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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."
I for one am excited.
I've never seen nor participated in Silk Road. But, you'd have to be an utter moron to participate in the Silk Road "Phoenix"! It is sure to be either an FBI honey pot or a scammer looking to steal BitCoin.
Go ahead, prove me wrong.
Lots of silk roads have opened up since the original one was raided. Some have taken orders, collected the money and done a runner with it. Some presumably are still operating. Some will be fronts and honeytraps set up by various law enforcement bodies around the world. Some will be real genuine marketplaces. Nobody knows for sure which ones are the genuine ones.
Long Live The Silk Road.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
...is that this instance is run by FBI.
I don't see other reason why anyone would take the risk without - at least - a massive security technology change.
of course it's not a honeypot. What would ever make you think that?
Traditionally, domains and servers sized by the FBI become honeypots afterwards, right?
I would be disappointed if they were to break with this convenient reallocation of resources now.
Other have already taken over. It might not yet be as trusted as Silk Road was, but there are alternate platforms that were just waiting for the big one to go away and took over without a problem. Too much money to be gained in a fairly secure market. Just don't be from the US but from Russia or somewhere where they don't bother going after someone mostly facilitating sales in the US and Europe.
OMG!
For the love of god, think of the drug dealers!
Have you tried turning it off and on 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!
note, I said "directly harmed." it is possible somebody may have been indirectly harmed by violence perpetrated by deranged criminals who are involved in the supply chain due to the fact that this activity is currently deemed illegal. note, it's not illegal because it is run by criminals, no it is run by criminals because it is illegal. There's a big difference.
Bitcoins went way up shortly after Silk Road was shut down because the Chinese took interest, so that's extremely risky. Do not assume that Bitcoin value is tied to availability of politically incorrect drugs sold for bitcoins.
drugs are bad mkay
Supposedly the transactions are safer this way. I'd rather them meet online than on the street where I live.
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is very happy to hear about that.
On teh intarwebs, no one can tell you're a FED.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Bitcoin was at $130ish when Silk Road shut down. Then there was hand waiving about a "crash." It "crashed" all the way to $100.
As I write this it looks like Mt. Gox is $265.
You're whole posit is bullshit.
Well, that depends on the details of what the transaction actually was. SilkRoad was involved in a lot of things besides harmless recreational drugs, including quite a few products and services that were intended to hurt people.
Just like being illegal does not automatically make something unethical, being illegal but in demand does not automatically make something ethical either.
It could be a honeypot, but since everything done through a site like Silk Road is anonymous except receipt of delivery of items, the only users of the site the FBI would catch would be the drug buyers. Sellers, provided they're not using an OS or browser with the vulnerabilities that the FBI has used to de-anonymize TOR users in the past, and provided they don't do something dumb when they mail a package like reveal their identity, are safe. And since when is the FBI interested in going after drug buyers? Typically they only bust such small-time participants in the drug trade to get them to rat on their dealers, but that obviously won't work when your dealer is anonymous.
Or am I missing something here? My understanding was that Silk Road did things entirely through TOR and Bitcoin, meaning that those ends of the transactions are (excepting user stupidity) completely anonymous.
Liberty in your lifetime
Obligatory Drugwars link
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!
This is debatable, at best. Modern capitalism is theoretically founded in modern economics, which, guess what, uses utilitarian ethics for value. The utility A and B derived from the transaction may or may not offset the utility lost to everybody else. If it doesn't, then the transaction is not efficient, and rational actors should not perform it.
Of course, this is where libertarianism falls flat on its face. Your transaction incurs costs on others, and you are irrational if you do not take those costs into account.
LOL
Anyone who was on and followed what happened when they "busted" SR, should be skeptical across the board. THe orignal takedown notice was not a real FBI one the SR site. . . it had the SR logo on it. DPR is almost certainly not one person anyway, that is even revealed in the interviews that the guy who was busted gave. I guess, however, we can all make assumptions. . . and assume the mass media has accurately reported this from the beginning.
After all, they were so accurate when the Boston bombing occured. . .right? http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/04/wrongly-accused-boston-bombing-suspects-sunil-tripathi.html
True. The freakiest thing I saw when taking a look at SR was large amounts of cyanide from one vendor. I haven't heard about mass-poisonings, but making it that easy for a crazy to hurt a lot of people is very worrying. Other black-market sites I researched were worse, with guns available to anyone in addition to the poison and dangerous drugs.
