. I think Trump is terrible in every way, think the pardon is fine, but can't help but wonder why and other questions about it
"I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross. The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me. He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!"
Disclosure - I immensely dislike Trump and think Ross Ublricht deserved to be convicted.
That said - There is no evidence that anyone was ever killed, there is pretty thin evidence that he actually ever intended to hire any hitmen (though he may have defrauded people who thought they were hiring hitmen), and a life sentence for non-violent drug trafficking seems draconian. I certainly don't think this should have been one of Trump's priorities (I'm guessing it came through Vance, Musk, or someone else in the crypto community), but I don't have a big problem with it.
Absolute no brainer, he should be celebrated. Countless lives were saved via the harm reduction effect of a peer reviewed, reputation based platform. Of course if we had less draconian drug policy, it wouldn't be necessary but here we are.
> Countless lives were saved via the harm reduction effect of a peer reviewed, reputation based platform.
The basic immorality/pointlessness of the war on drugs aside, I don't know how you can assert this: it's not like there's a chain of provenance, and there's no particular guarantee that whatever grade of pure drugs was sold on Silk Road is the same purity that ended up in peoples' bodies.
My understanding of the Silk Road case is that, at its peak, it was servicing a significant portion of the international drug market. The dimensions of that market include adulteration; Silk Road almost certainly didn't change that.
Anecdotally, Planet Money looked into this years ago and their reporting was that as far as they could tell, drugs on Silk Road weren't less safe than street drugs. Most of them were likely "fell off the truck" samples from the original manufacturers being sold by people with an in on the supply, but no otherwise-easy access to an out on the demand.
Their observation was that reputation mattered on SR a lot and a well-kept reputation was valuable at scale in a way that it isn't for being a street-corner pusher looking to stretch your buck by cutting your supply with adulterants. The smart play was to provide a high-quality product at a reasonable price (the latter being the easiest part since they were bypassing the obscene markup of official channels).
> Anecdotally, Planet Money looked into this years ago and their reporting was that as far as they could tell, drugs on Silk Road weren't less safe than street drugs.
Yeah, I'm not saying they're less safe. In fact, on average, I'm willing to bet that the drugs sold on Silk Road were much safer than their street equivalents.
My point was about large sales: Silk Road moved not just personal drug sales, but also industrial quantities of drugs that were almost certainly re-sold. Those latter sales are impossible to track and (by volume) almost certainly represent the majority of "doses" sold through SR. Given that, I doubt the OP's assertion that SR itself represents a particularly effective form of harm reduction.
Or as another framing: SR gave tech dorks a way to buy cheap, clean drugs. But those aren't the people who really need harm reduction techniques; the ones who do are still buying adulterated drugs, which are derived from the cheap, clean drugs on SR.
You shouldn't assume that all "street transfers" of drugs are peaceful or have a positive outcome for those involved. Harm reduction comes in many forms.
I'm pretty sure my comment says the exact opposite. I'm saying that SR was a massive operation that fueled street traffic, which in turn lacked any of the harm reduction virtues that SR is being assigned.
I'm pointing to the transaction layer. When you get thousands of dollars and product in a room with people you don't know things can get extremely unprofessional very quickly. It's really fun when you discover that most of the currency is counterfeit which happens more than you think.
What you say is also true. So there is a trade here. I'm not claiming it's "worth it," but the alternative without SR at all does seem to be more negative.
The overwhelming majority of drug sales are for personal use. That doesn't mean that large sales weren't made, or that those weren't in fact a significant portion of the site's revenue.
>it's not like there's a chain of provenance, and there's no particular guarantee that whatever grade of pure drugs was sold on Silk Road is the same purity that ended up in peoples' bodies.
The fact that the majority of listings on the site were for personal use quantities suggests that the majority of sales were to end users rather than traffickers.
It's hard to dispute that this saved lives and I would speculate that it saved many lives.
>That doesn't mean that large sales weren't made, or that those weren't in fact a significant portion of the site's revenue.
Nobody made any claim that large sales weren't made, of course they were.
> It's hard to dispute that this saved lives and I would speculate that it saved many lives.
See below; the observation is that the people who were buying individual quantities of drugs from SR were not at serious risk of harm in the first place, relative to typical at-risk populations. Anecdotally, the people I know who bought drugs from SR during its heydey were very much test-everything-twice types.
By contrast, the large sales that SR facilitated almost certainly ended up in street drug markets, where harm reduction would have made a difference. But those people didn't benefit from SR's community standards, insofar as they existed: they got whatever adulterated product made it to them.
This is the basic error in saying "most sales were small": the big sales are what matter, socially speaking.
No no no, he is right. Its safe because if you receive a bad batch of drugs you can leave a negative review on the page of the drug cartel that has your name and address, no chance of that having any repercussions for you at all.
even if its not perfect for every situation it was a lot better then what existed.
negative reviews aren't the only review, absence of positive reviews is a signal, along with a lot of other positive reviews. later markets at least had reviews outside the markets too
if you are in the bulk and resale drug market you probably aren't getting package with your name on it to your home.
Yup. Drugs and the accompanying business disputes (there's a reason street dealers are armed or have armed people around) that would be normal in any other industry are sooo many people's (who would other wise not be violent criminals) entry point to violence. Letting parties remain at arms length yet transact successfully is such a huge step forward compared the prior status quo. Anything that gets buyers and sellers (either at the retail or distribution level) in illegal industries farther from each other is a win as far as I care.
As well as online drug marketplaces? Or would running one without legal trouble require a campaign-contribution booster pack?
What a beautiful political anschluss between people who just want to ban contraceptives and abortifacients, and people who just want to shoot up heroin. Not sure how you square that circle[1], but it's 2025, and here we are.
It's very telling about libertarian priorities when a cryptobro running an online drug marketplace who tried to hire a hitman gets amnesty, while hundreds of thousands of people who have been convicted of drug possession[1] do not. Likewise, somehow reproductive rights are just not a libertarian issue, either. It's not a party of freedom, it's a party of freedom for wealthy men.
[1] Biden gave a blanket pardon for people convicted of marijuana posession, but that's far less important for libertarians than Ulbricht.
I think most libertarians are against the war on drugs and would happily pardon or commute the sentences of non violent drug offenders, but the DPR probably takes priority for them because of the free trade issue compounded with the popularization of a non state-backed currency.
He has both drugs + crypto vs just drugs. *Ignoring the accusations of hit ordering, which I would imagine all librarians cannot excuse.
If they are actually trying to maximize any kind of public welfare utility function, surely commutations and pardons and decriminalization and harm reduction for hundreds of thousands and millions of people, and body autonomy for hundreds of millions more should mean a wee bit more than this entirely transactional act.
These discussions are very interesting. So many red flags from Trump (this pardon, ending birthright citizenship...), and people try to justify these things. America is unfortunately heading for a very dark time. Politics aside, I am rather uncomfortable with the power the president possesses. We were always mindful that there are systems of checks and balances. However, given the current court overturned a precedent (Roe), I am unsure what the future holds. This pardon makes me very uneasy.
I am happy to see that Trump is a man of his word. I voted for him just because of this campaign promise. I would have voted for almost anyone who promised this.
I am very sympathetic to the idea of voting just for Ross. It is unclear to me which candidate would be better, since neither of them are close to my political beliefs at all. It is a deadlock and I seem completely unrepresented. The consequences of voting based on any big issues I care about seems completely unpredictable; politics is a game of lies, smoke and mirrors. So I would perhaps rather vote for the candidate that would definitely save one person's life that is important to me.
What were your number 2 and 3 issues, out of curiosity?
Were there any accompanying policies that you would say, "despite promising to free Ross Ulbricht, I don't think accompanying Policy X would be worth it?"
If Paris agreements cannot prevent tariffs on Chinese EV and Chinese solar panels, which are basically battling climate change on Chinese money, these agreements don't justify the cost of paper they are written on.
Not OP, but yes, immensely. Two different galaxies.
The Paris Agreement is a joke; it has done nothing. It's just a bunch of big-ass politicians and a few celebrities bloviating about not solving the problem.
Look, I'm not disputing at all that global warming is an issue, or that we need to solve it, or that humans cause it, or whatever. But the Paris Agreement and those all other agreements are all about big idiots pretending to do stuff.
Probably the most effective thing we have done globally to combat warming is changing to electric cars, and that's NOT the Paris Agreement. Not even close.
The Paris Agreement is the ultimate politician's move. Global warming is a technical problem and must be solved by technical means.
Ironically, the one person who is doing more than all the politicians combined to solve this is backing the current administration. Twitter is nuts over if he did a Nazi salute, while doing nothing to focus on solving what they believe is the biggest issue in our lifetimes.
Yes. If you stop producing steel (which we kinda did), and just buy it from China instead, you haven't "eliminated emissions". You've merely moved them to a country which is currently not subject to the environmental limits. We are on the same planet - in the long run it doesn't matter where you burn coal.
Until you can prove to me that all courts, judges, attorneys, and juries are above reproach and no innocent people are imprisoned there absolutely should be a method for someone to pardon. Sometimes a pardon will be issued for people you disagree with, but that’s part of it. Just like somebody will say something that pisses you off, but that’s the cost of free speech
Are you proposing to drown mercy and forgiveness in bureaucracy?
Corruption is a valid point generally. And this question can be raised when discussing pardon for president's family.
But is this point valid for this specific case, for the man who already spent 11 years in prison and has no relation to the president?
you say lawful convictions, but yet have not provided any evidence of all convictions being lawful. we absolutely know that people have been wrongly imprisoned. but at this point i feel like i'm talking to a 3month old bot
So I'd prefer to give a good person the power to do good things by pardoning those worthy of liberty, and a bad person the power to make their corruption evident for the world to see.
I see absolutely no reason to have the risk of terrible pardons like we have seen over and over in the US. Clinton pardoned Mark Rich while he was still wanted by the DOJ because he donated a lot. Trump just pardoned everyone convicted in the Jan 6 insurrection.
> “All my Republican donations were dark,” [SBF] said, referring to political donations that are not publicly disclosed in FEC filings. “The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the f—k out if you donate to Republicans. They’re all super liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.”
> Given that he donated nearly $40 million to Democrats in the 2022 election cycle—and he admitted to giving an equal amount to Republicans—his total political contributions may have actually been around $80 million.
Libertarians are the cheapest fucking buys of all time.
They will sell their souls to a man who would grind them into a paste and sell that paste as a protein snack to his cultists-- in exchange for a hollow, symbolic win that either impacts them in no way whatsoever or maliciously hurts people they don't like.
At least with other political groups you have to, you know, BRIBE them.
Libertarians are so used to receiving absolutely nothing that they will mistake the scent of a steak for a full meal.
That hollow, symbolic win could have been given to them by anyone other than Trump. If nobody else thinks a group's interests are worth listening to, don't be surprised when they start chasing after the tiniest morsels.
So Trump keeps his promises to the ones who supported him. Makes one think how what other promises he has made to other people and groups having funded and supported his campaign.
Gentle reminder that we have 1,459 more days of this shit. We really don't have to upvote every crazy fucking thing this guy does, or HN will be nothing but that for the next four years.
I think this pardon just reflects Trump's transactional politics. Ulbricht has sympathizers in high places now because crypto is all over this administration.
In the long run letting political influence trump (no pun intended) the criminal justice system is a very bad thing.
By world standards our criminal justice system is a strength of the country. A pity if we lose that.
I'm genuinely surprised of the reactions on this thread. Trump just announced that cartels down south are terrorist organizations. This means that some of the members will likely die by the hand of the us govt. How is running an open market for drugs, weapons, etc different? Seems contradictory to me, what am I missing?
Hard to square the circle with this. Trump is against China's drug imports (and more generally China's imports), but releases someone convicted of running a "import some drugs from China" business because... well crypto money. Oh money that's it. No contradiction!
It's baffling to me that there are actually comments on Hacker Gosh Darn News of all places suggesting that Ross justly belonged in prison.
He successfully created a tool to undermine one of the most unjust and predatory policies of the US State - the policy of drug prohibition.
He's a damn hero. I don't understand why Trump, who most of the time seems like a simply awful human being with no end of appetite for state power, has chosen to do this, but I'll certainly take it.
It's beyond obvious that voting and other mechanics of representative rule have not succeeded at simple policy change such as ending prohibition. I look forward to several decades of truth trumping power in the form of the internet undermining states, until the asinine mode of political organization known as the nation state is deprecated entirely.
It's hard to know why he wouldn't - he conspired to have people killed, and facilitated illegal activity, i.e. the sale of all sorts of drugs. You might be saying "well, drugs shouldn't be illegal", or even, "well, conspiring to kill people shouldn't be illegal", but they were illegal at the time.
Seems like a legal slight-of-hand, and also unjust and unethical and absolutely ripe for government abuse.
He was punished for the crime of attempting or conspiring to commit murder. Without ever having been found guilty in a trial by jury of his peers determining beyond reasonable doubt that the facts met said crime.
Since no one is posting it, here's Trump Truth Social post on the matter:
"I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross. The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me. He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!"
I’m not necessarily going to comment on his behaviors directly, as everyone else has already stated that in part or in whole. My grievance, my perspective, is that it’s yet another white man getting a slap on the wrist for wrongdoing while doing nothing to correct any of the underlying problems or pardon others who engaged in similar or lesser behaviors.
The war on drugs has always been farcical, deliberately engineered to target minority groups who were opposing power dynamics at the time. It’s why - despite popular opinion to the contrary - cannabis remains broadly illegal at the Federal level and enforced globally through a web of treaties. It’s always been about creating the means of entrapment for those inconvenient to power.
Pardoning Ross smacks of a gift to cryptobros to earn their loyalty to the current powers that be, rather than an acknowledgement of a past mistake. It is nakedly political, pardoning a white man from an otherwise good background while others languish in prison on far less serious charges or convictions. Were any of the drug dealers on his black market similarly pardoned? Were any of his consumers? Of course not, because Ross was a Capitalist making profit in an untapped market, and the others were individuals who were not.
The entire thing is nauseating, and is enough to wash my hands of all involved were the need to dismantle this farce of a war not so grave.
Just a reminder: the condition for accepting a pardon is acknowledging that you did commit the crime in question and accept the court's finding of guilt.
In contrast: Biden didn't pardon Leonard Peltier, the president commuted his sentence. Peltier maintains his innocence.
Can you share more about your first point? A brief search shows the 1915 Burdick supreme court case said that accepting a pardon can imply guilt. However, it doesn't seem to say that acknowledgement or acceptance of guilt is a requirement by the recipient of the pardon.
I was just trying to understand how it works, because the way presidential pardons work is bizarre to me. The pre-emptive pardons seem even more bizarre if what you say is correct. I wasn't trying to engage in an argument. I do feel sceptical about whether you are correct, but i wouldnt know since i barely know anything about it at all.
tl;dr? Cratermoon cannot in fact cite a source for their claims.
This sort of shit is why people can't reasonably trust accusations of logical fallacy on the internet. You can't just yell whataboutism whenever you don't want to answer challenging questions.
So if you start a website and facilitate thousands of drug deals and get lots of people to ask the president to pardon you, and you’re white, you can get a pardon. But for everyone else you can’t. Even if you’re in prison for possession of drugs for more than ten years.
Also if you try to overthrow the government you get pardoned which I would have guessed approaches treason.
I felt the same when Biden pardoned the judge who put kids in jail for pay, or the nursing home CEO who took money away from the elderly to buy yachts, but I'd decided that pardons were effectively for sale (tho likely by barter) -- seeing Biden close out his term and Trump open his term with pardons has been kind to those who'd like to compare and contrast, but they both mostly just appear to be paying down debts.
He’s white and that can’t be left out of it. Let’s not pretend race doesn’t matter in any of these things. It is a fact that he’s white and I’m guessing ALL of the Jan 6th people are too.
I knew people who were wringing it out of medicated patches and sniffing it out of Afrin bottles during high school in the 90s. I also knew someone who ODd and died from tainted/fake pills they bought from one of The Silk Road's (immediate) successors.
Some number of people also OD on "traditional" street drugs every day. So, this is really not a sound argument.
Where's the paper bag that holds the liquor?
Just in case I feel the need to puke
If we'd known what it'd take to get here
Would we have chosen to?
So you wanna build an altar on a summer night
You wanna smoke the gel off a fentanyl patch
Aintcha heard the news? Adam and Eve were Jews
And I always loved you to the max
I see those people in my personal life, too. Ironically, they're also the ones who regularly drive drunk and do a little cocaine now and again because _it doesn't really count_.
I have nothing in particular to say about the dead comments in this very young thread, but they're sort-of-interesting comments to have been killed so quickly!
Is it due to HN policy? I guess they're subjective and ideological, and prone to starting arguments rather than debates.
Maybe "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity." or "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."?
I'm honestly just curious as a conscientious internet citizen lol
> I have nothing in particular to say about the dead comments in this very young thread, but they're sort-of-interesting comments to have been killed so quickly!
[dead] is different than [flagged][dead]. [dead]-only (no [flagged]) means they're auto-dead, they aren't killed by someone reviewing the comments (moderator or users flagging). One of the two commenters was shadow banned years ago but still gets vouched for occasionally (including by me at times). The other one was shadow banned (looked through their history) 11 days ago, with a comment from dang at the time stating as much. They also get vouched for on occasion, based on their comment history.
> Maybe "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity." or "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."?
dang does usually respond to people with something like that first, then for people who get repeatedly flagged or repeatedly engage in certain kinds of behavior, he bans them.
Just to add one point, flagged comments are mostly flagged by users (as opposed to mods). We can only guess why users flag things, but from looking at a sample in the current thread it's probably because they're mostly flamewar-style comments and/or political-battle style comments (or both). Those aren't good for HN because what we want here is curious, thoughtful conversation.
Nothing wrong with HN in particular. Every polarising discussion on a platform with moderation or up/down voting system ends up this way. This structure is fantastic for technical discussions just not amazing for politics
Removing moderation or voting systems (simple chronological comment sorting) creates another set of issues so this problem can't be solved without entirely changing discussion formats
> This structure is fantastic for technical discussions just not amazing for politics
No, it's not. Because the same magnification effect causes the causal, simple and correct sounding to float to the top and the nuanced "<signs deeply> so I dealt with this for 20yr and here's the deal" takes that nobody wants to hear because they're not simple and easy wind up at the bottom but above the flagrantly wrong crap and the trolls.
There's a reason that nothing with real stakes adopts this format and technical discussions that matter still mostly happen in some sort of threaded format that doesn't allow voting or any sort of drive-by low effort interaction to effect much.
Format like this is good for driving interaction, which is why public facing websites use it for their comment sections.
Interesting -- what other system could you possibly have, other than votes...? I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting. I guess traditional forum threads (sometimes with votes, a-la GitHub) are nice, but ultimately that's just trading "correct sounding" for "early commenter".
Otherwise, the only thing that comes to mind is StackOverflow functionality where OP can mark a single answer as "accepted" and push it to the top instantly (which obv. wouldn't translate well to general discussions).
A more complicated system is too complicated, but if you could emoji react to a comment (from a very limited set of emoji), and then allow people to assign weights to each emoji, so someone who likes jokes could say :laughing-face: comments rank high up in the list but someone who was more dour could set their default view to be negative for them, then you'd have something a bit better than merely up or down. you could then set the default view to be heavily in favor of what you want the site's culture to be.
the four disagreements apply to a comment section as well: the comment is factually wrong, the comment lacks information, the comment. draws a different conclusion from the same set of information, or the comment is philosophically opposed to my viewpoint. For an online comment system, spam is another category.
This conversation is presently flagged. Why? When Ross was sentenced HN had a discussion about it with more than 600 comments. His conviction has been discussed numerous additional times in other threads throughout the years. His pardon is plainly on-topic for HN, and this discussion is a necessary followup to those previous discussions.
Of course it's on topic. Why did users flag it? Probably some combination of not liking the event itself and fatigue with political stories. But that's just a guess.
In any case, we turned the flags off when we saw it.
It is much more on-topic than the Musk thing. HN has been debating this conviction, in intricate detail, since 2015. Meanwhile, you can just go to any news site from CNN to Fox to the Guardian to see the Musk thing. There's stuff to talk about with the Ulbricht story, and basically nothing to talk about with the Musk thing, except for subsets of both sides who are just itching to have a flamewar about it.
The Ulbricht story is also in the news. I don't see that there's a ton to say about it that hasn't come up in the previous (exhaustive) discussions that you mention. The people who thought Ulbricht was prosecuted unjustly are happy and the people who didn't are less happy (unless they thought the sentence was too harsh). I suspect that we just disagree about the significance of the Musk story.
The problem with the Musk story isn't simply that it's a news story; it's that it's only a news story. It's important to understand that this isn't a question of the significance of either story. Important things happen around the world every day that aren't good subjects for HN threads.
I don’t agree that the Ulbricht story is more than just a news story, but in any case, my issue is not with that story being unflagged.
HN is, as you know, chock full of enormous unflagged threads about news stories involving Elon Musk that amount to little more than “Elon Musk says something on Twitter!” It may well be that the mods would happily flag all these submissions into oblivion if they had the time. But I don’t think it’s a good look to have all of this trivial discussion about Musk on the site and then defer to the submission guidelines (reasonable enough in themselves, but lightly enforced in Musk’s case) now that he is in a position of power within the US government.
This isn’t about individual moderation decisions necessarily being wrong or unjustifiable in isolation (though I do think the 'but it might cause a flamewar!' excuse is applied with wild inconsistency). The issue is that avoiding political flamewars on a tech news site in 2025 is a fundamentally different proposition than it was in 2010.
All of those "Elon Musk says something on Twitter" threads are worth flagging. They're insubstantial, and I can't be the only one here who would like a lot less of that guy in his life.
I'll spare you the detailed argument for why Ulbricht is clearly not "just" a news story.
Given there are at least thousands if not millions of people who "provide online forums," and pretty much this single one is in prison, I have to wonder if there's something unique about this case?
I don't know anything about this guy. Is there really nothing unique about his case?
Silk Road was, at its height, uniquely successful and making an absolute mockery of the United States government's capacity to regulate drug trafficking. In addition, he fashioned himself an anti-establishment persona, going by the handle "Dread Pirate Roberts" online.
He was unique in his magnitude of success. Governments can successfully magnify their enforcement ability by making an example of outliers.
There are multiple examples of federal law enforcement making examples of particularly brazen instances of flouting federal law that are disproportionate to the actual harm caused. Kevin Mitnick is a classic example.
Here's the thing about the US federal law enforcement: there aren't actually a lot of them. In a country of 380 million people, there are 38,000 agents. Google employs more people than the FBI. If the US citizenry decided to take collective action against them, the federal domestic police force alone could not stand against the citizenry.
This shapes where they apply their resources. To be most effective, they need to be visible so that people don't start to think of them as toothless, because mass-resistance to their general police activities would actually work. So they pursue cases into the dust to generate high-profile images of lawbreakers having a really awful time to discourage other lawbreakers.
He was prosecuted because he broke US drug law. But he was prosecuted to the extent he was prosecuted because Silk Road had made headlines as something untouchable by federal authority. That's the kind of Capone energy that the federal law enforcement cannot abide and survive as an institution.
Yes, it was the biggest drug market on the dark web at that time, and the 50,676 bitcoins seized by the feds from then is today worth 5,3 billion dollars to give you an idea.
Also there was a long side story with disappeared bitcoins, presumably stolen by federal investigators.
The seven offenses in question: distributing narcotics, distributing narcotics by means of the Internet, conspiring to distribute narcotics, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiring to commit computer hacking, conspiring to traffic in false identity documents, and conspiring to commit money laundering
A judge bypassed the jury and prosecutor and sentenced him as if he hired hit men and admitted doing so. The sentence upgrade was based on a preponderance of evidence, whereas they would have had to proven beyond a reasonable doubt had he been charged.
Framing this as judicial activism is false. Many sentencing arrangements include - with the agreement of the defendant (since it is their rights in this case) - to have other related activities factored in exactly this manner.
It happens all the time in pleas and diversion agreements, so don’t frame it as a reckless lone judge going off the reservation.
do you know that is actually the case ? i've been trying to find the text of the pardon and haven't been able to yet. can only find Trump's description of it as "full and unconditional"
This was a pandering to get Libertarians' votes. It has nothing to do with the crime itself. I wouldn't commit any crimes and expect to get away with them unless I anticipated becoming the pawn in someone's scheme to get elected.
But MLK also talks about moral obligation and not other forms of obligation.
He was not trying to create a free for all where everyone gets to decide which laws are okay or not, because he (and jefferson) were not complete morons.
> Considering that his rhetoric was very much based on Christianity, it's clear what standard of "unjust" he was applying.
Considering the diversity of standards of justice within the history of Christianity (which, in just the US, includes—relevant to this topic—MLK, sure, but also the Southern Baptist Convention, founded explicitly in support of slavery), I don't know that having rhetoric grounded in Christian theology tells much of substance about the standard of justice one is appealing to.
Touche, however there is plenty of evidence of people throughout history making this assertion, including MLK.
He was trying to create a more just, egalitarian society. I don't understand how you can consider acting in accordance with leading research on successful drug policy "moronic"?
Is it unjust to prohibit the sale of illegal drugs, weapons, etc.? Society has good reasons for regulating certain goods. I regularly see people in my community who are enslaved by fentanyl and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. The society I live in decided to make selling it illegal. What is unjust about that?
As I recall weapons weren't permitted on the platform.
The society didn't decide, the ruling class decided to use drug policy to attack their own citizens.
History shows that prohibition is an abject failure. The fent epidemic is symptomatic of this failed policy.
If they actually cared about the epidemic, addicts would have access to regulated, pharmaceutical grade heroin whilst also having ready access to treatment.
But then we'd have empty prisons and the police would be free to solve real crimes so we can't have that.
> addicts would have access to regulated, pharmaceutical grade heroin
We tried that, it was called the opioid epidemic and Purdue was the pharmacist. We had readily available, doctor-prescribed, high quality narcotics available to anyone who wanted them and the result was an epic disaster that cost thousands of lives.
>We tried that, it was called the opioid epidemic and Purdue was the pharmacist.
Not really, this was a case of a private company deliberately pushing narcotics for profit without oversight or any associated increase in access to treatment options.
Now the "opioid epidemic" has been replaced with a "fentanyl epidemic" which is objectively a much more dangerous drug with absolutely no regulation and murderous cartels instead of doctors - and we're still throwing people in prison for the crime of being addicts rather than treating it as a medical issue.
I don't know the stats (or if it's even possible to accurately collect statistics due to prohibition) but I'm fairly certain this costs more lives than the short lived opioid epidemic.
Is Trump pushing for broad drug decriminalisation? I feel like that would be necessary for this pardon to make sense on the basis of current drug laws being unjust.
Wasn't he also continuously complaining about how mexicans are importing all the drugs to the US (whether or not that statement is even factually correct)? He also recently designated drug cartels as terrorists. So all in all I wouldn't say he is for the decriminalisation of drugs.
Not exactly, fentanyl epidemic was specifically started by one family seek profit and ousted doctors to over prescribe it while claiming it was mildly addictive.
The war on drugs have caused immeasurable harm due to failure to understand most people use drugs either as escapism or as a tendency.
There are healthier middle grounds we could explore where e.g. advertisements are banned and individuals could register themselves as being banned from participating in certain addictive vices because they don't consistently have the willpower to quit or don't want to tempt fate trying it (and make it a crime to sell to an individual who has voluntarily banned themselves), but it's hard to argue that The War on Drugs has been in any way just.
I expect in such a society, certain groups (e.g. Mormons) would normalize banning yourself from vices the day you turn 18.
What is just is decided both by an individual and the society they exist in. "It is one's moral obligation to fight injustice" is a pretty common tenent to hold. Injustice can be city laws encouraging anti-homeless spikes. Injustice can also be genocide in a remote country. Those injustices get fought in very different ways. One can be handled by individual vigilanteeism and peacefully petitioning local governance. The other might require global war.
In my personal belief, everyone[0] has the right and moral obligation to fight the injustice they care about at the level they can manage. If that's handing out water at the protest or inventing penicillin, do what you personally can do to improve the world.
[0]the average layperson, obvious exceptions for power/money apply
Sure, but the facts matter. Making millions of dollars by operating a marketplace for illegal drugs is not even close to the same ballpark as protesting a draconian anti-homeless law, let alone resisting genocide!
The only reasonable argument for drug legalization, in my opinion, is the libertarian one - the idea that you should be free to take the drugs you want to take. I am sympathetic to this argument. I am someone who is able to make wise decisions about the drugs I take. But I also recognize that millions of my fellow citizens are not. The harm to society from drug addiction and overdoses outweighs the benefit to me getting high whenever I want.
I mean strictly speaking the people voted for Trump, so collectively they're all okay with this.
Of course Trump's platform was enormously based on law & order and combatting the drug trade, which he seems to think should still be actually illegal and is not ending the war on drugs so, I don't know - make of that what you will.
Maybe Thoreau? That's more authentic and gets at similar themes. On more than one level considering his circumstances and run-ins with law enforcement.
”Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison."
But there were also abolitionists at the time, even amongst that class. Jefferson not being among them does, actually, diminish his standing and his views on justice. This quote, for example, does not acknowledge that there are also laws which are unjust to obey; such as the owning of human beings in chattel slavery.
Jefferson did, certainly. He was instrumental in starting a war from what I understand.
Ross though? The government alleged it but never bothered to prove it. Furthermore the government agents involved were laughably corrupt, so anything they alleged needs to be taken with a massive grain of salt. For all anybody here know, they fabricated the entire assassination story to distract the public from their plot to loot Ross's money (which unlike the assassination stuff, has been proven in court.)
I don't see how this benefits the American economy, jobs, or national security. I do see that for a cohort of people in the Libertarian community this was held to be a central Tenet: Ulbricht was their "hostage" just as the Proud Boys thought their leader was.
But, I can't see how this becomes net beneficial in Congress, or in the wider economy. At best it's providing lower friction movement of goods and services. They tend not to go to Federal Tax collecting exchanges, so I cannot for the life of me see how this helps the exchequer, but maybe thats the point?
Do you think it's possible the 11 years he spent in prison could have had any rehabilitation effect? Or should we jail anyone who ever commits a crime to a life sentence?
Whether Ulbricht is a changed man is somewhat immaterial to the signaling to other young would-be drug kingpins that the President thinks you shouldn't be punished so harshly for setting up online black markets.
I agree: online black markets should be free trade. If drugs were legalized, even fewer issues would exist, and it would be easier to isolate the actual crime which imposes negative, third party externalities like traffiking or violence.
B) I don’t see this sort of leniency being offered to other drug dealers, in fact, the Trump administration wants to designate Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations.
C) a day 1 pardon communicates that it’s a top priority of the administration that drug dealers and cop killers (Jan 6) get freed.
D) he was convicted by a jury of his peers who know full well what a judge would sentence him to. Now Trump comes out to overrule that.
The time to change sentencing would have been pre-trial. We tried doing that, but that was a massive loser electorally.
E) it wasn't merely commutation, it was a pardon. A pardon means that President is declaring the defendant not guilty. A commutation merely reduces the sentence.
Hyperbole much? I for one am happy that these Americans who were politically targeted and serving 4 years of prison time especially for the violent crime of trespassing have been giving their lives back.
The message is clear: don’t weaponize the American justice system against its own citizens.
And Biden just commuted the sentences of mass murderers and child killers. What kind of message does that send?
Pretty sure she is currently in jail.. if not, she's finished doing the time she was sentenced.
Her husband took the fall, whatever the facts actually are, and got a longer sentence.
SBF - well the scale, number of laws violated, duration, number of victims, profile of victims, complete lack of contrition, etc would be why he got a much longer sentence.
A possible line of reasoning is that drugs should be legal, but the property and violent crimes committed around them shouldn't be, in the same way that adults are legally permitted to drink alcohol, but they're not legally permitted to drive drunk. The "ruining cities" is about the crimes, not the drugs themselves.
That's the logically consistent line of thought, yes. Which is one I don't particularly disagree with, because of the harm the war on drugs has caused.
But the inconsistency comes from people advocating for a black market drug site and bending towards the far right. The same people who in the same breath also further criminalize drugs, reduce access to things that help addicts while arguing that drug dealers should be deported and our streets swept.
The logical inconsistency is that 'their' drug dealers are conducted by people of virtue therefore they did nothing to break the law. And not being willing to deal with the actual fallout of said illegal drug empire.
Political coalitions are not personifiable, contiguous entities. There are disparate groups of individuals aligned on certain issues and at each other's throats elsewhere. That said, political hypocrisy isn't uncommon, but in this case you may be over-generalizing.
Most libertarians considered the Silk Road a place to buy psychedelics like LSD or mushrooms or experimental synthetic drugs (not that these don’t come with numerous risks). Not a bulk heroin warehouse. So the perception is different from that of a wholesale fentanyl clearing house.
Just because the far right complains about 'drugged out zombies' ruining cities thanks to drug smugglers from Mexico, doesn't mean libertarians think that. Libertarians have been opposed to the "war on drugs" for decades.
I think thats a biased answer and strawman argument. He made a platform where anything coudl be sold as he was a libertarian. It actually echoes what the ethos of hackernews is, to build a product everyone uses.
He didnt sell anything, so your metaphor doesn't correlate at all.
Also Aaron las literally a CEO of a company. Im not complaining about Aaron, he did have higher thoughts on how to help society but my point was about entrepeneurship.
If you want to come onto a ycombinator forum and say "hey this website creator was bad", then argue the case without comparing him to "user" of the site, which was my pretty simple point. Otherwise you just make yourself look bad.
I do not agree with his behaviour, I am saying he made a site, and got into trouble because of what happened on it. This sets a precedent that affects startup entrepeneur. Its a simple concept I am discussing. So dont strawman this.
I want you to convince me, but if you need to be logical.
Saying "this is my ideology" is not really all that believable if you stand to make millions with that ideology. I don't know what's in his hearth of hearths and to be honest I don't really care. All I'm saying it's just not comparable at all.
Not going to try and sway you here but to learn more, read or listen to "American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road".
yeah I only know a limited amount, but I found the sentence to be super harsh at the time for a website owner and as we can see form all the comments, the fact he got punished so harshly has implications on ycombinator as well most of the poeple here are website owner.
I wont watch your video as it clearly is a hit piece by the title. If it had just had an impartial "An investigation into Ross" then I would have.
The fact you suggested a video source with a clearly biased source make me think less of your argument.
EDIT> Also I am not sure if you downvoted me, I upvoted you as I appreciate your time in sharing your view. thanks.
I really wonder who benefits from this. Trump only does things that are good for him, or those close to him. I realize he's been making connections to the crypto world, and has his own meme coins. Does pardoning Ross somehow make crypto more valuable?
It’s also just good politics. There are a vocal group of voters that are in favor of this, so it gets those people on his side. And no reason not to (politically), as most people just don’t care about this topic, or if they do and disagree with the decision, this isn’t going to be the action that moves the needle for them on how they feel about Trump or the Republican Party.
Partisan caricature is not a reliable starting point for logical inference or deduction. To answer your question - on the campaign trail he attended a convention of libertarian organizers and promised them that if he won he would free Ross, and has followed through on that promise today.
A video from Reason magazine a few days ago[0] mentioned a deal between the Libertarian Party leadership and Trump in which they selectively didn't run their candidate in several states in order to help Trump. If this is true, Trump could have reneged, but evidently decided whatever political blowback for pardoning Ulbricht (which is probably small potatoes at this rate) wasn't worth the credibility cost.
For all his many defects and cloudy motives for doing it, Trump deserves applause for this. It's with actions such as this that he also shows why he's a genuine maverick of a president, with who it's genuinely possible to expect deeply unexpected actions (for better or worse).
For all his talk of being progressive and cultivation of a youthful maverick image of his own, you would have never seen such a move from Obama and forget about it under the mealy mouthed Biden or a hypothetical Hillary administration. With Trump, rather uniquely and singularly, it happened.
Ulbricht made many mistakes, less so morally but definitely legally, of the kind with which he could have expected to cause punishment to rain down upon him, but the way in which his case was managed and the way in which he was sentenced truly were both disgusting in numerous ways.
They were classic examples of prosecutorial and political vengeance and give much truth to Trump's own description of the same as "The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me. He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!”
If you in any way mistrust heavy-handed government prosecutions and persecutions, it's hard to disagree much, even if it's also not hard to imagine Trump being just as abusive in other contexts where prosecution of enemies would suit his interests and personal vengeance.
Now if we see him pardon Snowden too, i'd happily give a standing ovation.
Before someone here smugly chimes in about how Ulbricht also tried to hire out a murder by contract, bear in mind that this accusation was riddled with holes, suspicions of entrapment and in any case wasn't formally used for his sentencing, AND still wouldn't justify the kind of onerously grotesque sentence that was dumped on him. Pedophiles who committed child murders have been sentenced to less than Ulbricht was.
the fact that he will never pardon Snowden tells you all you need to know: this pardon was pandering and suits his own purposes. there are no higher principles here besides quid pro quo.
Trump is literally into the second day of his presidency, nobody can know whether he might or might not pardon even Snowden for some reason of his own. I had zero expectation of a pardon for Ulbricht yet here it is and it's more impressive than Obama's pandering (but to me still applause-worthy) pardon of Manning, though none came for Assange.
I disagree that it was pandering to the LGBTQ lobby.
I agree Assange should not have been pursued at all.
You can't directly compare the two situations. Manning was a US citizen, serving a sentence in the US. During Obama's term, Assange was not yet accused of any crime in the US, so there was no presidential pardon to be had, though Obama could have dropped the extradition request.
Biden did eventually reach a deal with Assange that allowed him to count time served -- essentially the same as commuting a sentence, so along the lines of what Manning got -- and return to Australia.
So in the end, Assange and Manning were both freed after serving time.
> Obama could have dropped the extradition request.
Yes he could have. And did not. Whereas Manning was freed, because s/he had sponsors in the right lobbies.
> Biden did eventually reach a deal with Assange
Mostly driven by the UK government, because it would have looked bad to deport a journalist on the orders of our colonial masters. And again it took years, when it could have been done in a minute - like Trump did with his allies. Because the reality, beyond words, is that the Democratic establishment is basically as much an enemy of the free press as the Republican one is, when in power.
Those of you downvoting this comment, I sincerely wonder if it's because you really think Ulbricht deserves to rot the rest of his life in prison despite a deeply flawed, openly vengeful trial and a sentence that simply doesn't usually correspond to any of what he was convicted of in most cases, or because you simply can't, emotionally, approve of anything Trump might do, even if you'd otherwise agree with it.
I'd say either posture is an insult to your own capacity for reasoned thinking, but I am curious about which kind of insult it is.
Trump doesn’t care about Ross’ parents or their donations much.
What he did care about were libertarian votes. There was a deal that libertarians will support Trump if he promises to free Ross. This is on record, you can find it.
Hacker news absolutely loved this 1700 comments which makes me want to list all hacker news threads ordered by most comments because these are usually the best ones
This thread really shows how unhinged the community is. Dude hired contract killers and ran the most prolific darkweb forum for whatever. He's not some martyr. He's just a bum.
The sympathy for this guy from so many of you makes me sad.
The messages show he wanted and thought he was getting people murdered. But that's perfectly OK because it was actually the evil FBI he was talking to!
Tangentially related: I had the disconcerting experience of reading a Wired article about his arrest[1] while unknowingly sitting about six feet from the spot where he was apprehended. When I read that the FBI agents had stopped at Bello Coffee while preparing their stakeout, I thought, huh, interesting coincidence, I just had a coffee there.
Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me, and suddenly as I was reading I could look up and see exactly the chair he had been in, where the plainclothes police had positioned themselves, how they had arranged a distraction.
Having this tableau unexpectedly unfold right in front of my eyes was a fascinating experience, and it certainly made the article suddenly get a lot more immersive!
[1] https://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-2/
EDIT: to be clear, I was not present for the arrest. I was reading the magazine, some years after the arrest, but in the same place as the arrest. (I didn’t qualify the events with “I read that...” since I thought the narrative ellipsis would be obvious from context; evidently not.)
Sorry, it went over my head a bit, you read about his arrest while he was being arrested?
He was being arrested in the article, not IRL. When I say “Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me” I mean that I read
> He went... past the periodicals and reference desk, beyond the romance novels, and settled in at a circular table near science fiction, on the second floor... in a corner, with a view out the window and his back toward the wall.
and realized that I was in the Glen Park public library, at a circular table near science fiction on the second floor, in a corner with my back to the window, and facing directly towards where the article had just said he had sat.
I see so you accidentally retraced his footsteps from years prior and then realized it as you were reading about it.
> He was being arrested in the article, not IRL.
So the article lied that he was arrested?
Cute
Then he realized that he was Ross Ulbricht all along.
That’s because they are describing the inner workings of their visualization systems.
They saw him walk in because he was where it happened. The image of Ross, and others, was in mind, however.
I had the same confusion initially, interestingly chat GPT gets it:
So while wolfgang42 wasn't there when Ulbricht was actually arrested, their realization created a vivid mental image of the event unfolding in that space, which made the story feel more immersive.
In short: they were reading about an old event, but it happened to occur in the same spot they were sitting at that moment. Hope that clears it up!
> their realization created a vivid mental image of the event unfolding in that space, which made the story feel more immersive.
Glad that ChatGPT, probably like GP themselves, is a visualizer and actually can create a "vivid mental image" of something. For those of us with aphantasia, that is not a thing. Myself, I too was mighty confused by the text, which read literally like a time travel story, and was only missing a cat and tomorrow's newspaper.
Legitimately and I say this was absolutely no shade intended. This is a reading comprehension problem, nothing to do with aphantasia.
He clearly states that he was reading an article, he uses past tense verbs when referring to Ross, and to the events spelled out in the article. If you somehow thought that he could be reading an article that ostensibly has to be describing a past event as he was seeing it in real time that is a logic flaw on you.
It has nothing to do with what you can or cannot visualize. All you have to do is ask yourself could he have been reading an article about Ross’s arrest while watching it? Since nobody can violate the causality of space time the answer is no.
This isn’t just you this is everybody in this thread who is reading this and going this is a little confusing. No it’s very clearly him speaking about a past experience reading an article about a past event.
I realised what was going on, but I did a double-take at:
> Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me
The problem is that two past events are being described, so tense alone cannot distinguish them. Cut the readers some slack; the writing could have been better.
Done for effect: it felt to the OP as if it was the present so the writing conveys that, while elsewhere making it clear the arrest was not the present.
To follow the tense and delivery of the previous sentence, it would have been clearest to say
"Then when Ulbricht..."
That "then" always does a lot of heavy lifting in English prose.
Yes, same here.
I am as baffled at the responses and appreciated this explanation as it was helpful to me to work on my communication style and expresses a lot of similar frustrations I have. Like what is actually going on here? this isn’t shade at anyone, I just feel like people are losing some fundamental ability to deduce from context what they are reading. it’s doubly concerning because people immediately reach to an AI/LLM to explain it for them, which cannot possibly be helping the first problem.
Agree. This entire thread is weird. How do so many people in this thread have such obvious reading comprehension issues?
On a similar note--I've noticed that HN comments are often overwrought, like the commenter is trying to sound smarter than they actually are but just end up muddling what they're trying to say.
Perhaps these things are connected.
If an LLM clears up a misunderstanding, I am having trouble seeing that as a bad thing.
Maybe in 10 years we can blame poor reading comprehension on having a decade of computers reading for us. But it’s a bit early for that.
Who will think if LLM is doing all the thinking?
The problem is that people already have piss-poor reading comprehension. Relying LLMs to help them is going to make it worse than it already is.
I wonder what is going on? I’ve noticed this getting worse for a long time to the point I’m not sure it’s my imagination anymore. I usually like to lambast whole word reading as a complete failure in the american school system that contributes to this, but I think it’s likely something else. Shorter attention spans?
Long form reading is dying.
We have a multitude of immediate distractions now.
Books build richer worlds & ideas. But without learning to love books very early in life, which takes a lot of uninterrupted time, they don’t come naturally to most.
I used to read a few books a week, virtually every week. Sometimes two or three in a long day and some night. I still read a lot daily, interesting and useful things in short form. But finding time to read books seems to have become more difficult.
I do think the comment had something about how it was written that made it hard to follow. I understood the first sentence. But then I got to
> Having this tableau unexpectedly unfold right in front of my eyes
And the metaphor / tense shift caught me by surprise and made my eyes retrace to the beginning. I still got it, but there was a little bit of comprehension whiplash as I hit that bump in the road.
In some ways, we're treated to an experience like the author's as we hit that sentence, so in that sense it's clever writing. On the other hand, maybe too clever for a casual web forum instead of, say, a letter.
Agree this is a consequence of people reading too fast and reacting.
Isn’t it at least equally likely that one would be more prone to confusion if one was a visual thinker?
I don’t think we can infer anythin about how LLMs think based on this.
Right. I'm not claiming the LLM has visual imagination - I suspect that OP has it, and that ChatGPT was trained on enough text from visual thinkers implicitly conveying their experience of the world, that it's now able to correctly interpret writing like that of OP's.
It's a strange feeling, watching the AI get better at language comprehension than me.
I made a similar mistake on the original comment as you (I read it as "Ulbricht returned to the cafe, he actually sat down right in front of me while I was reading the story about his previous arrest here, and that's when I realised it was the same place"), and also thought you were saying that you think ChatGPT has a visual "imagination" inside.
(I don't know if it does or doesn't, but given the "o" in "4o" is supposed to make it multi-modal, my default assumption is that 4o can visualise things… but then, that's also my default assumption about humans, and you being aphantasic shows this is not necessarily so).
