
Dark net drug markets kept alive by great customer service - rosser
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-08/21/buying-drugs-on-the-dark-net
======
Exenith
As far as I'm concerned, all of these drug markets are an absolutely fucking
wonderful thing for society. Even if you think drugs should be illegal,
incredibly violent cartels still exist. Markets like Silk Road can take all
their power away.

100,000 people have died so far in the 8-year Mexican Drug War. How would you
like if that number turned into 0 without any need for political intervention?

This is what Ross Ulbricht described his goal as on LinkedIn:

"I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and
aggression amongst mankind."

Is that clear enough? The guy studied organic solar cells and EuO thin-film
crystals for 5 years as a grad student, describing his goal then as to expand
the frontier of human knowledge.

Do you think a person like that would suddenly plunge himself into a crazy
get-rich scheme? Let's be honest here: that kind of person meticulously plans
these kind of things, and they do it ultimately to help the world in an
abstract way -- not constantly empathetic of each individual person, but
ultimately concerned with the total human condition.

~~~
mehwoot
_This is what Ross Ulbricht described his goal as on LinkedIn: "I want to use
economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and aggression
amongst mankind." Is that clear enough? The guy studied organic solar cells
and EuO thin-film crystals for 5 years as a grad student, describing his goal
then as to expand the frontier of human knowledge._

And then twice paid money to (what he believed) have somebody killed that was
causing him a problem.

~~~
anonbanker
I still use reiserfs on my drives, ever after knowing Hans Reiser is a
murderer. Doesn't make his contributions any less valid.

~~~
mehwoot
Yes, but the comment I replied to claimed he was "ultimately concerned with
the total human condition." I'm saying he isn't, or is at minimum a hypocrite.

------
unchocked
This is a breeding pool for techniques that are resistant to state security
measures. Fed would have been smart to leave SR 1.0 up as it had dominated
that environment and would have suppressed "evolution".

------
zo1
I often posited/mused that one of the main reasons hard drugs haven't been
legalized yet is that there is very little variety in them. Let me elaborate a
little. With alcohol, there are hundreds/thousands of different
flavors/types/process/names/combinations. But, with most of the hard drugs,
it's pretty much "a chemical". That's it, nothing to it. No "Alabama Whiskey"
or "Russian Vodka No 5." to make it into a giant favor-winning game.

Now, I don't know how the state of such a product range would change if it
were legalized. Who knows, they might even come up with ingenious ways to
spice things up without increasing dosages. Flavors, combinations, negative-
effect suppressants, whatever. Or how about people come up with ingenious
places/ways to take drugs that prevent addiction, or simply enhance the
setting.

I don't know. What I do know is that we should let people use/do what they
want to their bodies. Will this have negative effects? Sure, they might, they
might not. Personal choice trumps any sort of wide/vague societal benefits,
otherwise society is just a bunch of tyrants. As long as what individuals do
doesn't physically harm anyone, then they should be allowed to do it.

~~~
bronbron
> I don't know. What I do know is that we should let people use/do what they
> want to their bodies. Will this have negative effects? Sure, they might,
> they might not. Personal choice trumps any sort of wide/vague societal
> benefits, otherwise society is just a bunch of tyrants. As long as what
> individuals do doesn't physically harm anyone, then they should be allowed
> to do it.

Eh, I dunno. I can see both sides of it. I worry that heroin is basically an
advertiser's wet dream and you'd see all sorts of shady shit encouraging
addiction. On the other hand we've already semi-successfully navigated those
waters with tobacco. But then, I don't see people on the street in the bronx
willing to blow someone for a cigarette. Maybe that's because it's legal. I
dunno. Seems like something we should investigate before making policy
decisions.

