
Quotations Of The Dread Pirate Roberts, Founder Of Silk Road - gbrindisi
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/04/29/collected-quotations-of-the-dread-pirate-roberts-founder-of-the-drug-site-silk-road-and-radical-libertarian/print/
======
gambiting
I agree with some things he says,and some things he says are absolutely
stupid. Private police force that you need to pay directly for protection?
Reminds me of ancient Rome times, when if your house was on fire, the fire
brigade would come and haggle with you first,trying to negotiate how much you
are willing to pay to save your house. Having to pay somebody directly(rather
than in your taxes) for protection is unfathomably stupid. Right now you can
call the police literally anywhere you are in the world, and they will come
and help, because that's what they do. With his solution, you could drive to a
nearby city and nobody would help you,because you haven't paid the security
agency there.

~~~
georgemcbay
There are bigger problems with the private police force idea than them not
helping you if you don't pay them. The far bigger problem is that it would be
way more profitable for them to just take everything you own than it would be
to protect you and your things for a few coins or bills worth a tiny fraction
of your net worth.

~~~
kybernetyk
You forget that there wouldn't be just one private police force but many
service providers. So if one offers bad service (by robbing you) you just hire
one of their competitors.

~~~
georgemcbay
... and pay them with... ?

This kind of cuts to my biggest problem with objectivists and anarchist-
capitalists, no sense of time context or history.

"Let's abolish the government and all that stuff, it is bad and not natural",
ignoring the fact that without the sort of government-structured society we've
already made, they'd be in no position to have the wealth they are so afraid
that taxes are going to "steal" and it works forward too in the sense that
without the protections we take for granted from tax-sponsored government,
they'd be robbed blind very quickly by those with the means and will to do it.

~~~
jacoblyles
I enjoyed David Friedman's discussions of the incentives present under market
anarchy in "The Machinery of Freedom", now available in its entirety
online[1]. Your objections are not new and have been discussed at length by
market anarchists. Whether or not you find the responses satisfactory is up to
you.

David writes for a mainstream audience which is assumed to have some
familiarity with concepts of economics and property, but does not need to
already be a libertarian. I feel he is the best representative of market
anarchist thought.

[1]<http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf>

~~~
subsystem
One thing I don't get with libertarianism is why this, second paragraph of the
book, doesn't apply both ways:

"People who wish to live in a 'virtuous' society, surrounded by others who
share their ideas of virtue, would be free to set up their own communities and
to contract with each other so as to prevent the 'sinful' from buying or
renting within them. Those who wished to live communally could set up their
own communes. But nobody would have a right to force his way of life upon his
neighbor."

------
wfn

        > Personally, I don’t think they [Bitcoin, Tor] can be effectively banned at this point. Iran and China, for example, are actively trying and failing.
    

That is, unfortunately, not quite true in regards to Tor. Iran has on multiple
occasions done/tried out doing (turned it on, then off) traffic censorship
that directly or indirectly very much affected Tor. [1] [2] True, Tor managed
to roll out obfsfroxy et al., which they'd been already actively developing
prior to that, but if e.g. Iran (again) attempted country-wise generic SSL
censorship, that would hurt things. Tor's pluggable transports would perhaps
be a response to that still, but Iran's gov't could move on to other things.

With China it's even worse, as it seems there is custom software being used
from within China to actively discover and censor out new Tor bridges (as in,
a new one is used by someone, some minutes later another connection from China
comes in to it, speaks Tor protocol, disconnects, and then the bridge is
blocked.) [3]

This is just to make sure the information about these matters is out there. If
anybody is interested in helping out Tor, the mailing lists [4] and research
papers and code is out there. :) [5]

[1] [https://blog.torproject.org/blog/update-internet-
censorship-...](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/update-internet-censorship-
iran)

[2] [https://blog.torproject.org/blog/iran-partially-blocks-
encry...](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/iran-partially-blocks-encrypted-
network-traffic) (more results via a simple search if interested.)

[3] [https://blog.torproject.org/blog/knock-knock-knockin-
bridges...](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/knock-knock-knockin-bridges-
doors)

[4] <https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo>

[5] <https://www.torproject.org/getinvolved/volunteer>

------
artas_bartas
I was so excited to discover that something like this exist - a community that
gets on with its business without any stupid organization or agency putting
sticks in its wheels. I just wish this spirit of freedom would come over to
countries of the former USSR where it is badly needed.

~~~
jacoblyles
I wish it would come to the USA.