As a visual thinker myself, I was also confused by how the story was presented. ChatGPT did better than me.
You could also say that ChatGPT erred similarly to the original writer, who was unclear and misleading about events.
We needn't act like they share some grand enlightenment. It's just not well expressed. ChatGPT's output is also frequently not well expressed and not well thought out.
There's many more ways to err than to get something right. ChatGPT getting OP right where many people here didn't tells us it's more likely that there is a particular style of writing/thinking that is not obvious to everyone, but ChatGPT can identify and understand, rather than just both OP and ChatGPT accidentally making exactly the same error.
Why would that be more likely? Seems like OP and ChatGPT (which is just many people of different skill levels) might easily make the same failure to communicate. Many failures of ChatGPT are failures to communicate or to convey structured thinking.
Because out of all possible communication failures OP and ChatGPT could make, them both making the exact same error, in a way that makes the two errors cancel out, is extremely unlikely.
Feel the AGI
One, ChatGPT isn't a "visualizer."
Two, I have aphantasia and didn't picture anything. I got it the first time without any confusion.
Are you seriously asking ChatGPT to read things for you? No wonder your reading comprehension is cooked. Don't blame aphantasia.
Reducing any judgment out of your comment, you have to admit that the commenter's action was a successful comprehension strategy they learned from and can use in the future without chatgpt.
Okay, that's actually pretty wild. I totally misunderstood too, but the response from the "AI" does indeed "clear it up" for me. A bit surprised actually, but then again, I suppose I shouldn't be, since language is what those "large language models" are all about after all... :)
Indeed. But their is something surprising here, however. people like chomsky would present examples like this for decades as untracktable by any algorithm, and as a proof that language is a uniquely human thing. they went as far as to claim that humans have a special language organ, somewhere in their brain perhaps. turns out, a formula exists, it is just very very large.
> chomsky would present examples like this for decades as untracktable by any algorithm, and as a proof that language is a uniquely human thing
Generatove AI has all but solved the Frame Problem.
Those expressions where intractable bc of the impossibility to represent in logic all the background knowledge that is required to understand the context.
It turns out, it is possible to represent all that knowledge in compressed form, with statistical summarisation applied to humongous amounts of data and processing power, unimaginable back then; this puts the knowledge in reach of the algorithm processing the sentence, which is thus capable of understanding the context.
Which should be expected, because since human brain is finite, it follows that it's either possible to do it, or the brain is some magic piece of divine substrate to which laws of physics do not apply.
The problem turned out to be that some people got so fixated on formal logic they apparently couldn't spot that their own mind does not do any kind of symbolic reasoning unless forced to by lots of training and willpower.
That’s not what it means at all. You threw a monkey in your own wrench.
The brain has infinite potentials, however only finite resolves. So you can only play a finite number of moves in a game of infinite infinities.
Individual minds have varying mental technology, our mental technologies change and adapt to challenges (not always in real time.) thus these infinite configurations create new potentials that previously didn’t exist in the realm of potential without some serious mental vectoring.
Get it? You were just so sure of yourself you canceled your own infinite potentials!
Remember, it’s only finite after it happens. Until then it’s potential.
> The brain has infinite potentials
No, it doesn't. The brain has a finite number of possible states to be in. It's an absurdly large amount of states, but it is finite. And, out of those absurd but finite number of possible states, only a tiny fraction correspond to possible states potentially reachable by a functioning brain. The rest of them are noise.
You are wrong! Confidently wrong at that. Distribution of potential, not number of available states. Brain capacity and capability is scalar and can retune itself at the most fundamental levels.
As far as we know, universe is discrete at the very bottom, continuity is illusory, so that's still finite.
Not to mention, it's highly unlikely anything at that low a level matters to the functioning of a brain - at a functional level, physical states have to be quantized hard to ensure reliability and resistance against environmental noise.
You’ve tricked yourself into a narrative.
Potential is resolving into state in the moment of now!
Be grateful, not scornful that it all collapses into state (don’t we all like consistency?), that is not however what it “is”. It “is” potential continuously resolving. The masterwork that is the mind is a hyoerdimensional and extradimentional supercomputer (that gets us by yet goes mostly squandered). Our minds and peripherals can manipulate, break down, and remake existential reality in the likeness of our own images. You seem to complain your own image is soiled by your other inputs or predispositions.
Sure, it’s a lot of work yet that’s what this whole universe thing runs on. Potential. State is what it collapses into in the moment of “now”.
And you’re right, continuity is an illusion. Oops.
Huge amounts of data and processing power are arguably the foundation for the "Chinese room" thought experiment.
I never bought into Searle's argument with the Chinese room.
The rules for translation are themselves the result of intelligence; when the thought experiment is made real (I've seen an example on TV once), these rules are written down by humans, using human intelligence.
A machine which itself generates these rules from observation has at least the intelligence* that humans applied specifically in the creation of documents expressing the same rules.
That a human can mechanically follow those same rules without understanding them, says as much and as little as the fact that the DNA sequences within the neurones in our brains are not themselves directly conscious of higher level concepts such as "why is it so hard to type 'why' rather than 'wju' today?" despite being the foundation of the intelligence process of natural selection and evolution.
* well, the capability — I'm open to the argument that AI are thick due to the need for so many more examples than humans need, and are simply making up for it by being very very fast and squeezing the equivalent of several million years of experiences for a human into a month of wall-clock time.
I didn’t buy that argument at all either.
Minds shuffle information. Including about themselves.
Paper with information being shuffled by rules exhibiting intelligence and awareness of “self” is just ridiculously inefficient. Not inherently less capable.
I don’t think I understand this entirely. The point of the thought experiment is to assume the possibility of the room and consider the consequences. How it might be achievable in practice doesn’t alter this
The room is possible because there's someone inside with a big list of rules of what Chinese characters to reply with. This represents the huge amount of data processing and statistical power. When the thought expt was created, you could argue that the room was impossible, so the experiment was meaningless. But that's no longer the case.
if you go and s/Chinese Room/LLM against any of the counter arguments to the thought experiment how many of them does it invalidate?
I'm not sure I'm following you. My comment re Chinese room was that parent said the data processing we now have was unimaginable back in the day. In fact, it was imaginable - the Chinese room imagined it.
I was responding to the point that the thought experiment was meaningless.
Yeah, whoosh for me.
Just as an additional datapoint, since I’m confused by fellow commenters’ confusion—I thought your narrative was clear, colorful, and entertaining, and I hope you’ll keep things so literary and engaging in your future contributions too :)
As with so many matters of crime, punishment, and high dudgeon, the physical reality of the situation always feels so banal. Dread Pirate Roberts’ lawless dark kingdom, where he commissions trans-national assassinations… looks a lot like a nerdy dude’s laptop on a municipal library table.
Yes, I thought it was an interesting blend of past and present. If this were a scene in a show or movie it could be edited beautifully - the reader, sitting alone in a corner, looks up and in a lucid, almost psychedelic way, the past comes to life with Ulbrict sitting in front of him, that unfold as he continues reading.
> Yes, I thought it was an interesting blend of past and present.
Surprise: OP time traveled.
Until you looked over his shoulder at his Bitcoin account balance rising dramatically in real time.
Huge amounts of income can even make something as boring as an online digital scrapbook tech sexy.
I also wasn't at all confused.
Regarding your edit. The first paragraph kind of lines up with you reading about it. But the second one is kind of confusing, and I think it's because "then" can mean two different things here. You meant "at the time of his arrest". If you casually read it without cross referencing the first paragraphs context, you might think it means "as I was sitting there".
And there's nothing in the following sentences that corrects this garden path assumption.
>Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me
Would not confuse as many if you wrote
>At the time of his arrest Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me
Or even clearer
>At the time of his arrest Ulbricht had walked into the public library and sat down at the table which was now directly in front of me
His writing employs a little bit of poetry in order to capture his feeling. Not all writing benefits from being as clear and bland as possible. HN should probably read some non-fiction books from time to time
I have read at least 1000 European and American novels, play, poetry etc. and never had a single issue.
The comment you refer to is just poorly written.
Not sure which novels you’re picking but in my experience novels are frequently more ambiguous and harder to parse than the parent comment, often on purpose. If you’ve really ’never had a single issue’ maybe you’re not choosing challenging texts
That is it! Another HN genius knows it all! Perhaps end your sentence with a full stop if you are lecturing.
Are you sockpuppeting? Lollll
Agreed. It was well written.
The focus wasn't on the exact timeline and facts of the situation. It was on what it felt like as he read the piece.
Why is he describing emotionally a factual event? He is leaving facts up to assumptions. I suppose sure, his intent was to confuse people. It worked.
Do you mean fiction books?
Whoops, yes I did
I think they want to confuse us.
Wow, you've totally cracked the mystery. This explains why all the commenters are at each other's throats - half of them are reading it one way and half are reading the other way, and only one of the two ways makes any sense.
Yes, it took three reads before I worked out what the story was trying to say.
Even just adding one word "Then Ulbricht had walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me" would be enough of a clue.
Exactly, that was my point about then being a word that can be interpreted in two ways, and the following sentence does not error correct this assumption.
If you read it one way, it's almost impossible to not be misdirected, because the following sentence works with both meanings.
If you include the had this would be enough of a clue to correct the incorrect assumption. Although it still might make for slightly bumpy reading.
But now It doesn't feel the same as the original comment
I used to live in Glen Park at that time and I vividly remember seeing Ross working as a cashier at the Canyon Market, helping me bag my groceries. It was probably around the time he was starting the Silk Road. The place where he was arrested was also my favorite table at the Public Library, where I used to go work. It is incredible to be that close to history.
> When the FBI agents stopped to have a drink I thought
You mean "when I read the part where the FBI agents stopped to have a drink I thought"?
This part makes your comment super confusing. Where you there then or later?
I believe they are suggesting an experience of imaginatively visualising the events of the arrest linearly as they were narrated in their read-through of the article, serendipitously aided by being physically present at the same location, and are referencing the article's narration partially in the present tense to similarly immerse us in medias res as we follow their remark.
Alternatively, they are themselves Ross Ulbricht, describing an out-of-body fever dream or post-traumatic flashback. This seems ... somewhat less likely.
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Singular "they" dates at least back as far as the 14th century, and I've yet to meet a person who objects to it but does not use it themselves now and again without even noticing if you observe them speak enough. It's entirely integral to English.
The interlude during which some pushed for "they" to be exclusively plural, was a mere brief blip in the history of the language.
It's also a couple of centuries older than singular "you", so if you want to complain about a pronoun changing between singular and plural, that's a better candidate.
In commonwealth english "they" can and frequently does work to indicate a singular person.
Here it's clear the word is referring to a singular stranger.
What word would you use instead in this specific case?
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I’ve been writing they to refer to individuals in the third person for five decades. Usage of they as a neutral singular pronoun began in the 14th century. Stercus alibi iace, outrage monkey.
It's so funny how outrage poisoned partisans have such crushing issues with pronouns. The word 'They' has been used to refer to individuals for hundreds of years. Get a life
> It's so funny how outrage poisoned partisans have such crushing issues with pronouns.
They might just be illiterate.
Let’s all be charitable.
Ok, and in this case, those pronouns are...?
I dont know, ask the commenter - he who reads OPs story and comments on it, projects himself into it when commenting on it.. there is no fixed answer to this.
There is a fixed answer: the neutral pronoun "they" which English speakers have been using for 700 years.
If you're not a native English speaker and need help with this then do feel free to ask.
Many of us here have spoken English since birth and correctly used "they" in the manner above for several decades.
It's obvious what is meant given the context...
I thought that starting my story in media res would make for a better dramatic effect, but it seems I overestimated my audience and went a little too heavy on the narrative ellipsis.
Boo! Don't blame the audience!
> Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me, and suddenly as I was reading I could look up and see exactly the chair he had been in, where the plainclothes police had positioned themselves, how they had arranged a distraction.
Alternately:
> Ulbricht had walked into the public library
gives the game away.
If you still want to play around a bit:
> I could see where Ulbricht walked into the public library. The table he sat at. I looked up and saw where the plainclothes police had positioned themselves, how they had arranged a distraction.
That way you are leaving some ambiguity, but are not directly lying with the tenses.
Well, a lot of times the audience is to blame... There are many people that are stupid, aren't trained in style figures of writing or just not trained in reading in a way that allows for complex conceptual frameworks. It also happens in software: someone writes great code, it's very complex and some people don't understand it and blame the author of writing unreadable code. Its easy to call something unreadable if you don't understand what it's saying. Let me bring it differently: it takes two to tango. I found his story interesting and engaging. Let me bring it in another way: Sometimes the joke is brilliant, but the audience just doesn't understand it. It's not a bad joke or a bad comedian. It's a bad audience.
To go into the meat of this: he is imagining it while reading in the same location as the incident happened. This is a style of writing. It's definitely not wrong.
To paraphrase the asshole quote: "if one person misunderstands you, that's their fault; if everyone does, it's yours". The same goes for your comedian analogy: sure, you can tell a brilliant joke in French to a Chinese audience, but why?
I think you could have told it as experiencing the events without making your post confusing, but you'd have to redo your first paragraph. Your first paragraph is external, meta, and places his arrest in your past, which throws off the effect when that suddenly changes in the next sentence. It's not the audience's fault that that is hard to parse.
> it seems I overestimated my audience
I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, somebody who aspires to be a better writer. But, no, this clarifies that you're just pretentious.
Can you form vivid mental images in your head?
Many of us can't. Personally, for nearly three decades I thought the ability to vividly experience a book this way was just some overused and extremely exaggerated metaphor - and then I discovered aphantasia is a thing, and I score close to top of its severity scale.
So perhaps it's less about your starting point, and more about describing a frame of mind some in the audience don't have, and can't relate to.
Curiously, I don't recall ever seeing this particular style of writing before, in any of the books I ever read.
I found it interesting and could visualize you as you were visualizing it while reading. The only part that made me go back was I thought he sat down to your table until I reread you could see the table he sat down at years ago.
> I overestimated my audience
How many languages do you speak? A large part of this site speaks at least two, and usually English is not the first one of them.
I've seen this type of thing recently and also have been told some comments were "obviously" meaning something else. I think people must've stopped reading books and lost interpretation skills.
I enjoyed it, personally.
I liked the way you wrote it, I could picture you sitting in the library, picturing the arrest yourself :-).
The reactions remind me of a philosophy class I had, where the professor went for a thought experiment in order to explain an idea. "Imagine a world where ...". There was a physicist in the class who kept interrupting the professor, saying "well that's not possible because of how physics works". I would have asked him what he thought about Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings; could he enjoy them at all? But he ruined the class for me so I didn't :-).
Imagine a world where I grab you by the shoulders and throw your smug ass out of the classroom!
You're not a physicist, are you?
I had a similar experience watching Mr. Robot. There’s a scene where it shifts to first person PoV and the voiceover says something like “am I seeing this? Is this real?” … and it was EXACTLY the PoV I had every day walking out of my office on 36th st back then.
I understood exactly what you meant and that is an awesome experience
This is so off topic. Or maybe not.
I once walked home after an evening of some friends and beer.
As I came up to my house it was dark but I clearly saw a little person walking through my back garden. About 3 foot tall, at the most, it seemed. And they were holding the hand of a smaller person half their height. Walking together, no hurry at all.
I just froze and watched them walking away, and turn a corner.
The feelings of disbelief, but wanting to believe were crazy.
I came out of my shock. Ran the length of my home and managed to see mother and child raccoons now walking on all fours.
They must have walked 20 feet on their back legs together, holding hands.
For a minute of my life I was actually Alice in Wonderland and there were tiny people who walked gardens at night.
You met some tanuki, 100%.
Thanks. That was a connection worth knowing!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bake-danuki
Yes
Maybe the single most confusing comment ever
Not really. If you've ever read fiction--like, at all--it's intuitive.
also single most irrelevant comment ever
My kids used to go to that library! We lived in the neighborhood (Glen Park- one of the "gems" of San Francisco) and the downtown is almost like a little village (except with California levels of traffic and trash). It was a bit weird to think that my kids were probably reading books while this guys was, uh, transacting his business nearby.
This is why I love SF. It’s so small.
You can walk anywhere, and there’s a good chance something big happened nearby.
I assume you mean "I could look up and see exactly the chair he had been in" figuratively?
I mean, it’s possible that the library had rearranged their chairs in the intervening years and that exact one was now at a different table, but it was certainly a chair in the same location.
this is Neurath's library¹.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurath%27s_boat
for the record, I appreciated your creative prose and enjoyed the trippy narrative
This is unrelated but you just did a wonderful job of explaining why I love history so much. There’s something so exciting (to me) about deeply researching an event, going to where it happened and seeing the land (or library) come alive with images of the past.
Good writing!
You did a Boondock Saints!
THERE WAS A FIREFIGHT
What's the symbology there?
I think that nick was comparing the magazine writer to the detective overly dramatically re-creating the scene of a crime in boondock saints:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsuH1msEkvM
BTW Boondock Saints is like one of the dumbest movies of all time, they made a behind-the-scenes documentary about how the film failed because of how arrogant the directors/screenwriters were. It's so stupid, it's great
He walks through a crime scene and exultantly visualizes the events that were happening in that exact spot during the crime. Its a memorable sequence.
Give it up for Glen Park.
It would be morbidly neat if that article is printed out and put on the wall over there.
I read this article when it was first published years ago, and it is written so well I still "see the movie" in my head when I think about it. Your experience must have been next-level.
I'll share my experience, too: I live near Glen Park and was in Bello that day, taking up one of those coveted seats, as all this was happening. I recall being aware of a lot of police cars outside, and perhaps seeing the phalanx around Ross as they walked past the window. Clearly something big was going on, but I stepped outside and the street was already back to normal. Shrug, perhaps I'll hear about it on the evening news. Not a peep. :-)
It was only some months & years later that I heard about Glen Park, the library, and Bello being part of the drama, and other local landmarks. To this day I keep hearing about other local details. (I learned a few months ago that his group house was on Monterey Blvd, not far from the conservatory).
Looking back, I had noticed a number of 'out-of-town' business people in Bello around that time. Glen Park is a busy local scene, but gets very few visitors, so they stuck out. Clean cut, business casual, but not FiDi types. They were cheerful but not interested in chatting. Who would go to a cafe and not want to socialize, I wondered? I thought perhaps realestate people.
I went to Bello frequently then, and must have seen Ross there a few times too, but I only vaguely recall once or twice. Something drew my attention to his laptop, maybe it had an EFF sticker on it? But he likewise didn't seem interested in conversation. I do recall once he was talking with an older man, in his 50's or early 60's, about libertarianism.
Literacy and nuance is hard with written words — especially when a large chunk of your audience is either a non-native English speaker or and Adderall addict. I feel like this community is heavily laden with both, and surely there must be some significant overlap between those groups.
In other words, it was too well written
i had a similar experience working in copenhagen. read an article about copenhagen sub orbital rockets, looked up and out my window and my eye landed on the rocket i was just reading about. weird.
Before I got to the edit I was convinced you were in The Neverending Story
I had a similar experience years ago when I read about the same thing in an Airbnb less than a kilometer from the library.
It was almost you not you!
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Wait, you were reading about his arrest while he was being arrested? That article was written after his conviction?
He first read the article while sitting where Ulbricht was when Ulbricht was arrested.
Plot twist: wolfgang42 is Ulbricht
Clearly time travel. He had brought the article back in time so he could read it as it happened.
By the way, I thought the post was written well. It did take a little thinking but it was an interesting take.
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The responses to this comment show that people's ability to read and comprehend text has decreased dramatically in the last few years. Frightening...
If every reply is pointing out how confusing it is, maybe the original comment is just poorly written.
You’re not going to hear from the people who thought it made perfect sense, so the replies are a pretty biased sample. (This is also true of the parent complaint about reading comprehension, tbh.) But I see three confused replies and three corrections (not counting my own), so it doesn’t seem to be every reply.
I think the problem is that I took an artistic style in an attempt to paint a picture for the reader, but I did it in a long thread on a technical forum where people are probably mostly skimming rather than engaging in literary criticism, so I should maybe have anticipated this would be a problem.
I thought it was fine, I wasn't confused for a moment. The only real problem here is that HN attracts a certain brand of nerds who are inclined to think it's hilarious when Maurice Moss says "Yes, it's one of those", many of whom are likely frothing right now because I just committed a comma splice in the previous sentence.
> The responses to this comment show that people's ability to read and comprehend text has decreased dramatically in the last few years
Or they show that GP wrote an ambiguous piece of text.
Or HN just has a lot more international readers now and English isn't their first language.
I was afraid of this too but it turned out to be presbyopia
Aaron695's comment are always fun to read. For some reason he's kinda 86'ed here.
I (and others) have vouched a few of his comments back to life, he does write a good comment.
I don't know the original reasons for his apparent perma-dead'ing (users can option to "show dead" and see these comments) but I suspect it's due to going fully Australian wih swear words and invectives when he gets a bit passionate about something .. or even just adding colour for a lark, as we do.
An engineering forum may not be the place for creative prose, too.
You may be interested in looking at your experience though this lens: https://youtu.be/y61vpQ9cZ8s?si=jMXF35v6-2t5w0cj
I feel torn about this because it seems there was good evidence for attempted murder- and I cannot understand why they never tried him for that (seemingly larger) crime. However, for the crime he was actually found guilty of, the sentence was unfair and unreasonable. It seems they unethically sentenced him for crimes he was not even ever charged with.
I'd also argue he almost certainly saved a huge number of lives with Silk Road: the ability to view eBay style feedback and chemical test results makes buying illegal drugs far safer than buying them on the street. On Silk Road people could buy from a reputable seller with a long history of providing unadulterated products, and could view testimonials from other buyers who had sent the products for chemical analysis.
Not going to comment on the murder part as that’s well discussed here.
I would take issue with assuming that it was net positive with ratings. Given the anonymous nature handling bots spamming fake reviews would be even harder to catch here, and you ultimately don’t know who ended up addicted/hooked/DUI’s etc from the easy availability this provided. I’m not sure the total effects could ever be qualified, but it’s not like unadulterated drugs are automatically safe. Just look at how many lives pharma-grade opioids ruined, even though they were “safe”.
That’s also not to mention guns and all kinds of other dangerous & illegal parts of it.
I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel.
(SWIM’s experience with Silk Road):
For LSD there existed a third-party forum, where a group of (supposedly) vendor-neutral, unaffiliated individuals would purchase samples from vendors, send them to private or state-sponsored labs around the world and publish/discuss the results (often with online links to lab results).
Yes, of course vendors could have also attempted to infiltrate these forums. But as enough of these functions were provided by/for the community, the profit incentive tilts. If you ran a vendor account on the Silk Road, your effort was better spent maintaining/improving good infosec and mail/postal security. Some techniques they developed were quite innovative, the professionalism was evident.
Ross’s story is fascinating and tragic- as everything that’s said for and against his character is generally true. Silk Road was built on naive yet admirable ideals. It fostered a special community, some of which really did reflect those ideals. He got in over his head, and really did try to have someone killed.
Though, the details on that latter point are a bit more complicated- authorities had infiltrated Ross’s inner circle- the motive and the ‘hitman’ himself were fictional. Ross still took the bait though, which is pretty damning. Until that point, they weren’t sure they had a sufficient case on him.
Is that why they never prosecuted the attempted murder? It sounds like entrapment.
That's the point people don't seem to be getting about anonymous reviews- if the review is more costly than the value it provides the seller, they won't do it, and it's fairly easy to make that the case. A separate enthusiast forum where the reviews are from people with a long history of high effort engagement is a good example of that. That's basically the idea behind crypto as well- making false transactions is more expensive than the value it could return.
The truth is no one knows why they didn't bring those charges, or the real details behind the evidence or what happened in those interactions. It's pretty much shrouded beneath things like: -DOJ released some details and screenshots, but -the FBI agents who were involved in investigating this topic were like arrested for stealing bitcoin from silk road or something, so their work is hard to find credible -general lack of clarity as to the identity of the person running silk road at the time this happened
>It sounds like entrapment
The law is murky and seems to hinge on the court's opinion on whether the person who committed the crime would have had they not been influenced by an officer. The police being the ones to start the conversation doesn't rise to the level of entrapment. The police deceiving you into wanting to commit a crime may rise to the level of entrapment if the courts find you wouldn't have done it otherwise (the example I found that illustrated this best was "Hey there's a warehouse full of valuables let's go rob it" isn't entrapment but "Hey this guy said he's gonna kill your kid you need to kill him first" probably does absent any reason to believe you would have killed him without being deceived first). My guess would be that the grey area, plus the relative ease with which they were able to secure a life sentence for the other charges, is why the murder-for-hire charges never went to trial.
> the example I found that illustrated this best was "Hey there's a warehouse full of valuables let's go rob it" isn't entrapment
Literally entrapment.
Like you said, it hinges on if you would have committed the crime without encouragement from the police.
A trap car is not entrapment. You walking past a trap car, checking if the door is unlocked and then going for a joyride / stealing it means you convinced yourself to do this crime.
An undercover policeman telling you he's seen an unlocked car, and "just take it for a spin, for the hell of it"? That's entrapment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_v._United_States
>By a 5–3 margin, the Court upheld the conviction of a Missouri man for selling heroin even though all the drug sold was supplied to him, he claimed, by a Drug Enforcement Administration informant who had, in turn, gotten it from the DEA. The majority held that the record showed Hampton was predisposed to sell drugs no matter his source...The case came before the court when the defendant argued that while he was predisposed, it was irrelevant since the government's possible role as sole supplier in the case constituted the sort of "outrageous government conduct" that Justice William Rehnquist had speculated could lead to the reversal of a conviction in the court's last entrapment case, United States v. Russell.[2] Rehnquist was not impressed and rejected the argument in his majority opinion.
Here's one where the government said "Hey you should sell this heroin that I gave you" and the conviction was upheld because "the record showed Hampton was predisposed to sell drugs no matter his source." So no, the simple act of an undercover cop asking you if you'd like to commit a crime isn't entrapment on its face.
> In late February 1974, Hampton and a DEA informant known as Hutton were playing pool at the Pud bar in St. Louis when Hampton noticed the needle marks on Hutton's arms. He said he needed money and could obtain heroin to sell. Hutton responded that he could find a buyer. After the conversation, he called his handler, DEA agent Terry Sawyer, and reported the proposal.
It was under his own will, the DEA just supplied him the means to do so.
It's basically as if I was in a seedy bar and spot a pistol on an undercover agent, and I tell them I know an easy spot to rob near the bar. Then the undercover agent gives me the pistol, asking for 20% of the take. It only turns into entrapment if I was talking about money problems and the undercover agent would have told me robbing a nearby convienence store could be an easy solve to my money troubles.
My understanding is that they did not charge him with the attempted murder because it was later found that both parties/witnesses (other than Ross) later turned out to be corrupt and financially benefitting from the situation (keeping his murder payment for themselves) and the Silk Road in general.
It made the situation...messy, to say the least.
Entrapment requires some coercive/persuasive force by the government to push you to commit the crime, the government is allowed to setup entirely fake scenarios and let you choose to do a crime.
The above person claimed "the motive was fictional" which sounds coercive?
Not that it's a perfect source, but reddit lawyers used to describe the difficulty of proving entrapment by laying out two requirements: (1) you wouldn't have committed the crime if the instigator wasn't law enforcement, and (2) you only committed the crime because the instigator was law enforcement. One or the other is not enough. Like an 'if and only if' deal.
If you aren't aware that it's an LEO urging you on, I don't see why you should be able to argue impropriety. You made the decision as if it were real and would have real consequences.
Not really - entrapment is narrower.
If someone comes to you and offers you a fictional job to illegally move a lot of drugs for cash and you agree - that's not entrapment, you agreed of your own accord. That the whole thing was a fake setup is not materially relevant.
If you first refuse, and then the undercover officer says "if you don't do this we'll come after you and kill your family" and then you agree under duress - that's entrapment.
It has to be something that's compelling you to do something you would not have done otherwise. Presenting you with the option to make a bad choice is not itself enough because had the situation been real you would have done it.
On one hand I'm sympathetic to Ross in that I can empathize with his youthful ideals and ego that drove the marketplace, but I also think he genuinely would have authorized that person be killed had it been real and people are in prison for a lot less. His market was also a lot more than drugs iirc.
I find his supporters downplaying the assassination bit irritating - I suspect they do it because they know it's the least defensible bit and they can argue it on technicality. I think it'd be better if they just accepted it.
I also think he's very unlikely to commit another crime now that he's out, but still - a lot of people are in prison for a lot less.
Depends a lot on the exact setup. He still chose to try to hire a hitman allegedly. The standard is fairly high, "that man is informing on you" isn't entrapment, without knowing a lot of details it's hard to know and it's rarely actually entrapment.
The worst part is that it doesn't even appear to be the case that the government set up the scenario in which Ross bought murders
Built on naive yet admirable ideals? Special community? It was the world’s largest drug market, selling things like fentanyl in large quantities. What admirable ideal is this?!
You really cannot stop illicit drug use. A hard approach to prohibition not only makes people less safe, it’s a massive waste of spending. On just a pragmatic level- Fentanyl and analogues are by weight hundreds of times more potent than morphine. How do you even effectively stop that from getting across borders? Silk Road provided a brief counterpoint, and ideally wouldn’t have had to exist. The ideals it represented were more broad- for drug regulations/spending that focus on safety, and respect individual rights / bodily autonomy (ofc limited to not harming or endangering others).
> How do you even effectively stop that from getting across borders?
One idea that springs to mind: if a person starts up an anonymous, online marketplace for that activity, imprison him forever.
The Silk Road represented a tiny fraction of illicit drug revenue per country. Some report-skimming would indicate less than a single digit. A series of more profit-oriented darknet markets replaced it. I don’t know what the costs were associated with its takedown but they must have been enormous. I doubt it became large enough for cartels to care much, but the effect of shutting it down is certainly good for them.
I don’t personally hold the opinion that Ross Ulbricht shouldn’t have been pursued according to the law- or support his pardon- or even that darknet drug markets should exist! I’m also not really interested in crypto.
However I strongly believe that a completely different approach to drug laws & regulations is necessary to make people safer and reduce crime.
Oh, I like that, tough on crime! It's a novel idea. I wish the Nixon and Reagan administrations had thought of that a few decades ago, maybe if they did we could be witnessing the brilliant effects of that sort of policy today!
Amazing idea! After all, giving long term prison sentences to drug dealers, and even drug users, has totally eliminated drug use, it's not like it has exploded over time...
Just him though? Just the first guy and not all of the numerous people that started clones after, were tried and all received much less punishment?
Separating the drugs from the adjacent crime and problems that come with an illicit industry by finding a way to make it run kinda like normal business seems pretty admirable to me.
>What admirable ideal is this?!
That adults should be able to buy and sell whatever the fuck they want?
And that the government should not get a say, or even a cut?
I don't necessarily fully agree with that, but for sure it's an ideal, and has been expressed many times (e.g. by libertarians).
I have some delightful “medicine” for you to buy.
It’s cheaper than the alternative, though, if there is rat poison in it, there is nothing you can do!
Caveat Emptor is a shit way to run a society. It incentivizes the sociopaths.
Both Hippies and Libertarians fail to understand that if your organizational principles don’t account for sociopaths, they will take over and ruin everything.
>It’s cheaper than the alternative, though, if there is rat poison in it, there is nothing you can do!
Sure there is, I can take you to court.
>Caveat Emptor is a shit way to run a society. It incentivizes the sociopaths.
Bureaucracy and nanny states do that too.
>Both Hippies and Libertarians fail to understand that if your organizational principles don’t account for sociopaths, they will take over and ruin everything.
I don't think the latter are against locking people up. Or executing them even!
And the former, I dunno, perhaps they handle them Midsommar style!
Not to mention the issue is quite solvable: sellers can sell whatever, but need to specify the contents and whether they match a specification (e.g. same contents as aspirin). If you want to buy rat poison drug or heroin cut with sawdust, it's on you.
> Sure there is, I can take you to court.
Courts can do very little to remedy the harm of dying from rat poison. They can address, in an imperfect way, the incidental harm your death by rat poison causes to other people, but, I think most people would strongly prefer not to die of rat poison, than to die of rat poison but have their dependents compensated financially for the loss of their future income, etc.
Who will enforce such a rule?
Speedrunning the history of civil society the dumb way.
Law is the history of transgressions against the public good.
Something anyone with an addict in their life needs to know:
While substances can efficiently help someone destroy their life, keeping them away from drugs won’t stop them from destroying their lives. There’s something already broken in these people that they need to fix before it’s too late.
There are perfectly legal alternatives that can be just as effective with a little more effort. Putting heroin in your arm is just quicker than downing a fifth of vodka, or chasing dopamine at the dog track.
I think you're advocating for better mental health care and rehabilitation of addicts, which I agree with. However, the idea that addicts will destroy their lives regardless of whether they stop using, or are forced to stop using, their drug of choice is an extremely dangerous statement. Many addicts get better by changing their environment and quitting/going to rehab/etc.
Furthermore, heroin != vodka in terms of how addictive it is for the average user, and that's partly why only one of them is legal for recreational use.
Controversies about decriminalization aside, harm reduction exists as a studied component in addiction, public health, and psychology circles for a reason.
Alcohol destroys many, many more lives than heroin. Isn’t even close.
The important question isn't raw numbers, it's which destroys a greater percentage of lives out of those who consume it. If heroin were as widespread as alcohol, would it still be true that alcohol destroys more lives? We obviously can't know for sure without trying it, but preliminary results aren't promising.
Yeah, I don't know. There's certainly people that are just broken, but reading other examples, I think there are plenty of people who just happen on to a perfect addiction(, or maybe an imperfect one that fills the spot). The manifest destiny stuff is kind of a mix that soothes a lot of people with various motives whether or not it is representative of the median case.
> That’s also not to mention guns and all kinds of other dangerous & illegal parts of it.
I think it isn't mentioned because Silk Road didn't actually facilitate any selling/buying of weapons or any items "whose purpose was to "harm or defraud."" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)#Produc...
> I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel.
He's the candidate that was preferred by Christians, yet probably he was the least Christian-like candidate. Just today/yesterday he criticized a Bishop for values that are clearly Christian, people seem to swallow it. I'm pretty sure trying to add logic/reasoning to the choices he makes is a lost cause.
> Silk Road didn't actually facilitate any selling/buying of weapons or any items "whose purpose was to "harm or defraud"
There was definitely a fake ID tab on it. Isn't fraud one of the main purposes of having a fake ID?
Guns were definitely for sale on Silk Road. Ulbricht stopped selling them because it wasn't lucrative enough.
I can't find the original post, but this post quotes his comments at the time when he closed the gun forum:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66587.msg1079466#msg...
> Ulbricht stopped selling them because it wasn't lucrative enough.
While technically accurate, the tone of the Ulbricht quote differs somewhat:
Sounds like his next step was anonymous assassination markets.
I saw guns on it when I joined years ago.
There's a reason Wikipedia doesn't accept "I saw it" as a citation.
Wikipedia isn't perfect, but if I had to put odds on Wikipedia vs "rando on internet forum who claims to remember something from years ago", I'm going with Wikipedia 10 times out of 10.
As you wish. I have a lived experienced with Silk Road. I am not random for myself.
Well, I didn't. Stalemate?
Not at all. (I haven't seen you)
Facebook doesn’t make the comments that will kill people
"Facebook is a communication tool for friends and family that is sometimes used for illegal activity" is categorically different than "Silk Road is a tool created to facilitate illegal activity."
Probably the first social media genocide was organized on Facebook, the Rohingya genocide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide
Similarly, the first social media revolutions were also organized on Facebook (and Twitter): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
There are many Christians who would happily to get in long arguments over which values are “clearly Christian.”
If you really want to understand, it’s not hard. It just requires making an honest effort to try, without judging. And that’s what stops people who don’t understand it. Try chatting with an LLM sometime about what it looks like from their perspective. Knowing it’s not a human makes it easier to avoid getting upset.
> If you really want to understand, it’s not hard. It just requires making an honest effort to try, without judging
I was brought up Christian, sealed my religiousness with a confirmation when I was 15 (which required studies and field trips), and been around religious people for a lot of my younger life. Oh, and my mom worked at a church where I grew up, spent a bunch of time in the church, for better or worse.
I'd like to think that the values of compassion and mercy are two of the most fundamental Christian values, at least from the protestants I spent a lot of time with. It seems to me, that the American bastardization of Catholicism, might not actually be very Christian if those two values aren't include in there.
I'm not religious anymore, but if I learned anything from (truly) religious folks, then it would be that you should treat your fellow humans as just that, fellow humans.
i think this points to a bunch of weird crypto people are actually in charge of a lot of this administration
Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have significant influence on staffing.
Vivek Ramaswamy is a partner at a16z
> I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel.
why do you believe he's anti-drug or anti-cartel?
Well, he just did an executive order to label cartels as foreign terrorists, and has spoken at length about drugs in many of his speeches. Not sure why you think such a statement is controversial.
He made sure the Sacklers could keep their fortunes and continue to sell opioids.
Because I don't think he has a honestly held belief about anything. I think he's happy to do whatever is most expedient for his interests.
He wants to be known as a guy who trades favors, so here, he ignored all the previous fear mongering about [scary thing], and is repaying the favor to the "libertarian party" who wanted this, and voted for him.
Almost everything he says is just for show, fits his pattern of behavior better than, "he believes [thing he said]" does.
I just read another article about how the person who says we need to follow "law and order" and "respect police" just pardoned everybody convicted of violence against police... again, trading favors instead of consistently following something he said.
I'm no Trump fan and won't go to bat for him, but being anti-drug and anti-cartel is literally one of his schticks.
I replied with more details in a sister thread but calling it a schtick is more accurate that I think you meant. It's exclusively a shtick; he doesn't actually believe it, or care about it.
Historically, many anti-drug / anti-cartel leaders are actually members of a rival cartel, and want to use law enforcement to fight their wars for them.
The Mexican government has a long history of this. The LAPD’s (well documented for over 50 years) do the same thing.
Trump is a convicted felon with lots of ties to organized crime. Nothing about him pardoning members of some criminal organizations but not others is surprising.
In related news, he signed an executive order forcing prosecutors to seek the death penalty when police are killed, and in the same day pardoned 132 of his supporters that were convicted of assaulting police officers during an event where officers were killed.
>he signed an executive order forcing prosecutors to seek the death penalty when police are killed
He also pardoned a drug dealing cop killer at the end of his last term. Said cop killer has since been arrested for attempting to strangle his wife to death.
https://www.wesh.com/article/cop-killer-pardoned-by-trump-co...
You think Trump is involved with drug selling organized crime, and this guy somehow was on “his side”?
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> Historically, many anti-drug / anti-cartel leaders are actually members of a rival cartel, and want to use law enforcement to fight their wars for them.
For reference, Rudy Giuliani was lauded as the anti-organized mayor that brought down the Italian mob in New York, but ultimately was flagged as actually being an upper echelon of Russian organized crime who worked to establish it by eliminating competiton.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani
The Wikipedia article does not flag Giuliani as being a member of Russian organized crime, but someone who Giuliani's law firm represents, an individual by the name of Dmytry Firtash.
Furthermore the timeline for this is over a decade after Giuliani was mayor of New York.
What good is common sense and facts when you have a gut dislike?
The link doesn't say that. The phrase you use is a reference in the Wikipedia article to the DOJ's characterization of Dmytry Firtash, "a Ukrainian oligarch who is prominent in the natural gas sector", not Giuliani.
I can only go off what I read in American Kingpin but from that book, to pardon Ulbricht is absolutely insane.
Not to mention lets compare what Ulbricht did to say Snowden?
Are you kidding me?
It is like we live in some idiot version of the Twilight Zone.
Well, now you probably understand that Trump is not really anti-drug/anti-cartel. Nor do I think he's pro-drug/pro-cartel. I think he doesn't actually care except in how those issues affect his political career and public profile. Many of Trump's more ... let's call them "random" seeming statements and actions make much more sense if you look at them through the lens of "he doesn't actually care one way or the other".
Trump is pro-Trump. That's it.
Well, also pro-publicity and pro-distraction (firehose). Of course those are ultimately self-benefiting too.
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Its purely transactional. The Libertarians gave him their endorsement and one of the things they wanted in return was this pardon and deregulation.
The libertarian party or a bunch of crypto bros? I don’t get why “libertarians” would care about this one guy?
Ulbricht's career represents many core values of a certain wing of today's Libertarians.
* unfettered and unregulated and anonymous weapons sales. * willful ignorance and rejection of any of the social costs of buying and selling hard drugs. * commerce that operates in a world that is difficult to be taxes by government entities, and ideally anonymously (even though bitcoin is the least anonymous thing in the world)
So are libertarians fighting for complete legalization of drugs? If so, why aren’t they pressing on Trump for that? Why wasn’t that an executive order vs pardoning this guy?
I don't think Trump actually has a lot of Core Beliefs besides do stuff that appears strong on tv.
A large portion of people at the Libertarian convention that Trump gave a speech at would prefer complete legalization of all drugs.
I think it's a belief that a lot of us arrive at early in our lives, many eventually grow out of it.
> I think it's a belief that a lot of us arrive at early in our lives, many eventually grow out of it.
Very astute. What’s interesting to me is the ability for youth to discount this potential change, mostly because they just see the end result vs the journey. I know I was like that.
he is just anti-mexico.
It was a promise to his libertarian voters....
> I would take issue with assuming that it was net positive with ratings.
I know this is probably as minority view, but I think if adults consent to buying and using any drug, that should be both fully legal, and their right and responsibility- any negative consequences are 100% their own fault, not the person who sold them. It's probably true that making drugs easier to buy made more people buy them, but I was only considering the ill effects of fraudulently adulterated products. Do the math differently if you don't see it this way.
I don't know how Silk Road was designed, and have never actually used it or anything like it- but I imagine it would be possible to eliminate fraudulent reviews with proper design, and they may have done so. eBay, for example, is almost free of fraudulent reviews because posting a single review is very expensive- you'd need to sell an item to yourself for full price, and then pay eBay their full (rather large) cut to post a single fraudulent review.
As a buyer, you should be able to take a single high effort review that contains something like mass spec chemical analysis results, and further confirm that the reviewer themselves has a credible history of making purchases and reviews broadly across a lot of different sellers. An impossibly expensive to fake signal. This could also be done automatically by the platform- by making the more credible reviews display first.
> I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel.
I explained this in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787217
Trump is not an idealist- he will promise anything to anyone if it gets power and attention. Previously, he had attempted a political career as a leftist, and switched to the right because it was getting more traction.
> I know this is probably as minority view, but I think if adults consent to buying and using any drug, that should be both fully legal, and their right and responsibility- any negative consequences are 100% their own fault, not the person who sold them. It's probably true that making drugs easier to buy made more people buy them, but I was only considering the ill effects of fraudulently adulterated products. Do the math differently if you don't see it this way.
I'd agree with you if the people that used these drugs did so rationally. That's not the case mostly though from what I've heard. Trauma is often the root cause and that's out of many people's control. From then on it's ub to society to help them.
If a high performing exec wants to buy drugs to function better, sure maybe that's ok but I doubt that's the majority of people.
I proclaimed nearly this exact opinion in the jury box after being summoned between 15 and 20 years ago. They didn't pick me for trial, which was the intended effect. I really did believe it at the time. Nowadays, I just think it's way more complicated and there are no simple or blanket answers.
Re-consenting: this is a different argument than saying more lives were saved because the reviews would remove adulterated products. Again, just look at opioid addiction for very clear evidence of the opposite effect.
It is very clear from what you’ve said that you haven’t used it :) I have browsed it when it was active and I was very pro tor. You’re making a lot of assumptions that simply don’t hold for silk road.
> Again, just look at opioid addiction for very clear evidence of the opposite effect.
I was playing devil's advocate, but agree there is more culpability to a seller if the drug overwhelms your ability to make the choice in the first place- however a lot of very illegal drugs do not do this. More so if you're using emotionally manipulative ads and selling methods as the alcohol and pharma industry do.
No doubt people were buying weed and hallucinogens on Silk Road, but there was A LOT of opioids, Xanax, cocaine, meth, and other highly addictive drugs that change people’s brain chemistry for the worse.
silk road was on the dark web, a place that is oriented 100% around anonymity. This precludes any sort of "elimination of fraudulent reviews" since there's no reasonable way to build any sort of chain of trust.
I explained several ideas to eliminate fraudulent reviews in my comment, that you didn't address. The main thing is to make a review coupled with a purchase that involves a large cut to the platform, so each review is very expensive. Secondly, don't take reviewers themselves seriously unless they've also made a large overall number of purchases to a diversity of sellers- making becoming a credible reviewer also expensive.
The dark web is based around network anonymity.
You can find, and log into, your facebook account, should you have one, here, where I'm sure you would be quite identifiable.
facebookwkhpilnemxj7asaniu7vnjjbiltxjqhye3mhbshg7kx5tfyd dot onion
anonymity doesn't preclude chain-of-trust (really "reputation"). after all, anonymity only means "can't be linked to real-life identity".
> Trump is not an idealist- he will promise anything to anyone if it gets power and attention. Previously, he had attempted a political career as a leftist, and switched to the right because it was getting more traction.
This is a critical point. His explicitly goal is to be an autocrat, there is no other ideology other than what works.
That's why I think the only real bit of him is the one that admires Putin. That is who he wants to be.
It's why his moves seem so random.