It seems to me that we shouldn't be banning reasonably safe in-demand products because having products that mainstream people want only available though the black market, enables the terrible things that also go on there. A drug should have to be really destructive like Meth to be banned.
True. The freakiest thing I saw when taking a look at SR was large amounts of cyanide from one vendor. I haven't heard about mass-poisonings, but making it that easy for a crazy to hurt a lot of people is very worrying.
Does cyanide have no uses other than poisoning? I don't know, but I presume someone who does know and is interested in playing with the stuff would rather pick it up black market than try to procure it legally and be added to a watch list somewhere.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Your point is so nuts that the only appropriate response is to hold it up to the light for people to observe exactly how deep the well of objectivism can go.
No really..it's a trap. Obviously the NSA has "resurrected" the SR to lure you poor guppies into a giant net of "why don't you have a seat over there"....oop be right back there's a knock at my door... *Never heard from again
Cyanides are useful in making dyes and certain metal plating processes, among other things.
Drugs are always a tricky issue when it comes to legality. There is always this tricky balance between personal freedom and social good, esp when it comes to the highly addictive ones.
A while back there was a research group trying to devise a chemical cocktail that had the pleasant recreational elements of various drugs (they were working on booze specifically) but without the addiction or health issues. Now there would be a blockbuster that could change the world....
...has taken it over and going to run it as a profit center to support whatever off-the-books black ops they are running, as well as provide a long-term intelligence gathering center for transnational organized crime and drug dealing.
key resource in many street level recovery industries - cheap, dangerous and dirty, unfortunately.
There already exists recreational drugs without addiction or health issues... they are also all illegal.
It's attached to perceived market conditions.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
If they kept it in wallets controlled by the Silk Road site, they have only themselves to blame. Preventing that kind of thing is what bitcoin is designed for.
They can probably determine which time zone the user mostly is in from the logs alone.
With drug users working on Doper Substandard Time? That would be a stretch.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I'd never order my medication from a place like "Silk Road." I don't like the idea of giving my address out to some anonymous stranger that I've never chatted with or met.
Silly me. Being paranoid like that.
Remember: Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't watching you.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
there are plenty of things that a market exists for that are immoral
plutonium. child sex slaves. ricin. RPGs
just because a market exists for something does not justify it
you may say that you can't shut a market down, it will just go underground
yeah, and making rape, murder, and robbery illegal hasn't stopped them either. but we still do not legalize or accept rape, murder, or robbery
some things civilization will always be at war with. permanently
it's simply a maintenance function
you yourself are involved with a "war on trash". if you take out the trash once, do you never have to take out the trash again? no, you have to take it out every thursday, or it accumulates and your house becomes unlivable
because you can't take out the trash once and be done with it, you stop taking out the trash altogether? because you can't guarantee 100% no trash in your apartment you must accept high levels on unlivable filth?
no. you minimize it. as a constant function. trash will always be there. and a constant effort at minimization is the best you can do
and that's completely ok. and normal
and so it is with "the war on {X}"
simply because you can't stop it, that all you can do is minimize it, is no argument against the effort
for the simple reason that just because something is possible, doesn't mean we accept it
the concept you are missing in your thinking is called right and wrong
and if you form a world view without the concept of morality, your world view will fail and has no validity
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Like tulip bulbs then?
Yes, exactly like tulip bulbs, gold or US dollars.
The value of money isn't attached to anything either. It's a collective fiction. There's nothing that prevents bitcoin from functioning as a full-fledged currency, though it does have some flaws (such as: only a fixed number of bitcoins will ever be found).
Huh? Can't you read? The FBI's efforts have been thwarted.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
if i suddenly got interested in cyanide, i'd be a bit worried that the seller on that site sits in some fbi office and would try to talk me into poisoning something right after that.
Rich
The problem really wasn't with silk road, it was no more or less illegal than your street corner. The problem is it was being run by some guy who was violating laws, and got caught. If you do something to piss off the man, you really need to stay clean.
Its too bad the dealers lost their $, but that can happen in real life too if your supplier gets busted before he delivers.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Very few currencies are, except to other currencies. I mean, I suppose you could say the value of the US Dollar is attached in some vague way to the military power of the US, and thus their ability to force people to accept the currency, but that's hardly a useful conversion for daily use.
I would have thought petroleum, neodymium, platinum, and other rare industrial catalysts would be a far better investment than gold. In and of itself, gold is a rather useless metal; structurally its crap. Its one saving grace is that it is very resistant to corrosion. But then, so are a lot of other far more abundant materials. We seem to have earmarked it as a "store of wealth" over the ages only because someone could not print up a pile of it on a whim.
