Slashdot Mirror
The Silk Road Is Back
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Silk Road is rising from the dead. After the FBI seized the deep web's favourite illegal drug market and arrested its alleged founder Ross Ulbricht last month (for, among other things, ordering a hit through his own website), the online-marketplace-cum-libertarian-movement has found a new home and opened for business at 16:20 GMT this afternoon. In the wake of the original Silk Road's closure, everything became a little turbulent for its users. First, they had to get used to not getting high-quality, peer-reviewed drugs delivered direct to their sofas. (Though presumably they didn't stop getting high, instead forced back to the 'mystery mix' street dealers and surly ex-Balkan war criminals who have spent years filling cities with drugs at night.) Some users were pissed off that they'd lost all the Bitcoin wealth they'd amassed, or that paid-for orders would go undelivered, while small-time dealers freaked out about how they suddenly lacked the funds to pay off debts owed to drug sellers higher up the food chain."
Just short-sell bitcoins when it goes away again.
People have a product to sell.
Other people desire this product.
Person A sells this product to person B.
This is capitalism. it's not evil. Nobody is directly harmed in this transaction, and both parties got what they wanted. This is a good thing!
You should be careful how you word that, Silk Road had a (not always well policed) policy against it, but other black market Bitcoin-based market places have been selling children, women and hitman services, among other things. For real. You could still say "People have a product to sell. Other people desire this product. Person A sells this product to person B", but I would disagree on the "not evil or directly harmed".
Original point still stands. Neither A nor B, who were the parties to the transaction, were directly harmed. That's capitalism between A and B. Party C (a slave) is not a party to the transaction, they are the goods being sold.