The cybersecurity podcast Risky Business interviewed an FBI agent who was deeply involved, I'd highly recommend listening to it if you want that perspective. If I remember correctly, the agents who were investigating the murder for hire stuff were later found to have been stealing some of the bitcoin they were confiscating and the prosecutors fro the Ulbricht case decided they didn't need to bring up those charges to get a conviction (which they obviously didn't).
yup. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7iPp5QaHmI , starts at 36 minutes or so
the bitcoin stealing was only one of the 6 murder for hires, so even if you think thats invalidated, there were still 5 others
They can try now! Because he is pardoned for the existing convictions not for future convictions
That is interesting. I'd suspect he could possibly be found guilty of attempted murder, and have the sentence reduced or eliminated by arguing that his previous sentence unjustly assumed guilt for this as well, and factored it into the sentence he already served.
If I remember correctly, there were comments from both the prosecution and judge that would basically prove that point- and they allowed evidence related to those other crimes in the trial. If they could prove this misconduct, they may even be able to argue double jeopardy.
There was deliberately no mention of the alleged murders-for-hire during the trial.
The judge said during sentencing that she was giving Ulbricht an incredibly harsh sentence to make an example of him to others who think that facilitating selling drugs is a victimless crime, and she was also angry at the huge stack of nice letters that people sent to the court in support of Ulbricht.
Good luck, when the main investigators have since gone to prison for crimes related to this investigation.
Unless Trump screwed up the paper work, he’ll have been pardoned for past crimes, which includes the murder.
And even if he did screw up the paper work, he could just write another pardon anyway. He can write infinite pardons (for federal charges, anyway).
"for the crime he was actually found guilty of, the sentence was unfair and unreasonable."
Was it? Based on current law in the US?
While I do not know English Common law well, in many jurisdictions, every part of the drug dealing is drug dealing. Even if you never touch a drug and just provide payment processing services, transport or whatever, as long as you are aware of it and profit from it, it is drug dealing. So every transaction on Silk Road would also be his crime. And there were many, many many. On the other hand, for non-first degree murder, in several jurisdictions his sentence would have maxed out at 15 years. First time offender, he could have walked after 10.
In most of Asia the sentence would have been death (back to back multiple sentences if that is possible).
> I'd also argue he almost certainly saved a huge number of lives with Silk Road: the ability to view eBay style feedback and chemical test results makes buying illegal drugs far safer than buying them on the street.
So will the Trump admin be making any moves on legalization or safe supply? Especially since between Musk and Kennedy's admitted drug use, the white house pharmacy report, and the allegations about the Trump family itself, it seems obvious that the White House appreciates the usefulness of illegal stimulants?
Or is this another case of "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect"?
the benefit wasnt really unique to silk road or ross. it was just a very convoluted, roundabout demonstration of how safe drug use can be when its done in the right environment. legalization would be even safer…
Safer for buyers and users I guess. Based on being able to smell marijuana coming from so many car windows just walking around town, I'm not sure it would be safer for the public. I'm not anti-legalization by the way - I think it's similar to gambling: a mixed bag.
What you are saying is nothing short of the manifestation of pure evil.
Innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until a random hunch is resolved.
The federal government has a long history of manufacturing evidence and this is no different.
Again, pure evil what you are saying.
What are you talking about? I specifically said it was unethical that they seem to have sentenced him for crimes he was never even tried for- but deserved a fair trial for. You appear to think I was saying the opposite of that?
I just can't fathom the lack of self-awareness of people who championed Ross Ulbricht's cause, seemingly because he looks like them, codes like them, and sat in the same public library they frequent or became associated with a techno-libertarian identity. Hundreds of drug and gun dealers are sentenced every week, some certainly unjustly. Where is the outrage for them?
Those people that championed Ulbricht's cause are for the most part also the people championing the cause of drug dealers and other victims of New Prohibition. If you genuinely care about this cause, you might ask yourself whether alienating other supporters is the best approach.
If you're just looking for someone to feel superior about, find another forum.
<citation needed>
My impression is that a big part of the outrage is directed not at the conviction, but at the disproportionate sentence.
I'm not surprised or upset at all that he went to prison, but unless I'm missing a ton of details (and I probably am), 12 years is plenty for what he did.
It's the scale of the crime (he facilitated 10s of thousands of transactions), the judge clearly stated she wanted to make an example of him and give pause to anyone thinking about doing something similar in the future, and she was angry at the many of the letters of support Ulbricht's fans family and friends sent the court.
My memory is she started the sentencing hearing by disdainfully reading a few of them from a pile of them she brought to the court that day.
Ha ha, it turns out that there is affirmative action, for libertarians!
As for the murder part Christina Warren knows best:
The murder for hire bit was always the most bullshit of all the charges. Not only were the fbi agents that were part of that later jailed for their own actions related to the case (including theft and hiding/deleting evidence), it was never real and no one was ever in danger.
https://bsky.app/profile/filmgirl.bsky.social/post/3lgcck6i6...
> it was never real and no one was ever in danger.
Because one of the hitmen he hired was a scammer, and another was an FBI agent. Still clearly a crime to hire them for murder.
Ulbricht's right-hand-man Roger Thomas Clark, who was involved in one of the murder-for-hire conversations, admitted the conversation was real during his trial:
"In his own remarks, Clark didn't comment on that murder-for-hire conversation—which he at one point claimed had been fabricated by Ulbricht but later conceded was real."
Wow! There have been multiple (astoundingly so) arrests of agents who were present in the Silk Road case. As far as I can see:
1 DEA agent for extortion, money laundering and fraud. 1 Secret Service Agent for money laundering. 2 Key advisors in the case.
that was only one of the 6 murder for hires
Chris Tarbell, the guy who arrested ross, talks about it on this podcast https://risky.biz/RB770/ 37:08
Chris Tarbell states that there are logs about 6 imaginary "murder of hire"'s .. none of which actually took place, two were faked by the FBI(?) and four were scams run by third parties outside the USA.
In the absence of any other context it's assumed these were acts of "intent to murder" but that's about it .. logs that look like a duck and probably were a duck.
But no actual murders that anyone could find, no bodies, etc.
If I go to a bar and end up hiring a hitman to kill my wife, and the hitman happens to be a FBI asset, I'm still going to jail.
Not for 11 years!!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39870416
and if you do this for six ex wives or six people that annoy you and not a single one dies?
At what point does this strike you as odd?
You are feeling the same thing that some people felt who wanted OJ Simpson exonerated.
How so?
Okay, another comparison would be, everyone who wants Luigi Mangione exonerated also is feeling what some people felt when they wanted OJ Simpson to be exonerated. Do you see now?
Luigi is a symptom of an overly inactive justice system, if you don't prosecute crimes then some people take the law into their own hands (as a matter of fact). Preventing vigilantism is why having a working justice system is important to a functioning society.
DPR is according to his defenders a symptom of an overly active justice system prosecuting crimes that shouldn't be prosecuted. Though I'm not sure I personally agree with that.
OJ was just a crook.
The Luigi some people have constructed in their minds is a symptom of an overly inactive justice system. The Luigi of real life is the symptom of a man suffering a psychotic break.
See, you are one of the people who feels about Luigi Mangione what some people felt about OJ Simpson. You’re getting it. You can read about how some people talked about OJ Simpson’s supposed innocence, it is exactly the same energy.
Almost nobody thinks Luigi Mangione or Ross Ulbricht are innocent, or were falsely accused. Neither of the 3 cases are remotely comparable beyond being "people charged with crimes that there is some public sympathy for."
Most people seem to think Ulbricht was guilty, and deserved to be found guilty and go to prison, but that the full sentence didn't fit the crime.
I don't see how those are remotely comparable, the OJ people believed he didn't do it and was set up by the racist LAPD while the Luigi people think that what he did was good actually. I guess the Ross Ulbricht people are more like the latter but they still seem pretty dissimilar.
The guy is a crook.
There was literally no evidence of an attempted murder. Just an empty and unsubstantiated accusation.
The lengths the FBI went to in one of the murder for hire cases is interesting.
After Ulbricht ordered the hit on one of his forum moderators, the FBI visited him, took all of his computers, told him they were going to be "him" from now on online forever, had him "pose" in a bathtub where they hosed him off and doused him in ketchup to take fake trophy photos, had the "hitman" send the photos of Ulbricht, who famously commented "It had to be done."
Did you just make that up? I have never heard that claim before and searching for Ross Ulbricht ketchup just leads back to your comment, so you seem to be the first person to ever claim this.
You're right, the agents actually smeared him with Campbell’s Chicken & Stars to make him look he just got strangled. You got me!
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/how-the-feds-sta...
>Force got Green to sign a waiver, thereby commencing his role in an impromptu staged torture sting against DPR. Soon Green was being dunked in the bathtub of a Marriott suite by phony thugs who were in fact a Secret Service agent and a Baltimore postal inspector. Force recorded the action on a camera. “Did you get it?” Green asked, wet and wheezing on the floor. He’d felt like their simulation was a little too accurate. They dunked him four more times to get a convincing shot.
There used to be an online archive of every little bit of public information known about the Silk Road's administrators and their court cases. I can't find it anymore. It was over 10 years ago. All I can remember is the site had a weird url.
This is wonderful. I've never argued that Ross shouldn't have served time but it's always been clear his prosecution and sentencing were excessive and unjust. The prosecutors asked for a 20 year sentence, which seemed disproportionate given the sentencing guidelines for a first-time offender and the non-violent charges he was convicted of. But the judge sentenced Ross to TWO life sentences plus 40 years - without the possibility of parole. There's no doubt Ross made a series of unwise and reckless decisions but serving over ten years of hard time in a FedMax prison is more than enough given the charges and his history.
It's just unfortunate that Trump, and now, excessive pardons are politically polarized, which could cloud the fact that justice was done today. I don't credit Trump in any way for doing "the right thing" or even having a principled position regarding Ross' case. Clearly, others with influence on Trump convinced him to sign it. It doesn't matter how the pardon happened. Biden should have already pardoned Ross because that crazy sentence shouldn't have happened in the first place.
Madoff got 150 years for non-violent charges (and he didn't even try to have anyone killed). Died in prison.
Madoff stole $20-35B, but by some measures a human life is only worth $10M. I am not really asserting those figures are comparable, just that Madoff stole a lot of money.
Nah, it's more that you do not fuck with the money system. SBF is learning that same lesson.
Jeff Skilling (Enron) served 12 years in jail for insider trading and securities.
Not saying that Skilling, Maddoff or SBF shouldn't have gone to jail. They deserved it. But I do find it interesting that financial crimes can tend to be the most harshly judged, likely because of who they impact (the people with money) and because they cause distrust of the financial system as a whole.
> Madoff stole $20-35B
Not to defend Madoff, but it's not like he made off with that money himself, so I'm not sure "stole" is the correct term. Most of that money went to investors -- it just went to a different set of investors than the ones who had put that money in (the nature of a Ponzi scheme).
> Nah, it's more that you do not fuck with the money system.
Isn't a common critique of the justice system that white-collar crime gets you less prison time (in nicer jails) than being for ex a drug dealer?
Plenty of finance scammers and conmen who stole millions get <5-10yr sentences
yes, unless you're a big enough finance scammer that you stole from really rich people (most scammers who steal millions don't get it from the very rich)
People have gone to jail for longer for selling weed, I think the argument that finacial crimes get you longer prison sentences is absurd.
I didn't say financial crimes in general, I specifically said financial crimes on a level that impact a large number of very rich people.
But even then the times aren't longer than someone who gets caught with a 100 grams of coke. Skilling got 12 years for a financial fraud so heinous the whole system was re-regulated. You get that for selling crack on the corner.
There’s no question that the “war on drugs” sentencing is ridiculously out of proportion with the actual harm done, especially if you’re not white or upper class. I was making a comparison between types of financial crimes.
I mean if you’re saying bigger financial crimes get larger than smaller ones, ok?
In those cases it's not about how much they stole but who they stole from?
Steal the pensions and other retirement funds of millions? At worst, slap on the wrist.
Steal a single dollar from a single billionaire? Hope you like solitary, buddy.
Yup, these numbers are high, but just check out decades of wage theft and you realize it's only legal to steal from the poor.
Hasn't the Trustee recovered 90% of the money invested? Phantom returns were ignored; at the time of the arrest the phantom returns were considered money lost.
> Not to defend Madoff, but it's not like he made off with that money himself, so I'm not sure "stole" is the correct term.
What else would the term be? Did you always feel that Robin Hood was being unfairly maligned when he was described as robbing from the rich and giving to the poor?
It's the same level as saying "tech companies stole from the populace". Which is ethically correct but legally wrong. I guess that's the distinction GP wants to make.
cheat, lie
I expect SBF will be out soonish. He's exactly the sort of white collar crook that Trump would pardon.
I think there's almost no chance. SBF is a perfect example of someone to throw the book at. He's effectively Madoff 2.0, the people everyone from the lowly to the elite hate.
Ross Ulbricht is a very unique, interesting case. I don't for a second believe that Trump has any moral imperative with pardoning him, but his sentence for the crimes he was prosecuted for was very clearly unjustly large in an extensively murky case. There's also a whole slew of benefits to Trump for pardoning him - it's largely perceived as very pro-crypto, pro-libertarian (ironic), etc.
In any sane democracy I would agree with you. But this POTUS has pardoned 1500 people that actively participates in an insurrection, some of who hurt and even killed police officers. He's pardoned a the Dread Pirate Roberts.
All of those people were perfect people to throw the book at.
For the next 2 years all bets are off.
From what I read, the Ulbricht pardon was part of a deal at the Libertarian National Convention. So it's just business as usual.
Broken clocks and all that. I entirely agree that he may have a potential muder conviction on his case, but they instead threw the book at him for a much lesser crime for a way too large sentence. Especially if we compare it to the War on Drugs.
If someone robs a bank, or steals a wallet, they're probably hoping to get as much money as they can. If that wallet happened to $1B in it, I don't think it makes the thief more heinous. If we sentence people based on the amount of money they manage to steal, we're sentencing them largely based on luck.
If you shoot someone and hit their head killing them or just their ear, its a matter of luck (and possibly skill), the charges are different. The justice system judges based on intent as well as outcome (i.e. execution X luck).
Norm: Murder and attempted murder are the same thing
Seinfeld: Different skill level
Murder is just agg assault with one less witness.
well you're not wrong. That attempted Trump assassination was a few inches away from being in the same books as John Wilkes Booth, instead of being talked about for less than a week and then forgotten. Sentences would have been night and day.
Many jurisdictions have the same punishment for attempted murder and murder though.
I get that there are different views on how much punishment should be based on intent vs outcome. My opinion is factoring in outcome in criminal sentences is often pragmatic, but if we had omniscient judges, judging on intent would be ideal.
Well, also, if you’re a competent murderer, you’re more dangerous to society, which is the reason we lock people up
It's not possible to accidentally steal $1B when your intention was to steal $10K. Scale does matter - this isn't "luck".
You're either not understanding or refusing to engage with the hypothetical. When you steal a wallet, you don't get to choose how much money is in it. It could have $5, or $500.
You're imagining something like a thief who just intends to steal $X, robs a bank, counts out $X and leaves the rest of the money untouched. In reality, most thieves are opportunists: they will take as much money as opportunity allows without getting caught.
Obviously you couldn't physically fit $1B cash in a wallet, but assuming this hypothetical wallet did have $1B, does that make the thief more heinous or just luckier?
(If you must insist on a literal and physically accurate wallet in the hypothetical, just imagine it held $1B in Bitcoin.)
But if the wallets each only contain $100 and you steal enough of them to get to $1 billion, that is qualitatively different from stealing a single wallet. The man committed fraud repeatedly and caused financial hardships for tons of people. He wasn't lucky in how much he managed to steal, that was a combination of effort, skill, and reckless disregard for the wellbeing of others.
Sure, but that's an entirely different metric to judge him on than the comment I was replying to. Instead of trying to judge the heinousness of his crime by comparing the raw amount stolen ($20-35B) to the value of a human life ($10M), you're judging based on the number of times a crime is committed. That makes intuitive sense; more crimes committed gets a harsher punishment.
The hypothetical is there to try to tease out a principled stance from our intuition. If someone stole a wallet that contained $1B, should their punishment be a million times harsher than someone who stole a wallet with $1000? Should it be 5x harsher? The same punishment?
If your stance is that luck would not ideally affect one's punishment then the amount stolen isn't itself a factor in determining the punishment. It's downstream of the true factors, such as the number of thefts committed. The amount stolen is correlated but not causal.
> If your stance is that luck would not ideally affect one's punishment
I don't think this is generally the stance. If you give someone a little shove, they bump their head, and they get a bruise, you've committed assault, you're facing up to a few months in jail. If you give someone a little shove, they bump their head, and they die, you've committed murder, you're facing potentially years in jail. According to the eggshell skull legal doctrine[0], it doesn't matter that some people are especially more vulnerable than others (ie that you were particularly unlucky and pushed someone who happened to have an eggshell skull), you take responsibility for the consequences when you do something illegal.
Now in our world, no one is going to steal a wallet with $1 billion in it - there is some reasonable assumption that when taking a wallet you are at most stealing a few thousand dollars, and never more money than a person would be comfortable keeping in their wallet. While that's against society's rules for various reasons, it's not a particularly damaging crime. The victim will be perhaps very inconvenienced, but no worse.
However if we lived in a world where a wallet might contain 1 billion dollars, that would be a different story. Now you might very well be causing life altering damage to large numbers of people when you steal a wallet. The decision to do so, knowing the risk, is a much more serious offense. The metaphorical wallet Madoff stole was not only possibly filled with an enormous sum of money, it very likely contained that much. Beyond the much greater and repeated effort that Madoff employed to steal this money than would be needed to snatch a wallet, the very fact he was willing to cause so much potential damage for his personal gain is a much more severe breach of the social contract than a petty thief.
There definitely shouldn't be a simple linear relationship of dollars stolen to days in prison; but that doesn't mean the punishment should be completely agnostic either. These relationships are complex and need to be looked at in context with other relevant factors like pre-meditative effort or degree of remorse. Regardless of one's stance on rehabilitative vs punitive justice, I think we can all agree someone who effortlessly broke core parts of the social contract and would gladly do so again needs to be treated differently from someone who made a bad call in a moment of weakness.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull
> If you give someone a little shove, they bump their head, and they die
What you're describing is manslaughter or possibly not a crime in most jurisdictions, but your point stands. Generally, murder is an intentional killing, and manslaughter is an accidental killing. But if, say, you give an aggressive drunk a little shove and they bump their head and die, you probably haven't committed a crime. Nonetheless, luck absolutely plays a role in punishment in our current justice system in a thousand different ways. I don't think most people consider the element of luck to be ideal so much as an unfortunate but necessary reality.
With the eggshell skull doctrine, you're talking about paying for damages in a civil case. I think most people see reparations differently than punishment. In civil law, you pay to fix the damage you caused, even though the exact amount comes down to luck. But criminal punishments require some criminal intent. It's a higher bar.
> there is some reasonable assumption that when taking a wallet you are at most stealing a few thousand dollars
I think you're giving thieves too much credit here. They may not expect most wallets to have more than $1000, but I don't think most thieves have some innate goodness in them that makes them want to get a wallet with less than $1000. I think it's the opposite: if thieves knew someone had $1B in their wallet, and the chance of getting caught was the same as stealing any other wallet, I think most thieves would want to steal that wallet more, not less. And I don't think most would care if the money in that wallet rightfully belonged to the investors of Madoff Investment Securities either.
> factors like pre-meditative effort or degree of remorse ... moment of weakness
With these factors, you're judging the thief based on their character. We're both advocating this. The difference is you're arguing someone who steals a larger amount of money has a worse character while I'm arguing they just had greater opportunity.
Madoff stole from the rich. That is a sure fire way to have the book thrown at you. Smart criminals steal from the poor, because they don’t fight back as much and the justice system doesn’t care.
It is wildly harmful and an escalation of monstrous practices to look at one or several unjust actions and/or sentences and declare that those who do worse than the person who was dealt out such a retribution should receive an even longer sentence.
If someone gets 10 years for smoking weed, the solution is not to put someone in prison for 20 years for punching someone.
On the same principle, noting that someone who punched someone got one day in jail is not a good justification for why someone shouldn't get two days in jail for smoking weed.
I know this is all semantics, but my State made weed legal a while ago. So the justification for smoking weed -> Jail is a whole lot higher.
It's not all semantics. You are providing an entirely different justification for why someone shouldn't get two days in jail for smoking weed.
I imagine "because it's not illegal" is semantics because I know that that's not a law on every state nor country.
I wasn't implying that either Ulbricht or Madoff's sentences were unjust.
The rule is: do whatever, but don't make the federal government look bad.
AKA file your taxes, essentially.
The numbers of pardons granted per president is interesting: https://www.justice.gov/pardon/clemency-statistics
It is interesting but, if I'm understanding the stats being tracked there, it's about petitions received and granted. However, many of the recent pardons by both Biden and Trump were unusual and controversial because they were either never petitioned, preemptive (in the case of Biden's family, staff & political allies) or granted to broad groups (in the case of Trump Jan 6th protesters). I'm not sure they are reflected on the site, or at least not yet, and if/when they are, how the site would reflect one pardon impacting dozens or hundreds of people.
In general, the recent wave of pardons in the last month reflect the trend over the last 20 years of pardons by both parties being increasingly political, self-interested and granted to connected donors who mount targeted campaigns. Sadly, it's not a great look. Yet I believe the pardon process can, and should, serve an important function of being a final check and balance to correct prosecutorial and judicial excess when it occurs. I'd be happier if the majority of pardons were commutations of grossly excessive sentences in cases most people have never heard of.
Hopefully, many of the more unusual and controversial recent pardons were a final paroxysm in response to the increases in politically-related prosecutions or threats of such prosecutions by partisans on both sides. Regardless of the validity (or lack thereof) of these prosecutions (or threats), it's clear many were pursued more aggressively, timed or conducted with at least one eye on either influencing political optics or retribution. Overall, it's certainly not been a shining moment for our republic. Both parties share the blame and need to do better.
Most Pardons: Clinton & Reagan (4/month). Fewest Pardons: Bush senior / Biden (1.5/month)
Since Reagan.
Your math is wrong at least for Biden, I didn't recheck the others. Biden has 1736 pardons commuted or granted in 46.5 months or 37 pardons per month. I suspect all your other ones are wrong since Biden was so off. The recent trend is Biden and Obama being "off the charts" compared to the republican presidents. From my understanding this is due to weed related charges where they did mass pardonings. It's besides the point ones feelings about it, just commenting on the math.
> non-violent charges
Although the murder-for-hire charges were dropped, transcripts published by Wired in 2015[0] show Ross Ulbricht openly discussing contract killings: he haggles over price, suggests interrogation, and even provides personal details about a target’s family (“Wife + 3 kids”). These charges were dismissed partly because he had already been sentenced to life in New York, making further prosecution moot—but the transcripts themselves factored into his sentencing. No killings occurred (he was likely scammed), yet the conversations challenge the notion that his crimes were purely non-violent. He was willing to have someone killed to protect his idea.
[0]: https://archive.is/pRG3U.
> These charges were dismissed partly because he had already been sentenced to life in New York
It was further complicated because a couple of the law enforcement officers involved with setting up one of the six murder-for-hire scams* stole the Bitcoin Ulbricht paid and it was also felt that trying to prosecute based solely on the other chat logs would have been difficult. The FBI agent who arrested Ulbricht was interviewed about it recently[1].
* The other five are said to not have been law enforcement, which makes it curious the number of times Ulbricht was scammed in this manner.
[1] https://risky.biz/RB770/
The charges, sure. The ethical and moral implications, no.
The murder for hire was done with the admin account which was called "Dread Pirate Roberts" from the novel "The Princess Bride". The thing about the name is that is passed on over and over. The admin has claimed multiple times that he is not the original nor first administrator (Ross) of the silk road.
In addition you have the guy that was supposed to be murdered also claiming that it could not have been Ross.
The murder for hire case was very weak and then in addition you had the two federal agents working the murder for hire case charged for stealing bitcoins.
This is silly whataboutism. They have plenty of evidence, including PST/PDT timestamps and proof he logged out of other personal accounts when he logged into that account, that suggested it was him. Despite his claims, they watched him extensively and found no indication that anyone else was posing as DPR.
Not to mention that he was caught in part because the first public advertisements for Silk Road were traced back to his personal accounts, and there's strong evidence that he personally grew the first batch of shrooms that launched the market. It was all him from the beginning.
> sentencing guidelines for a first-time offender
First time offender?!?!? Applying that term to a guy who spent years traveling around the world under multiple fake IDs while using state-level security on his hardware and racking up law violations every single day seems like an absurd stretch.
I mean, come on. By that logic, Al Capone was a first time offender when the feds finally nailed him for the first time. Pablo Escobar was a first time offender when he finally got nabbed. Good lord.
"First time offense" applies to your _first offense_. Not relevant when you've committed thousands of offenses over years while living on the run.
> I don't credit Trump in any way for doing "the right thing" or even having a principled position regarding Ross' case.
This is probably the most ridiculous comment in this thread. Trump even spoke at the Libertarian convention and specifically mentioned how unjust the sentence was and that he would pardon Ross as one of his campaign promises and he delivered. Trump saw parallels between the attack on Ross and the politically motivated law fare the democrats attacked him with. I think the real issue you have with this pardon is that Trump did it and not some democrat.
> Trump saw parallels between the attack on Ross and the politically motivated law fare the democrats attacked him with.
How exactly was it politically motivated law fare?
I think he's referring to the NY state case, which is difficult to dispute that it was done for political purposes. Although I'm sure Trump would say it applies to the federal classified documents case, as well.
Actually, I support neither major political party. I'm probably closest to a moderate "free markets, free minds" libertarian (note: the small "l" means I'm not in, or aligned with, the national Libertarian Party). I haven't voted for any candidate from either major party for decades. I greatly disapprove of Biden, Harris and Trump equally, along with almost all state and federal politicians of both parties. There are less than a handful of national-level politicians I would trust to dog sit, much less run my country.
Interestingly, I get hate from nearly everyone whose bought into either side of the political mainstream, and not because I dislike their candidate (few serious people would argue even their favored candidate doesn't have significant negatives). No, people can't stand that I don't dislike the other candidate/party more than I dislike their preferred candidate/party. It's bizarre because it seems entirely reasonable to have concluded that all the major party presidential candidates are so flawed, each in their own uniquely terrible ways, that they are beneath any serious comparison of which may be less bad. It's simply beyond reasonable discourse to engage in evaluating whether a dog shit sandwich might taste better or worse than a cat shit sandwich. They are all animal shit sandwiches.
I'm responding because you're objecting to my mild statement about Trump's likelihood of having a principled position regarding Ross' case and thus you may have assumed I favor the other candidate or party. Hardly! This is especially galling because I've had to defend Trump, who I dislike as much as Biden/Harris, against reflexive "Orange Man Bad" attacks - if only to point out, sometimes Trump does things which are good. And the same was true of Biden. Both of them have done good things - even if only in the sense of a broken clock being right twice a day.
To be clear, my observation about Trump not basing many of his political positions on long-held, fundamental principles applies equally to both major parties. Neither party is grounded in principle. In recent decades, both parties have abandoned so many of their own long-held, traditional "left/right" pillar positions judged by how they actual govern when in power, if not in their campaign claims, as to now be mostly incoherent. Neither party can seriously claim they arrive at their current political positions by deriving them from deep, unchanging principles. Once again, I'm not making a partisan judgement for or against either. This is simply a factual statement. Neither party's platform positions or political actions over time are self-consistent enough to be grounded in principle. At most, they try to later market the political calculations they've made for pragmatic, contextual reasons as aligned with some principle - but that's just transparent retconning to pander to their base. This is obviously true because no voter can reliably predict what their own party's (or candidate's) position might be on some enitrely new issue in advance.
In the case of Ross, Trump came very close to granting a pardon at the end of his term in 2020. He ultimately didn't pardon Ross due to the uncharged, untried allegations of Ross hiring an online hitman. Trump pardoned Ross now despite the same things still being true. The reasons Trump cited for the pardon were the excessive prosecution and sentence, but those things were also equally true in 2020. So, while I think it's just that Ross is free after over 11 years in a FedMax prison, that's why I don't believe Trump's reasoning was grounded in principle. And it has zero to do with liking Biden/Democrats more or Trump/Republicans less (because I dislike both equally). If Biden had pardoned Ross it would also not have been for principled reasons.
This is a very interesting standpoint.
I personally believe that having lots of parties founded on concise, coherent principles would be very nice from a voter point of view (to express preferences), but those would be completely unable to actually govern-- because there are a lot of decisions to make and compromises to find, and trying to do this solely based on a small set of principles is just not possible, because you would need to abstain from all decisions that your founding principles can not answer clearly (and no current democracy is set up in a way that enables this).
I can picture a system where this could work in theory (lots of parties forming the government, but most parties abstain from voting on any single decision), but I can see no way of preventing scope creep/consolidation...
Regarding the "both main parties equally bad" aspect:
What are your main pain points with the previous administration? As an outsider, to me it appears that despite getting dealt a rather bad hand (Covid/Ukraine/Middle East chaos), they made a lot of correct decisions (in hindsight).
Post-trump republicans, on the other hand, appear irresponsibly selfcentered to me in many ways (climate/emissions, Covid policies, foreign/trade, anti-pluralism). I also think that (2016) Trump poisoned political discourse in a insidiously harmful way, by basically forgoing any form of factual debate in favor of spewing insults at every opportunit (lying Hillary, sleepy Joe, ...)-- this alone I feel almost requires opposition...
What issue would your ideal party tackle first?
> TWO life sentences plus 40 years - without the possibility of parole
IMHO convicting somebody of such a thing is a crime in itself. Simply not excusable. Especially when the crime is essentially a form of white collar crime at best. Bank robbers, drug dealers, and some actual murderers often get more lenient sentences than that.
I think this was a case of the justice system being abused to make a political point. Casually destroying somebody's life to make a political point should be criminal in itself (with appropriate sentences and public disgrace). I don't agree with Trump's politics. But this seems like he's righting a clear and obvious wrong; so good for him. Regardless of his motivations.
> Biden should have already pardoned Ross because that crazy sentence shouldn't have happened in the first place.
Biden did commute the sentence of several other non-violent cases just last week or thereabouts, and Trump has been talking about Ulbricht for quite some time so it's not a complete surprise.
I guess the whole "murder for hire" thing excluded him from the "non-violent" category. But how that got tacked on seems very odd; the judge basically said "we didn't really handle it in the court case and it wasn't a charge, but it was mentioned a few times and it seemed basically true, so I included it in the sentencing". Like, ehh, okay?
To be honest, I don't really understand much of the logic ("logic") of the US justice system....
Judges are allowed to consider some evidence during sentencing which was not presented at trial. The standard for this evidence is lower than the "beyond a shadow of doubt" standard required for a criminal conviction. This is allowed because during sentencing the judge is considering information related to the history and character of the defendant. The 'hiring an online hitman' (who was an FBI informant) allegation was never charged or tried. Even if it hadn't been obvious entrapment, it might well have evaporated under discovery and cross-examination by a competent defense.
Including such evidence in sentencing consideration is not uncontroversial in the U.S. However, it can cut both ways, in that a judge can consider extenuating circumstances in a defendant's life to reduce sentencing. We want judges to evaluate cases and make sentencing adjustments where appropriate. So, I don't think I'd do away with the practice. The real issue is that this specific judge went absolutely bonkers far beyond the 20 years the prosecution asked for during sentencing (which was already very high) and sentenced Ross to two life sentences plus 40 years without parole.
Most of us who are happy that Ross was pardoned agree that he was guilty and deserved a jail sentence for the crimes he was convicted of. The only problem is the sentence was so wildly excessive for a non-violent, first-time offender. Compared to guidelines and other sentences it was just crazy and wrong. Ross has served over ten years. Now he's free. That's probably about right.
Calling him a non-violent first time offender is very odd given the magnitude of what his crimes were. He created a very large scale marketplace for all things illegal. Independent of his own hiring of hit men (hello non-violent?), selling substances that lead to overdoses, guns, bomb making materials, etc is certainly my definition of violent. Then add the scale; I fully agree with life sentence without chance of parole. This pardon is shameful.
The silk road did not sell guns and bombs.
I don't understand why people keep stating Silk Road did not sell guns.
Here's a thread in a forum where someone quotes Ulbricht's message stating Silk Road will no longer sell guns.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66587.msg1079466#msg...
Yup. And just for some context regarding guns at the time; during the years Silk Road was active it was perfectly legal for me (in the state of Virginia) to buy a gun from another citizen cash in hand without ever showing an ID, filling out a BoS, or any paperwork whatsoever.
I saw it when it was active.
On the one hand you say we should retain judges making sentencing adjustments where appropriate, but who judges the appropriateness of the adjustments?
It sounds like if an extenuating circumstance resonates with a judge, then the sentence will get modified. Sentencing shouldn't be based on a single person's "feelings."
Ultimately responsibility lies with the people electing either judges directly or representatives who appoint judges. We must choose people of proper demeanor who will make sound decisions when required. It takes effort on our part to be knowledgeable and vocal, but it's the price for living in a world where we are not at the mercy of unfeeling automatons.
I was at the sentencing, I do not remember the judge mentioning the murder-for-hire cases. To me it was obvious that the prosecution defense and judge had agreed beforehand to not mention it. The judge gave plenty of other reasons for the harsh sentence.
But he’s only served a tiny fraction of what you say was an unjust sentence. So the jury’s still out as to whether he’s served enough time. Other hard drug dealers get way more time than Ross has served.
Its astonishing that granting pardons to drug dealers and attempted murderers is something Trump sees as one of the more urgent matters affecting the most powerful nation on Earth.
I wish this weren’t true.
He's served over ten years. That's 1/8th of an average lifespan. It would be a fairly normal sentence for second degree murder where I'm from.
And in Singapore drug dealers get death penalty. Wherever your from seems extremely lenient.
And where you are seems extremely insane. Literally every adult I know has done an illegal drug at some point.
Trump also says he's bringing back the death penalty so he seems to be somewhat inconsistent.
It's not insane, it depends on what you value.
If you value societal order above all else, then you want extremely horrific punishments for crimes, you want near-absolute certainty that you'll be punished for criminal acts, and you want capture and trial to be swift, so that people know that breaking the law results in:
Swift capture Swift trial Swift execution
And with those three things, you get a highly ordered, law-abiding society, because it becomes common knowledge that breaking the law results in death, guaranteed, so unless you're just stupid or insane, you don't break the law.
If you don't value that kind of clockwork societal order, then you get... Western civilization.
Frankly I'll take the chaos of our Western civilization over the stifling draconian societal order of places like Singapore any day of the week.
> If you value societal order above all else, then you want extremely horrific punishments for crimes, you want near-absolute certainty that you'll be punished for criminal acts, and you want capture and trial to be swift, so that people know that breaking the law results in:
You're ignoring the issue of which acts are criminalized.
so... smoking weed gets you the death penalty? Does that not sound like cruel and unusual punishment?
The United States incarceration rate is 4x higher than of the rest of the world, in part because it hands out much longer sentences than most other countries. You're not wrong, but it's still the US that is the outlier in terms of sentence lengths [1].
[1]: https://counciloncj.org/new-analysis-shows-u-s-imposes-long-...
The US is wholly inefficient with the Death Penalty, so I'm against it from a purely financial point of view. By the time many cases get to a point of being convicted they will have already served years, maybe even a few decades in prison already.
And yes, there is the open secret that the US uses its prison system as a form of soft slave labor. Many people don't want to reduce that supply.
That one's easy. Don't sell drugs in Singapore. Give them away and then the recipients accidentally drop money a block or so away.
Good luck with that. Possession is also illegal.
Highlighting the polarization and weaponization of the justice system is worthy subject matter for the most powerful nation on Earth. It needs to be set onto a new path that is fair to all involved.
Maybe Trump is counting on Ulbricht starting a blockchain based online grocery chain to bring down the price of eggs.
Trump owed the libertarians for their support. This is what they got in return. It's bizarre seeing Trump designate the Mexican drug cartels as terrorists a few hours earlier while Ross facilitated billions in sales of the same products.
I think the attacks on some of these black and gray markets has increased violent crime in the real world. I wish the federal government would stop shutting them down and instead use them as tools to build cases against people breaking the law.
For example, for a while most prostitution and sex work seemed to be online, on places like Craigslist right next to ads for used furniture and jobs. And it seemed to be really effective in getting prostitutes off the streets.
Now that those markets were shut down, I'm seeing here in Seattle we're having pimp shootouts on Aurora and the prostitutes are more brazen than ever. Going after Craigslist has had a negative effect on our cities and has increased crime, and I suspect going after SilkRoad has had a similar impact.
I wish instead of criminalizing addiction we'd fund harm reduction centers and rehabilitation services.
I would much rather the police be focused on stopping violent crime rather than these victimless crimes.
Legitimizing drugs/prostitution makes is easier to regulate and ultimately make safer. Shoving this stuff into a black/gray market is what ultimately creates violent crime.
> I wish instead of criminalizing addiction we'd fund harm reduction centers and rehabilitation services.
We tried that in SF, I was a supporter. Seeing it first hand with a with a family member in public school flipped me. Dumping money into people who aren't ready to convert back into tax payers (even in the most basic sense) while schools got the back burner was enough. Not to mention the tents.
> Seeing it first hand with a with a family member in public school flipped me.
Why is this an either or?
SF spends about $1 billion dollars on schools [1] and while the program ran it had around a $40 million dollar budget [2]. For an area that houses huge tech companies, this doesn't seem like an extreme budget to be working with.
> Not to mention the tents.
Ok? And what options would you give these people, just be homeless somewhere else where you can't see them?
[1] https://www.sfusd.edu/about-sfusd/sfusd-news/press-releases/...
[2] https://sfstandard.com/2021/11/17/supervisors-approve-6-5m-i...
SF spends nearly $1B on the homeless.
Dollars spent is a poor metric for effectiveness. If you were to become homeless in SF tonight, is there shelter available for you to sleep in?
Homeless and drug addicts are not the same.
Letting the homeless block streets with tents is not the same as caring for them, or rehabilitating them.
correct. my comment was intended to point out the disturbing misplacement of priorities, given that the budgets for educating the citizens of the future and for fetty smoking bums are comparable.
While I think anecdotes are valuable and should not be easily dismissed, we have decades of research and evidence supporting the benefit of harm reduction centers. They reduce risk of overdose morbidity and mortality while not increasing crime or public nuisance to the surrounding community.
E.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8541900/
It's just really hard to swallow the findings in this paper (all non-US cities) when you can see such a visible change on the streets in SF since the pandemic.
By all official accounts crime is down in SF, but many agree something has changed in the way homeless carry. I would dare to use the word "entitled" to describe the cavalier way large encampments and bicycle chop shops are set up.
I think a confounding variable is that SF also significantly reduced jail sentencing and prosecution of other types of crime during the pandemic.
I never did any drugs but when I was growing up, it was understood that you needed to keep your drug use somewhat secret, behind closed doors, hidden from the public, I expected there would be consequences from the police if I decided to do drugs out in the open.
Now I see guys doing extremely hard drugs out in the open on the street and on buses. it is a jarring. They're usually not trying to inject or exhale on me ( though the meth smoke guys on some buses don't seem to care ).
Honestly, it's because SF didn't actually do anything
Having harm reduction sites doesn't mean you get to shoot whenever and whatever
SF's governance is delirious honestly
Yeah although this is more a consequence of how SF decided to handle it. Rather than decriminalising they're just enabling users.
Look towards other countries with similar policies (Portugal, Netherlands, etc.) in their cases they saw a decrease in drug usage and fatalities. The difference is they decided to not encourage their behaviour by allowing open air drug markets to flourish, with kiosks just down the street handing out the necessary paraphernalia.
The decline in Portugal may have been temporary.
https://archive.is/3iXlM
Portland tried this. It was a resounding failure.
no victim means no crime. victimless "crimes" are just 'arbitrary rule' violations (like going 56mph in a 55mph zone) or infractions. the twisting and distortion of language by the state is counterproductive to society.
How does that make any sense? So you could never pass a law to reduce risk because in most cases, breaking it won’t create a victim?
Speed limits are done to reduce the risk of you killing someone. Do you really think you should be able to drive however you want and until you actually have an accident, it’s fine?
if you cause no harm, how could it be a crime? an infraction, sure. a rule violation, sure. but calling a small rule violation which never causes any harm to anyone the same thing as rape, murder, assault, carjacking, etc, is just pure degeneracy of language.
The crime is increasing the risk to other people. Why does that not make it a crime in your opinion?
If I try to shoot someone but miss and they never even notice, is that fine because there’s no actual victim?
Edit:
To be more precise, the crime doesn’t even need you to increase the risk to anyone. Just thinking that you’ll increase the risk is already a crime, even if you’re wrong. If you buy a prop gun but think it’s real and try to shoot someone, that would still be attempted murder, even if it couldn’t even have worked. But you’re punished for trying to kill someone, it doesn’t matter wether you’re incompetent at it (well you get a bit less for the attempt compared to the actual successful act but it’s still a crime).
And another edit because coming up with weird hypotheticals is fun:
Imagine planting a bomb with a one hour timer on a marketplace and when it goes off, the marketplace was empty of people by chance.
Does that mean that the worst punishment you should expect should be for property damage because someone needs to clean up the ground? Obviously you committed a crime, even if there’s no specific victim this time.
an attempted crime is an intent to harm another. even my autocorrect could finish that sentence.
but we have a separate crime category for those already. "attempted murder" etc. those are crimes because they intended to be a crime, but they just failed for incompetence. it's a lot harder to prove in court (rightfully so).
i would say that i agree with you about attempted crimes, if that helps.
So what’s the problem? Attempting crimes is a crime too.
Edit:
You initially wrote:
> no victim means no crime. victimless "crimes" are just 'arbitrary rule' violations (like going 56mph in a 55mph zone) or infractions. the twisting and distortion of language by the state is counterproductive to society.
So you think not being allowed to bomb someone while being unsuccessful is ab arbitrary rule and should not be called a crime?
It's how you do it in Germany in the left lane
>no victim means no crime
If you feel entitled to redefine the word "crime", that is.
Those won't stop the problem at the root, right?
The inflow/manufacture of narcotics won't be affected at all. You'll still have a constant new influx of junkies, and it you'll essentially by funding this widescale and expensive solution forever.
Much better to simple make drug trafficing and manufacture a capital offense. It's been extremely effective in a lot of jurisdictions. Even if you're squeamish about the death penalty, a back of the envelope calculations will tell you you're saving a lot more lives than you spend due to decreased overdoses, drug wars etc,
Where has that strategy been effective? Do you have any numbers? Does it have any side effects?
I think he’s referring to Singapore. Don’t have any numbers but it does look like it’s working.
It's a tiny island nation with a single sea port, single bridge, and single airport. Meanwhile western nations are so porous they can't keep millions of undocumented people out.
Having garbage bins in my neighborhood, keeps garbage from being put on the ground. There are other neighbourhoods where the garbage bins don’t help at all
Next up: The final solution for littering. And traffic violations. And adultery. Utopia awaits the bold!
I don't think much changed, really. The contraband and services offered on these marketplaces has always been backed by criminal enterprises. Mostly the markets provided level of indirection that made purchasing palatable and gave a false sense of safety.
Online markets for sex work allowed women to operate far more safely than "the street" allow. I had friends who were affected by the crackdown on craigslist etc.
I sincerely didn't mean to minimize the harm to sex workers, which is devastating.
My point is rather that an online marketplace in the absence of decriminalization and reform can only provide a marginal increase in safety. Sex workers marketing on Backpage, Craigslist, Onlyfans, and IG still face a great deal of risk of violence, pressure from pimps, and prosecution by law enforcement. It's a deeply complex systematic issue which can't be fixed by a website.
For drugs in particular, darknet marketplaces primarily rely on unspeakably violent criminal enterprises upstream. The consumers, sellers, and communities implicated in this supply chain are all losers in this system. The cartels are the winners and the global "war on drugs" establishment are a close second place.
I sympathize with the call for decriminalization.
Still, in the case of sex work, I think you are simply wrong. Your overall sketch is the "movie version" or police/puritanical version of sex work, a version that equates trafficking and voluntary transactions (not that those transactions can't exploitative in other ways). The majority sex work isn't filled with violence except on the level of the literal street. Notably, my friends and acquaintances who used Craigslist back in the day didn't deal with any pimps and a moment's thought would show pimps are only needed when someone sells sex at a physical location.
Also, afaik, onlyfans is a virtual only platform so workers there face the same physical dangers as people on zoom calls.
Drugs is a more complex beast.
> a moment's thought would show pimps are only needed when someone sells sex at a physical location
Pimps are needed whenever there is coercion involved. It seems unlikely to me that only street prostitution requires coercion. I think we'll soon learn that most of the women on OnlyFans are there because of a violent and manipulative man.
OF is about as decentralized as a "sex service" as you can get, so I'd wager you'd be very wrong there.
But yes, it can and does happen. Any system offering freedom can offer just as much freedom to those who coerce others.
Thank you for the kind elaboration. I wonder if you could share any writing on the social justice issues surrounding sex work? My knowledge is limited and informed by only a few pieces I've read over the years.
Well, the cartels own most of the avocados so why don’t you think about that next time you go shopping?
Illegal online marketplaces absolutely do reduce "turf wars". It's argueable that there is harm reduction compared to street dealing. Then I suspect it creates new consumers so there is that too.
Ask an actual sex worker what they think about that.
Sure, but the point is about secondary effects. If pimps are "competing" online then they need to compete on, well, marketing and UX. If they compete in real life then it is about who controls physical territory.