There're a lot of factors to be considered and "personal choice trumps all" is
just as silly of an axiom as the opposite. There's a plethora of disallowed
personal choices that the vast majority of people would agree are net
positives for society, if only because "doesn't harm anyone else" is a very
gray area.

~~~
ObviousScience
Do you think those advertisers will be more effective than the current
generation of street pushers that try to get your high school kids addicted?

As a high school kid (a decade ago), it was FAR easier to get marijuana,
opiate pills, shrooms, and other drugs than it was to get alcohol, because
alcohol required that we go through someone we knew personally not invested in
the criminal market for their income, and was vaguely watched by the
government (since they could regulate the caution the stores took).

> There's a plethora of disallowed personal choices that the vast majority of
> people would agree are net positives for society, if only because "doesn't
> harm anyone else" is a very gray area.

And being gay should be discouraged because it spreads AIDS.

The simple fact is that drug use doesn't require any risks to the public that
we don't allow already for other substances, drugs are already being used by
almost everyone who wants them, and our prohibition has cost us being able to
effectively deal with the reckless uses of drugs because people are hiding all
uses of drugs.

That you're trying to argue against the facts - prohibition is a failed policy
that makes drug use more dangerous than treating it as a social health issue -
seems awfully reminiscent of people who don't like gays inventing reasons
they're dangerous.

Edit:

I made a several off-topic replies in my posts, including this one, to the
person above me. For a more complete discussion of it, see here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8218789](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8218789)

~~~
bronbron
I'm not really talking about kids getting addicted. Not sure why you thought I
was. I think we've done a pretty good job of regulating legal substances for
minors.

> And being gay should be discouraged because it spreads AIDS.

Wow! That's incredibly homophobic. Unprotected sex spreads AIDS. Being gay has
nothing to do with it. If you didn't get the memo, in the 21st century we
don't fear 'the gays spreading evil diseases' anymore.

> That you're trying to argue against the facts - prohibition is a failed
> policy that makes drug use more dangerous than treating it as a social
> health issue -

I wasn't arguing for prohibition. Where did I argue for prohibition? Did I say
the word 'prohibition' anywhere? In fact, you touched on exactly my point:

> The simple fact is that drug use doesn't require any risks to the public
> that we don't allow already for other substances,

We very greatly vary in our regulation of those substances. And of everything,
for that matter. Alcohol's sold in corner stores, Percocet is only (legally)
available through a pharmacy with a prescription. Owning a concealed firearm
requires a permit. If we're going to legalize 'harder' drugs, where should
they fall on that spectrum?

Should we allow people to buy heroin at the corner store? Maybe! Should
advertisers be allowed to buy huge billboards advertising their brand of
crack? Possibly. We should evaluate what's going to provide the most overall
utility for us as a society. If the answer is to legalize cocaine but disallow
advertising of it, then that's what we should do.

We don't know where that maximum utility is though, because it's taboo to talk
about. People immediately see the word 'drugs' and froth at the mouth and go
off on tangents either about personal choice and cartels or conversely they go
off about 'think of the children!'.

> seems awfully reminiscent of people who don't like gays inventing reasons
> they're dangerous.

Actually, you're the one who did that in this conversation :).

~~~
ObviousScience
The rest of your post misunderstood a hypothetical I raised to compare and
contrast with your argument, and I won't be addressing it. However, there was
one part that I feel I should respond to:

> We very greatly vary in our regulation of those substances. And of
> everything, for that matter. Alcohol's sold in corner stores, Percocet is
> only (legally) available through a pharmacy with a prescription. Owning a
> concealed firearm requires a permit. If we're going to legalize 'harder'
> drugs, where should they fall on that spectrum? Should we allow people to
> buy heroin at the corner store? Maybe! Should advertisers be allowed to buy
> huge billboards advertising their brand of crack? Possibly. We should
> evaluate what's going to provide the most overall utility for us as a
> society. If the answer is to legalize cocaine but disallow advertising of
> it, then that's what we should do.

Three points on this:

1\. When we talk about making drugs legal, we mean for recreational use. It's
already the case that all drugs with a "demonstrated medical use" (let's
ignore for a moment how that gets decided) are legal to use for medical
purposes, and additionally, most of the laws have as a affirmative defense
that your actions were medically necessary in some way.

2\. The two legalized recreational drugs that we have (alcohol and tobacco)
are sold in a variety of ways by jurisdiction, and our debate about removing
the "only for medicine" requirement doesn't require that we resolve the debate
about how we're going to realize that change in a uniform way. It's certainly
not the most important question for if we legalize wider recreational drug use
or not.

3\. "Maximum utility for society" is a notoriously hard way to make a
decision, because we don't necessarily agree on what the metric is. Taking my
hypothetical from before again - is it of maximum utility to prohibit gay
marriage because it encourages straight couples to have more kids? Well,
that's incredibly hard to assess, even once you pin down several of the
subjective aspects. Instead, courts have been deciding the merits based on the
impact this has to freedom and how consistently that reasoning is applied
across similar cases. I greatly approve of this method of decision making.
It's generally better to start from first principles of the things an
individual should and shouldn't be allowed to do on a whim, by getting
permission from his peers, only with permission from a specific person the
action is happening to, or never. It's similarly reasonable to look at how
people raising objections apply those same objections to similar cases - if
they're consistent, then perhaps they have a real objection; if they're not,
they need to explain this either by differences between the two cases or
concede that's not their true objection.