If you were on the Titanic in its final moments, what would be worth more - a satchel filled with gold? A bag of diamond jewelery? A big old stryofoam cooler box with a broken lid?
Frankly, it surprises me other countries would hang onto a US dollar as an investment, and only accept it as a medium of exchange to quickly buy something else of real intrinsic value. I think of the dollar as more of a copper transmission line for wealth - not a battery - because the dollar as leaky as hell. Its printed on demand in reckless abandon, created from nothing, and in and of itself not worth the paper its printed on. It seems a game of musical chairs, and whoever is holding the dollar when the music stops leaves the room - broke.
When all is said and done, it seems the only investment that survives is the ability to physically intimidate and coerce people - and a people trained and intimidated enough to take it. aka "He who has the gun soon has the gold and the gun."
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Why am I reminded of the people who turn the talk to child molesters when talking about homosexuality? Could it be that you're doing something similar here?
Mind-altering substances are unlikely to be amongst those. The very fact that you felt the need to provide a fallacious appeal to emotion above implies you don't believe it either and thus tried to give your argument weight it doesn't carry on its own. Some people use psychoactive substances, other people ignore it, and the moral busybodies who make it their problem don't really have any arguments besides circular reasoning ("only criminals do drugs!") or thinly veiled appeals to some vague concept of purity.
The only question is: how many victims does this particular form of puritanism demand before people like you will get off their high horse and stop trampling others underhoof? And how much human potential is wasted by making it harder to examine the workings of the mind and how it can be altered?
So is it moral to decide for other people what they may and may not do to their own minds and bodies? And enforce your will through violence? Because it doesn't seem very moral to me. In fact it sounds suspiciously like you claiming ownership on them and declaring yourself their master.
Also, I find it hard to believe anyone would format their messages like you do yours unless they were under the influence of some rather potent substances, so is this just a very inefficient way of seeking rehabilitation?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The value of money isn't attached to anything either. It's a collective fiction.
Poppycock. The value of money* is attached to a government's ability to raise taxes.
[*money, that is, in the sense of legal tender, i.e. to only exchange technology the state accepts in satisfaction of tax liability]
Right, they sell it on SilkRoad for those who want to make other people dye.
Actually yea; believe it or not its primary industrial use is mining for gold.
it's moral for me to decide what people to with their bodies when i am forced to pay for their feeding and housing and healthcare when they destroy their lives with said substances
if substance abuse happened in a vacuum, it would be fine. but it does not. it has costs to society. this gives society the right to get involved
that being said, healthcare solutions are the proper approach to addiction, not jails
and nonaddictive substances like marijuana should be legal
but the people who sell the addictive substances like heroin, meth, and coke need hard jail time, for the costs their trade incurs on society
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This story is just another PR push for bitcoins by people who have invested heavily in bitcoins. Can we stop talking about bitcoins? It is not really a tech story and is a complete scam.
Why do you think that?
Do you think regular currencies are a scam as well?
"Of course, this is where libertarianism falls flat on its face. Your transaction incurs costs on others, and you are irrational if you do not take those costs into account."
I would agree with you if GP's comment were actually a reflection of "libertarianism", but it's not.
Where do you get the idea that libertarians (or an even more egregious error, Libertarians) have no ethics?
Oh, yeah... the liberal media that paints them all as anarchists. Well, I have news for you: [A] what you call "modern" economics is largely bunk (seriously... Keynes and his "interventionist" theories have been so thoroughly discredited over the last 4 decades, it's just ridiculous), but that's kind of beside the point, so on to [B] libertarians are not anarchists. If they were, there would be no need for the word "libertarian". Further, anarchists have their own party (called, appropriately enough, the Anarchist Party). They have run candidates for President.
Libertarians (small "L") and Libertarians (large "l") in America are, by and large, supporters of the Constitution. They are also supporters of free markets, but that doesn't mean "anything goes". One of the fundamental principles of libertarian philosophy is that your freedom to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. In other words, you don't have the right to harm others.
Therefore, if trade does harm to others, it is not libertarian, by definition. You might be thinking of anarchy, but you sure as hell aren't referring to libertarians.
The Libertarian party, in particular is definitely constitutionalist, definitely supports the rule of law, and specifically denounces doing harm to or initiating force against others.
"If someone wants to use drugs and walk out a window that is their business."
it never is that simple, is it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You don't think it warrants attention on a nerd news site that a technology-backed currency based on peer-to-peer cryptography is still growing strongly five years after its inception? If nothing else, I find the technological aspects quite intriguing.