There are lots of studies about the unintended consequences of prohibition.
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> getting prostitutes off the streets.
By this, do you mean "reducing the total amount of prostitution occurring" or "making prostitution less visible"?
Your third paragraph implies the former, but I suspect the answer is actually the latter. There is probably less total prostition now, but what's there is more visible.
You talk about "increased crime" in reference to pimp shootouts, but you know prostitution and sex trafficking are crimes too, right? If thousands of women and girls are suffering but you can't see it because it's all organized online, that's not necessarily better.
It could be much worse. Some parts of Onlyfans picked up the mantle for that sort of "service".
I think you meant decreased crime, judging by the context of the rest of your comment.
Coming from a country where prostition is legal and drugs heavily decriminalized, all with plenty of help programs for people who need it. I can only say that the problem is not the platforms but forbidding things that people won't stop using is simply delusional.
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Pimps dying is great. The government should arresting, convicting and executing way more of them.
Well, I think that justice has been served. The feds' prosecution of Ulbricht was the epitome of throwing the book at someone to make an example, when the government's case was pretty flawed, in my opinion. 10 years is enough time to pay the debt of running the silk road.
I am glad that Ulbricht has been pardoned and I feel like a small iota of justice has been returned to the world with this action.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading the comments on this thread. Multiple teenagers (one in Australia) died from the drugs distributed on Silk Road. Ross was ok with selling grenades, body parts, etc on there. But everyone is saying he served his time ???
People regularly die from drinking alcohol. Should liquor store owners be doing life in prison? (And why are Australians special?)
If the liquor store owner knows that some of those bottles might contain pure methanol, and people end up dying from drinking said methanol...then, yes, I do think the store owner should do some serious jailtime.
Which is what this boils down to. Ross didn't know what people were selling. Could be pure high-quality stuff, could be contaminated stuff, could be stuff that was cut up with fent. He made money either way.
Ironically silk road had much safer drugs than whatever pills you would get on the corner.
The Silk Road was "the corner." Do you think it would be any safer if it was running today? That makes 0 sense.
Sellers had ratings and reputations. It also allowed the long string of shady middlemen to be cut out.
Drug producers want pure products. It's almost entirely middlemen who cut drugs with whatever random chemicals they have on hand.
> It also allowed the long string of shady middlemen to be cut out
Based on what? This sounds completely made up. Anyone could sell on Silk Road, and faking reviews would be trivial on an anonymous platform. And if someone died from drugs they bought, they're not exactly leaving a review, are they?
Sellers have reputations in real life, but it can actually be difficult to link a death to a specific dealer without a thorough investigation. Even more so on an anonymous platform. Would Silk Road have cared if the police linked deaths to a specific seller? Fuck no.
For the record, I am not anti Silk Road, I'm actually for legalizing drugs. I just find the notion that drugs online were inherently cleaner to be naive Libertarian propaganda.
What if they contain pure ethanol, and people end up dying from drinking said ethanol?
Why not incarcerate all car makers and doctors then too?
You are hopelessly lost my friend, unable to comprehend the concept of illegal activity.
You look lost to me because you equate law and morality at a deep level.
Selling drugs vs. selling alcohol, this is beyond morality matter but a matter regulated by law, sorry.
There was no equation there actually. Let me unwrap it for you, probably this way it will be clear: first line was a satire of the parent comment along the line of depicting deadly but permitted matters; second line was the unpacking the satire higlighting that the fella hopelessly confused (now, this was more like the equation you sought) a socially permitted activity with an illegal one.
Look maybe I’m just stupid, but I still can’t tell what you’re trying to say. If you’re not saying what I think you’re saying, I apologize.
>Selling drugs vs. selling alcohol, this is beyond morality matter but a matter regulated by law, sorry.
There's nothing beyond morality. Laws are an application based on morality.
And as we know with the 18th and 21st amendments, even the law can have shakey morality based on more factors than "what is good for the populace". That's more or less why I'm against most drug laws. They were not made with "the good health of the people in mind", they were a scapegoat to oppress minorities. It's all publicly declassified, so no one can call me a conspirator anymore.
Nobody cares.
Also alcohol = drug = substance = molecule. IT all depends on how you morally frame it.
Law is based on a common consensus of morality (at least in theory) so they are, in fact deeply intertwined.
I don’t think that’s true. Maybe in its infancy law really looks like that, but as societies grow their law books get more complex and can very easily become separated from majority perception of morality. Does morality explain zoning laws, or is it more about the equilibrium point of a pluralist conflict, everyone looking out for their interests, etc.
Roughly. But always read between the lines and follow the money. We didn't selectively ban Tiktok because government finally woke up to the dangers of social media.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42790443
You understand that incarcerating liquor store owners was the absurdity part of the argument, yes?
Doctors can be arrested for malpractice. I sure do wish we could arrest some of these car makers for telling staff to skimp on details and taking "recalls" as a cost of doing business, but that's an issue for another time.
> unable to comprehend the concept of illegal activity.
There's illegal activity on popular forums all the time. How much should Facebook/X/Reddit be accountable for those?
Yeah, that also seems plausibly consistent with zanek's simplistic argument.
The comment you replied to referenced "multiple teenagers" - the very people that liquor stores cannot sell alcohol to since they're not recognized as mature enough to be freely allowed to drink.
SR allowed children to buy addictive poison without any regulation whatsoever, and Ross profited off of those transactions.
These are not comparable institutions.
You're right. Ross should have been granted a drug selling license, analogous to a liquor license, and it should have been revoked if he failed to check ID before allowing people to make purchases on his marketplace.
Teenagers routinely drink alcohol and sometimes die.
And businesses that knowingly sell alcohol to minors are charged with a crime.
Sure, but the crime isn’t murder. And they aren’t getting life for it.
If their business sold alcohol to as many teenagers as the Silk Road has sold drugs, then yes, they would get life.
Then why isn't the CEO of anheiser-busch given two consecutive life sentences plus 40 years?
AB-InBev does not sell directly to consumers. They have a distributor model of operation.
You mean how Silk Road didn’t actually sell anything but was only a marketplace?
Doing business in, or running, a marketplace without established legal regulations opens you up to undefined consequences. Without laws to bind you, there are no laws to protect you.
Do they get multiple life sentences?
The law recognizes that a bottle of beer generally cannot be used to murder someone else.
But it easily can. Break the end off and poke.
and if a store was selling broken bottles as weapons that would probably face some legal action
Maybe. That would probably legally qualify as a knife.
And stores are not allowed to sell knifes due to the danger to others?
What store isn't allowed to sell knives??
It was a rhetorical question, that was the point.
Not in the US.
No more shoelaces - they are weapons.
Next up - THOUGHTPOLICING!
You joke, but the ATF museum has within it a shoelace that is registered as a machine gun.
Charles Manson never murdered anyone. Should his sentence been commuted?
Obama ordered a drone strike on a wedding killing 500 people - yet he's walking free.
It's almost as if the state was a highly immoral construct.
Read Hoppe.
I am trying to find the incident you are referring to. Do you have any links/sources?
Very off-topic but it's this: https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/02/19/wedding-became-funeral...
GP misremembered what the 500 casualties number refers to (see article).
Idk about silk road, but hydra (russian online marketplace) was the best thing that happened to russia drug market. It had very good reputation system and even labs that did random testing of drugs being sold
Existence of big marketplaces definitely lower chances of people dying from drugs
Russians must have become experts at geocaching with all their experience chasing dead-drops.
It really surprises me that it's not widely used in the rest of the world
> Multiple teenagers (one in Australia) died from the drugs distributed on Silk Road
more or less than those who bought drugs from street dealers?
could it not be possible the silk road saved the lives of many more teenagers who would have died from street drugs otherwise?
I don't think those types of hypotheticals are taken very seriously in court rooms. One, they are effectively unfalsifiable, because it's a about harm that could have happened but didn't. Two, they can be applied universally. Any action might have prevented a catastrophe, after all. Courts persecute based on laws broken and harm done.
Ironically our justice system sometimes does persecute based on hypotheticals. For example persecution for driving recklessly, which is inconsistent with the principle above.
Manslaughter is at most 10 years, he served 12 years, I feel its fair to release him now.
As an Australian who had friends who bought product on silk road my understanding was:
1) It's safer to buy something online and have it mailed to your house than go pick it up from some shady dude.
2) On the street you would often get duds or spiked product, online reputations were built up over time and important to be maintained (think uber/ebay stars).
Overall silk road probably increased the amount of drug activity but made each incident safer. Not sure what the overall impact would be.
An 18 year old lad from my village, who had just started a job programming, bought a drug from an online “pharmacy” and it turned out to be spiked with a synthetic opioid (N-pyrrolidino-etonitazene) and he died in his sleep at home, alone.
On your point about spiked products - it’s clearly a problem for online illegal drugs as well as those bought on the street.
The problem is, you don’t get to leave a bad review if you’re dead.
1/5 stars. Quick and discreet delivery. Minus 4 stars because it killed me.
Smart people can differentiate between a market place and the sellers themselves.
If you knowingly operate a marketplace where unsafe products are being sold, you very much bear some responsibility of those injuries.
If Ross let drug dealers sell fentanyl-laced drugs, which ended up killing someone, he absolutely should be charged.
Those deals wouldn't have been possible without his platform. Sure, maybe the same drug dealer would have sold the bad stuff to some other poor user outside silk road, but those dealings that ended up happening on silk road are his (Ross) to own.
> If Ross let drug dealers sell fentanyl-laced drugs, which ended up killing someone,
This seems unlikely given he's been imprisoned for eleven years.
See: https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd...
You can clearly see that "deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone (primarily illicitly manufactured fentanyl)" didn't particularly alter or rise until after the 2013 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shut down of the Silk Road website and arrest of Ulbricht.
If the Silk Road Marketplace had any influence on fentanyl deaths Then some kind of spike would be expected during the years of operation, 2011-2013.
So I could bring down eBay by opening a store; selling something that I know (but eBay doesn't) is dangerous / broken / false. If that sale goes through, should eBay be taken down since they operate a marketplace where unsafe products are being sold ? eBay cannot reasonably test every single item that is sold through their platform. Same goes for every second hand marketplace in the world. They need to take some measure to address this, but cannot reduce the risk to 0.
As far as I know, SilkRoad had a whole reputation system in place to allow users to flag untrustworthy sellers; that system was inline or even ahead of what many "legal" marketplace had put in place. A part of why SilkRoad was so successful is precisely because overall that reputation system allowed users to identify trustworthy sellers.
This theory was actually tested last year and...eBay won.
The DOJ filed a lawsuit on behalf of the EPA against eBay in 2023, seeking to hold them liable for prohibited pesticides and chemicals as well as illegal emissions control cheat devices sold through the platform that violate multiple federal laws and environmental regulations.
There wasn't even really an argument about whether or not the items were actually illegal to sell - all parties including eBay basically stipulated to that and the judge even explicitly acknowledged it in her ruling - the entire case came down to whether or not eBay could be held liable for the actions of third party sellers on their platform who they failed to proactively prevent from selling illegal items.
In September 2024, U.S. District Judge Orelia Merchant granted eBay's motion to dismiss the case, ruling that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 provides eBay immunity for the actions of those third party sellers.
DOJ filed an appeal on December 1st so we'll see where that goes but as it stands now - no, you couldn't take eBay down even by listing stuff eBay does know to be illegal, based on current precedent.
Why the courts applied Sec230 that way in one instance and not another is the real question and the more cynically minded might also wonder how eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's various philanthropic and political endeavors (including but not limited to being the $ behind Lina Khan's whole "hipster antitrust" movement) could be a factor too. He's no longer an active board member but still a major shareholder whose existing shares would likely be worth a lot less if a case with a potential ~$2 Billion in fines had been allowed to proceed.
Ebay tries to prevent you from selling illegal stuff though. Silk Road didn't. The reputation system was to prevent scams and bad quality products, not to prevent illegal transactions, right?
A large minority of the population (and in some cases, like weed, an overt majority) of the population don't think those transactions should be illegal. "The law is wrong" is sort of the whole point, and why Ulbricht is a quasi-folk hero.
It's a philosophical difference. As someone running a market where buyers and sellers meet I think it's valid to let the buyers and sellers participate in the exchange among themselves at their own risk. The person running the market doesn't need to treat the participants like children. Plus, if you're on the TOR network and buying obscure research chems using crypto in the early 2010s I think it's safe to assume you're more sophisticated and aware of what you're getting into than the average person.
Silk Road (shut down 2013) more or less entirely predated illicit fentanyl's dominance of the opioid market.
I think there is some difference between running a marketplace which you intend for people to sell products legally on, and a marketplace which you intend and know people will sell products illegally on.
Whether I agree with it or not, the law often recognises differences like this. It's not illegal to lie, but it is illegal to lie in the aid a murder. The lier themselves might not be a murderer, but the lier is knowingly facilitating murder.
Ulbricht was knowingly facilitating crime in the case, and sometimes this crime would result in the deaths of people. And despite knowing all this he took no action to address it.
Perhaps your point was he just didn't deserve the sentence he receive, which is fair, but he clearly did something that most people would consider very wrong.
I also wonder how people would feel if Silkroad was associated more with the trading of humans, CSAM, biological weapons or more serious things rather than just drugs. I doubt the "he's just running a marketplace" reasoning would hold in most people's eyes then.
This is why people only blame the DZOQBX brands that sell on Amazon for review fraud and not Amazon themselves, who are blamelessly hosting all those fraudulent sellers.
I totally blame Amazon!
He tried to have people murdered for his own benefit.
Well, he should have get sentenced for that then. And not for running a neutral market place.
Silk Road was a neutral marketplace ? What kind of drugs are you on ? Or are you just completely not aware of what happened
Ross willingly sold weapons, body parts, etc on it. He personally ok'ed the sale of these things (text proof from the prosecution)
Do these smart people you speak of think things that are different are entirely unrelated?
Smart people can differentiate between a transparent marketplace which provides a net economic benefit to society from an obfuscated one which by design enables illicit activity.
Smart people realize that it is not so black and white.
Definitely.
your argument is actually quite dumb, because they have messages from Ross giving the OK to sell most of these things.
He wasnt some hands off executive who had no idea. Smart people should be able to not equate an illegal market place with a legal market place
Coltec, Sterigenics, UCC/UCIL, DuPont, Bayer-Monsanto, Dow, Mallinckrodt, Imperial Sugar, BP, A.A.R. Contractors, W.R. Grace, PG&E, Perdue Pharma.
So much corporate/gov negligence leads to permanent environment damage, cancer, death. In most cases it's a slap on the wrist. Maybe some exist, but I'm having a hard time finding an example.
Show me one executive that served this kind of jail time despite direct links to the deaths of multiple individuals and evidence of negligence leading to those deaths.
You can certainly make an argument that the sentencing was warranted but there's a whole lot of history of being sentenced, if at all, to far less for far more egregious crimes.
Body parts? huh
Maybe spend a little less time reading propaganda.
Wait… you’ve clearly never used The Silk Road, have you?
You don't have to answer that question.
The government should have investigated the people that listed and sourced the drugs
this isn't controversial to say, the governments just go for the laziest intermediary lately
but there is the choice of doing actual investigations for time tested crimes. those dealers just went to other darknet markets, which are far far bigger than Silk Road ever was
People die when they take drugs all the time, whether brought online or not.
But the war on some drugs are a failure, but also impossible to change due to stupid people, so Silk Road and crypto was a means to work around this, while lowering crime and turning it into an iterated prisoners dilemma so that quality etc could stay high.
Plus he tried to hire a hitman to kill someone. Ten years sentence seems a little light for that alone.
He wasn't dealing them. He's not exactly culpable for the effects of his platform any more than Zuckerberg is responsible for mass hate speech coordinated by third-world dictators or Evan Spiegel for facilitating millions of nude images of children and teenagers.
Hard disagree - Zuckerberg absolutely is responsible for inadequately policing calls for genocide on his platform. Just as every social network is responsible for policing child abuse materials. Should they be punished for such content being uploaded? Of course not. They should face punishment where their wilful failure to police such content results in active harm. Facebook's utterly irresponsible behaviour in Myanmar is a great example - https://systemicjustice.org/article/facebook-and-genocide-ho...
In the case of the Silk Road of course, it's much worse, since the platform specifically existed to facilitate illegal behaviour. I couldn't care less about the drug dealing aspect per say, but absolutely facilitating sale in these quantities with no protection from outright poisoning from contaminants is immoral. But he also sold weapons via 'the armory' https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/not-ready-silk-roads-the...
He also directly attempted to have someone murdered, which is a very serious crime in any country. The guy is not a hero. - https://www.wired.com/2015/02/read-transcript-silk-roads-bos...
I didn’t say Zuck isn’t responsible for the ills of his platform. I said DPR is no more responsible than Zuck or Spiegel. That is, that there’s a distinction between facilitating a drug deal and dealing drugs, just as there is a distinction from managing a communication platform that promotes hate speech and violence.
That distinction wasn’t recognized, and I called attention to it. And also to the fact that Eva Spiegel very strangely isn’t catching any shit whatsoever for knowingly running the nation’s most prolific child porn brokerage platform, with a product tailor-made to do so.
You have to understand that half of the people here are libertarians who never grew out of their teenage philosophy.
drugs is one part, but silkroad facilitated more than drug, guns, fake documents, stolen data, money laundering, fake currency, contract killers... the list goes on.
Are you confusing SR with other darknet markets? SR explicitly banned most of these things (guns, fake currency, stolen data, contract killers). Yes, fake documents were allowed.
Did you just make a "think of the children" argument? Teens are well known to engage in risk taking. Why not prosecute the parents?
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People have died from things bought on Amazon, too
Also, Ross wasn't selling those things. He was just operating a market where other people sold things.
wasn't there evidence of hiring a hitman to commit a murder in furtherance of the Silk Road? that's not part of "the debt of running the silk road"
Wasn't that charge dropped though?
Yes but he did get scammed as that wasn't a real hitman
Intent matters!! For all he knew, Ulbricht had killed those guys and he was fine with that
If intent matters, why can't people be tried for crimes before they commit them?
He took paid someone money (a concrete action) with the intent to have someone murdered. This isn’t rocket science
People are usually jailed for hiring contract killers, even if the contract killer happens to be a FBI informant and the murder does not end up getting done.
There wasn't any evidence that actually happened. It appears that it may have been fabricated by the same investigators that later robbed him of some millions of dollars worth of bitcoin. Then when it went to trial the murder-for-hire charges were completely dropped due to lack of evidence.
He was convicted of:
I think they were dropped because in 1 out of the 6 cases, the investigation was tainted because the associated government agents committed their own crimes, and also maybe but I can't prove it everyone thought that prosecuting someone who has been sentenced to 2 life sentences + 40 years is a waste of time.
The hitman was a conman for a murder on a fictitious person. While he fully believed he was committing a real assassination, you can't convict people for killing imaginary people.
You can convict for murder for hire in that circumstance.
This doesn’t sound like an imaginary person
https://www.vice.com/en/article/murdered-silk-road-employee-...
I'm not convinced that you looked at the article you linked.
> That’s because he was the Silk Road employee implicated in an elaborate, and fake, murder-for-hire scheme, created in part by a corrupt Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent.
The murder was fake not the murder order.
>DPR contacted one of his trusted drug dealer contacts, Nob, and asked him to kill Green for $40,000. Shortly after, Nob sent DPR photos of Green covered in Campbell’s Chicken & Stars soup and victim of an apparent asphyxiation, to prove the murder had been carried out.
> Unbeknown to DPR, Nob was no drug dealer. In fact, Nob was Carl Mark Force IV, the very same DEA agent who had arrested Green.
There weee two murder for hire. Look up the story wirh FriendlyChemist.
But does it matter if he ordered a real murder?
The trial for the real one was scrapped because of his other convictions.
Both were fake. One was a con by the DEA and the other one a con by a single guy posing as executioner, victim and a slew of other colorful characters.
The DEA murder was fake but not his order of the murder.
The man just didn’t die because the killer was a DEA agent in reality.
That’s still a felony.
Real justice would be changing the laws and sentencing guidance (through a democratically legitimate process), and re-evaluating the sentences of everyone affected.
Whatever you think about the outcome in this case, it is the moral equivalent of vigilante justice. It is unfair to others convicted under the same regime, who don't happen to be libertarian icons who can be freed in exchange for a few grubby votes.
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I think his original sentence was absolutely deserved—even though the charge of hiring a contract killer to assassinate his business competition may have been dropped, I think it's clear he did many things in the same vein. Even if you support his original pursuit of a free and open online marketplace, I think most people would agree he took it a bridge too far in the end.
That said, I do think he absolutely deserved to be released, not because he didn't deserve to be locked up in the first place, but because he's clearly been rehabilitated and has done great work during his time in prison. All that considered, ten years seems like a not unreasonable prison sentence for what he did. I hope he'll continue to do good when he's released.
"he took it a bridge too far" is a massive trivialization.
The guy operated a marketplace for illegal goods in order to enrich himself. The illegality wasn't just incidental, it was literally his business model -- by flouting the law, he enjoyed massive market benefit (minimal competition, lack of regulation, high margins etc) by exploiting the arbitrage that the rest of us follow the rules.
Said a different way, he knowingly pursued enormous risk in order to achieve outsized benefits, and ultimately his bet blew up on him -- we shouldn't have bailed him out.
His sentence was excessive and cruel to make an example out of him. There’s a serial child rapist in the same prison serving less time.
The state hates more than anything someone who operates on first principles that the empire is wrong.
A serial rapist, even one that would happily do it again, will often repent and quickly admit guilt. They have no interest in undermining the philosophical basis of the state. They will posture themselves as bound but imperfect citizens under the law.
Ross violated the only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law. He was sentenced for being a heretic.
> Ross violated the only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law. He was sentenced for being a heretic.
Good.
Let's keep in mind that the shared faith in this "holy religion, the rule of law" is the only thing holding together your country, my country, everyone's countries, and civilized society in general. Take that away, and everything around us will collapse, regressing the few survivors of that event to the prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other for what little scraps the land has to give.
I'm from Germany. I could tell you something about blindly following the "rule of law". If you throw morality out the window the law can become a very ugly instrument.
No, "Rule of Law" means "Rechtsstaatlichkeit". What you mean is "It's law, so it's always right" i.e. "Rechtspositivismus".
Yes, Rechtsstaatlichkeit only means that the state and its organs have to follow the law themselves. It doesn't say anything about the moral quality of the laws.
The Nazi state had to follow its own laws. They just had such laws that enabled the total lunacy that the 3rd Reich was.
All I'm saying is: If you decouple laws from morality you get a really bad time.
> The Nazi state had to follow its own laws. They just had such laws that enabled the total lunacy that the 3rd Reich was.
This is false. Even if you take the Nazi propaganda that their laws were themselves lawful (which they were not, beginning with the clearly unlawful capture of power) at face value, the Nazi regime did not adhere to its own laws and regulations. While in some cases the Nazi regime did codify a basis in law for their atrocities (i.e. excluding and expropriating jews), much of the Nazi terror both in a civil and military context would have been explicitly illegal under the law at the time.
This includes the November Progroms of 1938 (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novemberpogrome_1938), large parts of the Nazi's approach to warfare, as well as the entire Holocaust (the murder of more than 6 million jews and other "undesirables"), for which the Nazis did not bother to create any legal justification.
While the Nazi regime was deeply bureaucratic (in that it documented its policies, orders and their results in high detail) this is not the same as "following the law". Most of the Nazi's atrocities evolved not through a process of lawmaking, but from their racist ideology and were given legitimacy through the highly personalized nature of the regime: Hitler was explicitly above the law, as were his orders, not matter if expressed through him personally or in his name by his followers.
Not sure why this comment got voted down; it's absolutely true.
The rule of law means that nobody is above the law, not even the Fuehrer or president. Clearly this is not the case in many countries, but it is in some, and it should be.
> The rule of law means that nobody is above the law
If the stats from the Innocence Project are correct[1,2], then it would also mean that nobody is above being a victim of the rule of law, either.
The rule of law is not infallible - and any sort of blind "rule of law" worship is akin to the worship for a dictator; its just merely dressed in different clothing.
[1] - https://innocenceproject.org/exonerations-data/ [2] - https://falseconfessions.org/fact-sheet/
This has nothing to do with the concept of "rule of law". This is simply about how the law is applied and appealed. If anything, the rule of law should protect against these miscarriages of justice, because the law should be applied equally to everybody, and therefore the poor should have the same access to the processes of appeal as the rich and powerful.
I went on r/AskHistorians and I found this answer which seems to agree with you :
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4h2rnc/comme...
Very insightful answer indeed. I found this part particularly interesting:
> One of the most interesting theories however is Ernst Fraenkels "The Dual State". Fraenkel asserts that Nazi Germany is a dual state where the normative state (the state based on the rule of law) coexists with the "prerogative state" (the state not bound by law). While some swaths of society such as the relation to private property, the civil law etc. continue to function on the basis of codified norms (think the building code, neighbor disputes, companies suing each other, "ordinary" criminal law, stuff in relation to ownership of private property), some parts of the state were unbound by the Nazis such as the prosecution of political opponents, the camp system etc. Fraenkel further asserts that once the prerogative state is established, it has a very strong tendency to expand into the territory of the normative state and that state actions once unbound will cause enormous havoc in a certain sense.
This theory kind of generalizes my statements upthread, expanding them to cover authoritarian states. Any kind of society we could label as authoritarian state is by definition already way too large to be fully micromanaged by the people at the top. Such a state has to retain a quite substantial "normative state", as Fraenkels calls it - and this state is what my arguments about intersubjective beliefs apply to. When people stop having faith in the "normative state" - whether because of "prerogative state" overreach or other forces - the whole thing collapses, and not even the strongest tyrant can hold it together.
The issue is that we're used to think in terms of Legislative, Judiciary and Executive. That's what most modern democracies are based on.
If you look at this the old way, Hitler wasn't above the law, he was the law, because there was no real split of powers.
Your comment, though, is very interesting because it defies the stupid idea that back then people respected laws, while today....
Somehow this got idolized, which is why (young!) people tend to feel nostalgic about such times. In reality, there was a lot of corruption, Hitler himself evaded taxes, used Party money to fund his own Mercedes etc.... yeah like today!!! :)
Edit: somehow this propaganda of people of law lasted until today. In reality, the guy was a fraud that collected millions over the years. While everyone else had to live in fear of deportations or worse. I don't understand why journalists don't focus on things like this to dismantle idiotic extreme parties.
> Even if you take the Nazi propaganda that their laws were themselves lawful (which they were not, beginning with the clearly unlawful capture of power)
What definition of the laws lawfulness are you using? Capturing the power - it is what makes law lawful, otherwise any law is unlawful.
This is a very crude and on every level incorrect understanding on how laws work, both in a formalistic, as well as a societal way.
When the Nazis captured power, they did so by excluding the legitimate (and lawful) parliamentary opposition from key votes in parliament by (unlawfully) imprisoning opposition parliamentarians. In a strictly legal sense, this made their entire regime illegitimate from the outset.
What you fail to grasp is that a regime like Hitler's is constitutionally and ideologically incapable of being "lawful", i.e. having any set of laws and norms that would apply consistently, even if these laws were shaped by their own ideology. The whole point of Hitler's leadership was that laws were irrelevant and completely subservient to facilitating his twisted idea of Arian racial domination, with even the "German" society being completely dominated by the "Ubermenschen" that he hoped to create out of the murderous struggle of war.
Even the ancient Romans and Greeks would have recognized the Nazi regime as "unlawful". While the roman empire was a dictatorial regime, it had a mostly consistent set of laws and norms that even the Cesar had to abide by (though these laws gave him tremendous power in comparison to modern democratic executives). "Personalized" regimes in contrast are not build on laws, but revolve around the whims and/or ideology "the leader". You can see some aspects of this in Trump's approach to governance, though the US is obviously still a long way away from the extremes that the Third Reich went to.
You are absolutely right saying that rule of law is not sufficient condition for the existence of modern society. It was a bit confusing still, because nobody claimed the opposite: the comment you replied to was saying rule of law is a necessity.
It's not sufficient, but it's still necessary.
Exactly what I was saying.
You may have been saying this but the parent comment that spurred the discussion was making the explicit assertion that "the rule of law is the only thing holding together [...] everyone's countries, and civilized society in general".
Saying that law is 'the only thing' necessary for the existence of modern society effectively means it is also a sufficient condition. So yes, someone did claim the opposite.
Why argue more when they agree with you?
I doubt that modern society does fulfill the sufficiency criteria [1], so „the only thing“ can be right, but also it is not the claim that it is enough for survival.
[1] USA regressing to a globally disrespected oligarchy under Trump is a good example.
Not in my wildest dreams I imagined Brazil would give the good example for prosecuting a former president who attempted a coup and that the US would fail to do the same.
Ah, but legal positivism is the norm in liberal societies, and not by accident. This follows directly from the demands of liberalism which privatizes discussion of the objective real and relegates it to individual sentiment. One of the paradoxes of liberalism is that the maximization of individual liberty necessarily demotes authority and elevates power, leading to tyranny.
So any appeals to the contrary are rooted in appeals to beliefs held in parallel with the liberal doctrines of the state. When Protestants ruled the US, that means some residual (often warped) Christian sensibility, because they were able to attain that consensus. But with greater competition today, that old consensus is no longer possible. Liberalism ensures that.
The Nazis did anything but blindly followed the rule of law. They did the opposite - they used law as a cudgel to beat their enemies with, while somehow magically, not being held responsible for any of their own violations of it. It's how they rose to power, and it's how they liquidated all of their internal opposition in the pre-war years.
We are seeing this play out again. The brownshirts have all been pardoned (with a clear message to the ones who will be involved in the next act - that as long as they break the law in support of the regime, they'll get bailed out), while everyone else is getting in line to kowtow and kiss the ring - because if they don't, they might be targeted.
It's actual insanity that people are looking at this and saying it is fine.
Then again, the whole country has gone insane, it looks at a video of the richest main in the world giving a fascist salute, and insist that he's just giving a confused wave, or that it's the same thing as a still of some other person with an outstretched arm.
But now, let's get back to the case in point. Who threw morality out of the window, Ross Ulbricht or the state?
Both?
I thought everybody knew the first thing the Nazis did was eroding the rule of law, with the help of Hans Frank, before even taking power.
The fact that everybody is equal in front of justice and that justice should be independent, two of the basics tenet of the rule of law, were hated by the Nazis and called 'jewish law', and were targeted. Lawyers and judges were increasingly close to the Nazi party. The same crime by a party member didn't had the same consequence.
I think the Nazis pamphlet said that 'roman law follow the materialistic world order, and should be replaced by German law'. Where materialistic was a dogwhistle for Marxism, and world order for Judaism.
What did help Nazis was that older judges and lawyers were often aristocrats who didn't really love the republic, and new one were petty bourgeoisie where Nazism had a lot of supporters. They helped put a staunch conservative (who later joined the Nazis) at the head of the German supreme court before 1933. The man blocked socdems appointments, and changed how the German law was interpreted (basically pushing intent of the law vs letter of the law, where intent weirdly always aligned with Nazi ideology).
Then, once they had power, the first thing they did after the conservative Hindenburg (may he be remembered as Hitler first collaborator) declared a 'state of emergency was to suspend judiciary oversight over arrest and imprisonment.
I learned so much from reading this, thank you. Is there more of this same style dense history writing somewhere? (Of course there are caveats and narratives etc., I hope people understand that...)
With respect to this particular topic, one may consider The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich by Ian Kershaw to be a worthwhile read.
I found this short article also similarly illuminating: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-ger...
I bought it as an audiobook and listened for about 30 minutes already. It's been fascinating. It is quite long. But I have definitely learned a lot. Thank you!
I guess the psychological aspect of clamoring for a strong leader would need more deep diving. Serhii Plokhy and Martti J Kari have talked about this in regards to Russia, those are available as Lex Fridman interview and youtube lecture: a strongman, even with downsides, is still preferrable to a weak leadership that is unable to defend against external threats or internal chaos.
The reader's pronounciation of German is quite incomprehensible though (book is in English). Völkischer Beobachter is not easy.
> a strongman, even with downsides, is still preferrable to a weak leadership that is unable to defend against external threats or internal chaos
What's interesting with that is that I think it is wrong, the part against 'external threats'. France during the revolution was attacked by everyone, and despite absolutely no leadership, managed to beat back, well, everyone. By deferring power, it made its army stronger. Yes, then some the people the republic deferred power to then took the rest of it by force, but the laws were weak and the culture not set yet.
Nobody here is advocating blindly following the rules. We can follow the rules with our eyes open, and while advocating for the rules being reformed.
In this case the person throwing morality out of the window was Ulbricht.
Certain discourse in other languages sometimes like to underline the difference between "rules" and "law" as in "we must aspire to be a state built on law, not a state built on rules." (not necessarily claiming English is such a language either)
Everything done without consideration is very quickly evil. Free tragedy of the commons with every free market; equivalents of Malthus for poverty wages and zero profit margins in the economy; Nash games where all parties want to defect and want the other not to; AI optimising for paperclips.
Rule of law is a pillar, but not the only one — in an ideal case the laws themselves are bound by constitutional requirements, and the constitutional requirements are bound by democratic will, and the democratic will by freedom of speech, and the freedom of speech by a requirement for at least attempting to be honest.
Well you need to study history more x) If there's one thing Hitler did was precisely to ignore rule of law and rule by decree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Führerprinzip
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If you sell magic mushrooms and/or lsd then: yes.
>who also completely violated the rule of law in any case
Actually they didn't. Everything the Nazis did they had a law for. The mass murder was all lawful according to the 3rd Reich's laws.
> Actually they didn't. Everything the Nazis did they had a law for. The mass murder was all lawful according to the 3rd Reich's laws.
This is false. Even if you take the Nazi propaganda that their laws were themselves lawful (which they were not, beginning with the clearly unlawful capture of power) at face value, the Nazi regime did not adhere to its own laws and regulations. While in some cases the Nazi regime did codify a basis in law for their atrocities (i.e. excluding and expropriating jews), much of the Nazi terror both in a civil and military context would have been explicitly illegal under the law at the time.
This includes the November Progroms of 1938 (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novemberpogrome_1938), large parts of the Nazi's approach to warfare, as well as the entire Holocaust (the murder of more than 6 million jews and other "undesirables"), for which the Nazis did not bother to create any legal justification.
While the Nazi regime was deeply bureaucratic (in that it documented its policies, orders and their results in high detail) this is not the same as "following the law". Most of the Nazi's atrocities evolved not through a process of lawmaking, but from their racist ideology and were given legitimacy through the highly personalized nature of the regime: Hitler was explicitly above the law, as were his orders, not matter if expressed through him personally or in his name by his followers.
"Everything the Nazis did they had a law for. The mass murder was all lawful according to the 3rd Reich's laws."
Can you cite those laws?
I doubt you can, because they do not exist. There were laws for removing jews from academic positions and to confiscate their belongings - but no law allowing to kill them based on them being jews.
The Nazis operated from the very beginning on the principle do things and later maybe add a law about it, if necessary.
And it's not what rule of law mean.
I now understand why this is even a debate.
"the mechanism, process, institution, practice, or norm that supports the equality of all citizens before the law, secures a nonarbitrary form of government, and more generally prevents the arbitrary use of power."
The law's majestic equality forbids rich and poor alike to beg, sleep under bridges, and steal bread.
You ought to distinguish 'the law' that can be discriminatory, unjust, imperfect, and 'the rule of the law', which in theory cannot. In practice, the 'rule of the law' was never truly achieved, nowhere, and recently (post 9/11 it seems) the US might have gotten further from the hypothetical 'perfect state'. Presidential pardon, Guantanamo, or I think closer to everyday life civil forfeiture, or arrest without cause, interrogation without a lawyer...
Some exceptions to the rule of law are just good practice: immunity to the executive power from executing a voted law, immunity for the legislative power (in some countries like France this immunity have some caveats) while elected. Sadly it breeds corruption.
That's not what rule of law is. Rule of law requires following the established constitutional order which the Nazis did not. A feudal king ruling on his whims has many laws, but there is not rule of law.
>The rule of law is a political and legal ideal that all people and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers, government officials, and judges.
But the Nazis themselves were accountable to their own laws. It was a highly lawful state. Only the laws were pretty fucked because the society lacked any morality.
> It was a highly lawful state.
I know what you mean, and I do agree with your main point about not blindly following orders. I hope most people do. It's just the way you phrase it, I also have to disagree. The Nazis at their core were not "lawful", not even "lawful evil". Not unless the one law is "as long Hitler says it's fine, it's fine".
> Any hierarchy, no matter how authoritatively managed, and any communication of orders, no matter how autocratically and dictatorially issued, would stabilize and thus limit the total power of the leader of a totalitarian movement. In the language of the Nazis, it is the dynamic, never-resting "will of the leader" (and not his orders, which could be given a definable authority) that becomes the "supreme law of total rule".
-- Hannah Arendt, "Origins of Totalitarianism"
Also: https://www.hdot.org/debunking-denial/ah1-hitlers-orders/
> Hitler did sign an order for the T-4 euthanasia program. In the T-4 program as many as 100,000 German citizens who were thought to be ‘unworthy of life’ were murdered by Nazi party authorities and other German collaborators. When the German population caught on to what the Nazis were doing with T-4, they protested and Hitler was forced to publicly back down and cancel the program (although it continued secretly in the camps). Having been embarrassed by a written order once, Hitler became wary of doing it again. Important Nazi officials confirmed the oral transmission of Hitler’s secretive orders.
>all people and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Extrajudicial_killing...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Extrajudicial_killing...
Yes those were also violations of the rule of law, thank you for the examples.
The controlled substance act violated the constitution as it regulates even intrastate trade of drugs. It relies on the tyrannical Wickard V Filburn ruling which says intrastate commerce is actually interstate commerce. The charges against Ross relied on law that flagrantly transgress the 10th amendment of the US constitution as written and as enforced.
This is why they needed an actual amendment to nationally ban, say, home made liquor.
I don't think that legal argument is accurate, but hey, I'm not a lawyer and neither are you.
It was 'accurate' until the 1930s when a certain lawyer with initials FDR found his programs unconstitutional, so he threatened to pack the Supreme Court until they were willing to shit can the 10th amendment.
I'd argue more have died from drug regulations than the Nazis, particularly when you factor in how DEA licensing and FDA approval corruption stifles access to medicine, and how prohibition fosters violence without meaningfully curbing harmful drug use.
Can you hear yourself? Are you really saying that "drug regulation" has caused more death than the tens of millions who died in ww2? Not to mention the millions and millions of people whose lives have been saved by drug regulation as they are not exposed to harmful drugs from charlatans.
Slow burn vs all at once. Also helps if you include the casualties from the narco wars in mexico
39 million people died on the European theater of WW2 alone. Estimates of Jewish deaths during the holocaust range from 4.9 and 5.9 million people. Are you seriously suggesting drug ~regulation~ caused more deaths?
Silk road was not primarily used for "unregulated medicine" but for recreational drugs, weapons and other quite unsavory illegal things.
The bodies dead from the Holocaust are somewhat countable.
The bodies dead because of worldwide drug wars, because it is insanely costly to sell new medicines, and because some poor African child could not get a medicine because a company spent 500 million to get it approved and needs to recoup their costs in the inflated US market is much harder to count.
It's easier I guess to just frame the counterparty as downplaying the Holocaust. I am just not taking the death of the Jews seriously enough, perhaps I am some kind of racist or culturally insensitive person.
Yeah, I remember the silk web being exclusively for cancer treatments not yet approved by the FDA. /s
In Germany it is currently illegal to criticise Israel. You'll pardon me for being a bit skeptical about rule of law. Rule of good law is good, but rule of bad law is bad.
> In Germany it is currently illegal to criticise Israel.
Got any sources for this claim? Like an actual law?
one of the German states foundations is responsibility for the Holocaust, which led to the founding of the state of Israel.
There are laws in Germany that make it a crime to condone a crime (forgive, overlook, allow, permit )
Some German courts have ruled that the slogan "between the river and the sea" is condoning the unlawful removal of Israelis or that the slogan is firmly attached to Terrorist Organization Hamas (therefore is by default a criminal statement )
Plenty of people have been fined for chanting the slogan at German protests against the current conduct of Israel in Gaza and West Bank.
There isn't a German law that states "it is illegal to criticize Israel" but laws like the following have been used to punish people criticizing Israel, in Germany:
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__130.html
Some German courts have thrown out some of these cases, they don't agree the Condone Crime laws can be applied to chanting 'between the river and the sea'
Thanks for the explanation.
I understand that you could face charges if you criticized a group of people and expressed something that can be interpreted as a call for their elimination.
Pretending that those charges are for the criticism doesn't seem right, though.
Grossly excessive sentences for non-victim crimes while letting rapists, murderers and corrupt politicians go free with at best a slap on the wrist, is why people are abandon your "holy religion" in droves
Big shades of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas in GP comment
Never read it, but I watched its recent adaptation as a Strange New Worlds episode called Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach, and if it's in any way representative of the source material, then I'd say the ethical problems there are nontrivial.
Ironically, by sentencing him more harshly on the basis of ideology as opposed to on the basis of the criminal code, you are undermining the rule of law, which requires sentences to be based only on statutory law.
It makes me very sad when people act as if the rule of law wasn't important, or worse in case like this they do as if the rule of law was only a limitation of freedom.
One cannot be more wrong: there cannot be freedom without the rule of law and without the existence of a state that enforces it.
> ... the shared faith in this "holy religion, the rule of law" is the only thing holding together your country, my country ...
Let's forget a minute about that holy rule of law, "your" country has elected a convicted criminal, and it's yet to collapse.
> and it's yet to collapse
This will age well.
Yeah, it's pretty clear that the rule of law is not particularly strong in the US. The past few years have made it clear that some people really are above the law.
Quite an interesting fact that both committed victimless crimes and both were victims of exceptional prosecution
That's comparing apples and oranges. One spent 10 years in a jail for making himself rich (and some others), the other never spent a day in a jail for committing at the highest level election subversion, retention of classified information, hush money payment (and more) - and was caught on the latter, eventually. It was arguably "exceptional prosecution" for that hush payment, like Al Capone was caught on a mere tax fraud
Maybe he should've pardoned himself into the past and a little bit into the future too, like that other man did. /jk
>One spent 10 years in a jail for making himself rich (and some others), the other never spent a day in a jail for committing at the highest level election subversion, retention of classified information, hush money payment (and more) - and was caught on the latter, eventually.
What an interpretation!
Another one might be: they tried to throw all kinds of things at Trump, and they all failed because they simply aren't true, until they managed to catch him on some triviality.
The fact that you "rule of law" people keep putting out accusations as if they were convictions, and insinuating people should be judged on these accusations is truly horrible for the system.
Are you calling Trump's crimes "victimless"? And he's barely been prosecuted. Everything was postponed indefinitely or blocked by corrupt judges.
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> the rule of law" is the only thing holding together your country, my country, everyone's countries, and civilized society in general. Take that away, and everything around us will collapse, regressing the few survivors of that event to the prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other
I've seen this sentiment expressed before, including with the movie "The Purge" (that I admittedly haven't seen, but I understood the concept as law becomes suspended for a day and everyone becomes violent). That idea that the only thing keeping people safe is the rule of law seems absurd to me.
There's a sense of empathy, there's religion (e.g. desire of heaven and fear of hell), there are family values (keeping extended family ties together which can induce pressure to do what's considered right), a concern over reputation, a sense of unity with one's culture and wanting the betterment of one's people, collectivism (the psychological/social tendency to put others before oneself), stuff like not wanting to bring shame to one's parents and extended family, a hate for hypocrisy, a simple lack of any desire to be violent, etc. etc.
I like to believe that between most people and their potential for violence, there's a lot of things besides the rule of law. Law enforcement is for outliers that have a desire for violence and nothing else to stop them.
If law enforcement would disappear from one day to the next, people would be less safe, but I don't think to the point that you'd have "few survivors of that event", especially if you consider just a single country/culture going through that experiment, since this probably depends somewhat on culture and its particular values. I'm more inclined to think that life would mostly just go on as normal, carried by habit/convention and the values we instill in offspring.
Current state of your religion sucks big time then.
Maybe. Or maybe the arbitrary lines drawn and maintained that define "country" and "society" are the only things allowing hate to prosper. Get rid of the lines and become one people.
Selectively punishing someone with a grossly disproportionate sentence on the grounds of their political beliefs seems contrary to the rule of law.
He was punished for his visible actions, not his private beliefs.
Also, I was focusing less on Ulbricht, and more on what 'ty6853 wrote in the comment I replied to. Quoting another part of it:
> The state hates more than anything someone who operates on first principles that the empire is wrong.
My point is: the state is absolutely right to hate such people. This is true regardless of whether the "empire" is North Korea or the United Federation of Planets - it's not an ethics issue, it's a structural property of stable social organizations.
As for people living today, unless you really suffer under the yoke of an evil empire, it's worth remembering that, were the state to suddenly break down, things will get much, much worse for everyone in it, yourself included.
It's too easy for all of us to take our daily lives for granted.
Many were convicted of the same acts and received far lighter sentences. They specifically sought to make an example out of him. That is contrary to the rule of law.
I think you may be overstating this. The archeological evidence is pretty clear that prehistorical lifestyles weren't just small tribes slaughtering each other, and that there was a lot of variety and complexity in the way prehistoric societies organized themselves. Also, there are some societies that exist in 2025 which proved scary enough examples of what's possible.
