
Shedding light on the dark web - gwern
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21702176-drug-trade-moving-street-online-cryptomarkets-forced-compete
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dopamean
Any time I read anything about the illegal drug trade I am struck by how much
the industry would change if all drugs were legalized everywhere. So much
effort is expended to keep things hidden from law enforcement and other
criminals that it adds an incredible amount of friction to the purchasing
process for the purchaser and the seller.

From the buyer's perspective you now have to go into business with some often
unsavory people just to get high. From the seller's perspective you have to
make sure that the buyer isn't law enforcement and also not someone who is
going to rob you because you have zero legal recourse. It's really a shitty
experience for everyone involved. Considering how shitty that experience is it
says a lot about people and their desire to take drugs that the market
continues to exist and basically never stops serving the customer.

It really seems like when confronted with something inevitable, like drug use
and sales, the effort to prevent it may be more costly and damaging than just
allowing it to happen in a more controlled environment.

~~~
Torgo
Any time I read anything about legalizing all drugs I am struck by how that
opinion would change if they tried to function with a heroin addiction.

~~~
Archio
Why have you never tried heroin? I am struck by how often the response to that
question is not "because it is illegal".

~~~
ponyous
Is this your actual experience? I have talked with few friends about this and
all of them pretty much said: "I don't want to destroy my life"

~~~
Archio
That's precisely my point. Most people avoid heroin because they don't want to
destroy their lives, not because it's illegal.

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Cshelton
Sellers of drugs, will ALWAYS sell drugs, both illegal and legal.

Buyers/Users of drugs will ALWAYS buy/use drugs, illegal or legal.

It is an interaction between humans of Earth, no government or entity, no
system or blocks will ever stop it. Shut down the internet, it will continue.
Short of a massive purge of life, drugs will never go away.

If you somehow...were able to shut down the "darkweb", it would move into
something else that authorities are unaware of.

On a whim, if I desired, I can purchase any drug I want, probably get it
today, without using the internet.

The war on drugs has no end. Stop trying to pretend you (the lawmakers) have
never tried an illegal substance. Even the most powerful public figure in the
world (Obama) has admitted to using illegal substances at one point in his
life.

Government: It's time to sit down, shut up, stop wasting the taxpayers money
and leave it alone.

~~~
jswny
I tend to feel the same way. These types of things are inevitable, you are
never going to stop them from happening. However, when debating this point, I
have a hard time defending my point when someone else says "so should we just
not do anything? Wouldn't that increase the illegal activity? Should we let
people buy guns too? Where do you draw the line?" I have to say, I'm not sure
what to say about that. If the government did not actively fight this,
successful or not, would it cause the markets and illegal drug users to
proliferate?

~~~
stonemetal
First off if it were legal how would there be an increase in illegal activity?
There probably would be an increase in drug use if that is what you mean.

The government could still fight it, but it would be a health and human
services problem at that point. Which means a lot less high stakes do anything
to not get caught crime going on. It could be paid for by taxes on the drugs.
There would be fewer deaths from drug overdoses because quality and purity
could be regulated. Drugs with little to no long term side effects would
probably become popular. Drugs that have harsher side effects and highly
addictive properties would probably still be stigmatized because of their
effects.

The line would get drawn the same place it does for gambling and alcohol.
Occasional use by grownups is OK, if it becomes life impacting then rehab and
abstinence is probably best for you.

~~~
alsetmusic
> First off if it were legal how would there be an increase in illegal
> activity? There probably would be an increase in drug use if that is what
> you mean.

I think the hypothetical here is that illegal activities could rise in search
of money to feed drug addiction. This would come in the form of theft,
robbery, etc. It's not as if no one ever stole money to buy food.

~~~
brokenmachine
I don't know about the premise that there would be more people stealing to
feed addiction. Is there a significant problem with people stealing now to
feed alcohol addiction?

~~~
alsetmusic
I'm only saying that a need creates a motive. When I was eighteen and addicted
to cigarettes, I scrounged every inch of my apartment for coins to buy a pack.
I imagine an addiction to harder drugs would create a greater need. I only
pontificated on what I thought the parent might mean. I didn't state a fact.

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dzmien
Demand for recreational drugs is ever present, it seems, and it looks like the
prohibitionists are losing 'the war on drugs.' I hesitate to recommend
sweeping legalization, but surely it must be time to rethink drugs policy. I
suppose it is happening, slowly, with medical and recreational marijuana
legalization, but other drugs must be considered as well.

I don't use drugs or alcohol anymore because I couldn't control my use of
opioids. I have had a very difficult time in the past 10 years because of
this, and every rehab/behavioral health treatment I found myself in
recommended 12 step support groups as a one size fits all solution to my
substance abuse issues. It wasn't until I got into a methadone program that I
was able to find some relief from my addiction and frequent relapses.
Unfortunately, methadone is frowned upon as much NA/AA is favored by addiction
counselors.

Anyway, I've rambled on long enough. The point is that I think addiction is
the real problem we face when it comes to drugs. And two potentially addictive
drugs are currently legal. I think that if enough money was allocated for
medical addiction treatment, legalization could work. A lot of money could be
made by regulating and taxing recreational drugs. Addicts could be kept out of
jail and receive the help they need instead of falling into the trap of the
criminal justice system.

------
rcpt
Using gwerns data I put together stats on the likelihood that vendors who sell
one product sell another here:

[http://ryancompton.net/2015/03/24/darknet-market-basket-
anal...](http://ryancompton.net/2015/03/24/darknet-market-basket-analysis/)

All the parsed data is available as a csv as well. I was surprised how well
substance relationships could be recovered from vendor co listings

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eatbitseveryday
Couldn't reverse tracing work? A fed poses as a customer, and uses a PO Box to
receive goods, but also registers this in the Fedex, USPS, UPS databases, such
that if this address appears anywhere on a package, it is traced to determine
the origin. Build a network over time, repeat.