I'll grant you that the constant focus on the illegal aspects of bitcoin grows annoying, just like calling computer crackers, "hackers."
Do the illegal aspects worry you because you are a bitcoin backer? Do you own bitcoins? I have never met anyone who does. I have no interest in owning them. The illegal uses is the only sensible reason for something like bitcoin existing. That said it probably makes it easier for governments to squash it.
No, they would try to talk you into stating that you will poison something before selling you a false substance. Then it would be controlled delivery and they'd take you straight to court on conspiracy and whatnot...
" (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.)"
Uh, source please for this outrageous and heavily biased statement?
What makes anyone think the drugs available through Silk Road merchants have no ties to war criminals, gangs, or drug cartels? Is this more of that wishful thinking of drug users who insist their habit harms nobody, no matter what kind of scoundrels they are funding by their habit? That is an extraordinary claim to make.
And really, if you think the drugs you get through Silk Road merchants aren't mixed, you are insane. These are drug dealers selling to drug addicts, profit is the only goal that matters.
This is yet more delusional thinking from people choosing to live in a world of delusions.
zing.
and there are laws about alcohol's use
would you support a law saying LSD/ psilocybin/ other psychedelic use is legal, as long as you have a responsible sober babysitter?
i would
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
GMT is soooo last century.
And so is Swatch Internet Time, thank goodness.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Well, what else is bitcoin good for? I can either buy goods and services using a stable currency that's accepted by everyone... or I can try to hide transactions using an obscure token whose value fluctuates wildly. Hard to believe the main uses of it aren't illegal.
Don't "regular" currencies have stories written about them 6 days a week in the Wall Street Journal and the Business section of the New York Times?
And you think that's what drives gold's price? It isn't the selling of an idea to everyone that it is precious, and should be worn around the neck?
Bitcoin value isn't attached to anything.
Actually, if you understand political-economy, neither do the various fiat currencies we have today. All we have is a shared psychological conditioning that attaches a value to something (pieces of artistic paper) that have no inherent value of their own. When a fiat currency goes bad, you don't see people burying it in the backyard hoping it will have value again in the future. OTOH, you do find precious metals, gems, jewelry, sometimes other works of artistic value, and the odd person with some Swiss Francs. Now I'd add a flash drive with a few bitcoins.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
what does that have to do with anything? my point remains. there is an active program to promote bitcoin in slashdot. It is an orchestrated campaign to make sure there is some news story every few days. Bitcoin is a scam and not a topic that slashdot should be wasting its time. I would be interested to know if each of these commentators have a vested interest. I personally do not own any bitcoins nor have i ever had.
and i thought it was a liberterians wet dream - true market forces in action, the market self regulating itself by supply and demand.
Sort of. Libertarians (capital L) would rather see a return to something like the gold standard, near as I can tell with actual gold, silver, possibly other precious metals, in circulation. Bitcoins still fall under fiat currency as it has nothing more, or less, than a perceived (psychological) value, It's a bit more since there are only supposed to be some absolute maximum number that can be in circulation which isn't true of most (all?) fiat currencies.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
The fact that you think that plutonium is somehow intrisnically immoral bothers me.
It's like if somebody in 1750 said that "crude oil will always be intrinsically immoral" because it was poisonous, smelled bad when you burned it in a lamp, and caused a stack of black, smoky pollution. There are reactor designs that exist right now which are capable of turning that plutonium into heat and short-lived decay products.
_Nothing_ is intrinsically immoral except for man perpetrating force or fraud against his fellow man.
You're doing it wrong.
there is nothing good that can come from civilian possession of plutonium, and plenty bad, whether intentionally or unintentionally
there is nothing remotely comparable to plutonium that you can do with crude oil in terms of threats to the general populace
all i can think is that perhaps you share this guy's view on tinkering with radioactive substances in civilian settings:
http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/radscout.html
since this poor fellow is clearly insane, there is nothing more to say on the subject
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Cocaine isn't chemically addictive. Like cocaine, marijuana is psychologically addictive. I'm not for or against legalizing marijuana, just pointing out that it is not nonaddictive. I know a couple of people that are addicted enough that they can't get through a day without it. Arguably its still not as bad for them as alcohol though.
Like Ayn Rand, right?
After all, I am strangely colored.
I'm a critic of bitcoin as well, but it's not true that illegal uses is the only thing bitcoin is good for. What it has potential for is as a decentralized and low-fee payment infrastructure, to compete with Visa and Western Union or whatever hoops people have to go through to transfer money.