There are also societies which have blatant arbitrary authoritarian rule which seem to be well in the 21st century. I doubt that faith in the rule of law is the only thing keeping our societies together.
> pretty clear that prehistorical lifestyles weren't just small tribes slaughtering each other,
Well, that's sounds quite logical. When you kill people, they usually fight back. Very strongly fight back. So you have to expect something big to make it worth it. But small very undeveloped tribes had nothing of such, so they have no incentives to slaughter each other.
> But small very undeveloped tribes had nothing of such, so they have no incentives to slaughter each other.
With neither size nor technology to make a lasting impact, the ones that got slaughtered didn't exactly leave much in archeological evidence behind for us to find.
As for GP's point, obviously those people weren't bred for battle with others. All the tiny tribes would happily frolic in the forest or whatever small prehistoric tribes did when they weren't starving, but eventually they'd grow in size, hit a size limit leading to a new tribe splitting off, etc.; over time, the number of tribes grew to the point that they started to bump into each other and contest the same resources, leading to the obvious outcome.
It was later, when humanity accumulate knowledge about resources gathering and processing, about nature and how to deal with it to not to die all the time. Then yeas, tribes were becoming larger, wealthier, more stationary. But before that there were very few people, the tribes were nomadic with virtually no alternatives and had nothing of value. At least nothing so valuable that it would be easier to get it by attacking another tribe, rather than by simply moving a couple of dozen kilometers away.
I'm genuinely convinced that prehistoric humans, being literally the same species as us, were just as capable as us in the ability to thoughtfully construct their societies. Like, why, when they bumped into each other, couldn't they have formed a confederation? I think instead of labeling them as children of nature or starving savages warring with everything in their vicinity, it makes most sense to see them as more or less similar to ourselves.
Editing in a TL;DR: imagine you and your friends are thrown back in time to year 20 000 BC or thereabout. Imagine you find the nearest tribe of humans, and by magical means are able to understand and speak their language. Imagine you go to their chief and propose to form a confederacy, and ponder what would stop them from replying "ugh" and bashing your head in with a club. Compare with a closest analog to today, and where the difference comes from.
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> I'm genuinely convinced that prehistoric humans, being literally the same species as us, were just as capable as us in the ability to thoughtfully construct their societies.
I agree. We're basically the same people as we were before, hardware and firmware, +/- lactose intolerance and some extra mutations that, without modern medicine, would prohibit one from successfully reproducing. With that in mind...
> Like, why, when they bumped into each other, couldn't they have formed a confederation?
Because they most likely couldn't have even conceptualized this that long ago, much less make it work.
A "confederacy" isn't some built-in human feeling. It's advanced technology. Social technology, but technology nonetheless. In a way, it's merely a more advanced form of a bunch of elders getting together to deal with a problem affecting all of their tribes - but this is like saying passing around crude drawing on stones is basically a bit less advanced e-mail or international postal network. As an advanced social technology, a confederacy has a lot of prerequisites - including writing, deep specialization of labor (allowing for both rulers and thinkers to thrive), hierarchical governance, a set of traditions (religious or otherwise) that solidify the hierarchical governance structure and some early iteration of a justice system, literate ruling class, etc.; all of those are but a few nodes in the "tech tree" that leads to a confederacy, and more importantly, enables scaling the society up to the point we can even talk about a confederacy as we define the term today.
> I think instead of labeling them as children of nature or starving savages warring with everything in their vicinity, it makes most sense to see them as more or less similar to ourselves.
We still are children of nature. We're not starving because of all the advancement in science, technology and social technologies we've accumulated over the past couple millenia.
Consider that it is only recently - within the last 150 years - we finally stopped going to war over land and natural resources. Human nature didn't change in that time. What changed was that we've expanded to the point every place on Earth's surface has someone staking a claim to it, that the knowledge of these claims quickly becomes known to other groups; we then fought it out in 1914-1918 and then for the last time, in 1939-1945, then most countries accepted agreements to keep the borders as they are, and then we invented nuclear weapons and froze the borders via MAD.
The modern world is a beautiful but fragile place. If we let any of the supporting structures - whether social or technological or military - snap, the whole thing will collapse like a house of cards, and the few people that survive it will be back to prehistoric savagery. Not because they'd suddenly get dumber, but because they'd have lost all the social and technological structures that makes humanity what it is today, and they'd have to rebuild it from scratch, the hard way.
The law can't save us.
Look at every society before the modern state monopoly on violence. Basically none of them were in danger of regressing because of it. The evolution of the modern state is a result of inter society competition for who can apply the most massed violence against a competing state.
We've seen what happens when empires fall apart (Rome for example) and things don't revert to "prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other for what little scraps the land has to give".
I'm not gonna go too far into this because like you say, it's a religion, and I'm not gonna waste my time trying to convert anyone.
Depends on the time scale. I mean the early middle ages (500 to 1000) could be described as "(smaller) tribes fighting over what is left" (considering all the barbarians from the north pillaging the roman empire while the Arabs conquering it from the south).
The evolution of modern society is as much a result of religion (centralizing a purpose and limiting inner fighting) of science (do things more efficient) as it is to violence.
Violence might be one way to progress, everybody is entitled to an opinion. I just hope you experienced it yourself if you believe it is the way you prefer personally. I am saying just because I thought some things would be great, only to be quite disappointed when I actually tried them...
> Look at every society before the modern state monopoly on violence. Basically none of them were in danger of regressing because of it.
They were too small. But they had their own social orders of equivalent importance, and breaking those would break them apart. There's a reason religion and tradition played bigger role in a distant past, and going against them was severely punished. It's not just out of spite or "us vs. them"; people take threats to stability of their group personally. It's definitely in part a survival mechanism.
> The evolution of the modern state is a result of inter society competition for who can apply the most massed violence against a competing state.
Yes. More specifically, it's the result of growth. It's the same thing as small tribes fighting each other over some small areas of land, except scaled up. Bigger groups have a competitive advantage over smaller groups, but there's a limit to the size of a group beyond which it ends up splitting apart; increasing that limit requires stacking more layers of hierarchy and associated social technologies. "Rule of law" and the legal system in general is one of such technologies, and it looks like it does today, at scales of groups we have today.
A group of dozens can just work on instinct alone. A group of hundreds requires some rules and specialization and designated authority. Scale that 100x, and you need another level of leadership hierarchy just to keep sub-group leaders coordinated and aligned. Scale that 100x further, and you kind of have to get something looking like a modern nation state, as anything else would either break apart or be defeated by another group that is more like a modern nation state.
See also: Dunbar's number.
> We've seen what happens when empires fall apart (Rome for example) and things don't revert to "prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other for what little scraps the land has to give".
Europe would disagree.
LOL I thought the time after the fall of the Roman empire were colloquially termed "The dark ages"
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Yes, Ross Ulbricht is basically a revolutionary.
Nonsense. "The rule of law" isn't one cohesive thing--sure, some parts of it are important for holding together a country/society, but in a sufficiently complex legal system (like the US') there exists a plethora of laws which are irrelevant to holding together society. Every such society has laws which are on the books but are not enforced, weakly enforced, or unevenly enforced. In fact, an implicit part of British Prime Minister Harold Wilson's theory of government was explicitly having laws which only existed to be broken, to allow citizens to exercise their rebellious impulses without causing harm--Wilson believed that turning a blind eye to the breaking of a certain subset of laws actually minimized the harm of unlawful action. An example of this is rules against walking on the grass in many public areas in London, which is enforced by security guards whose only recourse is to tell you to stop.
The US also has laws which we don't care if you break, and the laws we place in this category say a lot about our society. For example, it's widely accepted that people can drive up to 10 MPH above the speed limit and consequences will be rare. Even more severe moving violations are met with a slap on the wrist which primarily effects the poor (fines).
Drug laws were already within this category before Ullbricht started the Silk Road. The was on drugs was explicitly started by Nixon as a war on the antiwar left and black people, and if you didn't fall into one of those categories, you were/are largely above drug laws, since enforcement generally targets those categories, while the social acceptability of popular drugs means that crimes of this nature are rarely reported.
Ullbricht's primary offense was breaking a law that was already broken ubiquitously. Society did not collapse before Ullbricht when these laws were broken, it did not collapse when Ullbricht broke them, and it does not collapse because of the myriad of darknet sites which immediately filled the void left by the Silk Road's closure. Ullbricht's arrest didn't end the blatant disregard for drug laws on the darknet, and yet somehow in the 11 years since his arrest, society still hasn't devolved into small tribes slaughtering each other.
In short, if people breaking drug laws was a real threat to society, then society would have devolved into tribes slaughtering each other already. We have had over 50 years of people ubiquitously breaking drug laws without societal collapse.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman
I'm not talking about any particular law, I'm talking about the general idea of laws as things that apply to everyone, that everyone should obey, and that everyone expects everyone else will obey, and that everyone knows they're expected by others to obey. That's the self-reinforcing structure of intersubjectivity, that allows us to invent and maintain imaginary entities such as "dollar", "law", "justice system", "contract", or "limited liability corporation", etc. Underlying all such entities is the set of shared beliefs about how others will behave.
This structure is self-reinforcing and very resilient: few people here and there rejecting faith in rule of law, or authority of the courts, or money, don't make a difference - we write such people off as weirdos and carry on with our days, secure in knowledge our world will continue to work as it worked the day before. But if sufficient amount of people have their faith falter, that's where the trouble starts.
For example, if enough people stop trusting in the justice system to deliver something resembling justice most of the time, you'll see people ignoring courts and laws and taking justice into their own hands[0]. People start lynching and killing each other, others see them getting away with it, which quickly destroys their trust in the system, and now you're at the precipice. If shooting a (person accused of being) thief is fine, if shooting a billionaire is fine, then why uphold a contract? Might as well get your own at gunpoint, etc. At this point everything stops working - banks, healthcare, fire services, stores. Your country collapses. You probably die.
That is why threats to our shared belief system are so dangerous, and need to be dealt with swiftly and aggressively. It's not about elites in power wanting to stay in power (though it's no doubt part of it for them) - it's because should we all start thinking our social structures don't work, and that everyone else thinks this too, and start acting on this expectation, they'll all collapse in an instant.
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[0] - No, whatever it is that America has with its police is still far from that point.
> I'm not talking about any particular law, I'm talking about the general idea of laws as things that apply to everyone, that everyone should obey, and that everyone expects everyone else will obey, and that everyone knows they're expected by others to obey. That's the self-reinforcing structure of intersubjectivity, that allows us to invent and maintain imaginary entities such as "dollar", "law", "justice system", "contract", or "limited liability corporation", etc. Underlying all such entities is the set of shared beliefs about how others will behave.
You can talk about whatever you want, but you don't get to limit what other people talk about.
If you think there's anything like "everyone should obey, everyone expects everyone else will obey, and everyone knows they're expected by others to obey" around drug laws, you're living in a fantasy. You can talk about that concept if you want, but I'm saying that concept doesn't apply to drug law, which is, in case you noticed, the primary group of laws Ullbricht was convicted of breaking.
> For example, if enough people stop trusting in the justice system to deliver something resembling justice most of the time, you'll see people ignoring courts and laws and taking justice into their own hands[0]. People start lynching and killing each other, others see them getting away with it, which quickly destroys their trust in the system, and now you're at the precipice. If shooting a (person accused of being) thief is fine, if shooting a billionaire is fine, then why uphold a contract? Might as well get your own at gunpoint, etc. At this point everything stops working - banks, healthcare, fire services, stores. Your country collapses. You probably die.
You're picking unrelated examples and ignoring the issue at hand.
If selling drugs is fine, why uphold a contract? If driving faster than the speed limit is fine, why not get your own at gunpoint?
Sure, generally people agree murder is bad, but that's very little to do with the law or any sort of trust in the law. Your ivory-tower ideals have nothing to do with it: as it turns out, people don't want to be murdered, so we're all pretty happy when the cops enforce that law, whether we trust them or not.
I'll further add: banks, healthcare, fire services, stores, all only work for a segment of our population in the US. By your definition of collapse, large portions of the U.S. collapsed decades ago.
> That is why threats to our shared belief system are so dangerous, and need to be dealt with swiftly and aggressively. It's not about elites in power wanting to stay in power (though it's no doubt part of it for them) - it's because should we all start thinking our social structures don't work, and that everyone else thinks this too, and start acting on this expectation, they'll all collapse in an instant.
"Our shared belief system"?
Let's be clear, this is your belief system, and what you're trying to do is justify ramming it down other people's throats with the physical violence performed by police. Your belief system is probably the majority opinion within the upper-middle-class and richer demographic of Hacker News, and might even be the majority opinion nationally, but it's not unanimous or even close to unanimous. Drug use is well within the mainstream in 2025.
> Ross violated the only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law. He was sentenced for being a heretic.
That's a weird way of talking about that. The rule of law is what keeps rampant corruption and government abuse at bay. It means the law also holds for the ruler, and not just for the subjects. The rule of law has already been significantly weakened in recent years by openly corrupt judges and politicians, and traitor being elected in defiance of the 14th amendment.
None of this is a good thing. Without the rule of law, it's the people that lose, because then you get the rule of those in power, who will be above the law.
Also his opsec was sloppy. If you want to believe that the spooks were doing full ipv4 scans to DDoS all his legit exit nodes that would make a better movie. But really, he was just in over his head.
Predictably, dark web market operators adapted afterward. The state got lucky and they knew it, so that also factored in to their sentencing recommendations.
Glad he's getting out.
> only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law
Uhm... Really? Is that present tense?
If rule-of-law was a national holy religion, the last 10 years of US politics would have played out very very differently.
> the last 10 years of US politics
Ten? Oh man. Have you read about the FALN commutation? Iran-Contra? Watergate? The 1960 presidential election? Roosevelt (both of them)? Wilson? Lincoln? Those are just a very few of the instances of disrespect for the rule of law that come to mind immediately.
> Ten? Oh man. Have you read about [list of older historical events I suggest you were foolish to ignore]
Slow down there cowboy, it's "ten" because the other poster is referencing a conviction which occurred on February 5th 2015, uncannily close to exactly ten years ago.
Like any religion, the rules usually don't apply to the leaders, only the followers.
But that's what "rule of law" means: that the rules also apply to the leaders. The fact that leaders in the US aren't held accountable for their crimes means the US does not have the rule of law, but the rule of power. Or the rule of money, probably. The rich are above the law and can buy the government.
Rule of law would prevent all of that. Or should.
Except that's fundamentally incompatible with "rule of law."
So whatever real-world thing being described would need a different term.
By that logic, nobody has lived under the rule of law ever, because it's only achievable in an ideal dream world.
* ty6853: "The car is reliable."
* Terr_: "No, there have been too many serious breakdowns."
* dns_snek: "It's reliably unreliable, so it still counts."
* Terr_: "No, that's literally the opposite of what it means to describe a car as reliable."
* arcfour: "Terr_! Stop demanding perfection! The universe is imperfect therefore true reliability is impossible!"
* Terr_: "No, goddamnit! That's not what I said! FFS, it's as if [RECURSION EXCEEDED]"
Yep, and now the "heretics" are running the show, or at least a large piece of it, so they pardoned him.
The law means less than it used to.
This is a really excellent analysis and you will see it in a lot of prosecutions once you learn about it
Pretty sure Silk Road enabled loads of pedophiles to go about their activities. This is a false equivalence
> The site's terms of service prohibited the sale of certain items. When the Silk Road marketplace first began, the creator and administrators instituted terms of service that prohibited the sale of anything whose purpose was to "harm or defraud." This included child pornography, stolen credit cards, assassinations, and weapons of any type
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)#Produc...
Despite Silk Road explicitly banning CSAM, and the feds not charging Ulbricht with it when you know they would love the positive PR if they could?
What do you mean? Did it actually allow selling anything related to pedophilia? Like CSAM?
Nope. Such content was banned.
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Yes, but so are a lot of sentences in the US. I've heard of people being put away for decades for mere drug possession.
That said, rapists surprisingly often get just a slap on the wrist, or not even that. The US absolutely needs some balance and consistency in its sentencing, but pardoning this one guy sends a really weird message in that regard. At the very least, just commute the sentence so at least the conviction still stands.
Pretty much all criminal laws are like that since only a fraction of crimes will ever lead to an arrest we make examples out of those are caught to make others less likely to commit crimes in the future when they see the punishment. The deterrence effect is basically "risk of getting caught" * "punishment if you get caught".
It's not just the deterrence but to publicly condemn the act. Condemnation needs to have teeth and the perpetrator needs to feel the burden, otherwise it's just empty words on paper. The burden is necessary to establish social balance. The punishment can't be enjoyable, it needs to take away the unfair advantage gained by the criminal act, it provides a way to repay moral debt back to society.
> A fourth feature of punishment, widely acknowledged at least since the publication of Joel Feinberg’s seminal 1965 article “The Expressive Function of Punishment” is that it serves to express condemnation, or censure, of the offender for her offense. As Feinberg discusses, it is this condemning element that distinguishes punishment from what he calls “nonpunitive penalties” such as parking tickets, demotions, flunkings, and so forth. (Feinberg, 1965: 398-401).
https://iep.utm.edu/m-p-puni/
In the UK, serial child rapists are being given 3 year sentences
In the UK, the police helped hide the crimes of non-british child rapists.
The axiom of their "rule of law" was that racism is the worst possible sin, and that anything done to appease people calling you racist was mandatory. The below link MASSIVLEY understated the number of victims.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/rotherham-sex-abuse-sh...
Enoch Powell explained all this nearly 60 years ago, and was sacked the next day by Edward Heath. The term "racist" is at best useless and at worst dangerous. It doesn't differentiate between judging people based on their physiology and judging them on their culture and values. By going out of their way to avoid appearing to judge by physiology, people allowed into their society millions of people with cultures and values fundamentally opposed to their own (e.g. Christians using the British common law vs Muslims using Sharia law). The result is a slow destruction of society that Enoch Powell predicted so long ago in his 1968 speech.
Well, maybe Britain shouldn't have colonized large areas of the globe and exploited them for resources while keeping the indigenous inhabitants oppressed for centuries, all while preaching the absolute supremacy of British civilization and culture. Hardly seems surprising that some of the people you colonized might want to see what all the fuss is about.
Indeed, Britain should have known this and realized that the only way forward was complete and total separation from the post colonial states. Any sort of immigration or pseudo integration was bound to lead to this. Other countries, such as the US, should look to what has become of Britain as an example of what not to do, what ideas do NOT work, and what ideologies lead to such betrayals.
Looking past the one-sidedness of your point of view, what does any of that have to do with the people of today?
in my country it depend on thr color of your skin and your bank account to what charge you get. =) wonderful world!
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He operated a site that allowed you to hire hitmen.
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> He literally made a marketplace for people who sold, tortured, and killed children, even babies.
cp was explicitly not allowed on Silk road. the man was a lot of things but he wasn't a monster.
I’ve never heard this claim before, where are you getting this?
Child abuse was the one thing that was never allowed on Silk Road.
None of that is true.
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Snoop you compare apples with oranges.
People don't really care about child rapists see the Christian churches.
Also you were able to buy everything on silk road including guns. The multiplication effect of this is potentially more worth.
Nonetheless it's still a straw man argument. I personally would not mind at all increasing prison sentences for child rapists.
Silk road had a policy against selling items with intent to harm like guns. While occasionally some weapon listings would slip through, they would be taken down. The focus was drugs (and a lot of legal media). There were plenty of other black market sites on the dark web that sold everything, but that's not what the silk road in particular was about.
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Selling say drugs that kill people (kids including) and illegal weapons that are often used for murders. Such activity is by western standards one of worst crimes, especially in massive scale and run for profit. Even ignoring all other criminal activity, 25 to life seems like a adequate sentence.
It seems that from day 1 US is moving quite far from the place it was and projected itself to others for past decades. More ruthless, money above all, not much fairness in international dealings. Maybe US will be richer after those 4 years, but at current trajectory it will lose a lot of friends and partners.
Please realize this - for Europe, China starts to look like a great not only business but also military partner, much more reliable long term. This is how much such moves can fuck up things.
That's mainly because it cuts into the US government profit margins. They and their favored contractors have been selling arms for profit and love drug running when it suits their aims as they showed with eg support for the Contras.
It is important drugs stay illegal so powerful connected interests can maintain high profit and control. Without that, simple cocaine/meth/marijuana is just an agricultural or chemical commodity with essentially the margin of generic OTC drugs.
Yeah I meant more like some shady fentanyl that overdoses people en masse, not some rather harmless and sometimes even beneficial weed.
The worst part are weapons, there is no way to spin it as something benign. Victor Bout for example got 25 years and there was no drug smuggling nor contract murders.
Victor Bout is free and selling weapons again with the blessing and release of the US government. Always was about profiting off of weapons. Don't believe what the US really got from it was one ditzy WNBA player.
The US government does not have profit margins. It hasn’t run a balanced budget in decades. What are you even trying to say?
They might be alluding to regulatory capture by groups such as the NRA, big pharma, and the defense industry, which, for all purposes, are an unelected part of the government.
I love how the NRA - which is almost entirely member-funded - gets lumped in with actual industries with eye watering margins.
They are a powerful lobby. Just mention "gun regulation" in DC to see how many of them there are.
In terms of money they really aren't that big, but they don't need much money to wield influence because their cause is very popular with a lot of voters and politicians know that.
He was serving 2 life sentences + 40 years, not one. Even the prosecutors only asked for 20. What he did was wrong, but the sentence was disproportionate. The judge intended to throw away his life to make a point.
Fitting then, that his release is happening to make a point with respect to judicial overreach in New York.
> for Europe, China starts to look like a great not only business but also military partner
Speak for yourself. China is still worse than the USA, and Xi isn't bound to any term limit, and has built up quite a following.
China seems to understand the concept of soft power, something the US has been neglecting for many decades in favor of less subtle military intervention.
You mean: bribery and economic pressure? It surely isn't cultural power.
It could start helping finance infrastructure projects, schools, hospitals, universities, and so on. Along that comes the opportunity to exercise cultural influence and develop consumers and suppliers for your own industry.
It’s far less nasty than invading, freeing the people from their government and installing a puppet in its place. Also a lot cheaper. Any missile could pay for a school.
Read up on USAID.
Which countries has china invaded, illegally or otherwise? Which governments have they toppled, covertly or openly?
Tibet
Perhaps more impressively: India, after India had been early to recognize PRC and worked to get them recognized internationally.
The next country that recognizes Taiwan as a state will find out.
Ah ok, so in other words we have to consider hypotheticals in order to even try and draw a comparison to the other state in question.
So, which countries did China liberate from oppression? What did the CCP/its predecessor movement actually do? Standing aside while the NRA fought the Japanese. Instead of helping and preventing some major bloodbaths, Mao and his army just abided their time. After the power change, the Long March, the Cultural Revolution and whatever havoc I forget, China was too weak to do anything, let alone invade countries. Now it's stronger, and seems remarkably poised for war.
Your "US bad because invasion" is a tankie frame. Yes, that refers to the Tiananmen tanks.
>So, which countries did China liberate from oppression?
My friend, what are you babbling about? Did you hallucinate me saying that China is my model of a utopian society?
Again. Which countries has China invaded or toppled, outside of the imaginary ones you yearn for in your head? Is the list close to that of the US?
>Your "US bad because invasion" is a tankie frame. Yes, that refers to the Tiananmen tanks. (??)
I'm a tankie because I think invasions are bad?? What does that make you, a frothing bloodthirsty hawk? A despotic militarist?
Or will now attempt to argue the tired and ahistorical trope that those other invasions were good actually because Pinochet or Suharto were actually secretly democratic and the thousands they murdered aren't important, and it was good that Arbenz was toppled because he actually wasn't democratically elected and was infact a rabid communist in disguise and the United Fruit Co. lobbying was just a coincidence etc. etc.
If so don't bother. I'm not wasting anymore time talking to one bereft of ordered thought, spinning baffling word associations and tired tropes. I'm not interested in discovering to what extent daily life presents a sisyphean ordeal to you.
>minimal competition, lack of regulation, high margins etc
Those benefits don't come from nowhere. You're basically getting compensated to take on the risk, same as any other business. The difference in this case is that the risk is that a bunch of thugs with guns will show up and either kill you or put you in a cage in addition to the usual financial ruin.
Many criminal gangs from biker groups to foreign cartels are doing the same thing and reaping profits in the $100Bs scale annually.
Your argument is not an argument for incarceration, it is an argument for abolition of prohibition and regulating the sales of some psychoactives.
The same stone would hit the fentanyl epidemic, it would hit the pushers of ”zombie drug” laced cocktails, it would hit cross-border trafficking, to name only a few. Society would massively benefit. So would the economy.
> Many criminal gangs from biker groups to foreign cartels are doing the same thing and reaping profits in the $100Bs scale annually.
That comparison does not flatter Ross Ulbricht.
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"Society would massively benefit"
Yes. Just like San Francisco and Seattle did when they legalized drugs
”Legalized drugs” as in ”buy and use whatever legally” is not what is being suggested here.
> he knowingly pursued enormous risk in order to achieve outsized benefits
Like it or not, this makes him a heroic figure in the eyes of many people.
> we shouldn't have bailed him out
Bailing him out comes at no cost. Letting him rot in prison provides no benefit to anyone.
Bailing him out comes at no cost? That's one way to see it. In my opinion, it sends a message that as long as you can provide value to this new administration, you get preferential treatment - no matter how shady and unethical your business ventures are.
I'm afraid that the current administration is fond on this business model. Borderline criminal business models behind curtains.
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wtf is your problem? why no go troll somewhere else?
Not sure it was high margin as much as it was low fees on a large number of transactions, coupled with bitcoin appreciation this meant he made a lot of money.
It was a very high RoI. The cost to run it was negligible compared to the income it generated.
>The illegality wasn't just incidental
The illegality of drugs is a government reaction, since governance failed to do anything with the problem by action. No-one deserves a life-long sentence in prison for that. This market, as well as minimal competition, lack of regulation, and high margins was created by the same power which sends people to jail.
"Exploiting arbitrage" is not high on my list of concerns.
The rest of it is.
Trump is a bit of an agorist is well. It's part of the American wild west mythical psyche, to the point America made a sport from moonshine running cars. Not hard for me to see how he half won and walked away with an unconditional pardon.
> to the point America made a sport from moonshine running cars
Huh, is that NASCAR?
TIL!
> In the 1920s, moonshine runners during the Prohibition era would often have to outrun the authorities. To do so, they had to upgrade their vehicles—while leaving them looking ordinary, so as not to attract attention. Eventually, runners started getting together with fellow runners and making runs together. They would challenge one another and eventually progressed to organized events in the early 1930s.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_car_racing
Yes, but the moonshine part wasn’t part of the sport or its celebration. It was about racing cars regular people could buy: “stock cars”.
I believe so
> he enjoyed massive market benefit
Life imprisonment, no parole.
You have to be a complete and utter wanker to think his punishment was justified.
》 we shouldn't have bailed him out.
I don't have a horse in this race but the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear "we shouldn't have bailed him out" is silicon valley bank and its depositors. That to me was the biggest show of hypocrisy by silicon valley.
There were no victims of his conduct.
The idea that possession of drugs is or should be illegal is purely arbitrary, and is used thus to justify massive violations of human rights. It is literally insane that the state claims authority over what you are allowed to do to your own body.
No victim, no crime.
While you might argue which drug is dangerous and which isn't, ban on drugs is not arbitrary decision. You can't do whatever you want with your body, because you might loose control and hurt others. Drug abuse affects others as well (financially, mentally, physically...). I am victim of someone's drug abuse. I never took any drugs. So if you are looking for victims of drug abuse, here I am.
Some of the decisions were rather arbitrary at best, and racist at worst, though. The sentence disparities regarding, for example, cocaine depending on how you are using it was designed to punish black people more harshly. Opium bans had as much to do with anti-Chinese sentiment than anything.
I'm not arguing that drugs should be legal, but we do have to be clear that the reasons for banning them and the punishment are not necessarily rational.
That’s pure historical revision. The sentencing difference was created in 1986 based on the belief that it was more addictive. It wasn’t until a decade later that research showed the causation had been reversed (more addicted people were more likely to use crack). If you look at the timing, there was a huge increase in drug crime that occurred as a result of the crack epidemic: https://www.nber.org/digest/oct18/lingering-lethal-toll-amer....
The recent change in policy simply reflects the prevailing trend of reducing disparities in sentencing for criminals while increasing disparities in crime victimization by failing to enforce the law.
> You can't do whatever you want with your body, because you might loose control and hurt others.
Why is it legal to drive a car, then?
It is legal if you're in good shape and therefore the risk of that happening is minimal. It is illegal to drive a car under an altered state that makes it more likely to happen. It is a balance between the benefits of permitting something and the likelihood of something bad happens. In normal conditions, the benefits are believed to outweigh the risks, so it is generally permitted to drive a car. But it is not permitted to drive it if you're under the effect of some substance that can alter your perception of reality.
OK, that's fair. So I agree that:
> You can't do whatever you want with your body
is pretty reasonable, but how about we rephrase it as something like:
> You can't do something with your body that significantly increases the risk of harming others
?
Yes, I would agree with this principle, with the caveat that there could be always be corner cases that deserve a special treatment.
Honestly, if cars were only invented in the last few years, it probably wouldn't be legal without extensive training and licensing
Then why the distinction with alcohol though?
Alcohol is in fact heavily regulated and controlled in most countries, and we have cultural practices in place that largely manage the risks for the vast majority of people that consume it.
Personally I'm in favour of further narcotics legalisation, but with regulation to manage it's social effects and taxation to fund the expensive mitigation measures it would require.
It's clear you don't personally know anyone who has been affected by a serious drug addiction. It is devastating not just for them, but their family and everyone that cares about them. It's unbelievable to me anyone could claim that dealing drugs is a victimless crime.
Almost everyone I know has been personally affected by serious drug addiction. Alcohol, opiates, cocaine, marijuana, cigarettes, even gambling if you count such things.
I still support the abolition of all bans and controls on access to drugs.
Destroying one’s own self has no victims, any more than bodybuilding does. If we should be free to build ourselves, we should be free to destroy ourselves.
Please don’t assume anyone who disagrees with your philosophy is naive or lacks empathy.
I'm not assuming. Your position on this issue simply lacks empathy.
If you've known anyone addicted to the list of things you mention, you should know that at some point, they are no longer "free to destroy themselves". They are continuing to destroy themselves out of a chemical or phycological necessity. The people who deal drugs or own casinos are running predatory businesses and it should be illegal, just like other predatory business practices are.
Those kind of drugs are bought by traditional street criminals. Darknet it's mostly about psychedelics and such.
A lack of personal responsibility is tragic, but hardly the fault of Mcdonalds when someone has a heart attack.
Chemical addiction is not comparable to overeating/lack of exercise. You could theoretically be "addicted" to McDonalds and still live a fairly healthy and balanced life in other respects. It's really not possible to be addicted to heroine and live a balanced lifestyle. Even though drug addicts are largely personally responsible for their actions, that doesn't make it less true that drug dealers are knowingly profiting off of vulnerable individuals and actively encourage them to ruin their lives.
How are liquor stores functionally different?
Drugs weren't the only items sold there, there were also weapons. If you illegally sell weapons in a country where it is already much easier to legally get a weapon than most other countries, you can be sure that those weapons aren't going to be purchased by a layperson trying to defend themself but by criminals going to use those to harm other people.
The crime being not selling the weapons, but failing to keep appropriate records that ensured the use of the weapons was responsible and that users would be held accountable for their use.
On my book, this is pretty serious.
Ross Ulbricht was not sentenced for murder-for-hire charges.
Those allegations were used to deny him bail and influenced public perception, they were not part of his formal conviction or sentencing.
He was convicted on non-violent charges related to operating the Silk Road website, including drug distribution, computer hacking, and money laundering.
Does this change your opinion of sentencing being well-deserved?
This opinion [1] from the judge in his case indicates that the murder-for-hire evidence was admitted during his trial. The document outlines the evidence for all 6 murder for hire allegations and explains why, although not charged, the evidence is relevant to his case.
[1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1391...
It's surprising to me that the prosecutor is allowed to essentially insinuate crimes to influence the jury, without the need to prove them. That seems to undermine the process because it creates a "there's smoke so there must be fire" mentality for the jury.
There was plenty of evidence that he ordered the hits, and the defense had the opportunity to address the evidence in court. The chat logs go far beyond "insinuation"
It's ridiculous that people are pretending there is any doubt about his guilt because they like crypto and/or drugs.
So why not properly charge him then?
Do you not think the optics are a bit weird when you sentence someone to life for something relatively small, but the reason is another crime you’re very sure he did but you didn’t bother to charge him with?
Prosecutors often choose not to pursue additional charges against someone already serving a life sentence. This approach helps avoid wasting court time and resources on cases that are unlikely to change the individual’s circumstances or contribute meaningfully to justice (none of the murders for hire resulted in victims).
I actually wonder if those charges may still be on the table now that a pardon has been granted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutorial_discretion
AFAIK they were dismissed with prejudice, so can't be brought again.
If I understand correctly, only one of the "murder-for-hire" allegations was dismissed with prejudice[0]. However, he was suspected of orchestrating a total of six "murder-for-hire" plots.
[0] https://freeross.org/false-allegations/
Comically (horrifically sadly?) they were dismissed that way because he was already in prison for life with no possibility of getting out, so the court did not want to waste time on it.
And here we are
Being a drug kingpin is not considered "something relatively small" under US law, as you can see from the sentencing. Being the leader of a large drug operation and ordering hits to protect your business would be considered worse than trying to take out a hit for whatever "personal reasons".
Obviously the hits are a lot messier to prosecute as well with the misconduct of the FBI agents, maybe you could hammer that enough to confuse a jury. But people are commenting like the evidence outright didn't exist - I can only think they have either heard it told second-hand, or are employing motivated reasoning.
Of course it is. Throwing in potential evidence of unrelated crimes to sway other people's (specifically jury's) opinion about the defendant without formally charging him is exactly what the word "insinuation" means[0]:
the action of suggesting, without being direct, that something unpleasant is true
[0]: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/insinuat...
> There was plenty of evidence that he ordered the hits, and the defense had the opportunity to address the evidence in court
Clearly not that much evidence if the state didn't bother to prosecute those charges. And why would they? The judge sentenced him as though he had been found guilty of them.
Coincidentally, on the same day, SCOTUS confirmed in Andrew v. White ruling [1] that admitting prejudicial evidence violates due process rights under the 14th Amendment.
1. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-6573_m647.pdf
It's a gross miscarriage of justice.
The gov should have to prove you committed a crime before that information is admissible at sentencing.
This opinion (after appeal) also details how they taken into consideration with sentencing. See pages 130-131
https://pbwt2.gjassets.com/content/uploads/2017/05/15-1815_o...
That's a nice end-run around “innocent until proven guilty”: they didn't have to prove anything about those allegations beyond making them, because he wasn't charged with them.
The first person in the murder-for-hire allegations 'FriendlyChemist' was an undercover DEA agent or informant, and it's strongly possible none of the other people existed. It's also conjectured the hitman account 'Redandwhite' was being operated by the same DEA agent [*]. Moreover the bitcoin DPR sent the supposed hitman 'Redandwhite' sat in the wallet from 3/2013 till 8/2013, "which alone should have tipped out DPR about a possible scam" ie. that the killing never happened [0]. DPR never requested any confirmation pictures of at least 5 of the (fictitious) killings, nor was there any Canadian media coverage to suggest anyone got assassinated on the supposed dates.
The US Attorneys made a lot of publicity out of the murder-for-hire conspiracy allegations against Ulbricht in their indictments and in pre-trial media ("although there is no evidence that these murders were actually carried out." as the indictment itself obliquely says).
Ulbricht's defense could have come up with a plausible alternative explanations that he knew redandwhite was a scammer trying to extort him with a story involving nonexistent people, and was just playing along with him for whatever reasons.
[*] If the prosecution had not actually dropped those charges at trial, it would have been confirmed at trial which of the six identities were fictitious/nonexistent and whether all the accounts were managed by the same DEA agents. Hard to imagine that at least one juror wouldn't have formed a skeptical opinion about government agents extorting a person to conspire to kill fictitious people (why didn't the indictment just focus on nailing him on the lesser charges?). If this wasn't a Turing Test on when is an alleged conspiracy not a real conspiracy, then someday soon we'll see one.
ArsTechnica covered these facts in 2015:
[0]: "The hitman scam: Dread Pirate Roberts’ bizarre murder-for-hire attempts. On the darkweb, no one is who they seem." 2/2015 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/the-hitman-scam-...
[1]: Silk Road’s alleged hitman, “redandwhite,” arrested in Vancouver https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/11/silk-roads-alleg...
To my mind, it doesn't matter whether a murder actually occurred for Ulbricht's culpability. He thought he was ordering a murder, he solicited proof, he got proof, and he asked for more hits. In his frame, someone was murdered on his orders. It's a burden to prove for sure, but the fact that he paid substantial cash equivalents in bitcoin to me mean he didn't think he was playing some fantasy game with scammers.
The chat logs show that he was quite stoic about the whole thing and treated it as a mundane business action to protect himself ("is a liability and I wouldn't mind if…"; "I've received the picture and deleted it. Thank you again for your swift action.").
Given that he is now free, and may have access to substantial cryptocurrency wealth, I think it would probably be best under the circumstances if everyone forgot about these allegations and just left him alone to live a quiet life.
FWIW, the two agents in the Ulbricht case, Shaun Bridges and Carl Mark Force IV, both subsequently went to prison for corruption, money-laundering etc. which they were perpetrating at the same time as the Ulbricht investigation, and tainted a lot of other prosecutions.
[0] gives a timeline and fills in lots of details.
Article [1] describes Bridges:
> Bridges was a cryptocurrency expert [... with offshore entities, including one that he had created after pleading guilty in this case]. According to AUSA Haun, his involvement with digital currency cases across the country caused a “staggering” number of investigations to become tainted, and subsequently shut down. She told the judge at Bridges’s sentencing that the corrupt agent had been looking out for opportunities to serve seizure warrants and somehow profit from it.
> The prosecutor also said that bitcoins were still missing, and they weren’t sure if he had worked with other corrupt agents. The US Attorney’s Office seemed to imply that there had been a lot of weird (but not necessarily chargeable) stuff that was still unaccounted for.
Article [2] describes Force:
> [Force's mental health issues]... his previous undercover assignments had ended disastrously. An assignment in Denver in 2004 had ended with a DUI. A second undercover assignment in Puerto Rico had ended in 2008 with a complete mental breakdown. Force was institutionalized, and did not return to his job until 2010. He was on desk duty until 2012, when he was assigned to investigate the Silk Road.
[0]: "Investigating The Staged Assassinations Of Silk Road" 11/2021 https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/inside-silk-road-staged-...
[1]: "Great Moments in Shaun Bridges, a Corrupt Silk Road Investigator" 2/2016 https://www.vice.com/en/article/great-moments-in-shaun-bridg...
[2]: "DEA Agent Who Faked a Murder and Took Bitcoins from Silk Road Explains Himself" 10//2015 https://www.vice.com/en/article/dea-agent-who-faked-a-murder...
[1] was previously posted on HN 2/2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11037889
99% of paid hitmen were and are just cops. They catch plenty of people with real plans all the same.
You missed that the "victims" did not exist and were invented (and Ulbricht's defense could have claimed that he was aware of that, and it would only need one juror to find that credible). I'm pointedly asking what a "real" plan is if it involves fictitious people invented by the two govt agents - both of whom (Bridges and Force) subsequently went to prison for corruption. If the conspiracy-to-commit-murder charges hadn't been dropped, cross-examining Bridges and Force likely would have destroyed the prosecution case (for conspiracy to commit murder).
UPDATE: apparently I'm wrong that "factual impossibility" is not a defense [0]. But Bridges and Force's criminal behavior tainted the prosecution case on this charge. Presumably why the prosecution made sure those two agents were not mentioned in the trial.
[0]: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/62360/can-you-charge...
> You missed that the "victims" did not exist and were invented (and Ulbricht's defense could have claimed that he was aware of that, and it would only need one juror to find that credible).
But now we're playing legal tricks here. The real question would be if Ulbricht was willing to have people killed or not, regardless of what the defense can claim.
EDIT: just to be clear. Legally, I think it makes a big difference if someone decides to have someone else killed, tries to hire an hitman and that hitman turns out to be a policeman in disguise vs a policeman in disguise telling you "there are people doing something that is bad for you, should I kill them?". And it is perfectly right that the second case is crossing a line. But form a moral perspective, if someone answers "yes" in the second case, that still tells us a lot about that person, regardless of whether those people existed or not. The important thing is that those people were real in this person's mind.
" I would like to put a bounty on his head if it's not too much trouble for you. What would be an adequate amount to motivate you to find him? Necessities like this do happen from time to time for a person in my position. I have others I can turn to, but it is always good to have options and you are close to the case right now. [...] As you don't take kindly to thieves, this kind of behavior is unforgivable to me. Especially here on Silk Road, anonymity is sacrosanct. It doesn't have to be clean, and I don't think there are any funds to be retrieved [...] Not long ago, I had a clean hit done for $80k. Are the prices you quoted the best you can do? I would like this done asap [...] I've only ever commissioned the one other hit, so I'm still learning this market. I have no problem putting my faith in you and I am sure you will do a good job. The exchange rate is above 90 right now, so at $90/btc, $150k is about 1670 btc. If the market tanks in the next few days, I will send more. Here are some random numbers for a picture: 83746102 Here is the transaction # for 1670 btc to 1MwvS1idEevZ5gd428TjL3hB2kHaBH9WTL4a0a5b6036c0da84c3eb9c2a884b6ad72416d1758470e19fb1d2fa2a145b5601 Good luck"
lmao
If that isn't conspiracy to murder, I'm not sure there is anything that would qualify.
I don't have knowledge of how the message exchange went. But if it was Ulbricht to contact the supposed hitman in the first place, then you're right that there isn't much to discuss about. Policeman in disguise or not, it is an attempt to murder someone.
This spin is so good that you should be a defense attorney.
He was found during sentencing to be guilty of hiring a hit on a competitor using a preponderance of evidence (lower then presumption of innocence). While this is a lower standard than a conviction, it is still a higher standard than most apply in public discourse.
That isn't fair, the point of the trial is to test whether something is to be acted on. To act on something that wasn't directly part of the trial is a bit off. I'm sure the judge is acting in the clear legally, but if someone is going to be sentenced for attempted murder then that should be after a trial that formally accuses them of the crime.
He wasn't sentenced for attempted murder, the sentence Ulbricht received was within the range provided by statute for the crimes he was convicted of. Judges have discretion in sentencing and they are allowed to consider the character of the defendant. The fact that Ulbricht attempted to murder people was demonstrated to the judges satisfaction during the trial and influenced her to sentence at the higher end of the range allowed for the crimes he was duly convicted.
The range allowed for those sentences is way too wide. Life without parole is nowhere near reasonable for hacking, money laundering, and drugs. Being within the sentencing range is meaningless when the range encompasses any possible sentence.
Well, just selling some drugs and laundering the money is one thing. Being some much a drug lord that you start a war on other drug lords is so much on a different level of severity that it could have been it’s own article in a criminal code
His sentence was severe in part because he fell under the "kingping statute". This is based on the amount of drug trade he facilitated, the amount of money he made, and the actions he took as an "organizer". The hits didn't help.
> For conviction under the statute, the offender must have been an organizer, manager, or supervisor of the continuing operation and have obtained substantial income or resources from the drug violations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_Criminal_Enterprise...
> Being some much a drug lord that you start a war on other drug lords is so much on a different level of severity
Is this a hypothetical or did I miss a big chunk of this story?
If the war involves people being hurt, then conspiracy and instruction to injure and murder sound like great things to charge the drug lord with. If it doesn't, then I don't see the severity.
This cuts both ways as judges often adjust their sentencing downward based on mitigating evidence. For both aggravating and mitigating circumstances evidence does need to be submitted, and there are standards of proof to be applied. It's just that the procedural rules can be different and, depending on the context and jurisdiction, sufficiency can be decided by the judge alone. In some jurisdictions, for example, aggravating evidence may need to be put to the jury, while mitigating evidence need not be.
The U.S. is rather unique in providing a right to jury trials for most--in practice almost all, including misdemeanor--criminal cases. And this is a major factor for why sentencing is so harsh and prosecutions so slow in the U.S. In myriad ways the cost of criminal trials has induced the system to arrive at its current state favoring plea deals, with overlapping crimes and severe maximum penalties as cudgels. Be careful about what kind of "protections" you want to impose.
> This cuts both ways as judges often adjust their sentencing downward based on mitigating evidence.
It isn't supposed to cut both ways. The prosecution is supposed to have the higher burden, and admitting unproven allegations is excessively prejudicial.
> In myriad ways the cost of criminal trials has induced the system to arrive at its current state favoring plea deals, with overlapping crimes and severe maximum penalties as cudgels. Be careful about what kind of "protections" you want to impose.
The lesson from this should be to make the protections strong enough that they can't be thwarted like this. For example, prohibit plea bargaining so that all convictions require a trial and it's forbidden to impose any penalty for demanding one.
It's not supposed to be efficient. It's supposed to be rare.
You misunderstand the judge's role in this
In common law, you are found guilty, and then sentenced. The judge does the sentencing, the jury finds you guilty or not.
Then there is precedent. Guidelines are created based on caselaw, so if a simular type of case arrises, that forms the "expectation" of what the sentence will be.
This means that you don't need specific levels of a crime. For example drug trafficking can be a single gram of coke for personal use, vs 15 tonnes for commercial exploitation. hence the range in sentences.
