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that_guy_iain | on: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
> 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.

Nit: People died, who may not have died, because of his actions but he didn't kill them. Very few people are forced to take drugs.

kerkeslager | parent
It's worth noting that darknet sites have at every point in their history provided higher-purity drugs on average than what was available elsewhere[1]. It's hard to say whether or not more people used drugs because of the Silk Road. But without question, many people who purchased drugs on the Silk Road and survived, would have purchased those drugs elsewhere and died from impurities in the Silk Road's absence. I think there's an argument to be made that Ullbricht saved lives by purveying safer drugs.

[1] https://www.euda.europa.eu/publications/insights/internet-dr...

EDIT: Added citation for commenter who couldn't be bothered to use a search engine. Link contains links to multiple studies.

perihelions | root | parent | next
- "But without question, many people who purchased drugs on the Silk Road and survived, would have purchased those drugs elsewhere and died from impurities in the Silk Road's absence. I think there's an argument to be made that Ullbricht saved lives by purveying safer drugs."

But how's that different from arguing that every crack dealer who doesn't cut their crack product is a utilitarian, net-positive life-saver?

Alice sells pure crack. Bob one street down adds fentanyl for the extra kick. It's a reasonable inference that Alice's clients, deprived of Alice, would switch to Bob and promptly off themselves. Does it therefore follow, that Alice-who-sells-crack is an upstanding, lifesaving even, member of society, who should be left free to sell more crack? If not, then what's the differentiation between Alice-who-sells-crack and Ross Ulbricht—what innovation has that cryptocurrency startup innovated, that makes it it a substantively different moral scenario?

Certainly, no crack dealer has ever, in the history of the US, tried to advance this specific utilitarian argument, which Ulbricht attached himself to (as Judge Forrest pointed out—it's a privileged argument of a privileged person).

kerkeslager | root | parent
> Certainly, no crack dealer has ever, in the history of the US, tried to advance this specific utilitarian argument, which Ulbricht attached himself to (as Judge Forrest pointed out—it's a privileged argument of a privileged person).

Tell me more about how a judge is calling people privileged.

I mean, do you have any discussion of the idea at hand, or are you just going to appeal to how we feel about hypothetical people who might have said the idea? Either the idea is correct or it's not, it doesn't matter if it's a crack dealer, a darknet market administrator, or a judge who makes it.

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that_guy_iain | root | parent | next
The purity can also cause overdoses and deaths because they're not used to it being that pure so they took the same amount they would take with a less pure so took a substantially larger dose. Especially with opium based drugs that would be a big problem.
kerkeslager | root | parent
At a systemic level, this is dependent on what "normal" purity is for users. First-time buyers on darknet markets probably are more likely to overdose because they're used to less-pure products, although I don't have any statistics to back up that guess. But if people are buying on the darknet consistently, they'll be unlikely to overdose due to unexpected purity (though they might still overdose for other reasons).

I'll admit I haven't done much research on opiates specifically for the simple reason that I have never known any active opiate addicts (though, I did get trained to administer Narcan). However, in my understanding of drugs such as coke, MDMA, or speed/adderall, which are more common in the tech scene, higher purity is unambiguously a net positive. It's been a while since I was actually involved in the overlap of the tech/festival scene but when I was around that more, I made anyone I knew used drugs aware that I had drug test kits and would let you borrow them no questions asked. I can't claim I ever saved a life, but I can say for certain that ~30 people at a festival I went to ended up riding out bad trips in medical tents or being transported to the hospital due to MDMA cut with DOC, and none of the people I let borrow my test kits at that festival did.

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sulam | root | parent
Citation needed.