Though that is not presently what it's used for. That is still 95% speculation and 5% illegal stuff. Certain of its features also sabotage its legitimate uses, most especially its inherent deflationary nature.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Trying to hide transactions is illegal in itself. It's money laundering by definition, illegal over certain amounts.
Yet FBI have stated officially that bitcoin is legal.
This ought to tell people something about how effective bitcoin is at hiding transactions.
Tumblers are illegal, though. They do succeed in hiding what crime the coin was originally the proceeds of.
However, that's no good, as the coin is now associated with the crime of money laundering instead, and just as much a hot commodity.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
No, it's pretty rare. Articles discussing why the yen is undervalued or the Swiss franc is not do happen, but considerably more rarely than every day IME.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Pure chemical addiction is easily broken. It happens routinely at hospitals.
I knew a guy who shot himself in the foot with a shotgun accidentally on a hunting trip. He spent months in hospital, got opiates for the pain, and developed physical addiction to it (tolerance). When he was written out, he went through withdrawal symptoms like any other addict - more severe, actually, since you get more and purer morphine in a hospital (in a situation like that) than a street addict can ever hope to get.
Yet once he recovered, he had zero need for morphine. Quite the opposite, in fact, he never wanted to go through that again. This is typical. A large study of Vietnam veterans treated with morphine showed that they had no larger chances of ending up as drug abusers than any other veteran.
So it's the soft, "psychological" addiction people should care about anyway. It's not the withdrawal symptoms that keep an addict on opiates, because street addicts regularly go through that, voluntarily or not. What makes them addicts is that they start again after being through it.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Collective might of what? There's nothing wrong with creating a new currency, even one that is digital. The fact that gold has real world applications has no relevance to its value as a currency, despite how people keep insisting on finding some 'intrinsic value' in the currencies they use. The intrinsic theory of value was the theory people held before Adam Smith, and the economic equivalent of the Ptolemaic system in astronomy -- the ancients thought so, but they were wrong.
We now believe that objects have subjective value, and that it is determined by the market forces of supply and demand. And we also believe that currencies exist because they facilitate transactions, so that their demand does not depend on any use they have other than as a medium of exchange for other goods (I include here being a store of value). Some important characteristics that make up a good medium of exchange are:
You see that under these conditions, bitcoin is equivalent to gold (except for the size of the market - a lot lot more gold is traded daily). This is because what makes fiat currency fiat is the fact that its scarcity is artificial. The dollar is scarce because the Federal Reserve has promised not to print too many, and we have faith (fiat) in it. Gold is scarce because if we want any more, we have to dig it out of the gound with increased difficulty, and bitcoin are scarce because it takes computing effort to find more. Practical uses for these things do not even come into consideration here.
Finally we come to the size of the market. If a currency is useful only as a medium of exchange, then the more people you can trade with in that currency, the more useful and valuable it is. This is the reason for the dollar's supremacy, as for 50 years it was the currency of the largest market in the world, and so it got established as the basis for international reserves. Because of this, the dollar maintains its primacy even now that it has been demoted to the second largest market. But this does not mean that it has intrinsic value, only that its demand as a medium of transaction is further boosted by transactions at the nation level
My point is that there is nothing wrong with bitcoin as a currency. It is as good as gold, as good as the dollar. But it just has a smaller market for now, which gives it the flaws people point out here. Any new currency would have the problems bitcoin is having. It may fail in the end, but that does not mean it was a bad idea.
Cyanide is not really great for poisoning. It tastes horribly, so people will know if you slip it in their food. You can make HCN, which is a gas which only around 85% of people can smell, but it is 5 times less toxic than chlorine gas which is easy to produce from common household chemicals. To get to a dangerous concentration for a small room (say,t he office I am in), you need nearly 10 g, and that is assuming that all of the gas enters the room, that none of it leaves, and that you get sufficient mixing.
All in all, it isn't a great way to kill anything but rats, or people you can force to ingest things, or people you can get to stay in a non-leaking room.
On route for the synthesis of mescaline from common chemicals includes it as a reagent.
Is that - serious question - why it's called cyanide?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
One of the big uses of bitcoin is the ability to send arbitrary amounts of wealth anywhere in the world with fees amounting to a few pennies. Need to send $10? No problem. Need to send $10,000? No problem.
For merchants, accepting bitcoins has zero fees, or if you want to use a merchant service and get the cash value deposited directly in your bank account, it's about 1 percent. Also, there is never any possibility of chargebacks. It is extremely attractive for merchants for these reasons.