Suppose you're charged with two crimes in two separate courts. The first is jaywalking, the second is murder, but the judge is given unlimited discretion to determine sentencing.
To try to prove their jaywalking allegations, the prosecution in the first case claims that you were in a hurry to cross the street because you were trying to kill someone, and present some evidence of that from a questionable source. They also have separate video evidence of you crossing the street against the light. The jury convicts you of jaywalking.
The judge in the jaywalking case then sentences you to life without parole, because jaywalking in order to murder someone is much more serious than most other instances of jaywalking. The prosecution in the other court then drops the murder charges, so the murder allegations were never actually proven anywhere.
Is this reasonable? Should we be satisfied with how this works and not want to change anything about it?
Thats not how it works or what happened.
You can only be given a sentence for the crime you have been convicted of, otherwise you could easily appeal.
> Is this reasonable? Should we be satisfied with how this works and not want to change anything about it?
It doesn't work like that, and I wouldn't be satisfied by a court system that does work like that. It'd fucking disastrous. If anyone convinces you that it does work like that, they are either a scammer, or want to make the law system _very_ scary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_in_the_United_St... which have been there for _many_ years. Its a common law principle that at least twice as old as the USA.
> You can only be given a sentence for the crime you have been convicted of, otherwise you could easily appeal.
If you're convicted of a crime, let's say selling drugs, that carries a penalty of up to life in prison even though most people get 5-10 years, and then you're sentenced to life in prison after the person doing the sentencing is prejudiced by these murder allegations you've never been convicted of, what's your basis for appeal?
> If you're convicted of a crime, let's say selling drugs, that carries a penalty of up to life in prison even though most people get 5-10 years, and then you're sentenced to life in prison
you can appeal the sentence as being "too harsh" or out of the normal bounds. That's fair game and quite common.
However, if you are convicted of drug trafficking, money laundering and criminal enterprise, and you are appealing the length of the sentence, its very difficult to appeal if your system/company organisaiton to which you admit to being the head honcho of, uses a very traceable currency to launder money, and therefore can reasonably prove spectacularly large amount of drug trafficking.
The criminal enterprise charge has a minimum of 20 years, adding in drugs to the mix adds an additional 10.
the whole "judge was biased because of unfounded ordered assassination" is plainly wrong.
Sure you can argue that drugs should be legal (but you need support and money to help people escape, see opioid explosion)
but thats not the same as Roos Ulbricht got the wrong sentence. What he did was really obviously illegal, and at industrial scale. industrial scale illegality is going to get you a long sentence.[1]
[1] yes rich people manage to escape justice, this is an affront to justice, but arguing that Ulbricht was wrongly convicted only enables rich people to get off more, because it wrongly states that the law was wrong in this isntance.
Mark my words, the US legal system is going to get a huge shakeup. most constitutional checks and balances for the executive have been dismantled, because of a failure of congress. You don't want that new legal system, as thats going to be injustice for many, control for the few. A central plank of libertarianism is a fair and equitable legal system, we are straying further from that.
> if you are convicted of drug trafficking, money laundering and criminal enterprise, and you are appealing the length of the sentence, its very difficult to appeal
That's what I'm getting at. The premise is that this guy is Al Capone. But if he was actually guilty of murder then they should have convicted him of murder, whereas if he was only guilty of running a website, those penalties are crazy. Not because they don't ever get handed out or Congress didn't put them in the statute, but because they have within them the assumption that you're a drug cartel. And then because drug cartels are murder factories, the penalties are extreme and inappropriate outside of that specific context.
But the courts are bound to follow the law, which is the problem, because those laws are nuts. They're even nuts in the context of the actual drug cartels, because what they should be doing there is the same thing -- getting severe penalties by charging them with the actual murders, not putting life sentences on the operation of a black market regardless of whether or not there is any associated violence.
It's the same reason people are so eager to lean into the unproven murder allegations to justify the sentence -- it's intuitively obvious that without them, the penalties are excessive.
> whereas if he was only guilty of running a website,
Yes, he was guilty of running a website, which on the face of it seems innocent right? Sure thats an argument. "i'm just providing an online location for this to happen, but I don't know whats going on"
Apart from he was _also_ running an escrow service, Now to run an escrow service you need to create a contract with conditions to allow money to be released. The problem is that to say "oh he didn't know what was going on" is a provable lie, because to keep the escrow trustworthy, you need to arbitrate, to arbitrate requires knowing what was supposed to be delivered and why it didn't get delivered.
Now, escrow isn't free, you're taking a risk holding that money. So Ross takes a cut.
But the problem is, that money comes from illegal activities. He knows this, so he needs to find a way to make the money legit. This means fraudulently laundering it.
The problem there is that when you combine laundering money and drugs trafficking, you get compound sentences. see https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/operation-foxhound-nets-47...
which has:
> Those arrested face sentences of 10 years to life in prison for the narcotics violations and up to 20 years for the money laundering violations.
However
I want to find agreement, because I want to make sure that understand I'm not saying your viewpoint is wrong, I think your anger is directed in the wrong place.
The sentence is within tolerance for the scale and combination of offences, the murder allegations are a red herring, and didn't materially affect the sentence.
For a large number of drug users, silkroad provided a safer way to obtain drugs, both in terms of violence and quality.
The people that ultimately set the bounds for these sentences are congress. They have chosen the war on drugs, which I think we can agree has caused more violence that it has stopped. The courts did exactly as they are supposed to do with the laws that they had at their disposal. The way the court operated was correct.
What is not correct is the federal governments approach to drugs.
> "i'm just providing an online location for this to happen, but I don't know whats going on"
It's not even that. It's a matter of, okay, there is a gas station next to the highway. They sell gas to anyone who shows up. "They don't know those people are speeding", wink.
They know those people are speeding. If you went up to the average gas station attendant and asked them if they knew their customers were speeding, they would probably admit they know, because the speed limit is below the speed of the median car and everybody knows it. You may also have other ways of proving they know. They may even know in specific cases rather than just in general. So they're knowingly making money from all of this illegal activity. A dangerous offense that causes thousands of fatalities. Literally making more money than they would otherwise, because cars use more gas at very high speeds, and knowingly enabling the unlawful activity, because those cars don't run without gas.
Should gas station workers all be in prison for life, or is that a crazy penalty for that type of offense?
> The sentence is within tolerance for the scale and combination of offences, the murder allegations are a red herring, and didn't materially affect the sentence.
There can be more than one source of the problem. I'm not disputing that Congress has passed some bad laws.
The issue is, there is still a range of penalties for that offense, and he got the very top of the range. For some reason.
That's not possible because jaywalking has a maximum penalty, and the judge can't exceed that maximum penalty.
A proper analogy would be something like two crimes, A and B, both with the same statutorily defined maximum penalty--life imprisonment--but where the typical sentence for A is much less for B. The defendant is found guilty of A, but the judge uses aggravating evidence to sentence them as-if it were B. But that highlights the fundamental problem: why would we have both A and B with the same maximum penalty, both covering the same or similar behavior? Often the point of A is to make convictions easier because proving B proved too onerous in practice.
What we want to get back to, and which almost every other jurisdiction implements around the world, including both systems thought to be far more fair than ours as well as less fair (for different reasons), is to have better tailored crimes, including penalties. One of the reasons we have so many felonies these days is because sentencing someone to jail for a single day on a misdemeanor offense for stealing a pack of gum for the 20th time can require a jury trial just as onerous as a felony offense with a 20 year sentence. Thus, if you want a more fair system, we probably may need to make it easier to sentence for smaller crimes with lighter sentences. IOW, lower the stakes so there isn't an arms race between punishment severity and procedural protections.
Most countries don't even require juries or panels for serious crimes, let alone light (i.e. misdemeanor) offenses. The shift to granting jury trials for any offense carrying possible jail time started in the early 1900s via Progressive Era reforms. Today only NYC (just NYC, not New York state) and, I think, South Carolina are the only jurisdictions[1] that don't grant a right to jury trials for misdemeanor offenses with jail time as a permitted punishment. Some other states nominally only provide for juries for 3+ or 6+ months of jail, but procedural precedent has resulted in courts effectively extending the right to any offense carrying jail time.
Note that the city of San Francisco has had for decades a public defender's office with equivalent or better resources (time, money, expertise) as the prosecutor's office, but the city sees the same interminable cycle as everywhere else.
[1] Also I think Federal jurisdiction, but purely misdemeanor cases without the threat of felony charges at the Federal level are pretty rare.
> That's not possible because jaywalking has a maximum penalty, and the judge can't exceed that maximum penalty.
That's part of the point. The maximum penalty for many nonviolent offenses is absurd.
> One of the reasons we have so many felonies these days is because sentencing someone to jail for a single day on a misdemeanor offense for stealing a pack of gum for the 20th time can require a jury trial just as onerous as a felony offense with a 20 year sentence.
But why is this a problem? The purpose of the trial is to deter the other million people who would have committed petty crimes if they weren't prosecuted. It doesn't matter if the trial costs ten thousand times more than the value of the stolen goods. Moreover, if the sentence would actually be one day then guilty people would just plead guilty without coercive plea bargaining because it's less trouble to serve one day in jail than to waste two weeks of your life going through a trial and then serve one day in jail anyway.
Whereas if you're innocent you may very well be willing to spend two weeks at trial to clear your name, vs. the status quo where if you try to do that you'll be charged with a dozen vague offenses that everyone commits in the course of an ordinary day but are only charged against people who demand their day in court instead of accepting a plea for some other offense the prosecution isn't sure they can prove, all of which have coercively onerous penalties.
So e.g. >90% (or whatever it’s now multiplied by several times) should be entirely ignored because the legal/judicial system won’t have enough resources to prosecute them?
Don't pass laws that wide swaths of the public don't respect, which would dramatically reduce the number of cases.
When the laws are ones that everyone agrees should be crimes, like murder, spend the resources to convict anyone who commits the crime.
So police should ignore all crimes other than murder? Because that’s what you’re going to get…
e.g. nobody will prosecute any property related and others low level crimes (e.g. damage is less than hundreds or at least tens of thousands). Crime rates will increase and the system will collapse at some point.
If you prosecute property crimes, you don't get a lot of property crimes, because prosecutions for that crime act as an effective deterrent and then the courts aren't overwhelmed with property crime cases even if the few cases they do get are full jury trials. You only get widespread property crime cases when you don't prosecute them.
By contrast, drug use has no theft victim to report the crime and then even harsh penalties don't act as a deterrent because detection rates are low and addiction is a stronger motivator than the spoils of petty theft. So you would stop prosecuting recreational drug use (compensating by increasing addiction treatment programs etc.), and thereby also eliminate all of the associated crimes as drug cartels murder over territory and drug users commit serious robberies to afford street drug prices that otherwise wouldn't cost more than a bottle of aspirin, avoiding the need to prosecute those either.
At which point crime goes down and you can spend more resources prosecuting the remaining cases.
> You only get widespread property crime cases when you don't prosecute them.
Which you won’t be able to do if the cost of prosecuting someone increases several times (i.e. no plea bargains anymore).
> you would stop prosecuting recreational drug use
Aren’t these already (realistically) misdemeanors at most in a lot of places?
Even in the best case e.g. lets say case load decreases by 25% that doesn’t seem enough to balance things out.
I’m confused, though. Are you suggesting legalization? Or just saying that law enforcement should ignore drug traffickers and dealers (because they will certainly continue engaging in violent crime if it’s the latter)
To truly minimize drug related crime you’d need legitimate drug companies to start selling OxyContin/etc. in the candy section at Walmart.
> Which you won’t be able to do if the cost of prosecuting someone increases several times (i.e. no plea bargains anymore).
Well sure you can. It just costs more. But since you're still doing it, the deterrent is still present and then the expensive cases you have to prosecute remain rare.
> Aren’t these already (realistically) misdemeanors at most in a lot of places?
Not for the sellers they're not.
> Are you suggesting legalization?
Yes.
If you could go buy codeine or lisdexamfetamine for $5/bottle from the pharmacy counter at Walmart then there are no more drug cartels, no more drug cartel murders, no more street pushers lacing what was supposed to be MDMA with fentanyl that causes people to OD or get addicted to opioids, fewer addicts robbing people for drug money, higher deterrence for other crimes because police aren't spread so thin, less poverty and desperation because fewer kids have fathers in prisons or coffins, fewer neighborhoods held hostage by drug gangs.
That's a whole lot of crime that just goes away.
More to the point, consider where we are in terms of efficiency. It costs on the order of $100k/year to incarcerate someone. Every one of those drug murders you prevent is saving twenty million dollars worth of keeping someone locked up for two decades. That pays for a lot of two day jury trials for petty theft.
And what dictator is going to implement this perfect solution?
Here's how things have manifestly played out over the past 150 years: procedural rules are strengthened because citizens are afraid of unjust prosecution. Some high profile bad guys, or parade of run-of-the-mill criminals, get off because of said procedural loopholes, after which voters demand politicians expand substantive criminal law to re-balance the equation. Upon which more unjust prosecutions enter the public consciousness. Wash, rinse, repeat.
This is what systemic injustice looks like, and the cycle continues as unabated as ever. On the one hand, you have movements like BLM, which have indeed effected change even in the most conservatives jurisdictions, largely by changes in procedural rules by courts and in policy by prosecutors and municipalities. At the same time, you have #MeToo, Harvey Weinstein, etc, which has resulted in the expansion of sexual crimes and punishments, and elimination of statutes of limitations, partly because procedural protections have made it extremely difficult to prosecute past behaviors, not because they strictly weren't already cognizable crimes.
Nobody is going to lose sleep over Weinstein, but long-term which demographics will bear the brunt of this tightening of the screws through the substantive law? You see the fundamental contradictory behavior here? There's tremendous overlap between the #MeToo groups and the BLM groups, and for both their demands are premised on empathy and justice, but at the end of the day we're going to end up with a harsher system that will further disproportionately punish some segments of the population over others. That's what systemic racial injustice looks like, yet nowhere can you find ill intentions or a desire to oppress anyone.
There's an alternative path, here. Notice how the legal screws have taken centuries to slowly but inexorably tighten without any concerted effort, yet in less than a single generation the normative behaviors of individual judges and other legal professionals, both as regards defendant rights (BLM) and victims rights (#MeToo) has seen a sea change. That suggests that by giving back more discretion to the system, not less, it's possible and, IMO, much more likely we could end up with a more fair system all around. Not guaranteed, of course, but neither is it guaranteed that just throwing more money and resources at the existing system would, even assuming we could even achieve let alone maintain that degree of attention from society. The difference between these two approaches, though, is that one requires trusting our fellow citizens, while the other holds out the (fantastical) prospect of an engineered solution.
> And what dictator is going to implement this perfect solution?
Nothing about it requires a dictator. You vote for politicians who repeal laws that don't have widespread consensus, when enough people vote for them they get repealed. Ideally you then do something that makes it more difficult to re-pass them.
> Some high profile bad guys, or parade of run-of-the-mill criminals, get off because of said procedural loopholes
The procedures aren't loopholes. They're prerequisites for a conviction. They by no means make a conviction impossible, but you have to do the work.
> At the same time, you have #MeToo, Harvey Weinstein, etc, which has resulted in the expansion of sexual crimes and punishments, and elimination of statutes of limitations, partly because procedural protections have made it extremely difficult to prosecute past behaviors, not because they strictly weren't already cognizable crimes.
The problem here is not procedural rules at all. It's evidentiary difficulties. How do you distinguish between someone who consents but then has regrets and changes their story, or someone who has sex with someone wealthy in order to extort them for money, and someone who was actually sexually assaulted?
There is no perfect solution to that, but "innocent until proven guilty" is the only sane one. What you then need is a system that can uphold that standard even when there is pressure not to.
> That suggests that by giving back more discretion to the system, not less, it's possible and, IMO, much more likely we could end up with a more fair system all around.
It suggests that when you give more discretion to the system and the system favors you at this moment in time, you get what you want, for now.
But then there is another election and you may not like what someone else does with that discretion.
> yet nowhere can you find ill intentions or a desire to oppress anyone
Well, you can. Its impact is heavily amplified, but there certainly are ill intentions and a desire to oppress people.
Yes. Scale up the judicial system and cut laws if needed.
Also, there will likely still be some pleas. Some people own up to being guilty and want to move on.
There is an absolute dearth of lawyers to support this. We just need more courts and more judges for the initial surge of a couple of years.
So most property crimes will not longer be prosecuted?
Also how exactly are jury trials superior to e.g. Magistrates Courts in the UK?
Isn’t the American legal system already very bloated and inefficient? So spending even more money on it might not be the best idea?
> Also how exactly are jury trials superior to e.g. Magistrates Courts in the UK?
The purpose of the trial is to separate the innocent from the guilty, and there is intended to be a presumption of innocence. But because the prosecution has to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt, they'll tend to only bring cases when there is a high probability of guilt -- a good thing -- so then let's say 90% of the defendants are probably guilty and 60% are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
A judge is going to become intimately familiar with that. ~90% of the defendants are actually guilty, so the judge develops the intuition that a new defendant is very likely guilty. That's a presumption of guilt. Soon even the innocent ones are getting convicted, when the whole point of the process was to prevent that.
A jury is a fresh set of eyes who look at the defendant as the only case they're going to be deciding for the foreseeable future and haven't been prejudiced by a parade of evildoers sitting in the same chair. It's also twelve separate people who each individually have to be convinced.
Yet the conviction rate in England was 84 % in magistrates courts (misdemeanors and low level felonies) and 78 % in crown courts (more serious crimes) which is not that different. Especially if we consider how a lot of crimes like DUIs are somewhat open & shut compared to more serious offenses.
> so the judge develops the intuition that a new defendant is very likely guilty.
A good judge wouldn’t do that. Also by and large random people are relatively dumb and biased. Why exactly are they less likely to convict an innocent person? (Let’s assume that the conviction rate is the same in both cases)
> Yet the conviction rate in England was 84 % in magistrates courts (misdemeanors and low level felonies) and 78 % in crown courts (more serious crimes) which is not that different.
The conviction rate can't really tell you anything because prosecutors will calibrate to bring cases they think they can win in a given system. Systems willing to convict more innocent people will have similar conviction rates but more innocent defendants.
> A good judge wouldn’t do that.
What about a human judge?
> Also by and large random people are relatively dumb and biased. Why exactly are they less likely to convict an innocent person?
Because you have to convince all twelve of them.
> because the legal/judicial system won’t have enough resources to prosecute them?
If your legal system doesn't have enough resources to prosecute 90% of people who are committing crimes.................................
.......................................... then maybe the state should.............................................
.................... wait for it...................................
.....................................give the legal system more resources.
(I know right, it's mindblowing, revolutionary, difficult-to-conceive stuff - I can see why nobody has thought of it before)
So make the system (that’s already inefficient) several times more inefficient and then increase funding by a magnitude or two? Certainly seems like a reasonable option.
I bet all problems could be solved using this approach. What could go wrong..
Perhaps.
I was thinking more along the lines of taking a system that isn't just or fair, and making it more just and fair.
See, I wasn't really concerned very much by profitability and efficiency, more about what is good and right.
Silly me, I guess.
> For example, prohibit plea bargaining so that all convictions require a trial and it's forbidden to impose any penalty for demanding one.
Many in jail awaiting trial are very guilty and the outcome of the legal proceeding is effectively a foregone conclusion. Exchanging a shorter sentence for a plea makes sense for all parties. Prosecutors can then spend their court time arguing more important cases, judges don't have to patiently direct clown shows where guilt is extremely obvious, and the defendant gets a lesser sentence. There is plenty of abuse in the plea system, and no shortage of outrageous prosecutorial misconduct. But that doesn't invalidate the principle of plea bargaining. No justice system is perfect and without plea bargaining every defendant would have to spend a decade in jail, maybe two, before their case makes it in front of a judge. That isn't justice. Unless we assign everybody chatgpt lawyers, judges and juries giving everybody a trial is a practical impossibility.
> Many in jail awaiting trial are very guilty and the outcome of the legal proceeding is effectively a foregone conclusion. Exchanging a shorter sentence for a plea makes sense for all parties.
Suppose we're talking about a case where it's a foregone conclusion. 0% chance that the defendant will be acquitted, never going to happen. Then the defendant should plead guilty and save themselves some time and effort regardless of whether it leads to a lesser sentence, right? You don't need to coerce them because they can't possibly gain anything.
Now suppose that the chance isn't 0%, it's, say, 10%. Should we coerce these people into a guilty plea by giving them a 100% chance of six months vs. a 90% chance of five years? Out of a million of them, a hundred thousand would be found not guilty, so no.
> No justice system is perfect and without plea bargaining every defendant would have to spend a decade in jail, maybe two, before their case makes it in front of a judge.
This is why the right to a speedy trial exists, even though it has been eroded dramatically by basically making it a false choice between "you have your trial immediately with no chance to prepare a defense even though the prosecution has secretly been investigating you for months" and "you waive your right to a speedy trial entirely and rot in jail for years awaiting trial".
The way it ought to work is that the defendant has a right to set a "not after" date where the prosecution either has to proceed or release them from jail and drop the charges, which gives them enough time to actually prepare a defense without opening the door to being detained indefinitely awaiting trial even after they're prepared. The prosecution already has this up until the statute of limitations has run, because they can already wait to file charges until they've prepared their case.
> Unless we assign everybody chatgpt lawyers, judges and juries giving everybody a trial is a practical impossibility.
Or we could just have fewer laws and then assign the resources necessary to prosecute the remaining more important ones.
Notice that if you get rid of e.g. drug laws, you also get rid of all the murders and other crimes that come along with the existence of drug cartels, and the load on the courts goes down dramatically.
I agree with your criticisms of the justice system except that your proposed solutions haven't worked anywhere. Yes the plea practice is abusive and coercive. It has to be because otherwise suspects would exercise their right to a trial, which they can't have. Anything you do to make going to trial more attractive for defendants will result in the backlog increasing or charges getting dropped en masse.
The laws on the books today hardly get enforced. Ross Ulbricht is one of the very few people to go to prison for crypto-related crimes. You probably agree that many people involved with crypto deserve to see the inside of a courtroom, but they won't. So not only is the justice system not capable of processing the people currently in jail (despite copious plea coercion) the justice system has almost completely given up on persecuting many crimes (e.g. fraud), presumably for lack of manpower.
All countries struggle with this resource problem. We want to give everybody a fair trial but we can't. Some countries force pleas on people. Other countries rush trials. Other countries still beat confessions out of people. Different 'solutions' to the same fundamental problem. Unless fair trials get cheap there is no way out.
> I agree with your criticisms of the justice system except that your proposed solutions haven't worked anywhere.
Name the jurisdiction(s) where the proposed solutions (e.g. drug legalization) are currently being attempted but aren't working.
> The laws on the books today hardly get enforced.
In large part because there are too many of them.
> Unless fair trials get cheap there is no way out.
You claim the other solutions don't work but how do you propose to achieve that one?
The only solution that actually works is to reduce the number of cases.
Sentencing is complicated in the US. Generally speaking, they have a huge range and a standard for computing where one falls in that range, but everything within that range is open to judge's discretion. Life without parole was within that range for the crimes that Ulbricht was convicted of.
This standard is an enormous document, https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines which lays out the rules for adjustments. Evidence is admissible (by both sides!) for sentencing, with a lower standard of evidence and burden of proof, to either raise or lower the sentence within the very wide numbers of what the conviction was for. So the Judge in this case found that the lower burden of proof was met for additional violent crimes being committed (with Ulbricht's legal team having an opportunity to rebut), and that impacts the sentencing calculations.
Not a lawyer, but I have listened to US lawyers on podcasts.
Other acts of those charged are routinely brought up in trials. Fir example, criminals being charged with crime A that already committed similar crimes in the past are used to show that the likelihood of crime A being committed this time is higher.
Sure, but then you should have to have a conviction on those other crimes. It’s strange to consider stuff that wasn’t proven. If the crime was committed and the state is sure, they should charge him and then use the first conviction in the sentencing for the second, if they want to.
That’s not what happens in practice. The other actions of those charged are absolutely brought in as evidence whether they were actual crimes or testimony from others that knew those charged. This happens all of the time.
> a higher standard than most apply in public discourse
Is it? Preponderance of the evidence is basically “more likely than not”
Yea, and most public discourse is at the level of "I saw a post online about it once". Most people aren't doing deep research before their opinions about things that aren't actually that relevant to their day to day lives. 95% of the world, at best, still has no idea who Ross Ulbricht is even today.
His original sentence was life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
So you can’t agree with the original sentence and then say he “absolutely deserved to be released.”
Without the chance of parole, a pardon from the president is one of the few ways he could get out of jail.
What has always sat odd with me regarding this, is we don't truly know the extent of the fbi's corruption in this. They stole, so it's not hard to imagine they planted evidence too.
A 10 year prison sentence was apt. He did knowingly break the law (the marketplace defense doesn't really apply, since admins had to create the categories that were obviously illegal). A life sentence was ridiculous, and added punishment for unconvicted crimes, however likely, is a gross violation of constitutional protections.
I'm more interested in the subtext of the pardon.
Why this person specifically? And why at this time? Perhaps the discussion shouldn't be about the actual subject of the pardon, and perhaps more about the motives of the pardoner...
These two thoughts are incompatible though, aren't they? Politics and shenanigans around the case aside, the original sentence should have taken into account the possibility of rehabilitation. But he got life without parole.
That said, it was entrapment and everyone involved should be deeply ashamed and prosecuted. At least those two agents did get some wire fraud charges [0], but the entrapment angle got explored because the charges were dropped.
[0] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-federal-agents-charged...
The most prolific drug dealers who sold on silk road have served their sentences and are out of prison.
Ross was given a life sentence without possibility of parole an incomparable sentence in relation to all other parties that were involved.
> has done great work during his time in prison
What work?
According to Reuters he was found guilty of "charges including distributing drugs through the Internet and conspiring to commit computer hacking and money laundering." In addition to running an illegal market bazaar for 4 years.
They dropped the contract killer charges - it appears that they were fabricated to try to turn public opinion against him and get him jailed. But as soon as they went to trial the charges were dropped for lack of evidence.
I personally find it ridiculous that people agree with the sentencing when you compare to sentences for tobacco industry practices, opioid epidemic, etc..
I don’t see why he deserves to be released.
So many people are in jail for crimes they didn’t commit, or for non-violent offenses that were committed out of hardship and a need to eat.
They gave evidence he tried to have someone killed, and that he saw confirmation it had been done.
Even if the accusation is somehow false and he didn’t order that killing, how many people did he actually kill just by running Silk Road?
I’m so sick of the narrative that aww shucks he’s a good kid from a good family and he just made a boo-boo and didn’t mean to build a multi-billion dollar illicit fortune from trafficking deadly drugs and outright poisons all over the world.
If this dude wasn’t a money-raised white kid from California no-one would care.
He might even run for President....
> I think his original sentence was absolutely deserved
The original sentence was two life terms. TO be pedantic, it sounds like you meant to say he deserved sentencing, but not the original sentence.
What? - whatever nasty stuff happened because of those drugs being distributed and sold still falls back on that guy, and lets be real, some shitty stuff has to have happened with a direct link back to those drugs.
> I think it's clear he did many things in the same vein
It is clear as mud. We now know:
* At least four other people had access to the DPR account, by design.
* One of those people (the person whose murder was supposedly ordered, who has vehemently defended Ross!) asserts that he knew that Nob (who we know who was a DEA agent) was one of those four people.
* Nob is a serial liar, and is now in prison for having stole some of the bitcoin from this operation.
...what about that make clear that Ross was within a mile of this supposed 'murder for hire' business?
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People have served more time for selling less drugs and attempting to murder fewer people than Ross Ulbricht did.
Just because he was decent with computers does not mean he should be busted out of jail.
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Ross Ulbricht was widely regarded by friends and family as a fundamentally decent and idealistic person—if admittedly naïve about the implications of his actions. Those who knew him personally describe him as thoughtful, intelligent, and motivated by a vision of a freer and more equitable society. His philosophical motivations were rooted in libertarian ideals, particularly the belief that consenting adults should have the right to make decisions about their own lives, including the substances they consume.
I just learned that he was an Eagle Scout.
Not exactly the résumé of someone getting locked up and the key thrown away.
Is this president extremely concerned about drug dealers and gangs in the US?
Why is he pardoning a drug trafficker?
I understand your point, but it has become a waste of energy to try to point out hypocridy and ideological inconsistency among that group.
It's better to ignore the rational reasons to oppose them and focus on the emotional ones. For starters, people are repulsed by their cruelty.
Trump clearly values favoritism to a high degree. He is doing exactly as he has promised, running the country like a businessman. If you scratch his back, he will scratch yours. Principles take a back seat to "getting the job done". For other examples, see his changed stances on TikTok, various foreign interests, cryptocurrencies, EVs post Elon support, etc. And in the opposite vein, he abandons support for anyone who challenges his authority on principles.
Pardoning Ulbricht was a campaign promise he made at the Libertarian National Convention in response to it being a popular demand among the libertarians.
Don't online drug marketplaces lead to reduced gang activity?
One does not need a gang and violence to sell drugs online. Selling drugs offline, gangs and violence will get involved.
I don't think he knows who RA is, I'm betting the cryptobros who ran his rug pulls and NFTs for the last year have his ear after making him millions of dollars.
I mean, I don't know why it's a full pardon, IMO Ulbricht's sentence was far too long and harsh, I'm sure it was to make a point that others should not replicate it, but wouldn't a stay on the remainder of his sentence been a better option here ?
No no no, my friend. Ulbricht was not a lowly drug trafficker (also, incidentally, not black or latino). He was an _entrepreneur_ who built a _marketplace_ that would bring together buyers and sellers, cutting out the middleman, and driving _efficiency_! Basically trustedhousesitters.com, just for illegal drugs instead of pets ;)
To appease the broligarch technologists, who all enjoyed buying LSD with cryptocoins.
He said he would do this during his campaign as a promise, a lot of libertarians voted for him based on this. He delivered on the promise after he won a convincing majority. I'm not sure why democracy offends you this much.
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A drug trafficker sells drugs
A developer builds a platform like eBay but without censorship that can be used by the drug trafficker
It's not the same thing
Creating a website where you can trade (potentially illegal) stuff is not the same as being a drug trafficker.
I'm indifferent to him being pardoned. But people saying he didn't deserve any punishment seems weird to me.
To me too. But life without parole seemed weird as well.
It’s always interesting to see how he’s become a folk hero to some people who can do a lot of mental gymnastics to downplay the fact that he tried to hire a hitman to kill people. It’s weird to read all of the comments trying to discount the attempted murder because it didn’t actually happen.
Me too. 12 years seems like enough, especially considering the sentence lengths other people get. If he tries again, they can catch him again. But running an illegal marketplace with clearly allowing whatever goes, and not receiving any punishment for it? That is wild.
He served 12 years. Feels about right for the crimes he committed. Depending on your political association feel free to put quotation marks somewhere in the previous sentence.
We need pardon reform.
I’d argue the President should not be allowed to issue pardons that are:
(1) Preëmptive (i.e. absent conviction);
(2) To himself, his current or former Cabinet members, or to any of the foregoing’s current or former spouses or children or grandchildren (or their spouses); or
(3) Issued after the presidential election in the final year of their term.
Furthermore, pardons for violent offences or corruption should be prohibited; provided, however, the President should retain the power to commute such sentences, and the Congress should have the power to regulate the manner in which the President may commute such sentences.
(Notably, I don’t believe this would apply to Ulbricht. He wasn’t convicted of a violent crime.)
While I would tend to agree with the first one, and preventing someone from pardoning himself or herself, the rest is a bit much. But it's a moot point anyway. At this point amending the constitution is virtually impossible.
An example of someone who could be pardoned would be someone committing an act of violence towards police to prevent them from enforcing a law which was later considered to be unjust and worthy of revolt against.
>(1) Preëmptive (i.e. absent conviction);
I think this is necessary class of pardons. A hypothetical example of a good preemptive pardon would be Congress repealing an unjust law, and the president pardoning anybody who broke that law before the repeal.
>(2) To himself, his current or former Cabinet members, or to any of the foregoing’s current or former spouses or children or grandchildren (or their spouses)
Agree on not pardoning himself or cabinet members. Maybe could extend that to include all political appointees. Politicians shouldn't enjoy special privileges like these. But I'm less convinced about preventing family pardons. Those people (generally) aren't politicians. And, if they plan to abuse the president's pardon to commit crimes, they'd either be asking after the crime and risking the president refusing, or asking before and leaving the president open to conspiracy charges.
>(3) Issued after the presidential election in the final year of their term.
I've grown too cynical about the voters to believe this would matter. Most people don't follow politics closely enough to know who's been pardoned, what they did, and any political/personal connections they had with the president.
If I may suggest a limitation, how about allowing the House or Senate to veto a pardon with a 2/3 majority?
> Preëmptive
amazing use of the diaresis
Regarding the substance of your comment, we do not have (IIRC) established judicial precedent for the constitutionality of preëmptive pardons. The practice originated with Ford pardoning Nixon, and has not yet been challened nor withstood judicial examination.
Personally, I'd like to see some of Biden's pardons challenged.
> (3) Issued after the presidential election in the final year of their term.
This is an interesting one for those who are seeking a second term but are at risk of losing
Any non-twitter reporting on this?
Edit: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pardons-silk-road-fou...
Guardian: <https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/21/ross-ulbrich...>
CNN: <https://lite.cnn.com/2025/01/21/politics/silk-road-ross-ulbr...>
NPR: <https://www.npr.org/2025/01/21/nx-s1-5270051/trump-pardons-d...>
MSN: <https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/trump-pardons-...>
Reuters: <https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pardons-silk-road-fou...>
AP: <https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/trump-pardons-...>
It seems a lot of reddit communities are starting to block xitter as it's painful to use now without an account. Should HN do the same?
it's in nytimes
Thanks.
In one message, Ulbricht informed ELLINGSON that “[the murder target] is a liability and I wouldn't mind if he was executed.” In another message, Ulbricht stated: “[the murder target] is causing me problems . . . I would like to put a bounty on his head if it’s not too much trouble for you. What would be an adequate amount to motivate you to find him?” ELLINGSON responded, “[the p]rice for clean is 300k+ USD,” and the “[p]rice for non-clean is 150-200k USD depending on how you want it done.” ELLINGSON further explained, in part, that “[t]hese prices pay for 2 professional hitters including their travel expenses and work they put in.”
Ulbricht later sent ELLINGSON $150,000 worth of Bitcoin to pay for the purported murder. ELLINGSON and Ulbricht agreed on a code to be included with a photograph to prove that the murder had been carried out. In April 2013, ELLINGSON and Ulbricht exchanged messages reflecting that ELLINGSON had sent Ulbricht photographic proof of the murder. A thumbnail of a deleted photograph purporting to depict a man lying on a floor in a pool of blood with tape over his mouth was recovered from Ulbricht’s laptop after his arrest. A piece of paper with the agreed-upon code written on it is shown in the photograph next to the head of the purportedly dead individual.
Later in April 2013, ELLINGSON and Ulbricht exchanged additional messages regarding a plot to kill four additional people in Canada. Ulbricht sent ELLINGSON an additional $500,000 worth of Bitcoin for the murders. ELLINGSON claimed to Ulbricht in online messages that the murders had in fact been committed.
James Ellingson is a convicted federal criminal charged with numerous crimes related to this case.
Tasked with investigating Silk Road he ended up in jail himself, along with his co-workers.
There's a very good reason none of this stuff ever went to trial, it would be incredibly embarrassing for the agencies involved to see the light of day.
That is table stakes for Trump
Will he get his possesions back then?
50,676 bitcoins, today valued at 5,3 billion USD.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-attorney-announces-h...
No, generally a pardon does not eliminate any civil liability or entitle you to refunds once the assets have been transferred to Treasury. He would still have to answer Yes to having been convicted of a felony and he would still not be entitled to vote in states that do not permit felons to vote.
> Where a person has paid a monetary penalty or forfeited property, the consequences of a pardon depend in part on when it was issued. If a monetary fine or contraband cash has been transferred to the Treasury, a pardon conveys no right to a refund, nor does the person pardoned have a right to reacquire property or the equivalent in cash from a legitimate purchaser of his seized assets or from an informant who was rewarded with cash taken from the pardoned person before he was pardoned.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/presidential-pardons-sett...
I am not sure of the legality around his possessions but they are long gone. Even the ones stolen by FBI officers during the course of the investigation.
If they were from the commission of a crime, then no.
Until now I oddly never questioned how any government could seize someone's bitcoin and how a government keeps the private keys of their crypto wallets secure.
Was that profits or users’ deposits?
I don't think it's crazy to suspect that Ulbricht knows a password or two and cut a deal here.
those are not his possessions. user account balances are included in that sum
obviously not.
Hey may have other wallets...
In 2021, Ulbricht's prosecutors and defense agreed that Ulbricht would relinquish any ownership of a newly discovered fund of 50,676 Bitcoin (worth nearly $5.35 billion in 2025) seized from a hacker in November 2021.[78] The Bitcoin had been stolen from Silk Road in 2013 and Ulbricht had been unsuccessful in getting them back. The U.S. government traced and seized the stolen Bitcoin. Ulbricht and the government agreed the fund would be used to pay off Ulbricht's $183 million debt in his criminal case, while the Department of Justice would take custody of the Bitcoin.[79][80]
Bingo. US always has been about commerce and money. It wouldn’t shock me if Ross has at least a few million hidden in some “lost wallet” printed out in a vault some where. He was smart enough to know he would get caught one day.
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Wow. Suddenly the pardon makes perfect sense.
Wasn’t he in jail for hiring a contract killer?
I’m all for the freeing him of his crimes when it comes to his crypto anarchic philosophy. But I find it hard to pardon someone for contract killing essentially. Also I’m not an apologist for the FBIs handling of this case either.
No, that charge was dropped. IIRC, it was on shaky ground and they were just trying to throw the book at him.
According to Wikipedia[1], he was convicted of charges related to hacking, narcotics, money laundering, and more.
But during the trial, evidence was presented that he made murder-for-hire payments, the court found that he did by a preponderance of evidence, and the court took this into account when sentencing him.
So, he wasn't convicted of it, but it is part of the reason he was sent to jail for a very long time.
---
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht
Some info from a previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33045520
I haven't reviewed the info for a while but it was pretty clearly entrapment as I recall.
He was in jail for running a darknet drug marketplace. Hiring a contract killer was a crime he was neither charged with nor convicted of.
Genuine question: Of all the people to pardon, why him?
because it was a promise he made to the libertarian camp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8ofi6U0eWE
Trump promised to do this at the Libertarian Party convention. This case is very important to the libertarian crowd. He is a martyr for many of their ideals. After Trump was so well received at the convention the LP, recently taken over by the right faction of the party, put forth a candidate specifically chosen to not get votes so that members would vote for Trump. Trump seems to be a man of his word.
It's because of his mother Lyn.
She was a tireless advocate for his release from the start, and it became a part of the libertarian cause to see him released.
It worked. Trump courted the libertarian vote, and this was his most popular promise to them.
She's an inspiring woman. I'm so glad she lived to see this.
Trump explains it eloquently:
"The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me," Trump said in his post online on Tuesday evening. "He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!"
According to Trump, he is doing this to get libertarian support.
They seem to be pandering to the more libertarian tech community. This guy appeals to that and to the more radical maga types who want a revolution. I’m sure we’ll see more.
The Biden DOJs bungling of the insurrection, turning a jail into a martyrs club, slow rolling prosecutions, etc is ultimately worse than the insurrection for democracy.
Presumably musk pushed for it. Not sure who else in/near the administration would even have him on their radar
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What do you mean? Trump just pardoned or commuted pretty much all of the J6 crowd. One guy convicted of crimes that don't require proving violence beyond a reasonable doubt is pretty tame in comparison. He is one of thousands.
Keep in mind that he spent 11 years locked up.
He's not getting off lightly!
I'm just shocked it was a full pardon instead of a commutation or something. I don't think the US is gaining a ton from keeping him locked up but he still did run an organization he knew was used for selling drugs and other illegal things and a full pardon for that seems weird. I feel like I mainly heard people talking about commuting his sentence
What do you mean "lightly?" He ran an illegal drug market and tried to assassinate a competitor. We gave him the punishment that society has determined one should receive for this. Revoking his punishment is "light."
It's still not enough.
Someone might have already pointed it out but for me, the sentence of RA is not the main issue, the issue is allowing a single person to stamp through an entire legal system and undermine all of the time and money that is invested in it, even if that person is a president.
I suspect that the idea originally was to give some safety valve but if it is used more than a few times by a President, it makes a mockery of it and it should be removed as a power. How can a President ever decide that the entire legal process is flawed and their opinion is right? If the sentence was too long then change the sentencing guidelines.
The main failure here is the failure of the elections system to elect anyone reasonable.
On its own it is not that bad an idea for someone who carries a mandate of the majority of the population to be able to grant pardons.
> I suspect that the idea originally was to give some safety valve
That reminds me of the early 2000s, where there were a lot of US debates around around terrorism and "harsh interrogations" i.e. torture.
A certain bloc of politicians and commentators kept bringing up a hypothetical scenario where there was a nuclear bomb counting down, and some guy wouldn't admit where it was hidden in a major city. My favorite response to that involved presidential pardons, something along the lines of:
1. "So what? If everything you say is true, then the authorities would simply torture the guy and seek a pardon afterwards. We already have an exceptional mechanism for those exceptional situations, meaning that's not a reason to change it."
2. "Conversely, any interrogator who isn't confident of a pardon is on who does not believe it's at ticking-bomb situation, meaning they cannot justify torturing someone anyway, they just want to do it to make their job marginally easier. That's bad, so it should stay illegal."
It's part of the separation of powers and the system of checks & balances against powers of branches of government.
Congress makes laws and impeaches presidents, courts judge constitutionality of laws and try cases of treason and presidents appoint judges and grant pardons.
You can't have impeachment without pardon, otherwise, there wouldn't be a check against judicial tyranny.
It's a system of checks and balances. The Presidential pardon power is specifically a check on the power of the Federal judiciary.
Regimes have toppled in response to popular uprising against imprisonments perceived as unjust. Having a system of governance without a way to rectify that seems unwise to me.
The check on Presidential authority, in turn, is impeachment. It's not a perfect system by any means, but in my estimation it's a good one.
I tend to think this way about ideal leadership, but in reality big systems I can see end up having exception paths, or even processes
They literally gave the power of pardons so that one person could right wrongs. Previously, it was used a lot more than it is now. There are lots of people in prison on unfair sentences which are technically legal but still wrong. Sentencing guidelines are just guidelines.
Legal system is very often at odds with public perception of justice, changing the law is slow and does shit for people currently in jail - having veto power for elected officials is a good safety mechanism and helps perception of justice.
It is a relic from the time when most countries had kings who could pardon people.
He's a single person but this was a campaign promise of a campaign that 77.3 million americans voted for.
Is this a complaint about Trump or Biden ? So far Biden has pardoned more than 20x Trump , and Bidens recipients were Much more controversial
Bidens pardons have been even more absurd - pardoning people for unspecified crimes before they have even been charged. Including his family.
Did you say this about Biden pardoning his whole family for their crimes, or just the ones Trump issued?
Still something tells me you have zero problem with the thousands of pardons Biden issued, correct?
Don’t dress up your stance in fancy garb when it comes down to something baser.
Maybe the legal system shouldn't have been used to go after individuals based on political reasons? Wouldn't that be a good start? Fed always win, so send Fed after someone and they will be in jail soon. It doesn't matter what they did or didn't do, this is sadly the way it's done now.
1500 in jail for protesting in DC? Really, less than that in jail after months BLM riots afaik. Sure, jail a few bad boys, but 1500? No way.
Throw a rock at people in power and go jail. Rape and murder is fine, no threat to DC.
I know he wasn't convicted of hiring a hitman, and I know the attempt didn't succeed, but he still tried to kill other people. Moreover, during a Bitcoin conference, he gave a live talk from prison via phone and still lied, claiming they planted the log on his laptop. A full pardon is ridiculous. It's unfair to so many people, including his partners like Variety Jones, also known as Thomas Clark. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure he won't do anything like this again.
> I'm pretty sure he won't do anything like this again.
Famous last words, eh?
Ridiculous? He was in prison for 10 years.
He did kill people. That factored into his sentencing[0]: the multiple overdose deaths from heroin and other things Ulbricht sold/facilitated/took a cut of the proceeds of.
He killed children.
- "During the sentencing hearing, Forrest heard from the father of a 25-year-old Boston man who died of a heroin overdose and the mother of a 16-year-old Australian who took a drug designed to mimic LSD at a post-prom party and then jumped off a balcony to his death. Prosecutors said the two victims were among at least six who died after taking drugs that were bought through Silk Road."
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-29/silk-road... ("Silk Road Mastermind Handed Life in Prison for Drug Bazaar" (2015))
It's squarely within the Overton window to impose extremely harsh sentences for people who sell heroin*. Most (?) Asian countries *execute* people who sell heroin. Trump himself has proposed, multiple times over the years, executing US heroin dealers[1,2]—which underscores the incredible degree of hypocrisy behind this pardon.
*(It's also within some people's Overton windows to contemplate the opposite of this, in a framework of harm minimization. I can't steelman this argument in the specific case of Ulbricht. Is it harm reduction to sell heroin? Is it harm reduction to sell fatal drugs to high-school age kids?)
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43465229 ("Trump urges death penalty for drug dealers" (2018))
[2] https://www.npr.org/2023/05/10/1152847242/trump-campaign-exe... ("Trump wants the death penalty for drug dealers. Here's why that probably won't happen" (2023))
Actual murderers get out in the time that Ross served.