------
xSwag
Why does frobes insist on adding page numbers? For page views? It's terrible
reading experience having to click every few paragraphs.

~~~
eksith
Here you go :
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/04/29/collect...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/04/29/collected-
quotations-of-the-dread-pirate-roberts-founder-of-the-drug-site-silk-road-and-
radical-libertarian/print/)

It's beyond obnoxious sometimes when some sites (not Forbes specifically) put
just 1-3 paragraphs per page with one image so that each one is effectively a
slide surrounded by ads. When I reach my limit of the "paged experience", I
search for the printer friendly page.

Edit: Er... Looks like Forbes is redirecting to the full "paged experience"
upon clicking. Oh well. Just scroll to the bottom and click "print".

~~~
deno
They redirect based on Referer header.

<http://pastebin.com/WNmLmKqL>

------
b6
This guy is doing good work, and I fear for his safety.

~~~
DividesByZero
Please elaborate on this? Good work in what sense?

Ignoring the dubious ethics of running a black market, SilkRoad is ultimately
a rent-seeking enterprise making money from transactional frictions. It
creates no value - hardly the sort of shining beacon of enterprise the
founder(s) make it out to be.

~~~
aero142
Morals of being a drug market aside, in what way is SilkRoad a "rent-seeking
enterprise" any more than any other transaction facilitating entity? Every
transaction has friction and facilitators provide the service of matching
buyers and sellers. Maybe not the highest ideal of productivity but hardly
deserves to be described as rent-seeking.

~~~
DividesByZero
You're correct, every business that profits from easing transactional friction
is to a greater or lesser extent, rent seeking.

~~~
aero142
Well, I guess we just disagree on the definition of rent-seeking. Matching
willing buyers and sellers creates value by increasing the satisfaction of
both the buyer and the seller since both should be better off after the
transaction. The facilitator who creates more mutually beneficial trades is
increasing the wellbeing of society as a whole. From wikipedia "Rent-seeking
behavior is distinguished in theory from profit-seeking behavior, in which
entities seek to extract value by engaging in mutually beneficial
transactions." SilkRoad is not rent seeking because they are not looking to
change or increase the transaction friction and regulatory control of the drug
trade for their own benefit. That is why rent-seeking is usually used to
describe entities trying to create a government policy which benefits them but
hinders mutual exchange of others. To define rent-seeking is such a loose way
as to cover all facilitators who don't produce anything directly is to distort
it's original meaning and make the word useless to describe true rent-seeking.

~~~
DividesByZero
Consider that it's very much in Silk Road's interest that the regulations that
currently create the transactional frictions on which it makes a profit remain
as they are, or perhaps become even more restrictive. It's rent seeking in the
same way that smuggling illegal immigrants is rent seeking. This does not
require a broadened definition of rent seeking at all.

~~~
lenazegher
>It's rent seeking in the same way that smuggling illegal immigrants is rent
seeking.

Smuggling illegal immigrants is not rent seeking. If an illegal-immigrant-
smuggling company lobbied the government to tighten immigration controls, that
would be rent seeking.

~~~
DividesByZero
It's in the interests of the smugglers that tight immigration controls remain
in place, just as it's in the interests of Silk Road that regulations on
restricted substances remain in place.

They need not lobby directly for these restrictions, they have other
organisations that will do that for them.

------
lenazegher
Given the ultimate traceability of bitcoins, would anyone care to speculate
how tDPR converts SR's transaction fees into fiat currency without being
tracked down by law enforcement?

~~~
adventured
He is law enforcement. His interest is the vendors and mapping the network.

~~~
youngerdryas
"How can you plug yourself into the tax eating, life sucking, violent,
sadistic, war mongering, oppressive machine ever again? How can you kneel when
you’ve felt the power of your own legs? Felt them stretch and flex as you
learn to walk and think as a free person? I would rather live my life in rags
now than in golden chains. And now we can have both! Now it is profitable to
throw off one’s chains, with amazing crypto technology reducing the risk of
doing so dramatically. How many niches have yet to be filled in the world of
anonymous online markets? The opportunity to prosper and take part in a
revolution of epic proportions is at our fingertips!

I have no one to share my thoughts with in physical space. Security does not
permit it, so thanks for listening. I hope my words can be an inspiration just
as I am given so much by everyone here."

Definitely a cop.

~~~
adventured
He's definitely not a cop in the sense of a Hollywood movie (eg Miami Vice).

He and his team are specialists. They are to cops what the Navy Seals or
Rangers are to an Army E1.

The primary goal is information. They could care less about busting any given
small time vendor. They want a mapping of the network of trade, origination,
distribution, communication, transactions and financing. Particularly to draw
currently unknown or difficult to track network nodes out into the open.