These are a couple of the perfectly-legal uses of bitcoin, that do not get into the whole Austrian/Anarchy philosophical world.
Something to think about: bitcoin as a black market tender is useless unless real-world people can accept it.
I find it interesting that one of bitcoin's greatest strengths (perhaps *the* greatest strength) is so often considered to be its greatest weakness. Bitcoin was designed in an Austrian economics school of thought, which holds quite clearly that markets should be free, inflation is bad, and so on.
We are going on 5 years now, and this upstart currency is stronger than ever. I think it lends a slightly different air to philosophical economics discussions, now that we have pure anarchic/Austrian currency to compare to "real" currencies.
What do you think?
if everyone used psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin responsibly (get a babysitter) they would be legal
Why would they? It seems that there are two ways for drugs to be legal: 1) They have a medical effect, allowing for FDA approval, and 2) They have traditionally seen widespread use in the western countries. Examples of this are alcohol, caffeine and tobacco. LSD used responsibly would fit into neither of these categories.
Bitcoin is a doomed currency by definition. At around 21 million bitcoins, no more bitcoins can be created. This inevitably means the value of bitcoins will rise and rise and rise and rise and rise. Another word for this: deflation. As any economist will tell you, deflation is extremely harmful for an economy. Why: the value of money increases, but the value of real (tangible) products DECREASES. On top of that, delfationist economist run the risk of its people to hoard all the money (since it will become more worth with time), instead of spending it into the real economy.
. If someone wants to use drugs and walk out a window that is their business.
What if he lands on somebody?
Don't own a single bitcoin, but the idea that a tech based currency doesn't belong on a tech news site seems silly. a scam??? How so? I see u keep restating scam with absolutely nothing barking up your claim....if u mean the value changing, come talk to me when the fed quits printing money it can't back...theb dollar is a scam and will probably collapse in my lifetime. Bitcoin is much more honest in how it works. and articles relating to the use and storage of said tech currency have a place in tech news. and as far as illegal goes.....desiring privacy != illegal.....shame so many have been brainwashed into thinking it does.
So what you are saying is, in order to actually sell something, you have to convince people to part with not just the money, but also its future value, right?
Doesn't that mean the end of consumerism? The end of gluttony and waste? A return to making things that last? A return to cottage industries? Is this bad?
I would like to invite you to consider something: at what point do economists' theories about bitcoin start becoming true? Now? 5 years? 20 years? 100 years? At what point does deflation end a currency? At what point does deflation even begin to weaken its appeal?
Bitcoin is fabulous for sending money around the world. Ever tried to send money to a relative half-way across the country? Easy if you have a shared bank account. Really fucking hard if you don't. PayPal and Dwolla have kinda-sorta mechanisms but those are recent and complex.
Bitcoin is easy and costs pennies.
That's a great reason to use Bitcoin.
I think you are simply sour about not picking up bitcoin when it was $20/ea a few months ago. $100 worth of bitcoin then would net you $1500 now.
Ouch.
While bad for deliberate poisoning, poor handling or disposal of it can be pretty toxic. If I recall correctly that is why it is regulated, not because people can use it for harm, but because it is too easy to harm others due to mishandlement. It is also generally only regulated in terms of large scale usage for mining or other such activities where the quantities are large enough to have significant impact, at which point it makes sense for the using entity to get the proper certification/oversight/underwriting.
I didn't say that. My point was that libertarian ethics are incompatible with utilitarianism, as Ayn Rand herself pointed out.
You implied it. But let me address this point. First, Rand is hardly an expert on Libertarians. Keep in mind that Libertarians, as a group, rejected Rand... don't confuse Objectivists with Libertarians! They are not the same at all.
But more importantly, second: you have gotten your own point wrong. Rand despised what she called Utilitarianism. Saying that Libertarianism is incompatible with it is actually a compliment.
"I made no mention of Keynes. Modern economic theory was founded by John Stuart Mill, and others, using the techniques of the utilitarian calculus to describe rationality and create a framework for modelling rational interactions."
Wrong again. Certain economic philosophy -- not to be confused with the science of economics -- was promoted by Mill. And subscribed to by few. "Most modern economists" -- especially those involved in government -- neither believe in or follow Mill's philosophy. Rather they are dyed-in-the-wool Keynesians, and most even admit it.
