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After Over a Year of Police Action, Dark Net Black Markets Still Growing
When the original Silk Road was shut down in 2013, it provided definitive evidence that federal law enforcement was targeting online black markets. Later, after the fall of Silk Road 2.0 and the Evolution Market's admins running off with their customers' money, you might have expected people to become more wary of dark net markets — but that doesn't seem to be the case. The number of products being bought and sold is up significantly since last year, and it's quadrupled since the original Silk Road fell. "The most enduring institution on the Dark Net is Agora. Founded in December 2014, amid the rubble of Silk Road's fall, Agora now accounts for 37 percent of all Dark Net product listings. It's a drug-heavy market with substantial supplies in marijuana, ecstasy, prescription drugs, and stimulants—and nearly any other drug you can imagine."
The honey tastes sweet, doesn't it?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Haven't 'drugs' been winning the war on drugs by almost unbelievable margins more or less continually since it was declared?
Why, if they were as dangerous as my kindly DARE officer claimed, we'd probably be living under the iron heel of a drugs occupation force right now.
Black markets pop up when free markets aren't available. Legalizing drugs would do wonders for the economy. Not only do we spend a heap of money on the war on drugs: militarized police, overburdened legal system and oversaturated prisons, but then there's also the costs in terms of innocent bystanders who are injured or killed in this war. Over 70,000 people have been killed by drug cartels in Mexico alone. How do a lot of terrorists fund their activities? By selling heroin. If they were available for over-the-counter purchase at a reasonable price, like alcohol & tobacco are, it would make a whole world of problems disappear. That's not to say that there wouldn't be new problems in terms of addiction, but these problems would be minor in comparison to the ones we have now.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
The way to "get around" the law is to change the law.
You cannot change the law without public support. One way to get public support for repeal is to show that a law is dysfunctional. If drug prohibition laws actually worked, did what they were designed to do, and had fewer bad side effects, then support for repeal would be much weaker. We are better off if people buy their drugs online, then if they get them on street corners. The only people harmed by these online markets are the drug dealers, the police, and the incarceration industry.
The exact same thing happened in the '90s with online purchasing.
At first everybody thought it was crazy. "Who would give their credit card details to people over this new fangled Internet thing?" There were legitimate businesses and total scams. But things grew and grew, and now nobody bats an eye about one click purchasing on Amazon.
I figure this will go the same way. Right now it's the wild west, but things will settle down and eventually nobody will bat an eye about spending a few doge on an impulse.
Question everything
IIRC, they got Al Capone for tax evasion.
The best way way to make "crime" go away is to repeal stupid laws. No victim, no crime.
"You cannot change the law without public support."
...unless your name is "Bush" or you are the NSA.
Actually, they don't change the laws; they ignore them. Nevermind.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Erm, would not work, they are super careful to double airtight bag shit.
And not just USPS, stuff gets sent in the mail international, passing through customs of numerous countries, still undetected.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
I don't know about that, I can imagine quite a bit.
The primary objective when shutting down crime is to follow the money and make the crime unprofitable.
A far simpler method is to legalize the activity so it is not a crime. The problem is not the profits of the drug dealers, but the profits from civil forfeiture, and the vast profits from the prison industry, more than $74 billion annually.
Though the public is made up of individuals and, I have seen many of them change their tune after running into some debate on the matter.
Especially when you point out to them that despite the fact that 50% of people in burn units are there for accidents involved with making meth; then you point out that addiction rates don't change (they fluctuate but trace a pretty horizontal line).... it really does get hard to justify the benefits of drug policy.
When you have a policy that can be directly linked as a major cause of the first wave of the HIV epidemic, that has skyrocketed prison populations, and created and funded violent gangs across the country.... all while....not even achieving its most basic goal.... most people do come around when presented with the onslaught of evidence that the current strategy is bullshit and bad for everyone.....
Everyone except the cartels, the gangs, and the police unions whose membership lives off hem.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The problem is, drug laws are doing exactly what the designers intended. They were intended to be public weapons against minority groups and immigrants, as well as assist in the political careers of people involved.... of which they have been extremely successful.
You used an illegal scenario, but how about these:
Did the guy working packing at the Amazon eat a poppyseed-lemon muffin on his coffee break? Instant FP (goes for inhalers too, btw).
Did someone who handles large amounts of cash also wrap a package? There's likely trace amounts of cocaine present on the outside of the package then.
Did someone wrap a package after their macrame class or civil war re-enactment? Oils from the rope will likely cause an FP.
There are so many drugs out there that to test for all of them means you're also detecting perfectly safe items such as hemp, poppy seeds, etc. as well as traces of illegal items that just happen to be smeared over a significant portion of publicly used cash.
You know those swabs they take in Airport Security? Those don't test for the majority of drugs or explosives, only a select few. And the sensitivity is turned down quite a bit. Otherwise, anyone who had been around, say, fertilizer, would set the thing off every time they flew.
gaining a majority is not a mandate , it is just persuading a large group.
untill we get past the notion that one party/idiom should be in charge we will not have real democracy.
the whole point of democracy is to have all the views represented in the choices the government makes
not choosing one or the other every few years.
we have only got to the point of this flip flop form one side to the other because of corporate funding of
the major parties , its easy to fund the top two and switch between the too whilst they keep the same agenda.
if you tried that with a proper democracy with more than a few parties it would be prohibitively expensive to
by influence.
IMHO government in a capitalist society should exist to protect the people from negative effects of the market, this isn't happening
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