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Bitcoin Used For the Narcotics Trade
An anonymous reader writes "A story on Aljazeera tells how bitcoin is being used to pay for cocaine, marijuana and other drugs at various eBay style drug websites. From the article: 'Two US senators are asking federal authorities to crack down on an online narcotics market that accepts "virtual" currency. The "Dark Web," an anonymous and secretive online community that trades in heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines among other drugs, has been operating unhindered for months.' Who said bitcoin is not used in the real world?"
I, for one, do not want to have to explain to some thugtastic DEA jackboots that "hash-based currency" can be acquired by legitimately doing a bunch of math, as well as by other means...
Nothing like using a hash to score some hash.
Hire me...
Most of these alternative-currencies (Bitcoin, e-gold, etc) find themselves on the shady side of things pretty quickly - especially money-laundering and the like. This is not at all surprising, really.
It's going to be that way until we finally repeal the idiotic War on Drugs and admit that in a so-called "free country" it is wrong to ever tell consenting adults what they may do with their own bodies in their own homes. War on Drugs is a total failure anyway. Anybody who wants drugs can get them. It has done nothing to stop them.
>Deflation serves only the hoarders and creates a braking effect on an economy, because why spend money today when it will be worth more tomorrow?
BS. Deflation serves almost everyone. Deflation is the natural effect of technological progress and capital accumulation. Why spend money today? Because you want stuff. Take an industry with major deflation you may have knowledge of - computers. I see no one spends money today on a computer because they will be able to get a better one tomorrow - right. Fear of deflation and adoration of inflation are just nonsense promoted by the state and the status quo because it benefits *them*.
"People are bad enough with alcohol and cigarettes. I'd hate to see what happened if you let people have unrestricted access to harder drugs. Most people can barely look after themselves as it is, let alone the children that those type of people tend to churn out, Idiocracy style."
Except that it doesn't happen that way. Places that have decriminalized some drugs (like the Netherlands) and even all drugs (Portugal et al.) have experienced NO significant rise in drug use! Further, there are a lot of societal benefits: lower crime rate, dramatically lowered costs for courts and incarceration, no need for as many police, etc.
Your comment reminds me of an elderly woman I know. She plays Bingo with friends regularly. She tells me that whenever she talks about decriminalization, she gets shocked reactions from all the other old ladies. Once, one of her friends said, "But if drugs are legal, everybody will start taking drugs!"
She looked at her friend calmly, and said "Really? Which ones would YOU take?"
Shut her right up.
Meanwhile, entire populations of foreign countries are buried in mass graves, if they're lucky, dissolved in a barrel if they're not.
A factory I work with has a customer in Monterrey, Mexico. They had advised the factory's sales director not to visit the city because the violent crime rate is so out of control. For all intents and purposes, Monterrey is a developed city, and it has gone backward very rapidly largely due to the funds and weapons flowing from the U.S. government. The nation is at war with itself and we feed the fire with our abolitionist laws.
Certainly the death of your brother-in-law is a tragedy in itself, but the fact that it occurred supports the argument that the drug laws don't work. It always has been and still is easier for young people to get illegal drugs than legal ones.
But on the flip side, what about the Iraq veteran who was recently killed by a swat team who thought he was a drug dealer, when in fact he was a working class husband trying to survive? That family is devastated and the kid is going to suffer terribly for the rest of his life. Without a doubt this is a family that would still be together, the father alive, the kid some semblance of normal, if we did not have a 'war on drugs'.
I know we want to believe that passing a law solves a problem, but in this case the drug laws create far more problems than they solve. The violence worldwide, the violence at home. I have a friend who went through college with a guy who ended up becoming a public defender. He tells these terrible stories of people hopelessly addicted to meth (he's in a rural area), with terrible health, no teeth; visibly, clearly in a state of helplessness, sentenced to 1 year or more for possession of a drug. This is solving problems? Making people's lives better? Improving our society? Even Pat Roberston is beginning to see the failure of these policies. Surely you can, too?
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.