It's the same thing that has been done with paedophilia online. It's a honey
trap. There isn't much value in busting single nodes. They want to see how
much of the network they can map out, and the leads it provides to larger
players. If this concept didn't exist, they'd desperately want to create it.
Given their history of creative honey pots and how long they've been
leveraging technology heavily, I think it tilts Silk Road toward being a
likely sponsored program.

~~~
youngerdryas
I think you give the government too much credit.

1\. How do you map the network if they are using Tor?

2\. Just the idea of Silk Road is more dangerous to the powers that be than
any drug networks.

3\. It can not be called law enforcement if it does not go through the chain
of command, which it most certainly cannot.

~~~
jiggy2011
Why would it not be able to go through the chain of command? The military and
intelligence services for example engage in all kinds of covert and
clandestine operations whilst still being government employees.

There are also techniques which may allow tor users to be deanonymized to vary
degrees. Browser/OS fingerprinting , flash cookies etc. These will be easier
if you control one of the end points.

I've never used silk road, but presumably if you want people to ship stuff to
you , then you have to enter an address at some point?

~~~
Jach
Many Tor users use the Tor Browser Bundle, which blocks flash by default,
includes noscript (I forget if it by default activates noscript...), and
doesn't retain any information between sessions other than what is manually
stored like bookmarks or saved passwords. On SR, buyers communicate their
address via PGP. Sellers only communicate an address (which may be fake) on
the package they send a buyer. SR is thus blinded to physical addresses.

<http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road>

~~~
jiggy2011
I guess law enforcement would simply gather as much data as they can. Only
need a few guys screwing up their browser settings one day, or maybe you get
more sophisticated and start looking at response times, timing jitter etc.

If you control the mechanism for key exchange would this not make MITM
possible? Display different keys to different people for the same person.

~~~
Jach
I'd be interested to see if any more sophisticated techniques have ever been
successfully used to uncover a Tor user.

From the webpage I linked, "Security-wise, Silk Road seems to be receiving
passing grades from law enforcement agencies internally; a leaked FBI report
mentioned no attacks against SR, anonymous anecdotes claim the DEA is
stymied4, while a May 2012 Australian document reportedly praised the security
of vendor packaging and general site security."

Right now a buyer's address is vulnerable if they don't use PGP when giving it
to a seller, or if SR is indeed trying to do a MitM attack by replacing a
seller's published public key with their own. But the latter case is easy for
a seller to check against simply by creating a second buyer account and
verifying the buyer sees the correct key. The buyer and seller can also
arrange to exchange keys off of SR. A better plan (also mentioned on Gwern's
page) would be to have law enforcement create their own buyer and seller
accounts and act like normal users until it was time to start a crackdown --
the problem seems to be that law enforcement, or at least the FBI, either
doesn't have permission to engage in mass entrapment and fraud, or it's just
not interested in buyers.

------
DividesByZero
For someone who paints themselves as some sort of Randian superman, he sure
uses the words of collective action and altruism a lot.

"It’s paradoxical, but the less you focus on your own happiness and focus on
others’, the happier you’ll be."

John Galt indeed.

~~~
icebraining
He's an anarcho-capitalist, not an objectivist. The two groups often disagree
on many things.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism_and_Objectivism>

------
mike-cardwell
"Do you want to see this thing go all the way and take the absolute piss out
of the power mongers of this world"

Would anybody other than a Brit say that sentence?

[edit] Although I notice a lot of American English spelling in there too.

~~~
patrickk
Brits, Irish and Aussies too I believe. When I read that comment, I thought
that Dread Pirate Roberts could be using Libertarian musings (which I've never
heard outside of US political discussions) and references to US law
enforcement agencies as a smokescreen for his identity.

Interestingly, and coincidentally, there's been speculation that the Bitcoin
creator (Satoshi Nakamoto) could be an Irish computer science student called
Michael Clear, due to British spelling in his (if it is his) written work:
<https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto>

~~~
claudius
‘British’ English is the standard English taught in Europe and the Middle
East, likely in India as well, so I doubt that this is a remotely helpful
clue.

~~~
rjknight
"take the absolute piss" is colloquial British English though. I doubt that
anyone is actually taught to speak that way.

~~~
norswap
Non-natives English speaker pick their English where they hear it. If you're
watching British television or speaking with English people a lot, you'll
surely pick some English colloquialisms.

------
nwh
I'm curious how long it will be until this person is turned into an FBI
informant (think Lulzsec and Sabu). The website has done some obscenely stupid
things in the past, like leaving their real (non-Tor) IP address on error
pages. Presumably the website is a large target, even just for it's common
mention in media.

~~~
Strom
The beauty of Silk Road design is that the site being a FBI honeypot has been
built into the threat model from the start. All identifying info sent between
buyers/sellers is encrypted using PGP, Silk Road doesn't see anything.