~~~
Cerium
They could build a Physical Onion Router. Send package to a node, which opens
it to find a smaller package already addressed to another location. Similar to
TOR each hop will increase security at the expense of resource utilization.

~~~
twinkletwinkle
Doesn't that leave a huge paper trail?

~~~
sp332
It works if you have a decent volume and can't trace individual inputs to
individual outputs. If you get one package and send one package, it's a little
obvious.

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dnm_hn_thread
Congrats gwern for being written up in the Economist. Your research exposing
the dark web (including your own battles with being implicated for wrongdoing)
are commendable.

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jmcgough
Gwern's other writings on darknet markets are also excellent, with a lot of
original research.

[http://www.gwern.net/#cryptobitcoin](http://www.gwern.net/#cryptobitcoin)

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joesmo
The "Alprazolam" and "Xanax" bubbles that shoot out of the "Prescription
Drugs" bubble should be combined into one bubble with a total of 2.1 as they
are generic and brand name respectively for the same drug.

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arca_vorago
Constitutionally the government doesn't have any right to tell a person what
they can and can't do with their body so long as it only affects them and
doesn't impact the _rights_ of another.

It's a slippery slope argument that could be applied to all kinds of things.
People need to remember the Constitution and its foundation of natural rights,
that it was created to protect those natural rights, not to establish any
rights.

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darkstar999
The chart breaks down marijuana in to "skunk" and "weed". Are these distinct
terms that I am unaware of?

~~~
bahjoite
The distinction is a loose one and to do with potency: skunk, originally a
strain of cannabis with a 50/50 balance of Indica and Sativa varieties, is
often used to mean potent, often hydroponically grown, cannabis flowers.

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sremani
Darknet markets are like Hydra with 10 heads, when Silk Road is taken down,
more players entered and when one other dark-market owners closed shop and
jumped with vendors bit-coins, new ones with multi-escrow showed up. Again,
with each take down people are improvising and making the system a bit more
resilient.

~~~
__xjb__
What an excellent example of Nicholas Naseem Taleb's concept of antifragility.

~~~
runeks
It's evolution. Survival of the fittest, quite simply. The weakest are taken
down, leaving more customers for the remaining, stronger competitors.

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SamChoi
Didn't realize marijuana was such a big factor on the darkweb. Think of the
all the missed taxes!! :(

~~~
adrusi
If you look at the second chart in the article [1] you can see that marijuana
is much cheaper online than on the street in the US. A lot of it is coming
from legal states and California, where it's cheaper to produce. Street weed
in most of the country is usually either grown locally or imported from
Mexico, so online prices are often significantly better.

[1]: [http://cdn.static-
economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac...](http://cdn.static-
economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/images/print-
edition/20160716_IRC989.png)

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Fej
Do we really use the term "darknet"? I thought it was a layman's term and
frowned upon.

~~~
boulos
The Economist is a broadly targeted publication. That's a term that's widely
"understood", so just as Internet (capital I) is sort of silly, I don't take
umbrage with it in such settings.

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Havoc
This is one of those topics where I've made a conscious decision to not check
it out. I have no desire to find out how deep that rabbit-hole goes...

~~~
pzone
There's not really much more to it than what you see in this article. You log
onto one of a few crappy ebay-looking sites, and sellers list items for sale
basically using the same list of categories in the graphic. No hit men or
anything like that - and Craigslist works fine for prostitutes. Sometimes site
managers don't even allow the sale of guns. It's mostly just people buying and
selling drugs. And 15% of users of illegal drugs have obtained them through
these sources.

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skraelingjar
So when can I get my deliveries via anonymous drone?

~~~
Jemmeh
I've seen a few articles where people are already delivering drugs with
drones. So...I guess that's already now.