~~~
bronbron
> The rest of your post misunderstood a hypothetical I raised to compare and
> contrast with your argument, and I won't be addressing it

No, I didn’t misunderstand it. It was dumb at best, and incredibly insensitive
at worst (I’m sure the gay community appreciates you appropriating their
plight).

> When we talk about making drugs legal, we mean for recreational use. It's
> already the case that all drugs with a "demonstrated medical use" (let's
> ignore for a moment how that gets decided) are legal to use for medical
> purposes, and additionally, most of the laws have as a affirmative defense
> that your actions were medically necessary in some way.

My point is that we vary greatly in our legal attitudes towards those
substances, even recreationally. Tobacco at 18, Alcohol at 21. Can’t advertise
tobacco much, but beer commercials are literally everywhere. What are we going
to do with cocaine? Heroin? Is there any difference in our stance towards
those two?

> 2\. The two legalized recreational drugs that we have (alcohol and tobacco)
> are sold in a variety of ways by jurisdiction, and our debate about removing
> the "only for medicine" requirement doesn't require that we resolve the
> debate about how we're going to realize that change in a uniform way. It's
> certainly not the most important question for if we legalize wider
> recreational drug use or not.

Well, ignoring that there are tons of other legal recreational drugs (caffeine
comes to mind), there are actually some pretty general laws regarding them
(e.g. tobacco at 18, alcohol at 21) and more specifically, advertising them.
Implementation details of how we’re going to transition those drugs into the
general populace is actually THE most important question in my mind.

> 3\. "Maximum utility for society" is a notoriously hard way to make a
> decision, because we don't necessarily agree on what the metric is.

Horse shit. Deaths caused by drug warfare, death rates caused by complications
(e.g. liver cirrhosis). Two metrics right there that nearly everyone cares
about.

> Taking my hypothetical from before again - is it of maximum utility to
> prohibit gay marriage because it encourages straight couples to have more
> kids?

Your continued gay analogies are really just exposing your ignorance of
homosexuality.

> It's generally better to start from first principles of the things an
> individual should and shouldn't be allowed to do on a whim, by getting
> permission from his peers, only with permission from a specific person the
> action is happening to, or never.

“by getting permission from his peers” is essentially what we do with alcohol
and tobacco (hence the age restrictions, if we think of minors as
individuals). “should be allowed to on a whim” is what we do for caffeine.
They’re treated differently. What should we do for other drugs?

~~~
ObviousScience
I'm just going to say this: I'm actually bisexual, and your insistence that
gay/queer issues are taboo for analogies, and that I personally mean clearly
conjured examples of things that other people have said in the public arena
(which I, many others, and federal judges think are flawed arguments), are
both a form of ad hominem/strawman weakening your other points considerably
and incredibly offensive.

I was otherwise enjoying our conversation, but far from it being me who seems
to have an issue with topics involving gays, I think it's you. You're unable
to have a real discussion about the logical fallacies of well trodden,
publicly expressed arguments from recent years (eg, I've seen all of these
expressed by people fighting against gay rights in the past 5 years published
in major news articles), and how they're similar to the argument you're making
about drugs.

> Your continued gay analogies are really just exposing your ignorance of
> homosexuality.

I'm not ignorant of homosexuality in any manner, I just think you're advancing
arguments on the topic of drugs with the same flawed logic that I routinely
hear trotted out against me when discussing people I have sex with or might
want to one day marry. That I chose personal examples of flawed arguments
doesn't tell you anything about my stance on those topics.

Again, it's very unfortunate that you've chosen to attack me personally rather
than address the topic, but I'm going to have to stop conversing with you.

~~~
bronbron
I see you're conveniently ignoring my other points (that you're arguing
against a straw man, that implementation is a key issue) besides your
incredibly dumb appropriation of the gay rights plight as an analogy for drug
legalization.