Much of modern mathematical economic theory on the other hand, as opposed to philosophy, was formulated by the early Austrian school. Early Austrians proposed a great deal of the math that is not a part of "mainstream" economic theory, and was "borrowed" by the proto-Keynesians (interventionists) and later Keynes himself, and made Gospel. (It should be noted that Mill's philosophy also included interventionism, but again we have to distinguish between political economic philosophy and "economics". They are not the same things.)
Later Austrians have argued that the math is only conceptual and does not actually model the real world, and that interventionism only interferes destructively with, rather than supports, free markets. That concept is still rejected by Keynesians, even though 80+ years of experience shows it to be fundamentally true.
s/that is not part of/that is NOW part of
And I'm forced to pay for the enforcement of your decisions, so I have a right to veto them. Also, why limit ourselves to drugs? Bad diet and lack of exercise cause more costly health problems than all drugs combined, so do you also claim you have a right to decide what other people eat and how much they must jog weekly? For that matter, since insufficient sleep is linked to both costly accidents and illness, do you wish to also mandate bedtimes?
Also, since sites like Silk Road are apparently quite profitable despite requiring a high level of social funtionality to use, I wonder how accurate the stereotype of a dysfunctional drug user really is? Most people who use alcohol continue paying for their own expenses despite it being one of the nastier psychoactive substances in both physical harm and addiction potential according to Wikipedia, so why would, say, your average ecstasy user not accomplish that?
Nothing happens in a vacuum. Yours is an argument that lets anyone claim power over anyone else for any decision.
That might be a reasonable solution. However, that would first require people to stop talking about "drugs", since the concept combines such widely different substances as heroin, LSD and marijuana, yet excludes alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. Also, it would require dropping the a priori assumption that a mind-altering substance is bad when discussing whether a particular one should be banned. Even more importantly, you'd need to acknowledge that banning a substance is a serious violation of other people's autonomy and can only be done in extraordinary circumstances, not something you can do just to save yourself some money - unless, as I pointed out, you're also willing to let others dictate what you may eat and when you go to bed.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Yes, and electronics and other industrial uses make up maybe 10% of gold demand.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
IOW, if a drug is used by a niche group (Native Americans, perhaps, using psilocybin) it should be illegal?
Sounds like you're promoting the idea that we should ban anything that hasn't been specifically allowed - rather than allowing anything that hasn't been specifically banned.
I've been a Libertarian for all of my adult life - you can probably guess my opinion on that matter.
I'm reminded somewhat of the 10th amendment, which specifies that powers not specifically granted to the feds are held by the state (or the people). The feds are the ones who are constrained by enumerated powers - not the state. Similarly, substances (including drugs) offered on the market s/b legal unless specifically banned, not illegal unless specifically allowed.
For a good example of deflation: see Japan. Recession since the 1980s.
Or....to flip it around.... any currency looks like a worthless scam if it doesn't have such wide adoption and use as to have unquestionable value to others. All currency is...at its heart, a confidence game. Someone hands you some paper, or does some math, or delivers some shiney stuff, because he says it has value and you look at it and believe that someone else is going to take a similar deal when you offer it.
It just so happens that its a useful con game that, works if enough people play along. It doesn't matter if the reason you think it has value is that someone wants it for industrial use, or pretty fobs. As long as you believe it, and the next guy believes it....it works. It doesn't matter if the US government falls tomorow, the Dollar is still worth something today.... someday someone will get burned on that one too.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
You rent a private PO box under an assumed name. I drop an envelope (or small package) in a street corner mailbox, addressed to your box. You abandon the box after receipt.
Anonymous enough.
That would be silkroad6ownowfk.onion (you must connect through Tor).
silkroad6ownowfk.onion
Erm, guess what. I bet all those governments that "back" your fiat currencies wish they had nothing backing them, because the only thing backing government money atm is debt.
I'm not stating how it should be, I'm stating how it seems to work.
Agreed, that's how it is. I misinterpreted your comment.
The value of a US dollar since 1913 has gone from 1/20 oz of gold to 1/1200 oz of gold.
The value of a BTC since 2009 has gone from 1/7600 oz of gold to 1/4 oz of gold.
Which would you rather give to your children? To your medical care provider?
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
They are not geek interest. BTC is the quintessence of geek interest.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Please understand, the value of a currency is unrelated to utility for unrelated uses. BTC is worth billions of dollars today because it is useful as a currency. This should not be surprising, because it was specifically designed to be a superior currency. It derives its value from truth. PQ=MV is a tautology, and hence true. When BTC is used to transact 4% of the wGDP, the value of 1 BTC will be equal to 27000 US dollars in 2013. When BTC is no longer used to transact, it will have 0 value.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Something that is not a made up currency and is based on real world values. As there is nothing backing BTC then its effective value is $0. Sounds like a stupid investment. It is a scam like pyramid selling. So do you own or have you owned BTC? If so, you are promoting the scam.