~~~
nullymcnull
That's not accurate. People are encouraged to use PGP for addresses and other
sensitive communication there, but it is not enforced or directly supported by
the system. There are still vendors who can't be bothered to figure PGP out
(often relying upon dubious alternatives like privnote), and there will always
be customers who don't care one way or the other.

Silk Road itself doesn't even have a discrete place for users to enter their
public key; it is only by convention that most vendors put it at the end of
their profile text.

------
kybernetyk
This man/woman is a hero of the free market and I wish him/her all the best.

------
mdelias
Submitted this the other day <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5645665>

------
cheeseprocedure
Is there historical evidence to back the notion that, through market forces,
employment standards would rise to meet workers' demands?

~~~
mr_spothawk
Hong Kong is a good example. You can watch the first episode of Milton
Friedman's PBS series "Free to Choose" for more details.

*edit for clarity

~~~
JVIDEL
HK grew off opium trafficking and money laundering, any other examples?

------
subsystem
I get so tired of libertarian self-serving mumbo jumbo. He's a drug
trafficker, makes large amount of money of it and I have a hard time seeing
that any decrease in government oppression isn't offset by the realities of
the drug trade. Regardless if I agree with it or not, someone like Cody Wilson
has a far better case in my book.

~~~
wyager
> any decrease in government oppression isn't offset by the realities of the
> drug trade.

What "realities of the drug trade"? Any drug sales happening on TSR are by
small-time manufacturers and dealers. There are no shootings or stabbings on
TSR. The cartels don't have any reason to use TSR. I think the nature of TSR
prevents most of the "realities" you're citing.

~~~
nullymcnull
Indeed. Pretty much all of the ugly 'realities' of the drug trade are those
which exist and thrive precisely because drugs are outlawed. SR happens to
protect its users from having to deal with most of those realities - and
that's a great benefit. DPR rightly deserves praise for helping people to get
the drugs of their choice without having to hit the often dangerous streets
for them.

Perhaps one day western societies will be able to have an adult conversation
about drugs, but for the time being shrill reactionaries still set the tone.
Meanwhile for every one dramatic walking-cliche of a drug casualty out there
killing themselves and making the world shittier, there are at least a handful
of responsible drug users conducting perfectly normal and successful lives.
For any drug you can name.

~~~
subsystem
If there's anyone being dramatic here it's the people who think anything that
furthers their cause is good. In term of transparency SR is the opposite of
legalization and will sooner or later be ruled by the ones who can produce the
best product for the cheapest price at a high enough volume. And responsible
drug use isn't a contradiction to "irresponsible drug manufacturing", so I
don't get your point there.

~~~
nullymcnull
Your point is pretty much impossible to discern as well. All I see in your
post is slagging off DPR as a glorified drug trafficker, and some rather vague
handwaving about the "realities of the drug trade".

"Irresponsible drug manufacturing"? If you're imagining that SR is a cesspool
of tainted products, you could not be further from the reality of it. On SR,
buying communities for specific drugs or drug subtypes tend to band together
to discuss and assess vendors and their products quite publicly. In some
cases, you see users subjecting vendors' products to lab tests (in countries
where it's actually easy and legal to, god forbid, quantify the exact
composition of illegal drugs). It's nowhere near as easy to get away with
selling tainted garbage in this venue as it is on the street. There are
typically far fewer unscrupulous operators standing between buyer and the
actual supplier on SR, and consequently product quality is higher than most
buyers likely have access to IRL.

> sooner or later be ruled by the ones who can produce the best product for
> the cheapest price at a high enough volume

..and? If the guy who can produce untainted, good-quality product at the
cheapest price wins (which he won't, as there are any number of other factors
that people involve in their buying decisions), then why would that be a
problem?

~~~
subsystem
I think it's fairly safe to assume that the drug trade didn't significantly
change over night and that the sources of drugs are largely the same. Which
means that a lot, especially of the harder drugs, come from south america. I'm
obviously not going to go through the problems the drug trade causes in south
america, as I assume this is public knowledge. Of course there is similar
problems with manufacturing in the US.

Also I don't think its hand-waving when I base my opinions on the available
information. I'm all ears if you can show that drug production has
significantly changed (or at least what's is available on SR), that there's a
significant overlap, and shift, between buying on SR and buying from street
gangs and that this new distribution channel won't have largely the same
victors, and therefor problems, as the rest of the drug trade.

Like I said, if someone comes up with a way to locally manufacture smaller
amounts of drugs and give the control to the users, than you might have a
theoretical case.