I'll take that to mean you're sufficiently embarrassed about grandstanding for
no reason. I hope in the future you read more carefully =).

~~~
ObviousScience
I was debating making one more reply to apologize for that, actually, when you
pointed it out in our other thread of comments.

I'll do so here and edit my original reply (if I still can): I'm sorry for my
replies to you, they were partially off topic, and I think I initially
misunderstood your point.

I still think you're overly focused on kids' safety, which is one of the main
things the regulation you're talking about implementing as the main question
we face is actually supposed to deal with. (The other things it deals with is
other kinds of verification that you're buying appropriate amounts, eg, not
reselling.) I do agree that how we implement such decisions is one of the key
questions about how we implement a decision to legalize drugs, but I'd argue
it's entirely irrelevant (and a variation on "think of the children!") to the
decision of whether or not to go about legalizing more recreational drugs.

> your incredibly dumb appropriation of the gay rights plight as an analogy
> for drug legalization

Gay rights isn't an analogy for drug legalization, nor have I ever tried to
claim the two were analogous. It just happens that many good examples of
clearly fallacious arguments which are widely known come from people arguing
against the rights of gays, and I elected to use two arguments that have been
told to me personally as examples of poor arguments which have a similar
structure to ones you were making. There is no deeper link nor analogy between
the two topics.

------
aburan28
In my experience the people that I know that are on "safe" drugs such as
Prozac, Adderall, Ritalin, Xanax are the ones having the tougher problem with
addiction compared to the people I have met that have used illicit drugs such
as Heroin. Companies like Shire Pharmaceuticals selling amphetamines to kids
are no better for society than your average heroin dealer. I mean atleast the
heroin dealer is honest with the fact that the drug he is selling is
absolutely going to have an addictive effect whereas giving kids speed or even
methamphetamine (prescription brand Desoxyn in the pharma world) to treat ADHD
is somehow a more noble profession.

------
sixQuarks
How is it that these drugs make it through international mail? Doesn't the US
government have ways to detect drugs that are shipped in this manner?

~~~
unfunco
When I was a teenager a friend used to send me LSD through the post, it always
arrived (Royal Mail).

I've also purchased Zopiclone and Valium through Silk Road which has been
shipped from the U.S. without issues (Hyperdontia, so with frequent toothache
I need to know I can get to sleep at night so that I can work the next day,
and I've had better experiences with the vendors on SR than I have with
doctors and dentists.)

~~~
junto
Out of general interest, has the state of the NHS dentists got so bad that you
can't see a dentist, or do you have a fear of dentists?

FYI if you have an abcess then you should really get it seen to!

[http://worldental.org/teeth/abscessed-tooth-complications-
an...](http://worldental.org/teeth/abscessed-tooth-complications-and-
dangers/350/2/)

~~~
hackerboos
As good as the NHS is - they hate to dole out drugs unless all other options
have been exhausted.

I went to my GP asking for a single Ambien (Zolpidem) to help me sleep on a
long haul flight and they said no as it 'could cause dependency'. So I bought
60 over the counter with no prescription in Thailand.

~~~
tim333
Yeah, I always thought it a bit dumb that you can't get a couple of sleeping
pills for a flight / jet lag. They could always limit it to say 20 a year so
you can't get addicted. I bought my Ambien in Vietnam.

------
bluedino
How are you guaranteed to actually receive your $5,000 worth of drug XYZ while
purchasing from an anonymous network? What if the guy mails you a box of
baking soda?

~~~
zo1
_Reputation_. People don't necessarily just go out and buy $5000 worth of
goods from an unknown seller. They start small, with a value they're willing
to lose. Say $20. Over time, the seller consistently delivers the goods
requested, and so their trust in the seller increases.

You can imagine that with a consistent system, this reputation can be
transmitted/communicated to new parties. Think EBay for a clear example.
Perhaps not the best of analogies, as EBay has money back
guarantees/insurance, etc. But as long as drugs remain in the dark underbelly
of government-hate, don't expect much protection from conventional
institutions.

------
dang
Url changed from [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/dark-net-drug-
mar...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/dark-net-drug-markets-kept-
alive-by-great-customer-service/), which points to this.

------
userbinator
_and are accessed using a special browser called "Tor"_

Tor is a browser now?

~~~
djent
It's a browser bundle. They were close.

~~~
chrisbennet
Your commented helped me. I'd heard of Tor of course but I didn't know what
the user interface was. When the article said that it used a Tor browser I
didn't know any better.