Besides a currency or gold is not an investment. It is not something that grows in value because it produces something. It is not like a share in a company. It is just a commodity.
Heroin addicts can't afford heroin (at prohibition prices) with welfare... They might spend $500+ a day on heroin.
Where does that money come from, who does it go to? How does that fit in with your concept that heroin stops people from functioning?
The MAJOR cost of those drugs to society all come from those imposed by prohibition, not the drugs themselves.
Imagine they paid retail price for it...
Some of us prefer to live in a different novel.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
He means that cocaine is not physically addictive. Cocaine is psychologically addictive, because it enhances the mood when taken, and leads to depression during withdrawal.
Cocaine withdrawal cannot kill you, the body does not physically depend on it for its continued functioning... Compare to alcohol, which is physically addictive, the changes your body undergoes to compensate for it mean that sudden withdrawal can cause death.
Neither cocaine, meth or heroin are physically addictive substances. Benzodiazepine and alcohol are though.
What about that guy that bought $27 worth of bitcoins which now are worth $800,000. Man. But no, I don't really follow them.
You need to learn the difference between things that harm other people and things that only cause harm to the consentor.
In economics, harm to others not involved in the transaction are called negative externalities. You can see that murder, rape, theft and violence are negative externalities.
However, if someone consents to violent sex, the harm is done to one who is willingly involved in the transaction... There should be no crime. Maximisation of economic decision utility occurs when people are allowed to willingly enter into these transactions. There is not harm to others from the act of taking drugs alone.
Controlling other people's behaviour always leads to lower economic utility. There is an inevitable cost of the drug war... and mostly it's in the violence and crime of gangs that form and are empowered by being handed the black market drug trade. These same people, now wealthy (as a network) then go on to traffic in sex slaves and other things that do cause harm... they become efficient at it... because drugs are so overwhelmingly profitable. (highly demand inelastic -- use does not depend greatly on price / availability).
That is not a valid example. The Yen is inflationary, and that period gave us the term stagflation, a dreary mix of both inflation and deflation.
There is no example of a deflationary currency that I know of except possibly precious metals and that is questionable. So the question is philosophical; when do you think the economists will start being right about bitcoin? They have been dreadfully wrong so far, when will tbey start being right?
I think strength is the wrong measure. Volatility is more important. I believe, as do many bitcoin users, that it will have huge boom and bust cycles for a long time, if not forever.
That this hurts its non-speculative uses shouldn't really be a controversial assertion.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
It does hurt its non-speculative uses. Nevertheless, it remains stronger than ever, and still growing. The fact is that these boom and bust cycles have not driven people away. If anything, the publicity attracts more attention, and therefore growth.
The question remains: at what point do the economists start being right about their predictions?
You're wrong. The net inflation of the yen over the last two decades is closer or below 0. In a nutshell: inflation no longer happens. See here for details: http://www.inflation.eu/inflation-rates/japan/historic-inflation/cpi-inflation-japan.aspx Besides that, the word "Stagflation" is a combination of inflation and stagnation. It has nothing to do with deflation. Japan did not experience stagflation. It experienced stagnation, yes, but not stagflation. Stagflation is the paradoxical situation of having (high) inflation and stagnation at the same time - something that keynesian economics deems impossible. Much of Europe is going through stagflation.
You are missing the forest for the trees. The overall economy may have suffered a recession, but the Japanese government was still inflating heavily. During that period, the economy was suffering from extensive capital destruction caused by collapsing loans.
Just like the US economy is experiencing now, high rates of defaults on mortgages causes extensive capital destruction and rapidly decrease the overall size of the economy. The Federal Reserve can inject hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy and it just gets sucked up into the abyss formed by collapsing loans. It is important to observe that the overall effect of this inflation is to significantly obscure even basic market signals, making it impossible to determine where to allocate money and resources. This is why corporations are stacking up cash reserves and failing to make new investments.
Both the Yen and the Dollar are highly inflationary currencies. Just because the overall value of the currency appears to decrease does not alter the fact that the currency is inflationary, or that it suffers greatly from inflationary policies. A decreasing economy merely means that fractional reserve banking is running in reverse, destroying wealth instead of creating wealth.