The concept of justice must include an element of proportionality, I would argue that Ross's sentence, for a first time non-violent criminal, was over the top. Without proportionality justice becomes arbitrary, based more on luck and your connections to power.
We punish those we can punish: the little guy. Whilst those running governments, corporations and networks that facilitate repression, hatred and genocide go scot free.
[dead]
The issue is that so many of the officials that investigated him were corrupt. How can we be confident any of the evidence was real. He is obviously not innocent but when at least 2 of the investigators went to jail for crimes committed during this investigation it casts serious questions on the validity of the case as a whole.
The police, DEA and Secret service have vast power they can use against the populace. If those same agents are committing crimes then it taints the entire investigation and prosecution. If a cop is found to have planted drugs on past arrestees, quite often a good portion of his other cases are thrown out as well as he has corrupted everything he touched.
It likely doesn't rise to the legal doctrine of "fruit from a poisoned tree" but its in the ballpark.
For the people downvoting me for some reason:
A DEA agent involved in the investigation "was sentenced to 78 months in prison for extortion, money laundering and obstruction of justice"
A secret service agent involved in the investigation "was sentenced to 24 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco following his earlier guilty plea to one count of money laundering."
I don’t think he should have been sent to ADX Florence, but gen pop in San Quentin seems reasonable. Give him 10 more years in Jail me says!
Because the federal government would never plant a log on his computer in order to obtain a conviction. Next people will be saying the CIA killed JFK. How can we lose faith in the judicial system, fuck, the very government considering how consistently benign and trust worthy its been time and time again.
Genuinely thought we’d never see the day. My feelings on Ulbricht are mixed and have evolved over the decade he’s been in prison.
However, the Silk Road allowed me to try LSD as an 18 year old in a safe(r) way than those that came before me.* It was those experiences that revealed I’d been depressed most of my life, and that it also didn’t have to be that way, by way of experiencing what that would feel like. I went on to seek new experiences, make new friends for the first time in my life, engage with professional mental health support, went to university, and started multiple businesses. It also introduced my staunchly-atheist self to the experience of spiritual/transcendental experiences, and how those can exist separately from, and don’t require, belief in deities or religion.
It can’t be said where I’d have wound up without those experiences, but my own understanding of myself feels pivotally tied to something I couldn’t have gone through without Ross’ actions. Still, I acknowledge it appears more likely that not he tried to have people killed, and regardless of the circumstances surrounding this, that is condemnable.
*Had it not been for an anonymous group at the time, The LSD Avengers, posting reviews using gas chromatography mass-spectrometry and reagent tests of suppliers on the site, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to take the risk of trying what I’d received. LSD is physiologically safe, not to say anything of any psychological risks, but knowing the dose allowed me to enter into the shallow end of the pool, so to speak. Common substitutes however cannot have the same said of them.
If I’d lived in a time and place that allowed for state-funded drug testing (something my own state has in fact recently abolished despite wildly successful trials), perhaps things would’ve not required a Ross Ulbricht to exist in my case, but I see this as a failure of the system and of drug prohibition as a whole.
Ross would’ve existed one way or another I believe, for better or worse, by another name, had he chosen another path. Now he gets the chance to try his life again. I felt the same way.
Question - did you need drugs such as LSD to have that experience or did it lower the barrier to entry?
I would find this easier to celebrate if it was a commutation and not a pardon, or if it was a pardon that went hand in hand with a change in the laws he broke.
> a pardon that went hand in hand with a change in the laws he broke
Trump doesn't have the power to unilaterally change laws (fortunately!)
Because their isn't a change in law doesn't mean the convictions were secure and bound by law before.
I thought it was a ridiculously long sentence compared to what other people have received. 10 years was right. That's enough time. I know that he was accused of hiring a hitman, but he was never convicted of that. It should have never been used in his sentencing. I think the government tried to make an example out of Ross Ulbrich, and it was a miscarriage of justice.
The solution is a commutation, not a pardon.
So does this mean the war on drugs is finally over and we're going to stop mass incarceration for non-violent drug offenses? If so, that _would_ be good news.
He also just classified drug cartels as terrorist organizations so drug dealers are now technically facilitating terrorism. Apart from liberating this white collar drug dealer, all of his other actions have escalated the war on drugs. While he was signing these orders, he claimed that drug cartels were responsible for up to 300,000 American deaths annually (a completely fabricated number.)
Not going to post this link to every post where it's relevant, but:
https://reason.com/2023/10/24/trump-who-freed-drug-offenders...You'll note there are comments here saying saying that he generally keeps his campaign promises. On the bright side I don't agree, but on the other hand I think he does often enough, especially for the "well of course he didn't literally mean that" ones.
I wonder if Assange will get the pardon he’s campaigning for:
https://www.action.assangecampaign.org.au/
I'd wager the chances of that happening are much lower under this current administration. Surprised Biden didn't consider it though.
Here is what the discussion looked like almost a decade ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9626985
Very striking to see how the sentiment has drastically shifted, while the facts of the case did not. There is a really cultural shift visible in how this issue is seen on here.
I'd be wary of drawing correlations like this. The people who commented on that thread are not going to be the same people commenting on this one. The topic isn't even the same; in the first thread the topic is his sentencing, and in this its his pardon.
The attraction for people to post on Hacker News is mainly to complain, and so in the first you get complaints the sentencing is too harsh, and in this one you get complaints that he shouldn't have been pardoned. Its not necessarily a cultural shift, just an artifact of the types of discussions people have online.
> Very striking to see how the sentiment has drastically shifted
I'm not sure. I have two questions on that. Is there the appearance of a sentiment shift? I see plenty of people arguing both against and for incarcerating him in both this thread and that old one.
And then if there is an appearance of a sentiment change (which I'm not sure about) is that evidence of a sentiment change or just selection bias? People who are okay with an outcome are much less likely to write a comment than people who are upset. That alone would change the bias of the comments.
Can you explain the differences you see? People found the sentence too harsh at the time, too, it looks like.
To suggest there hasn't been a cultural shift is insane, imo.
I wouldn't argue that both sides have gotten more extreme, rather the political spectrum curve has flattened. There is much less rational discourse in general.
Reddit is a great example. Even 10 years ago you could have mostly rational discussions. Now its no better than Facebook. I saw a post today about people being upset the government is giving OpenAI half a trillion dollars. They didn't even realize it wasn't government money. They didn't want to be corrected.
As someone who's been following this since the beginning, the most striking difference is the assumption that Ross was in fact the DPR ordering hits, which he repeatedly denied. Obviously, he could be lying, but that's the main question for me. Since people now assume he was the one and only DPR (I wonder if people didn't get the concept from The Princess Bride), they assume DPR chat logs where murder-for-hire occurred must have been him as well.
Both threads seem to share a similar sentiment: he should not serve much time for the drug marketplace but should for the murders-for-hire. There's just a difference in how many people believe those allegations and to what extent they should factor into the sentence given the charges were dropped despite the allegations almost certainly being true.
Seems kinda the same to me?
This debate about IQ could have been had yesterday, and I‘m pretty sure I saw a pretty similar debate a few months ago on this site. Not much has changed there at least.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9629493
I guess people feel ten years in prison was adequate punishment.
It seems like the same set of arguments to me.
Most interesting post here. A good indicator of the real change in HN readership over the years. For the worse IMO.
What I don't understand is why Donald Trump, of all people, is being lenient on drug traffickers.
Yes, by cultural shift if you mean, moral bankruptcy.
I see the same arguments: too harsh, not harsh enough, he tried to have people murdered, etc.
The facts are: Trump now does NTF and coinschemes himself and got talked into this by his new entourage. That is what most people here complain about.
And he does this to distract from the fact that he will not stop the Ukraine war, not stop H1B etc.
Many of the same people also complain about the Biden laptop and Biden's pardons.
life in prison was too harsh, but a full pardon is too lenient.
Reddit started off libertarian in its early days and has since gone radically far left. And similarly, HN has slowly drifted further and further left.
%-wise there are just fewer libertarian-minded people here these days.
yes, HN is becoming increasingly hyperpartisan and not even in a very interesting way
[flagged]
Ross Ulbricht on X: https://x.com/realrossu
If you're wondering like I was why he is able to tweet from prison, this article explains that he's dictating tweets via phone to his family, and they are sending back comments to him via mail. [1]
[1] https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2018/08/16/silk-road-founder-r...
May I respectfully and humbly suggest to this community to avoid posting Twitter links?
People have been fighting that uphill battle for close to 10 years now. I don't see it happening.
What's wrong with twitter links?
Original story here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9626985
I wish we could run some sort of sentiment analysis to see who was pro and anti the sentencing then vs now.
I had no idea this was a campaign promise. Why? I don’t understand.
Crypto currency proponents benefit from the existence of dark net marketplaces because they are some of the main places for the non-speculative use of crypto currencies. I think Ross and his pardon represent a sort-of metaphor in crypto-currency proponents' eyes for the government's toleration of these dark net crypto marketplaces.
Wouldn't be surprised if he is sitting on a billion dollars of hidden crypto somewhere.
* Ulbricht's conviction became a cause célèbre in American libertarian circles.
* In May 2024, candidate Donald Trump said that if re-elected President, he would commute Ulbricht's sentence on his first day in office
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht
I doubt Trump cares about Ulbricht as much as he cares (for whatever reason) about the continued support of various American libertarians (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and various crypto elites).
While he has made many promises this is significant for being one that he has kept.
Trump went around to a huge number of niche communities and promised to fix their core concerns in exchange for their support. The crypto and libertarian communities are obsessed with freeing Ulbricht. It was honestly a brilliant strategy, and probably the reason he won. Ironic that an authoritarian fascist was able to get elected by enlisting the help of anti-authoritarian communities with a single issue promise.
I am active in libertarian circles and Ulbricht was a cause celebre. The 2024 election was a game of inches, and many libertarians I know voted Trump purely on this issue. It is possible this was a key way Trump eked out a victory.
because the crypto bros love him
It's a trite thing to say, but when it comes to Trump it fits the pattern of inside dealing ... I'm guessing he personally will profit from this somehow / someone promised a donation / money.
To the libertarians.
Without any snark, why? What's the motivation?
Two life sentences was a bit harsh. 11 years seems about right to me.
I suspect the idea beyond "Free Ross" in some circles was that his conviction wasn't so much about drug dealing, but rather it was more a political prosecution for popularizing real uses of cryptocurrencies.
There's probably still some SR btc they wanted the keys to.
Possibly a deal with the Libertarian Party, which chose not to run their candidate in several states to help Trump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhDKYYdD2vY
It was one of the promises he made at a Bitcoin conference he attended a few months ago. It has been a popular issue in crypto circles
This might be a minor thing, but does anyone know if a full pardon will allow him to use an electronic device or access the internet? Often times, people convicted of crimes related to an online activity are forbidden this right, and I wonder if that's the case for him, and if so, what his life would be in this day and age.
With a full pardon it's as if he never did anything in the first place.
The laws should change too. Legalize and regulate drugs and access.
DPR is free!! I'm very happy for him and hope he makes good on this second lease on life.
It seems like a lot of the opposition to this I’m seeing online is because Trump is the one that granted it.
Ridiculous hyperbole about Ross ‘inventing the Dark Web’ or ‘Trump freed a sex trafficker’ is a great reminder that for some people, their ideological opposition can never do anything right and they’ll condemn anything they do without even a second of consideration.
I’m not an avowed Trump supporter (or even American) but believe this was the right call to make. The sentence was overly harsh and he has both served his time and reformed. I’m glad he has been released.
What’s the overall take of HN here? Was the government overstepping? Is everyone supporting this undoing of his sentence? Are we generally pro free drug trade? Or are we more anti-FBI?
My grasp of the sentiment in the comments - majority of folk here seem to think Ross did enough time for his crime.
I don’t support the undoing.
Government wasn’t overstepping, facilitating bad stuff on such scale has to be taken down with big consequences.
There is no „I was just running a site and people used it for bad stuff” he had all intentions and he profited from it.
The overall take of HN is that a sober discussion of this situation isn't possible on this site.
“We”? Examine your own principles, review the facts, come to your own conclusion.
The US constitution increasingly seems like the principles of the Roman Republic after Caesar — a quaint relic that gets regular ceremonial lip service but provides no checks and balances on the leaders.
Presidents of both parties abuse pardon power with monarchic glee. The president now has full immunity. The incoming president and his wife launched crypto-tokens whose only utility is to allow foreigners to send billions of dollars to them anonymously (of course with full identification of the buyer in private communications thanks to the crypto private key, so you can be sure of who sent the bribe).
People are obviously tired and overwhelmed. It's hard to pay attention because Trump has recently threatened so much more: invading foreign allies, military trials for political opponents, using the army against citizens, and so on. When he carries through with just 20% of what he said, it's supposed to be no big deal. But the institutions and norms are destroyed and they don't magically come back if the other party wins.
I always thought the sentence was too extreme, he broke some laws he should do some time. Not life without parole.
I don’t get it. Was every non-violent drug offender in federal prisons pardoned or only this guy? If so, why?
I laundered money on The Silkroad (sent birthday cards filled with cash for bitcoin). It was a level of criminality I was fairly comfortable with. I do retain some fear that my door would be kicked in some day. Lawyers of HN, Am I in the clear now too? Ross tried to have a guy murdered, after all.
That depends, did you send the cards on their birthday?
IANAL, but I think you should be in the clear as long as you left a big red lipstick kiss on the bottom of the card.
I wonder if the decision to drop the "murder for hire" charges was originally influenced by his existing life sentence, and whether the pardon now alters that reasoning. Is it still possible for him to be prosecuted on those charges?
I think they were dismissed with prejudice, which if true, is a “no”. That said, all prior charges and attempts were federal charges, and nothing in a pardon or federal dismissal prevents an individual state from bringing charges, IIRC. Would be a heavy lift though without cooperation from feds to turn over investigation materials.
All I can think about after reading this is "Rest In Power Aaron Swartz"
From wikipedia:
> "full and unconditional pardon for any crimes related to drugs".
Does "any crimes related to drugs" include the murder for hire allegations? Does this mean new charges related to that could be brought against him?
Given the farcical nature of those allegations and all that we now know, including that others with access to the Dread Pirate Roberts account assert that the DEA agent making the allegations (who is himself now in prison for attempting to steal some of the silk road bitcoin) had access as well, it will be wonderful if DoJ attempts to bring charges, just to further clear Ross' name.
There are not a shred of evidence that Ross ever had the slightest thing to do with those conversations, and it seems much more likely that the DEA used the DPR account to frame him.
Wasn't charges about paying a hitmen dropped?
Seems like it.
I think that we have to agree that anyone doing this today will definitely go to jail, and is my personal opinion that there must be a punishment. Now, the discussion could be if a life sentence is a fair sentence or not. I personally feel that a life sentence is a disproportionate punishment, moreover if the subject shows a different attitude after being in jail for more than a decade. Ten years time to medidate about what you did is plenty of time to change someone's mind, obviously if you are a person willing to do things differently.
Wasn’t it _two_ life sentences plus forty years?
I know values and priorities change over time. that gets reflected in the party platforms. But ee are in a weird place politically... where Republicans are now soft on crime? It's weird.
Silk Road 3.0 here we come!
(Silk Road 2.0 already existed. The guy running it is in prison now, I think.)
edit: ah seems Silk Road 3.0 existed too. So, 4.0 then
Fantastic news for the guy probably responsible for the wide adoption of bitcoin. I hope curl php no longer troubles him.
Nothing better showing how much Twitter has utterly degenerated than a gold checkmarked scam account (letter confusion) as the top reply [1].
[1] https://x.com/Frecs_Ross/status/1881968595632377962
For those who cannot / prefer not to click through: top reply is a new "coin" launch.
https://archive.today/FNvkp
Ross, you can set up identities on decentralized social platforms now!
https://rossulbricht.medium.com/decentralize-social-media-cc...
Ross just posted this photo on X. Man served 10 years, time for him to be free.
https://x.com/Free_Ross/status/1881925029497377104
I'm just assuming any pardons issued since Monday are probably to bad people.
It's very hard to square his sentencing.
If he had been running an IRL drug and gun facilitation marketplace in my city, I would have said 20 years was appropriate.
But when the feds make it a techno-political issue, I feel the urge to push back.
This is a general question for any reader here who disagrees with the original prison sentence. (Ignore the Presidential pardon for a moment.) What is a reasonable prison sentence for his crimes? 10-20 years?
How are cartels terrorist organizations but online drug markets are not illegal ?
They aren't illegal?
The difference is the terrorizing and beheading part.
Ross deserved prison 100%, but 2x life + 40 years in American prison, which is hell on earth on purpose. That's just beyond fc** up.
All these people here saying his sentence is deserved. It's just sick. How is your crime rate going? Declining...right? ....nope
...and the chemicals he would have supplied are being sliced and diced (padded out, to make more money), and you have to (in my country) go to some pretty dodgy areas to get what you want.
I wonder if he is going to be able to launder and cash out whatever crypto he squirreled away. His finances are probably going to be closely watched.
Starting a business that accepts crypto payments is going to be a tell.
He has admitted his wrong doings and made efforts to change whilst in prison. I doubt he will go straight back to a life even remotely close to before. He was doing good in prison for other inmates and I imagine he will continue doing the same now he has this second chance.
I'm wondering that too. I think there's three options: he either has secret money hidden away, is going to get a cushy job in tech by some fan, or he's going to be working as a walmart greeter in 3 years.
Honestly I'm hoping he gets an X account so I can follow him and see which it is lol
If he’s smart he’ll go Jordan Belfort style and make money with book, speaking, and movie deals.
does he even need to launder it ? The pardon may cover any proceeds given Trump described it as "a full and unconditional pardon"
finally! let’s go!
though he was very stupid with how he did it, I am happy he is a free man
Wait, is he smart or stupid ?
I don't think he should have done any time for the drug-related charges. And 10 years is more than enough for a murder-for-hire in which nobody got hurt. So this seems... just.
Curious what your thinking behind "he should have done any time for the drug-related charges"?
Some questions, as many of us are from another continent and are only marginally aware of the matter - so, for many here at HN:
1. Ross Ulbricht the ultimate entrepreneur?
2. Ross Ulbricht was a freedom fighter?
Wow - really surprised.
- So, what about the exploitation, violence, and devastating addiction that results from no-rules drug purveying/trafficking?
(how would you compare Ross Ulbright to medical opioid purveyers/traffickers? If the same, what are they morally?)
- Isn't murder for hire outright objectionable?
As a eu-er, yes and yes. (For me, and many of my friends).
A full unconditional pardon is one thing, reduction of sentence through judicial processes is another. He never pardoned Snowden and Assange .
Why do they still have courts in the US again?
Is Donald also refunding everyone’s deposits on Silkroad?
Who's next? Sam Bankman-Fried or Elizabeth Holmes?
These ones are left for the next Democrat administration, current one is probably hostile to them given their political leanings.
Explain to me like to five year old why when I create a _successful_ drug marketplace that sold whole bunch of illegal drugs should be pardoned?
This is the same president that wants to give the death penalty to Drug Dealers but I guess that's fine so long as you use crypto.
Was there anything said about pardoning Snowden?
More people should get these “pardons” instead of the parole process based on the similar criteria on how they are pardoned.
So is SBF next? FTX customers were made whole and he didn't try to kill anyone or facilitate the narcotics trade.
This is a rare Trump win. There are many things to criticize him for, but this pardon isn't one of them. I don't think anyone, after researching this case, would be okay with the life sentence handed down to Ross.
Life no but probably more than he did in the end. He was really turning into a syndicate boss. The deep ars technica article was pretty depressing.
Most people in real life don’t even know who this guy is. This is a guy that online people know. I will agree it’s a win, he was unfairly sentenced. I just wish I would have been able to buy from SR. I did get to browse it before it was seized.
This is just. If a president can pardon people preemptively then they can pardon someone retroactively as well.
The amount of doublethink, false-flagging, misinformation, and “looking the other way” in this thread is just absolutely disgusting.
can we all just agree that he was given a ridiculous sentence and trump did a good thing, is that so hard.
When Snowden, is my question. RFK put a lot of words into "if I am in charge that'll be my first thing". Yeah, he's not the president but he's also not nobody anymore.
NGL it would be pretty funny if Snowden gets to return to the west but we hadn't actually fixed any of the stuff he brought forward in the meantime. Not sure what I would do in his shoes... I guess a pardon is pretty impossible for future presidents to get around, TBF
The courage a lot of these whistleblowers have shown is admirable. How the American public outrages, though: Facebook has targeted ads. How they don't outrage: their government is illegally tracking their own citizens' movements and communications including overseas.
Not going to say Ulbricht is a hero like some of the others, but he trail blazed like none before him! And he deserves his freedom years ago.
I'd be worried about the Russians putting him in jail if the US pardoned him.
Why? He did nothing to deserve punishment in Russia. If anything, if Snowden left, I think Putin would be relieved he doesn't have to treat a potential nuisance with utmost care anymore. At the moment he can't really disappear him and has to waste resources monitoring him.
Your mistake is thinking that you need to deserve it to be punished in Russia
I don't think Putin would want to taint his relationship with Trump on his first week on the White House.
That doesn't mean that he would want to be seen to be a pushover https://thehill.com/policy/international/5098063-donald-trum...
Oh that’s going to be good if it happens.
Everyone will celebrate Trump’s good deed while he funnels more government money to companies like Palantir to do things similar to PRISM.
private intelligence still has a few ways to go before whistleblowers don't have all their rights stripped by the state
The right gets to power and the first thing it does is to pardon its friends and allies.
The left goes into power and does basically nothing.
And then we wonder why one side is winning.
The elite are winning. This isn't football.
For someone that likes to take top secret documents and share them with unauthorized people, Snowden sounds perfect for this guy to pardon
So are online illegal drug marketplaces legal now if they’re run entirely on crypto?
I will take this opportunity to reflect on the fact that I spent some time considering a purchase of certain controlled substances on Silk Road, but failed to recognize that my own purchasing impulse was a pretty good indicator that the currency involved might be worth a casual investment.
I'm curious, what are the arguments for or against him being pardoned?
Didnt he paid a hitman to kill a dude, and ended up being an fbi agent ?
This is amazing. Well done.
Good.
Legalities aside, is it more evil to hire a dude to kill your enemy, or to go kill your enemy yourself? (I'd go with the former because if you go kill your enemy yourself you're at least accepting that it may go the other way).
Among other things this guy was trying to have people murdered.
I guess this is why he was upset about Mexico sending drug dealers and murderers - he didn't want competition for our homegrown drug dealers and murderers.
can't wait for him to star on joe rogan podcast!
Non-USian here. I'm interested in why.
Given that Trump didn't pardon Ulbricht during his first presidential term, why now?
What does Trump, who is notoriously transactional, get in return for this? Alternatively, what signal is he sending and to who?
To be honest if Trump would've pardoned him in his first term it would've been way too short of a sentence for what he did. Though I hate the usual libertarian defense that makes him out to be an innocent martyr, I think that 10 years is somewhat enough for what he did. It would have been a normal sentence in a lot of countries outside the US.
Thanks. I appreciate your view on the sentence, but I'm interested in why Trump would issue a pardon.
I'm unconvinced that Trump in 2020 thought Ulbricht's total sentence was okay, but four years later has apparently changed his mind. So who's the client here? It doesn't seem to be Ulbricht - is it libertarians in general? Why does Trump, as a second term president, actually care?
There are credibility issues if you make promises you don't follow up on, especially very public promises that are completely within your power to carry out; there are no limits on the presidential pardon power, barring that it only applies to federal crimes.
I wish this thread were discussing how in America you can get drunk in a bar, step into a 4,000 motorized bullet, kill someone or an entire family, and get a slap on the wrist.
This thread is a great lesson in "Politics is a mind virus"
I recommend you read the HN thread when Ulbricht was sentenced [0] first, then come here and read all the "Honest, genuine question, why?"s
Then start practicing not letting politics influence your thought process
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9626985
Or it could be different people commenting than on that original thread? And people might have changed their minds? HN is not a monolith. Humans are not static. You don't need to blame it on "politics being a mind virus".
But “mind virus“ is such a cool phrase, and it implies that people who disagree with you are not just wrong, but diseased. Great bit of rhetoric.
I don't know. I personally know people that lost their minds because of an election. Completely well off people, whose lives are not affected at all by national politics, apart from slight changes in tax rates. They live in a state and city that shares their politics. They're isolated from everything on the national level.
Yet some of these people have rearranged their entire lives around a singular politician. Ended relationships, moved, started therapy or medication.
It happens on both sides and its pretty sad.
What else would you call that?
>Completely well off people, whose lives are not affected at all by national politics, apart from slight changes in tax rates. They live in a state and city that shares their politics. They're isolated from everything on the national level...
>What else would you call that?
This is one of those comments that accidentally reveals more than intended because I would call that "empathy". You are revealing that the only reason you think people should be concerned about politics is when it directly effects them. Some people actually genuinely care about other people and seeing someone elected who has promised to hurt people is a disturbing and troubling turn of events even if they themselves are likely to be safe.
So you’re saying people are making a rational estimation of the various harms caused to their fellowmen, determining that political actions in Washington are the primary component, and feeling bad about the harm?
I don’t buy it. Citing empathy is moral language to justify bad actions.
>So you’re saying people are making a rational estimation of the various harms caused to their fellowmen, determining that political actions in Washington are the primary component, and feeling bad about the harm?
Trump released an executive order yesterday that said some of my friends are no longer considered citizens of this country. Yes, sometimes it is incredibly obvious when Washington is to blame for people's suffering.
This thread is about people whose well being and ability to enjoy life is ruined by politics (Enemy centered mindset).
It’s normal to feel bad for someone you know impacted by bad a policy. Ruining your life on their behalf is not empathetic.
>This thread is about people whose well being and ability to enjoy life is ruined by politics
Another facet of empathy is being able to understand other perspectives besides your own. Maybe this was your interpretation of the bounds of the conversation. It doesn't mean that is the only interpretation.
Here are the exact words from the comment I replied to: "Ended relationships, moved, started therapy or medication." I don't think those are signs someone whose "ability to enjoy life is ruined". In fact, I see those as signs of someone enjoying life more by removing or addressing things that sap the joy out of life.
Yes. Needing medication because your friend has visa problems is crazy. They themselves are probably less anxious.
> another facet of empathy
Do you really think political obsession is just a sign of superior morals and humanity?
Empathy should make you less pessimistic about politics because you understand other groups values and incentives. (I don’t claim this description is me)
>Yes. Needing medication because your friend has visa problems is crazy.
There was an "or" in that list of possible reactions. I was not giving an example of a situation in which someone would or should have every one of those reactions. I was directly replying to you by giving you an example of a situation in which it was clear that "political actions in Washington are the primary component" of inflicting harm on people.
>Do you really think political obsession is just a sign of superior morals and humanity?
I never said anything about superiority. That is something you brought to the conversation. Is there a reason you view someone exhibiting more empathy than you as an insult?
>Empathy should make you less pessimistic about politics because you understand other groups values and incentives.
Understanding a person's perspective isn't necessarily paired with the ability to change that perspective. Does knowing a racist might be motivated by fear make their racism less dangerous?
I think you should manage your health and safety first and those closest to you.
You're not helping by inflicting harm on yourself and those around you. If you want to canvas for the other side, donate, volunteer, great. But these people are obsessed and inflict a lot of damage on themselves for no good purpose.
Most people empathize to those that are infected with a virus. It's often out of their control. You can only offer them help and suggest they touch grass once in a while. But you shouldn't feed into their self delusions that self harm and obsession with things out of their control is healthy and a good way to live their life
The empathy you are showing in this comment would feel a lot more genuine if you didn't reveal with your prior comment how little empathy plays into your overall worldview. I'm personally fine, you don't have to waste your time telling me how to live a better life. I was just trying to explain to you what you were seemingly misunderstanding about your fellow humans.
> Some people actually genuinely care about other people and seeing someone elected who has promised to hurt people is a disturbing and troubling turn of events even if they themselves are likely to be safe.
Ya but, it's all a bit silly isn't it? Realistically those people wouldn't be doing any of that unless they were addicted to media and perhaps by consequence emotionally volatile. If I chose not to be chronically keeping up with stuff on a moment to moment basis that only has vague intangible impacts on my life or those around me, specifically online, does that make me less empathetic or less tolerant of having all my time, energy, and attention stolen from me? That's not always the case, but it often is, and if it's actually relevant, you're opting into poor mental health despite having zero control over anything even if you care, so you might as well not be so tuned in; which part is the good part again?
It's a bit fatalistic perhaps, but I feel like the greatest trick social media (and Trump) ever pulled was convincing us we'd be pariahs if we opted out. If not for chronically keeping up with nearly literally every word the new batch of chronies has to say, they might not be saying it.
>If I chose not to be chronically keeping up with stuff on a moment to moment basis that only has vague intangible impacts on my life or those around me, specifically online, does that make me less empathetic or less tolerant of having all my time, energy, and attention stolen from me?
Some people view empathy as an active ability to "put yourself in someone else's shoes". Other people view it as a passive feeling along the lines of "it hurts to see other people hurt". If you can just stop being empathic by not thinking about it, you are in the first group. Some of us are in the second group and can't just decide to ignore it.
Belief.
Belief short circuits reason.
Weird part is that these two groups generally belive are not that different in the general. Most of the fight on the ideological side is on marginal differences.
This all is mostly idiotic tribal fight when you hate each other because you just must to hate someone.
I profoundly hope for star trek like civilisation in the future
They’re not that different through a rich straight cis white Christian male perspective.
As soon as your skin color or sexual preference or religion or gender identity or income level is not in-group, they’re pretty different.
Integrity?
It’s religious conflict. Nobody cares really about differences in tax rates. But differences in foundational beliefs about the world and humanity will do that.
People generally do not come up with absurd beliefs all on their own, those do spread like a virus and as a consequence of all that social contagion, they do not seem all that absurd anymore to the person who contracts them.
i prefer 'mind-killer', myself.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-i...
Talk like this is never apolitical. No political change can occur without discussion first and therefore preemptively dismissing political discussion is inherently an endorsement of the current power structures.
There is no way to actually discuss this specific story without discussing politics. A president pardoning someone is an inherently political act and that is only emphasized when it was done on his first day in office and with a statement that includes lines like "The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me." That is all part of the story of what happened here and it involves politics whether you like it or not.
Yes let's use word that need massive essays to explain what one person believes they mean... Like "woke". And not just stick to words we know the meaning of. That surely aid the discussion. /s
Not sure what you’re trying to say, and the (attempted?) sarcasm doesn’t help.
But yes, coining pejoratives like “woke” or “fascist” or “communist” and then going to war with the imaginary beliefs attributed to the enemies who themselves don’t even use the term is indeed not helpful. It’s just childish.
Exactly. If anything, the one thing that’s guaranteed in these types of threads is that someone will make this same tired argument of “aha, but HN back then said differently” as if it’s some kind of gotcha. I used to always look, and not only was it never the same people but the threads are largely more balanced than the original poster let on. It’s like the contrarian dynamic, which dang has to explain over and over and over and over and over again.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
This is often a bit of a cop-out.
Any time a criminal is caught, people want them to do hard time, but people believe we're too hard on crime if you don't use examples. People think the government should spend less, but are far less likely too agree to any specific cut. People thought Musk was a genius until they realised he is also a jerk.
And while it's sometimes different people, it's suspiciously reliably consistent in what you see said and upvoted.
Based on the sheer number of posts that have misrepresented the charges or misunderstood why he was actually in prison, it appears to partially be a lack of knowledge on the case, likely due to time hazing some of the memories. Of course someone will change their mind, and some may have their view influenced by who happens to support him.
"Politics" is a dismissive word for crypto's evolution over the last decade. North Korea ransoming our hospitals, industrial scale gambling and scam enablement, wealthy kingpins buying self-serving policy. Crypto grew up. So did our opinions.
That doesn't change what Ross Ulbricht did, but we can now see him as continuous with a great evil that we couldn't see at the time. With more information, our opinions changed, and they were right to change.
The main thing I notice is that back then we were writing paragraphs.
Wow. I thought you were being glib, but the average comment length is noticeably higher in the linked discussion. While length isn’t necessarily a valid proxy for meaningful conversation, this was definitely an eye-opening contrast to the current thread.
I mostly stopped typing in paragraphs because I use a smart phone for most of my internetting. It's a lot easier to write your thoughts on a keyboard
Using a touchscreen halves my IQ.
(I'm challenged enough to start with.)
The value of the <EOS> token has gone up since then.
Well, that thread is almost a decade old. HN a decade ago was a very different vibe than today.
You are insinuating one thing, but perhaps it is also possible reason is that the same people with those old views of the crimes have grown and their views changed. I know mine certainly have gone that way. I’d have to imagine other users have grown with me.
I don't see anything special about that thread. There are in fact more people there who believe the contract killing allegations than now.
Nah social media is just about engagement. People who are happy with the article don’t bother to comment. Those who are outraged comment. It’s just two different groups of people commenting
At the time of sentencing, did we already know that the murder for hire plots were created by corrupt Secret Service and DEA agents on trial next door? and all of that was withheld from the defense and the jury?
because that's where the story really jumps the shark. I'm all for some accountability - such as the 12 years in prison already - but that particular case should have been dropped for several reasons, I've seen cases dropped for way less.
The craziest part about that thread is how much the attitude around drugs has changed in the past years. 10 years ago the comments felt a lot more optimistic about drugs and liberalization.
I guess since then, the fentanyl crisis has happened and shown that drugs also have more negative impacts
It’s different people commenting on each post. There’s no “mind virus”.
What exactly are you trying to say here?
That people can't change their minds? That HN is a hivemind ? (news flash: it's not , it's more diverse than you actually think) or that everything is attributed to "Politics is a mind virus" ? if so, what do you mind by this term specifically?
I personally, find little substance in such comments. If you have an opinion on the matter (which seemingly you do), then please share it so that we can have a discussion about it.
So.. care to elaborate?
I believe they are implying that people are disapproving the pardon because it was done by Trump.
Man, that shit is so old. Even if you're right, which I don't think you are, you are adding nothing to the conversation but cynicism.
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Don't cut and paste AI output. Anyone on HN who wants it can generate it themselves. Post your own thoughts.
For anyone who followed the Silk Road / Ross Ulbrict saga, this is all obvious and surface-level.
I think this comment would have got less downvotes if you could have made it somewhat shorter. Walls of text like this just scream Unabomber manifesto to me :)
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I’m confused as Trump said he wanted to be tough on crime and drugs and “kill drug dealers”, but he just pardoned one of the worlds largest drug dealers.
He was never a drug dealer, he provided a platform that was used to sell drugs. The pardon was a surprise, however his sentence was unfairly strict and he was clearly made an example out of that hasn't happened to any other platform provider.
Just as an example, there have been investigations in to the use of Snapchat as a method for drug dealers and gangs of drug dealers to access kids to sell them drugs However there has been absolutely zero discussion in the public domain even about shutting it down or requiring new laws to stop this, let alone considering charging the owners.
Hmm, but you have to be squinting pretty hard to see an equivalence between Snapchat and silk road
Even if you compare like for like, SR Vs SR2, the responses, charges, and sentences still aren't the same.
There is a huge difference between a communication platform that some users abuse for illegal purposes, and a platform whose primary purpose is a marketplace for illegal goods.
Actually the marketplace was just a marketplace, it then was primarily used for illegal goods. It hasn't really ever been proven that it was setup as a marketplace for illegal goods.
Why would anyone need an anonymous poor UX marketplace for anything other than illegal goods?
I mean I would agree regarding the user base, but it was originally built as a utopian concept for a free trade of goods, akin to the original world of warcraft marketplace.
It seems a big strectch, 99%+ revenue was from illegal goods, and it wasn’t like it was some decentralized blockchain marketplace.
The value created was reducing “legislative risk” for buyers and sellers of illegal goods.
Also, people just run ads on Facebook for drugs, counterfeit money, stolen debit cards.. it’s wild.
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Are you really confused? Did you believe him? He commits many crimes himself and so do his associates.
I suppose it could be made consistent if we posit the existence of another hidden rule. For example, the skin-color or political-connectedness of the accused.
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I think you need much more than "feels" to make claims like that, especially as they are directly contrary to HN guidelines, but also because making baseless claims, especially about other commenters, is a meaningless, inflammatory response.
So far you don't know what you are talking about and are making things up. If you do know what you're talking about and aren't making it up, please share your evidence and reasoning.
I mean daily we have responses and posts based on feels, but anyway I would state mine is based on fact.
Firstly, The sentence for running the exact same website, was 5 years.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/silk-road-2-founder-dread-pi...
The two life sentences and 35 years extra that were given to Ross were most certainly abnormal and used to make an example of. I have yet to see this comparison made although if anyone could provide valid reasons in the difference I would be open to listening.
Secondly, the sheer number of posts on this site stating didn't he hire a hitman. No, and there was no conviction of that.
I distinctly remember listening to recordings of him hiring a hitman. It's been a long time and my memory is certainly prone to error, but that sort of thing does stick with you. I especially remember the irony because he also preached about non-violence at some point, obviously until someone's continued existence became inconvenient for him.
I don't agree with that and I don't understand why those charges were not taken to court (I don't believe it was purely because he already had 2 life sentences as when the appeals were going to the supreme court and there was a risk of him winning, it surely made sense to secure him if you had the evidence to proceed with another case). Whether that was true or not though, someone can only be sentenced and punished on what one was convicted of. Anything else is not based in justice or law.
I don't really believe that the US is a country ruled by law any more, but in some idealized land of the law you are probably correct. But you won't convince me that OJ Simpson walking on a double homicide he clearly committed is justice. For Ulbricht, it actually feels like things more or less balanced out, but he did try to have someone killed, and I don't think that's a nice thing to do.
Did the judge conclude, as part of sentencing, that hiring a hit (or two?) was likely?
What reasoning did the judge give for the sentencing? They might involve similar websites but the crimes can be much different. Two people can run the same drug cartel at different times, but that doesn't mean their crimes are the same.
I think one can say the sentences were too severe and still think some sentence was fine.
I would agree with this. He deserved punishment as he did break the law.
Your link says that was a court in England. England generally has different sentencing standards than the US.
Valid point, however even those involved that were comvicted in the US such as Brian Farrell only received single digit sentences.
It was pretty out of left field and seemingly uncharacteristic for the him to do this. It's fair to ask why. I think Trump is terrible in every way, think the pardon is fine, but can't help but wonder why and other questions about it
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Donald literally cites Mommy Ulbricht's political inclinations...
Could you post the literal text? I don't really want to make a Doubleplustruth Social account, and it doesn't seem to be in other news excerpts.
His posts are public:
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1138691127416...
"I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross. The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me. He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!"
Thanks, I tried their front-page but it seemed to demand an account before any browsing or searching.
Disclosure - I immensely dislike Trump and think Ross Ublricht deserved to be convicted.
That said - There is no evidence that anyone was ever killed, there is pretty thin evidence that he actually ever intended to hire any hitmen (though he may have defrauded people who thought they were hiring hitmen), and a life sentence for non-violent drug trafficking seems draconian. I certainly don't think this should have been one of Trump's priorities (I'm guessing it came through Vance, Musk, or someone else in the crypto community), but I don't have a big problem with it.
Absolute no brainer, he should be celebrated. Countless lives were saved via the harm reduction effect of a peer reviewed, reputation based platform. Of course if we had less draconian drug policy, it wouldn't be necessary but here we are.
> Countless lives were saved via the harm reduction effect of a peer reviewed, reputation based platform.
The basic immorality/pointlessness of the war on drugs aside, I don't know how you can assert this: it's not like there's a chain of provenance, and there's no particular guarantee that whatever grade of pure drugs was sold on Silk Road is the same purity that ended up in peoples' bodies.
My understanding of the Silk Road case is that, at its peak, it was servicing a significant portion of the international drug market. The dimensions of that market include adulteration; Silk Road almost certainly didn't change that.
Anecdotally, Planet Money looked into this years ago and their reporting was that as far as they could tell, drugs on Silk Road weren't less safe than street drugs. Most of them were likely "fell off the truck" samples from the original manufacturers being sold by people with an in on the supply, but no otherwise-easy access to an out on the demand.
Their observation was that reputation mattered on SR a lot and a well-kept reputation was valuable at scale in a way that it isn't for being a street-corner pusher looking to stretch your buck by cutting your supply with adulterants. The smart play was to provide a high-quality product at a reasonable price (the latter being the easiest part since they were bypassing the obscene markup of official channels).
> Anecdotally, Planet Money looked into this years ago and their reporting was that as far as they could tell, drugs on Silk Road weren't less safe than street drugs.
Yeah, I'm not saying they're less safe. In fact, on average, I'm willing to bet that the drugs sold on Silk Road were much safer than their street equivalents.
My point was about large sales: Silk Road moved not just personal drug sales, but also industrial quantities of drugs that were almost certainly re-sold. Those latter sales are impossible to track and (by volume) almost certainly represent the majority of "doses" sold through SR. Given that, I doubt the OP's assertion that SR itself represents a particularly effective form of harm reduction.
Or as another framing: SR gave tech dorks a way to buy cheap, clean drugs. But those aren't the people who really need harm reduction techniques; the ones who do are still buying adulterated drugs, which are derived from the cheap, clean drugs on SR.
You shouldn't assume that all "street transfers" of drugs are peaceful or have a positive outcome for those involved. Harm reduction comes in many forms.
I'm pretty sure my comment says the exact opposite. I'm saying that SR was a massive operation that fueled street traffic, which in turn lacked any of the harm reduction virtues that SR is being assigned.
I'm pointing to the transaction layer. When you get thousands of dollars and product in a room with people you don't know things can get extremely unprofessional very quickly. It's really fun when you discover that most of the currency is counterfeit which happens more than you think.
What you say is also true. So there is a trade here. I'm not claiming it's "worth it," but the alternative without SR at all does seem to be more negative.
The overwhelming majority of listings on the site were for personal use quantities.
The overwhelming majority of drug sales are for personal use. That doesn't mean that large sales weren't made, or that those weren't in fact a significant portion of the site's revenue.
>it's not like there's a chain of provenance, and there's no particular guarantee that whatever grade of pure drugs was sold on Silk Road is the same purity that ended up in peoples' bodies.
The fact that the majority of listings on the site were for personal use quantities suggests that the majority of sales were to end users rather than traffickers.
It's hard to dispute that this saved lives and I would speculate that it saved many lives.
>That doesn't mean that large sales weren't made, or that those weren't in fact a significant portion of the site's revenue.
Nobody made any claim that large sales weren't made, of course they were.
> It's hard to dispute that this saved lives and I would speculate that it saved many lives.
See below; the observation is that the people who were buying individual quantities of drugs from SR were not at serious risk of harm in the first place, relative to typical at-risk populations. Anecdotally, the people I know who bought drugs from SR during its heydey were very much test-everything-twice types.
By contrast, the large sales that SR facilitated almost certainly ended up in street drug markets, where harm reduction would have made a difference. But those people didn't benefit from SR's community standards, insofar as they existed: they got whatever adulterated product made it to them.
This is the basic error in saying "most sales were small": the big sales are what matter, socially speaking.
No no no, he is right. Its safe because if you receive a bad batch of drugs you can leave a negative review on the page of the drug cartel that has your name and address, no chance of that having any repercussions for you at all.
I haven't seen anything to suggest that anyone was harmed for leaving a bad review.
Do you know many people who'd be willing to risk their life to give the Sinaloa cartel a bad yelp review?
Sinaola cartel sells lsd, dmt and mushrooms in personal quantities?
As far as I remember, those weren't the only drugs sold there, nor was there any rule enforced regarding "personal quantities".
Not that it matters, as it was an illustrative example.
even if its not perfect for every situation it was a lot better then what existed.
negative reviews aren't the only review, absence of positive reviews is a signal, along with a lot of other positive reviews. later markets at least had reviews outside the markets too
if you are in the bulk and resale drug market you probably aren't getting package with your name on it to your home.
Yup. Drugs and the accompanying business disputes (there's a reason street dealers are armed or have armed people around) that would be normal in any other industry are sooo many people's (who would other wise not be violent criminals) entry point to violence. Letting parties remain at arms length yet transact successfully is such a huge step forward compared the prior status quo. Anything that gets buyers and sellers (either at the retail or distribution level) in illegal industries farther from each other is a win as far as I care.
Does trump also support needle exchanges and safe consumption sites?
As well as online drug marketplaces? Or would running one without legal trouble require a campaign-contribution booster pack?
What a beautiful political anschluss between people who just want to ban contraceptives and abortifacients, and people who just want to shoot up heroin. Not sure how you square that circle[1], but it's 2025, and here we are.
It's very telling about libertarian priorities when a cryptobro running an online drug marketplace who tried to hire a hitman gets amnesty, while hundreds of thousands of people who have been convicted of drug possession[1] do not. Likewise, somehow reproductive rights are just not a libertarian issue, either. It's not a party of freedom, it's a party of freedom for wealthy men.
[1] Biden gave a blanket pardon for people convicted of marijuana posession, but that's far less important for libertarians than Ulbricht.
I think most libertarians are against the war on drugs and would happily pardon or commute the sentences of non violent drug offenders, but the DPR probably takes priority for them because of the free trade issue compounded with the popularization of a non state-backed currency.
He has both drugs + crypto vs just drugs. *Ignoring the accusations of hit ordering, which I would imagine all librarians cannot excuse.
If they are actually trying to maximize any kind of public welfare utility function, surely commutations and pardons and decriminalization and harm reduction for hundreds of thousands and millions of people, and body autonomy for hundreds of millions more should mean a wee bit more than this entirely transactional act.
> a cryptobro running an online drug marketplace who tried to hire a hitman gets amnesty
Would you call this amnesty? He was already in jail for a decade, I thought.
I misspoke. The correct term is clemency.
In that case, yes, guilty people get clemency. Innocent people don't.
He tried to hire multiple hitmen.
There is absolutely no way harm reduction was the reason Trump pardoned him.
It's absolutely one of the reasons why it was politically beneficial for him to enact the pardon.
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How is the thread basically off topic?
These discussions are very interesting. So many red flags from Trump (this pardon, ending birthright citizenship...), and people try to justify these things. America is unfortunately heading for a very dark time. Politics aside, I am rather uncomfortable with the power the president possesses. We were always mindful that there are systems of checks and balances. However, given the current court overturned a precedent (Roe), I am unsure what the future holds. This pardon makes me very uneasy.
I am happy to see that Trump is a man of his word. I voted for him just because of this campaign promise. I would have voted for almost anyone who promised this.
How could that possibly be the most important political issue?
I am very sympathetic to the idea of voting just for Ross. It is unclear to me which candidate would be better, since neither of them are close to my political beliefs at all. It is a deadlock and I seem completely unrepresented. The consequences of voting based on any big issues I care about seems completely unpredictable; politics is a game of lies, smoke and mirrors. So I would perhaps rather vote for the candidate that would definitely save one person's life that is important to me.
Unless it's your day job: never try to unpack the priorities of a voter. You'll just get sad.
(For consideration on this topic: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691138732/th...)
What were your number 2 and 3 issues, out of curiosity?
Were there any accompanying policies that you would say, "despite promising to free Ross Ulbricht, I don't think accompanying Policy X would be worth it?"
This one act was more important than the Paris agreement?
If Paris agreements cannot prevent tariffs on Chinese EV and Chinese solar panels, which are basically battling climate change on Chinese money, these agreements don't justify the cost of paper they are written on.
Immensely more important than an ineffective agreement on an overblown problem.
Wow, I couldn’t disagree more
Not OP, but yes, immensely. Two different galaxies.
The Paris Agreement is a joke; it has done nothing. It's just a bunch of big-ass politicians and a few celebrities bloviating about not solving the problem.
Look, I'm not disputing at all that global warming is an issue, or that we need to solve it, or that humans cause it, or whatever. But the Paris Agreement and those all other agreements are all about big idiots pretending to do stuff.
Probably the most effective thing we have done globally to combat warming is changing to electric cars, and that's NOT the Paris Agreement. Not even close.
The Paris Agreement is the ultimate politician's move. Global warming is a technical problem and must be solved by technical means.
Ironically, the one person who is doing more than all the politicians combined to solve this is backing the current administration. Twitter is nuts over if he did a Nazi salute, while doing nothing to focus on solving what they believe is the biggest issue in our lifetimes.
>Probably the most effective thing we have done globally to combat warming is changing to electric cars, and that's NOT the Paris Agreement.
What do you think about Trump's actions on electric cars then?
Despite being pissed off with the previous comment, I don’t generally think about Trump if I can avoid it.
So I don’t know his specific policies here. I do know those of Elon Musk.
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You're right. I guess we just shouldn't do anything. And somehow it's virtue signaling and reduces output?
Yes. If you stop producing steel (which we kinda did), and just buy it from China instead, you haven't "eliminated emissions". You've merely moved them to a country which is currently not subject to the environmental limits. We are on the same planet - in the long run it doesn't matter where you burn coal.
How do you feel about him backing down on H1B visas, price of groceries, peace in Ukraine...
> I voted for him just because of this campaign promise.
LOL. You're a conservative Christian[1] who thinks climate change is a hoax[2].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29187368
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?type=comment&query=author:macinjosh+...
LOL!
You don’t know me. Seems you are pretty bigoted towards people not like you. How not progressive of you.
>Trump is a man of his word.
Trump's history contradicts this.
Not in this case and this is the only one I care about. So pound sand?
No.
Hope he goes on Dark Net Diaries.
I am surprised Trump pardoned him, not unhappy bout it tho!
Presidents and governors should NOT have the power to pardon people. And if they do it should be ONE pardon per term.
Until you can prove to me that all courts, judges, attorneys, and juries are above reproach and no innocent people are imprisoned there absolutely should be a method for someone to pardon. Sometimes a pardon will be issued for people you disagree with, but that’s part of it. Just like somebody will say something that pisses you off, but that’s the cost of free speech
A single person should never have the sole power to undo an unlimited number of lawful convictions. It seems like a power designed for corruption.
Are you proposing to drown mercy and forgiveness in bureaucracy?
Corruption is a valid point generally. And this question can be raised when discussing pardon for president's family. But is this point valid for this specific case, for the man who already spent 11 years in prison and has no relation to the president?
I'm only in my 40s and I have already seen Presidents and Governors pardon people that absolutely shouldn't have been pardoned.
is the power to put people in prison designed for corruption? And if so, should it be limited to a max of 1 person / judge / term?
The court system has a LOT more checks than one man's whims
you say lawful convictions, but yet have not provided any evidence of all convictions being lawful. we absolutely know that people have been wrongly imprisoned. but at this point i feel like i'm talking to a 3month old bot
I trust a conviction by a unanimous jury verdict with strict rules of evidence than but the whims of one person.
The authority to pardon is one of the most direct indicators we have for the moral character of an executive.
So?
So I'd prefer to give a good person the power to do good things by pardoning those worthy of liberty, and a bad person the power to make their corruption evident for the world to see.
I see absolutely no reason to have the risk of terrible pardons like we have seen over and over in the US. Clinton pardoned Mark Rich while he was still wanted by the DOJ because he donated a lot. Trump just pardoned everyone convicted in the Jan 6 insurrection.
Less that than that the obviously corrupt, criminal, and/or treasonous should be kept from office at all costs.
Either way, obviously, the system has failed.
Or as the commonplace goes, is working as designed.
Is Trump not supposed to be tough-on-crime? How does pardoning a drug dealer factor into that? Is Trump against the war on drugs?
Trump refused to pardon Assange and Snowden. I suppose he has priorities.
In 2021, presumably during SBF's (big Democrat donor) FTX scam, Trump thought that Bitcoin was a scam:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57392734
Now he is best friends with the "crypto", AI, and H1B bros.
> “All my Republican donations were dark,” [SBF] said, referring to political donations that are not publicly disclosed in FEC filings. “The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the f—k out if you donate to Republicans. They’re all super liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.”
> Given that he donated nearly $40 million to Democrats in the 2022 election cycle—and he admitted to giving an equal amount to Republicans—his total political contributions may have actually been around $80 million.
https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donatio...
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Yep. He's not opposed to a scam so long as he's on the money-receiving side of it.
To wit his wife just launched one.
A full pardon should mean that he can get all his bitcoin back, as I understand it.
The right decision.
Trump freed him because libertarians voted for him - he openly said so. Meanwhile, he's waging a war on fentanyl! He should've freed Snowden instead.
i wonder if he'll pardon snowden.
Libertarians are the cheapest fucking buys of all time.
They will sell their souls to a man who would grind them into a paste and sell that paste as a protein snack to his cultists-- in exchange for a hollow, symbolic win that either impacts them in no way whatsoever or maliciously hurts people they don't like.
At least with other political groups you have to, you know, BRIBE them.
Libertarians are so used to receiving absolutely nothing that they will mistake the scent of a steak for a full meal.
That hollow, symbolic win could have been given to them by anyone other than Trump. If nobody else thinks a group's interests are worth listening to, don't be surprised when they start chasing after the tiniest morsels.
What's even going on? Why is everyone treating this guy as some kind of political prisoner all of a sudden?
I would've expected responses like this for Aung San Suu Kyi or Dawit Isaak or someone, but _this guy_? Really?
Oh, I guess he is an e n t r e p r e n e u r... I get it now.
So Trump keeps his promises to the ones who supported him. Makes one think how what other promises he has made to other people and groups having funded and supported his campaign.
For my friends, anything. For my enemies, the law.
This is the best news I've heard in a while
Gentle reminder that we have 1,459 more days of this shit. We really don't have to upvote every crazy fucking thing this guy does, or HN will be nothing but that for the next four years.
Based.
Is SBF next in line for a pardon?
SBF lost a lot of money for a lot of rich people; he's not getting off so easy as someone selling illegal drugs and ordering hits on competitors
Obligatory "This is good for bitcoin"
I think this pardon just reflects Trump's transactional politics. Ulbricht has sympathizers in high places now because crypto is all over this administration.
In the long run letting political influence trump (no pun intended) the criminal justice system is a very bad thing.
By world standards our criminal justice system is a strength of the country. A pity if we lose that.
Ulbricht was unfairly sentenced.
All of the death threat allegations were never proven.
He did not deserve to rot in prison for life for creating a website.
And yet the Ross Ulbricht case was a huge injustice. Biden should have done it.
I'm genuinely surprised of the reactions on this thread. Trump just announced that cartels down south are terrorist organizations. This means that some of the members will likely die by the hand of the us govt. How is running an open market for drugs, weapons, etc different? Seems contradictory to me, what am I missing?
Hard to square the circle with this. Trump is against China's drug imports (and more generally China's imports), but releases someone convicted of running a "import some drugs from China" business because... well crypto money. Oh money that's it. No contradiction!
There is no circle. There is no square. There is unbridled and unanchored self-interest, power-lust, and opportunists.
Interesting. I wonder who pushed Trump to do this. Gotta be Musk. Who else?
The LP presumably
It's baffling to me that there are actually comments on Hacker Gosh Darn News of all places suggesting that Ross justly belonged in prison.
He successfully created a tool to undermine one of the most unjust and predatory policies of the US State - the policy of drug prohibition.
He's a damn hero. I don't understand why Trump, who most of the time seems like a simply awful human being with no end of appetite for state power, has chosen to do this, but I'll certainly take it.
It's beyond obvious that voting and other mechanics of representative rule have not succeeded at simple policy change such as ending prohibition. I look forward to several decades of truth trumping power in the form of the internet undermining states, until the asinine mode of political organization known as the nation state is deprecated entirely.
It's hard to know why he wouldn't - he conspired to have people killed, and facilitated illegal activity, i.e. the sale of all sorts of drugs. You might be saying "well, drugs shouldn't be illegal", or even, "well, conspiring to kill people shouldn't be illegal", but they were illegal at the time.
Seems like a legal slight-of-hand, and also unjust and unethical and absolutely ripe for government abuse.
He was punished for the crime of attempting or conspiring to commit murder. Without ever having been found guilty in a trial by jury of his peers determining beyond reasonable doubt that the facts met said crime.
Since no one is posting it, here's Trump Truth Social post on the matter:
"I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross. The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me. He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!"
Trump haters in absolute shambles here.
We're just letting sex traffickers of children off the hook now? Gross. Putting my head in the sand for the next 3 years and 11 months.
I can’t believe Trump did something right. If Harris were prez he’d be languishing there till who knows when.
I’m not necessarily going to comment on his behaviors directly, as everyone else has already stated that in part or in whole. My grievance, my perspective, is that it’s yet another white man getting a slap on the wrist for wrongdoing while doing nothing to correct any of the underlying problems or pardon others who engaged in similar or lesser behaviors.
The war on drugs has always been farcical, deliberately engineered to target minority groups who were opposing power dynamics at the time. It’s why - despite popular opinion to the contrary - cannabis remains broadly illegal at the Federal level and enforced globally through a web of treaties. It’s always been about creating the means of entrapment for those inconvenient to power.
Pardoning Ross smacks of a gift to cryptobros to earn their loyalty to the current powers that be, rather than an acknowledgement of a past mistake. It is nakedly political, pardoning a white man from an otherwise good background while others languish in prison on far less serious charges or convictions. Were any of the drug dealers on his black market similarly pardoned? Were any of his consumers? Of course not, because Ross was a Capitalist making profit in an untapped market, and the others were individuals who were not.
The entire thing is nauseating, and is enough to wash my hands of all involved were the need to dismantle this farce of a war not so grave.
Now that I didn’t expect
Just a reminder: the condition for accepting a pardon is acknowledging that you did commit the crime in question and accept the court's finding of guilt.
In contrast: Biden didn't pardon Leonard Peltier, the president commuted his sentence. Peltier maintains his innocence.
Can you share more about your first point? A brief search shows the 1915 Burdick supreme court case said that accepting a pardon can imply guilt. However, it doesn't seem to say that acknowledgement or acceptance of guilt is a requirement by the recipient of the pardon.
Do you have a source for that condition? How does that work for Biden pardoning Fauci for crimes that havent been revealed yet?
classic whataboutism.
I was just trying to understand how it works, because the way presidential pardons work is bizarre to me. The pre-emptive pardons seem even more bizarre if what you say is correct. I wasn't trying to engage in an argument. I do feel sceptical about whether you are correct, but i wouldnt know since i barely know anything about it at all.
> cLAsSIc WhATAbOuTiSm
tl;dr? Cratermoon cannot in fact cite a source for their claims.
This sort of shit is why people can't reasonably trust accusations of logical fallacy on the internet. You can't just yell whataboutism whenever you don't want to answer challenging questions.
Hmm, good point. Maybe it wasn't whataboutism. It could just as well be sealioning.
deserved the pardon. privacy should be for all, not just the billionaires.
So if you start a website and facilitate thousands of drug deals and get lots of people to ask the president to pardon you, and you’re white, you can get a pardon. But for everyone else you can’t. Even if you’re in prison for possession of drugs for more than ten years.
Also if you try to overthrow the government you get pardoned which I would have guessed approaches treason.
These are pardonable offenses and conditions.
I felt the same when Biden pardoned the judge who put kids in jail for pay, or the nursing home CEO who took money away from the elderly to buy yachts, but I'd decided that pardons were effectively for sale (tho likely by barter) -- seeing Biden close out his term and Trump open his term with pardons has been kind to those who'd like to compare and contrast, but they both mostly just appear to be paying down debts.
There's no reason to bring race into this. Trump has pardoned PoC convicted of drug offenses, e.g. Weldon Angelos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weldon_Angelos_case
He’s white and that can’t be left out of it. Let’s not pretend race doesn’t matter in any of these things. It is a fact that he’s white and I’m guessing ALL of the Jan 6th people are too.
When Trump pardoned Christopher 2X, was he simply confused about his race? There are plenty of people Trump pardoned that weren't white:
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-don...
This kind of divisive nonsense is purposeless and doesn't productively add to the conversation.
...her?
At the same time he is threatening to tariff China 10% due to their responsibility for fentanyl, lol
Fentanyl wasn't big yet when Silk Road was around. And besides, people were buying straight from China off the clearnet
I think serious jail for running an illegal drug marketplace is good, even if he used lots of neat tech to do so..
I knew people who were wringing it out of medicated patches and sniffing it out of Afrin bottles during high school in the 90s. I also knew someone who ODd and died from tainted/fake pills they bought from one of The Silk Road's (immediate) successors.
Some number of people also OD on "traditional" street drugs every day. So, this is really not a sound argument.
I think they're pointing out the hypocrisy of wanting to crack down on drugs while doing this.
I see so many Trump adjacent folks demanding we lock up drug dealers, deport them, whatever. But they want to let this one go.
I see those people in my personal life, too. Ironically, they're also the ones who regularly drive drunk and do a little cocaine now and again because _it doesn't really count_.
Orange man is a classic tough-on-crime guy, very selective what crimes and what demographics of criminals he is tough on.
Mr. Trump isn't exactly known for making distinctions like that.
I have nothing in particular to say about the dead comments in this very young thread, but they're sort-of-interesting comments to have been killed so quickly!
Is it due to HN policy? I guess they're subjective and ideological, and prone to starting arguments rather than debates.
Maybe "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity." or "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."?
I'm honestly just curious as a conscientious internet citizen lol
> I have nothing in particular to say about the dead comments in this very young thread, but they're sort-of-interesting comments to have been killed so quickly!
[dead] is different than [flagged][dead]. [dead]-only (no [flagged]) means they're auto-dead, they aren't killed by someone reviewing the comments (moderator or users flagging). One of the two commenters was shadow banned years ago but still gets vouched for occasionally (including by me at times). The other one was shadow banned (looked through their history) 11 days ago, with a comment from dang at the time stating as much. They also get vouched for on occasion, based on their comment history.
> Maybe "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity." or "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."?
dang does usually respond to people with something like that first, then for people who get repeatedly flagged or repeatedly engage in certain kinds of behavior, he bans them.
Jtsummers is correct.
Just to add one point, flagged comments are mostly flagged by users (as opposed to mods). We can only guess why users flag things, but from looking at a sample in the current thread it's probably because they're mostly flamewar-style comments and/or political-battle style comments (or both). Those aren't good for HN because what we want here is curious, thoughtful conversation.
Nothing wrong with HN in particular. Every polarising discussion on a platform with moderation or up/down voting system ends up this way. This structure is fantastic for technical discussions just not amazing for politics
Removing moderation or voting systems (simple chronological comment sorting) creates another set of issues so this problem can't be solved without entirely changing discussion formats
> This structure is fantastic for technical discussions just not amazing for politics
No, it's not. Because the same magnification effect causes the causal, simple and correct sounding to float to the top and the nuanced "<signs deeply> so I dealt with this for 20yr and here's the deal" takes that nobody wants to hear because they're not simple and easy wind up at the bottom but above the flagrantly wrong crap and the trolls.
There's a reason that nothing with real stakes adopts this format and technical discussions that matter still mostly happen in some sort of threaded format that doesn't allow voting or any sort of drive-by low effort interaction to effect much.
Format like this is good for driving interaction, which is why public facing websites use it for their comment sections.
Interesting -- what other system could you possibly have, other than votes...? I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting. I guess traditional forum threads (sometimes with votes, a-la GitHub) are nice, but ultimately that's just trading "correct sounding" for "early commenter".
Otherwise, the only thing that comes to mind is StackOverflow functionality where OP can mark a single answer as "accepted" and push it to the top instantly (which obv. wouldn't translate well to general discussions).
A more complicated system is too complicated, but if you could emoji react to a comment (from a very limited set of emoji), and then allow people to assign weights to each emoji, so someone who likes jokes could say :laughing-face: comments rank high up in the list but someone who was more dour could set their default view to be negative for them, then you'd have something a bit better than merely up or down. you could then set the default view to be heavily in favor of what you want the site's culture to be.
the four disagreements apply to a comment section as well: the comment is factually wrong, the comment lacks information, the comment. draws a different conclusion from the same set of information, or the comment is philosophically opposed to my viewpoint. For an online comment system, spam is another category.
Wow, that's a really solid idea. I promise I'll credit you in the footer of my Reddit clone someday ;)
This conversation is presently flagged. Why? When Ross was sentenced HN had a discussion about it with more than 600 comments. His conviction has been discussed numerous additional times in other threads throughout the years. His pardon is plainly on-topic for HN, and this discussion is a necessary followup to those previous discussions.
Of course it's on topic. Why did users flag it? Probably some combination of not liking the event itself and fatigue with political stories. But that's just a guess.
In any case, we turned the flags off when we saw it.
Is it more on topic than the Musk Nazi salute thing, which you chose not to unflag? The comments are equally predictable in both cases.
It is much more on-topic than the Musk thing. HN has been debating this conviction, in intricate detail, since 2015. Meanwhile, you can just go to any news site from CNN to Fox to the Guardian to see the Musk thing. There's stuff to talk about with the Ulbricht story, and basically nothing to talk about with the Musk thing, except for subsets of both sides who are just itching to have a flamewar about it.
The Ulbricht story is also in the news. I don't see that there's a ton to say about it that hasn't come up in the previous (exhaustive) discussions that you mention. The people who thought Ulbricht was prosecuted unjustly are happy and the people who didn't are less happy (unless they thought the sentence was too harsh). I suspect that we just disagree about the significance of the Musk story.
The problem with the Musk story isn't simply that it's a news story; it's that it's only a news story. It's important to understand that this isn't a question of the significance of either story. Important things happen around the world every day that aren't good subjects for HN threads.
I don’t agree that the Ulbricht story is more than just a news story, but in any case, my issue is not with that story being unflagged.
HN is, as you know, chock full of enormous unflagged threads about news stories involving Elon Musk that amount to little more than “Elon Musk says something on Twitter!” It may well be that the mods would happily flag all these submissions into oblivion if they had the time. But I don’t think it’s a good look to have all of this trivial discussion about Musk on the site and then defer to the submission guidelines (reasonable enough in themselves, but lightly enforced in Musk’s case) now that he is in a position of power within the US government.
This isn’t about individual moderation decisions necessarily being wrong or unjustifiable in isolation (though I do think the 'but it might cause a flamewar!' excuse is applied with wild inconsistency). The issue is that avoiding political flamewars on a tech news site in 2025 is a fundamentally different proposition than it was in 2010.
All of those "Elon Musk says something on Twitter" threads are worth flagging. They're insubstantial, and I can't be the only one here who would like a lot less of that guy in his life.
I'll spare you the detailed argument for why Ulbricht is clearly not "just" a news story.
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Paraphrasing an aphorism I saw elsewhere: "Crime is legal now".
Providing online forums is legal now.
Given there are at least thousands if not millions of people who "provide online forums," and pretty much this single one is in prison, I have to wonder if there's something unique about this case?
I don't know anything about this guy. Is there really nothing unique about his case?
Silk Road was, at its height, uniquely successful and making an absolute mockery of the United States government's capacity to regulate drug trafficking. In addition, he fashioned himself an anti-establishment persona, going by the handle "Dread Pirate Roberts" online.
He was unique in his magnitude of success. Governments can successfully magnify their enforcement ability by making an example of outliers.
It was a forum that mocked the government's ability to regulate drug trafficking and therefore he was prosecuted?
I find that hard to believe.
There are multiple examples of federal law enforcement making examples of particularly brazen instances of flouting federal law that are disproportionate to the actual harm caused. Kevin Mitnick is a classic example.
Here's the thing about the US federal law enforcement: there aren't actually a lot of them. In a country of 380 million people, there are 38,000 agents. Google employs more people than the FBI. If the US citizenry decided to take collective action against them, the federal domestic police force alone could not stand against the citizenry.
This shapes where they apply their resources. To be most effective, they need to be visible so that people don't start to think of them as toothless, because mass-resistance to their general police activities would actually work. So they pursue cases into the dust to generate high-profile images of lawbreakers having a really awful time to discourage other lawbreakers.
He was prosecuted because he broke US drug law. But he was prosecuted to the extent he was prosecuted because Silk Road had made headlines as something untouchable by federal authority. That's the kind of Capone energy that the federal law enforcement cannot abide and survive as an institution.
Which is all different from “running a forum mocking drug enforcement capability” which makes it sound like he was a satirist.
> I find that had to believe.
Inconceivable!
Dread Pirate Roberts is legend, look up the silk road marketplace.
Theres probably a movie or two about it too
Oh so it was a marketplace, not a forum. Like one that allowed people to openly transact illegal goods? That makes more sense.
It's weird that GP seemed to purposely obscure that.
Yes, it was the biggest drug market on the dark web at that time, and the 50,676 bitcoins seized by the feds from then is today worth 5,3 billion dollars to give you an idea.
Also there was a long side story with disappeared bitcoins, presumably stolen by federal investigators.
American Kingpin by Nick Bilton is an excellent book covering Silk Road and what makes this unique
Hiring a hitman is legal now.
The seven offenses in question: distributing narcotics, distributing narcotics by means of the Internet, conspiring to distribute narcotics, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiring to commit computer hacking, conspiring to traffic in false identity documents, and conspiring to commit money laundering
A judge bypassed the jury and prosecutor and sentenced him as if he hired hit men and admitted doing so. The sentence upgrade was based on a preponderance of evidence, whereas they would have had to proven beyond a reasonable doubt had he been charged.
Framing this as judicial activism is false. Many sentencing arrangements include - with the agreement of the defendant (since it is their rights in this case) - to have other related activities factored in exactly this manner.
It happens all the time in pleas and diversion agreements, so don’t frame it as a reckless lone judge going off the reservation.
To be fair - he was not pardoned for that, he could still be charged for it. He was only pardoned for crimes related to drugs.
do you know that is actually the case ? i've been trying to find the text of the pardon and haven't been able to yet. can only find Trump's description of it as "full and unconditional"
edit: i see your other comment with the context
They unfortunately have not released the text yet.
It should eventually pop up here: https://www.justice.gov/pardon/clemency-recipients
(among other places)
It is now there, see - https://www.justice.gov/pardon/media/1386096/dl
He was not pardoned for any crimes not charged, and therefore could still be charged.
Does this mean California could go after Ulbricht for solicitation on the murder scheme, like, tomorrow?
He was never tried for that. Don't believe the disinformation.
blatant entrapment and gaslighting for more than a year by law enforcement dedicating 24h to it.
the real criminals for that prank were never even tried.
Looks like the "real criminal" was charged.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/silk-road-drug-vendor-w...
wake me up when you get a cop working for you for over a year just to convince you that you have to hire his friend to kill your other employee
Running an elicit drug and whatever else you want to sell market is legal now.
This was a pandering to get Libertarians' votes. It has nothing to do with the crime itself. I wouldn't commit any crimes and expect to get away with them unless I anticipated becoming the pawn in someone's scheme to get elected.
“If a law is unjust a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so” - Thomas Jefferson
1. There is no evidence jefferson ever said this
2. There is no evidence anyone else ever said this, either
The closest you get is MLK.
See https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jeffers...
But MLK also talks about moral obligation and not other forms of obligation.
He was not trying to create a free for all where everyone gets to decide which laws are okay or not, because he (and jefferson) were not complete morons.
MLK was himself referencing Saint Augustine:
>Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."
Considering that his rhetoric was very much based on Christianity, it's clear what standard of "unjust" he was applying.
> Considering that his rhetoric was very much based on Christianity, it's clear what standard of "unjust" he was applying.
Considering the diversity of standards of justice within the history of Christianity (which, in just the US, includes—relevant to this topic—MLK, sure, but also the Southern Baptist Convention, founded explicitly in support of slavery), I don't know that having rhetoric grounded in Christian theology tells much of substance about the standard of justice one is appealing to.
Touche, however there is plenty of evidence of people throughout history making this assertion, including MLK.
He was trying to create a more just, egalitarian society. I don't understand how you can consider acting in accordance with leading research on successful drug policy "moronic"?
Successful drug policy meaning what here?
Least amount of harm to both the individual and society as a whole whilst recognizing people's fundamental right to bodily autonomy.
Is it unjust to prohibit the sale of illegal drugs, weapons, etc.? Society has good reasons for regulating certain goods. I regularly see people in my community who are enslaved by fentanyl and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. The society I live in decided to make selling it illegal. What is unjust about that?
As I recall weapons weren't permitted on the platform.
The society didn't decide, the ruling class decided to use drug policy to attack their own citizens.
History shows that prohibition is an abject failure. The fent epidemic is symptomatic of this failed policy.
If they actually cared about the epidemic, addicts would have access to regulated, pharmaceutical grade heroin whilst also having ready access to treatment.
But then we'd have empty prisons and the police would be free to solve real crimes so we can't have that.
> addicts would have access to regulated, pharmaceutical grade heroin
We tried that, it was called the opioid epidemic and Purdue was the pharmacist. We had readily available, doctor-prescribed, high quality narcotics available to anyone who wanted them and the result was an epic disaster that cost thousands of lives.
> weapons weren't permitted on the platform
My mistake.
>We tried that, it was called the opioid epidemic and Purdue was the pharmacist.
Not really, this was a case of a private company deliberately pushing narcotics for profit without oversight or any associated increase in access to treatment options.
Now the "opioid epidemic" has been replaced with a "fentanyl epidemic" which is objectively a much more dangerous drug with absolutely no regulation and murderous cartels instead of doctors - and we're still throwing people in prison for the crime of being addicts rather than treating it as a medical issue.
I don't know the stats (or if it's even possible to accurately collect statistics due to prohibition) but I'm fairly certain this costs more lives than the short lived opioid epidemic.
Is Trump pushing for broad drug decriminalisation? I feel like that would be necessary for this pardon to make sense on the basis of current drug laws being unjust.
Last I heard he was promising to make drug dealers eligible for the death penalty: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-wants-e...
Wasn't he also continuously complaining about how mexicans are importing all the drugs to the US (whether or not that statement is even factually correct)? He also recently designated drug cartels as terrorists. So all in all I wouldn't say he is for the decriminalisation of drugs.
Not exactly, fentanyl epidemic was specifically started by one family seek profit and ousted doctors to over prescribe it while claiming it was mildly addictive.
The war on drugs have caused immeasurable harm due to failure to understand most people use drugs either as escapism or as a tendency.
That's why it has failed.
I think you have fentanyl and oxycodone mixed up
Yes, sorry about that.
So we like drug markets now ?
How are cartels terrorist organizations?
I like free markets.
There are healthier middle grounds we could explore where e.g. advertisements are banned and individuals could register themselves as being banned from participating in certain addictive vices because they don't consistently have the willpower to quit or don't want to tempt fate trying it (and make it a crime to sell to an individual who has voluntarily banned themselves), but it's hard to argue that The War on Drugs has been in any way just.
I expect in such a society, certain groups (e.g. Mormons) would normalize banning yourself from vices the day you turn 18.
What is just is decided both by an individual and the society they exist in. "It is one's moral obligation to fight injustice" is a pretty common tenent to hold. Injustice can be city laws encouraging anti-homeless spikes. Injustice can also be genocide in a remote country. Those injustices get fought in very different ways. One can be handled by individual vigilanteeism and peacefully petitioning local governance. The other might require global war.
In my personal belief, everyone[0] has the right and moral obligation to fight the injustice they care about at the level they can manage. If that's handing out water at the protest or inventing penicillin, do what you personally can do to improve the world.
[0]the average layperson, obvious exceptions for power/money apply
Sure, but the facts matter. Making millions of dollars by operating a marketplace for illegal drugs is not even close to the same ballpark as protesting a draconian anti-homeless law, let alone resisting genocide!
The only reasonable argument for drug legalization, in my opinion, is the libertarian one - the idea that you should be free to take the drugs you want to take. I am sympathetic to this argument. I am someone who is able to make wise decisions about the drugs I take. But I also recognize that millions of my fellow citizens are not. The harm to society from drug addiction and overdoses outweighs the benefit to me getting high whenever I want.
so we all individually can just decide a law is unjust? that'll be fun
Don't worry - jefferson never actually said this because he wasn't a complete idiot.
Don't take my word for it though, the monticello folks looked into it too - https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jeffers...
It is a fun quote though, because it's one of those quotes that people want to use to justify their own dumb behavior.
"If you don't like the law, feel free to ignore it" - Albert Einstein
If you come to disagree with the justice of a law, your options are to conform or, yes, decide that the law is unjust.
I mean strictly speaking the people voted for Trump, so collectively they're all okay with this.
Of course Trump's platform was enormously based on law & order and combatting the drug trade, which he seems to think should still be actually illegal and is not ending the war on drugs so, I don't know - make of that what you will.
Maybe Thoreau? That's more authentic and gets at similar themes. On more than one level considering his circumstances and run-ins with law enforcement.
”Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison."
I wonder how this sentiment is going to play out in Luigi Mangione's trial.
Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner.
So were most aristocrats of the time. Applying presentism doesn't invalidate the idea.
But there were also abolitionists at the time, even amongst that class. Jefferson not being among them does, actually, diminish his standing and his views on justice. This quote, for example, does not acknowledge that there are also laws which are unjust to obey; such as the owning of human beings in chattel slavery.
I don’t think suggesting that his quote would imply his slaves would be justified in violating their own enslavement is any kind of presentism.
It is just hypocritical: even his time most people knew slavery was unjust.
He never actually said it, either.
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… in a society where slavery was legal, widespread, and rarely questioned.
Murder has never been legal.
The legality of it is not in question (the purpose of this quote). It was as unjust then as it is now.
He tried to have multiple people murdered.
Jefferson did, certainly. He was instrumental in starting a war from what I understand.
Ross though? The government alleged it but never bothered to prove it. Furthermore the government agents involved were laughably corrupt, so anything they alleged needs to be taken with a massive grain of salt. For all anybody here know, they fabricated the entire assassination story to distract the public from their plot to loot Ross's money (which unlike the assassination stuff, has been proven in court.)
lol
Crime has always been legal for the ones with money and the right connections.
Biden pardonning his son and other criminals also made this clear.
Most people are becoming aware most politicians are actually criminals in suits.
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I don't see how this benefits the American economy, jobs, or national security. I do see that for a cohort of people in the Libertarian community this was held to be a central Tenet: Ulbricht was their "hostage" just as the Proud Boys thought their leader was.
But, I can't see how this becomes net beneficial in Congress, or in the wider economy. At best it's providing lower friction movement of goods and services. They tend not to go to Federal Tax collecting exchanges, so I cannot for the life of me see how this helps the exchequer, but maybe thats the point?
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Do you think it's possible the 11 years he spent in prison could have had any rehabilitation effect? Or should we jail anyone who ever commits a crime to a life sentence?
Whether Ulbricht is a changed man is somewhat immaterial to the signaling to other young would-be drug kingpins that the President thinks you shouldn't be punished so harshly for setting up online black markets.
I agree: online black markets should be free trade. If drugs were legalized, even fewer issues would exist, and it would be easier to isolate the actual crime which imposes negative, third party externalities like traffiking or violence.
A) yes, probably
B) I don’t see this sort of leniency being offered to other drug dealers, in fact, the Trump administration wants to designate Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations.
C) a day 1 pardon communicates that it’s a top priority of the administration that drug dealers and cop killers (Jan 6) get freed.
D) he was convicted by a jury of his peers who know full well what a judge would sentence him to. Now Trump comes out to overrule that.
The time to change sentencing would have been pre-trial. We tried doing that, but that was a massive loser electorally.
E) it wasn't merely commutation, it was a pardon. A pardon means that President is declaring the defendant not guilty. A commutation merely reduces the sentence.
Who were the cop killers from Jan 6?
Drug dealers, cop killers and family members. America's institutions continue to devolve into a cruel joke.
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Crypto oligarchs calling the shots in The Bronzer Strikes Back.
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Hyperbole much? I for one am happy that these Americans who were politically targeted and serving 4 years of prison time especially for the violent crime of trespassing have been giving their lives back.
The message is clear: don’t weaponize the American justice system against its own citizens.
And Biden just commuted the sentences of mass murderers and child killers. What kind of message does that send?
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I don't understand how she's not in prison and SBF is
Pretty sure she is currently in jail.. if not, she's finished doing the time she was sentenced.
Her husband took the fall, whatever the facts actually are, and got a longer sentence.
SBF - well the scale, number of laws violated, duration, number of victims, profile of victims, complete lack of contrition, etc would be why he got a much longer sentence.
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A possible line of reasoning is that drugs should be legal, but the property and violent crimes committed around them shouldn't be, in the same way that adults are legally permitted to drink alcohol, but they're not legally permitted to drive drunk. The "ruining cities" is about the crimes, not the drugs themselves.
(I think.)
That's the logically consistent line of thought, yes. Which is one I don't particularly disagree with, because of the harm the war on drugs has caused.
But the inconsistency comes from people advocating for a black market drug site and bending towards the far right. The same people who in the same breath also further criminalize drugs, reduce access to things that help addicts while arguing that drug dealers should be deported and our streets swept.
The logical inconsistency is that 'their' drug dealers are conducted by people of virtue therefore they did nothing to break the law. And not being willing to deal with the actual fallout of said illegal drug empire.
>The same people who...
Political coalitions are not personifiable, contiguous entities. There are disparate groups of individuals aligned on certain issues and at each other's throats elsewhere. That said, political hypocrisy isn't uncommon, but in this case you may be over-generalizing.
Yea, shooting up in itself is a victimless crime. If you can do that in your home and not affect others you shouldn’t be harassed by the state.
If however you shoot up and become violent, harass people, or commit properly crime you should go to jail.
> But it seems they don't have a problem with someone running an illegal underground drug smuggling network because...?
People have a soft spot for enterprising wunderkinds of certain demographics, even if he wasn't actually a kid when he start SR.
A good boy like Ross doesn't belong in prison, but the person arrested for smoking crack does, is a common sentiment.
Most libertarians considered the Silk Road a place to buy psychedelics like LSD or mushrooms or experimental synthetic drugs (not that these don’t come with numerous risks). Not a bulk heroin warehouse. So the perception is different from that of a wholesale fentanyl clearing house.
Just because the far right complains about 'drugged out zombies' ruining cities thanks to drug smugglers from Mexico, doesn't mean libertarians think that. Libertarians have been opposed to the "war on drugs" for decades.
Well for one, Libertarians are not far right in the way you are describing...
They've gone full doublethink, like when Trump claimed Jan 6 was done by antifas, but then pardoned them all and no one seemed to remember.
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two wrongs don't make a right
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Aaron tried to give the world free access to information for no personal gain.
Ross ran an online marketplace for drugs and other illegal materials for personal profit.
The life sentence was ridiculous, but they're not he same at all.
It's the difference between Chelsea Manning or Snowden leaking state secrets and someone who sells on state secrets to the Russians or Chinese.
I think thats a biased answer and strawman argument. He made a platform where anything coudl be sold as he was a libertarian. It actually echoes what the ethos of hackernews is, to build a product everyone uses.
He didnt sell anything, so your metaphor doesn't correlate at all.
Also Aaron las literally a CEO of a company. Im not complaining about Aaron, he did have higher thoughts on how to help society but my point was about entrepeneurship.
If you want to come onto a ycombinator forum and say "hey this website creator was bad", then argue the case without comparing him to "user" of the site, which was my pretty simple point. Otherwise you just make yourself look bad.
I do not agree with his behaviour, I am saying he made a site, and got into trouble because of what happened on it. This sets a precedent that affects startup entrepeneur. Its a simple concept I am discussing. So dont strawman this.
I want you to convince me, but if you need to be logical.
Saying "this is my ideology" is not really all that believable if you stand to make millions with that ideology. I don't know what's in his hearth of hearths and to be honest I don't really care. All I'm saying it's just not comparable at all.
EDIT> Also I am not sure if you downvoted me, I upvoted you as I appreciate your time in sharing your view. thanks.
Not going to try and sway you here but to learn more, read or listen to "American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road".
Truly fascinating story and good story telling.
yeah I only know a limited amount, but I found the sentence to be super harsh at the time for a website owner and as we can see form all the comments, the fact he got punished so harshly has implications on ycombinator as well most of the poeple here are website owner.
I wont watch your video as it clearly is a hit piece by the title. If it had just had an impartial "An investigation into Ross" then I would have.
The fact you suggested a video source with a clearly biased source make me think less of your argument.
EDIT> Also I am not sure if you downvoted me, I upvoted you as I appreciate your time in sharing your view. thanks.
The book is from the perspectives of Ross and from the main FBI (I think?) agent investigating him. It didn't seem much like a "hit" piece to me.
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I regret not voting for Trump. Hopefully most of his BS will be contested and the good stuff he does sticks.
I wonder if this action was executed at the suggestion of Mr. Musk?
It seems questionable Trump even understands or cares what Silk Road did or how it worked.
A. His prison sentence was totalitarian and three letters stole his crypto and illegally convicted him.
B. Orange is not a hero. I don't bow down to Kim Jong Un/Hitler wannabees.
C. Tor is a three letter honeypot.
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[citation needed] on those items
I really wonder who benefits from this. Trump only does things that are good for him, or those close to him. I realize he's been making connections to the crypto world, and has his own meme coins. Does pardoning Ross somehow make crypto more valuable?
It’s also just good politics. There are a vocal group of voters that are in favor of this, so it gets those people on his side. And no reason not to (politically), as most people just don’t care about this topic, or if they do and disagree with the decision, this isn’t going to be the action that moves the needle for them on how they feel about Trump or the Republican Party.
Partisan caricature is not a reliable starting point for logical inference or deduction. To answer your question - on the campaign trail he attended a convention of libertarian organizers and promised them that if he won he would free Ross, and has followed through on that promise today.
A video from Reason magazine a few days ago[0] mentioned a deal between the Libertarian Party leadership and Trump in which they selectively didn't run their candidate in several states in order to help Trump. If this is true, Trump could have reneged, but evidently decided whatever political blowback for pardoning Ulbricht (which is probably small potatoes at this rate) wasn't worth the credibility cost.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhDKYYdD2vY
Trump made the deal at the Libertarian National Convention to garner their support.
It’s almost a scandal that politician followed through on a campaign promise.
For all his many defects and cloudy motives for doing it, Trump deserves applause for this. It's with actions such as this that he also shows why he's a genuine maverick of a president, with who it's genuinely possible to expect deeply unexpected actions (for better or worse).
For all his talk of being progressive and cultivation of a youthful maverick image of his own, you would have never seen such a move from Obama and forget about it under the mealy mouthed Biden or a hypothetical Hillary administration. With Trump, rather uniquely and singularly, it happened.
Ulbricht made many mistakes, less so morally but definitely legally, of the kind with which he could have expected to cause punishment to rain down upon him, but the way in which his case was managed and the way in which he was sentenced truly were both disgusting in numerous ways.
They were classic examples of prosecutorial and political vengeance and give much truth to Trump's own description of the same as "The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me. He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!”
If you in any way mistrust heavy-handed government prosecutions and persecutions, it's hard to disagree much, even if it's also not hard to imagine Trump being just as abusive in other contexts where prosecution of enemies would suit his interests and personal vengeance.
Now if we see him pardon Snowden too, i'd happily give a standing ovation.
Before someone here smugly chimes in about how Ulbricht also tried to hire out a murder by contract, bear in mind that this accusation was riddled with holes, suspicions of entrapment and in any case wasn't formally used for his sentencing, AND still wouldn't justify the kind of onerously grotesque sentence that was dumped on him. Pedophiles who committed child murders have been sentenced to less than Ulbricht was.
the fact that he will never pardon Snowden tells you all you need to know: this pardon was pandering and suits his own purposes. there are no higher principles here besides quid pro quo.
Trump is literally into the second day of his presidency, nobody can know whether he might or might not pardon even Snowden for some reason of his own. I had zero expectation of a pardon for Ulbricht yet here it is and it's more impressive than Obama's pandering (but to me still applause-worthy) pardon of Manning, though none came for Assange.
I wouldn't even call it pandering. He straight-up said the pardon was because the libertarians supported him.
>For all his talk of being progressive and cultivation of a youthful maverick image of his own, you would have never seen such a move from Obama
he pardoned Chelsea Manning I think you're forgetting.
> you would have never seen such a move from Obama
you forgot Chelsea Manning; so I stopped reading there
Pardoning Manning while still going hard after Assange was a new level of pandering to the LGBTQ lobby. Pretty disgusting in its own right, I agree.
I disagree that it was pandering to the LGBTQ lobby.
I agree Assange should not have been pursued at all.
You can't directly compare the two situations. Manning was a US citizen, serving a sentence in the US. During Obama's term, Assange was not yet accused of any crime in the US, so there was no presidential pardon to be had, though Obama could have dropped the extradition request.
Biden did eventually reach a deal with Assange that allowed him to count time served -- essentially the same as commuting a sentence, so along the lines of what Manning got -- and return to Australia.
So in the end, Assange and Manning were both freed after serving time.
> Obama could have dropped the extradition request.
Yes he could have. And did not. Whereas Manning was freed, because s/he had sponsors in the right lobbies.
> Biden did eventually reach a deal with Assange
Mostly driven by the UK government, because it would have looked bad to deport a journalist on the orders of our colonial masters. And again it took years, when it could have been done in a minute - like Trump did with his allies. Because the reality, beyond words, is that the Democratic establishment is basically as much an enemy of the free press as the Republican one is, when in power.
Those of you downvoting this comment, I sincerely wonder if it's because you really think Ulbricht deserves to rot the rest of his life in prison despite a deeply flawed, openly vengeful trial and a sentence that simply doesn't usually correspond to any of what he was convicted of in most cases, or because you simply can't, emotionally, approve of anything Trump might do, even if you'd otherwise agree with it.
I'd say either posture is an insult to your own capacity for reasoned thinking, but I am curious about which kind of insult it is.
This pardon is corrupt. Ross' parents donated to Trump and he pardoned their son as a favour.
Whether or not you think he deserved the prison time, the problem here is how utterly brazen Trump is in accepting bribes.
Trump doesn’t care about Ross’ parents or their donations much.
What he did care about were libertarian votes. There was a deal that libertarians will support Trump if he promises to free Ross. This is on record, you can find it.
So, I’m seeing politician followed through on promise to voters. I’m sure this can swing to some orange man bad, I’m just not seeing it.
Words can't describe how happy I am.
If I wanted to know this, I’d visit Reddit.
those thinking this is a criminal who shouldn’t be released i recommend reading this thread https://x.com/tayvano_/status/1641931312385888256
Hacker news absolutely loved this 1700 comments which makes me want to list all hacker news threads ordered by most comments because these are usually the best ones
This thread really shows how unhinged the community is. Dude hired contract killers and ran the most prolific darkweb forum for whatever. He's not some martyr. He's just a bum.
The sympathy for this guy from so many of you makes me sad.
The messages show he wanted and thought he was getting people murdered. But that's perfectly OK because it was actually the evil FBI he was talking to!
Surely you must understand that he was also white and solid middle class.
And he was able to code sloppy LAMP code.
Ah I hadn't seen his photo. Could have been me after a night of drinking, lets not ruin the poor guys life just because of a few callous decisions.