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Just for the sake of discussion: What about Silk Road? I would say that's a legitimate case of a company (of sorts) engaging in civil disobedience. Ross Ulbric

Just for the sake of discussion: What about Silk Road? I would say that's a legitimate case of a company (of sorts) engaging in civil disobedience. Ross Ulbricht was ideologically motivated. I've heard some rumors about Travis' ideology. Maybe he's similar. (He named his company Uber, maybe he's some sort of Nietzschean?)

tim333 10y ago
It didn't work out well for Ross but then drug trafficking is a whole different thing from providing a taxi service.
gotothedoctor 10y ago
You would be incorrect. Humans, not companies, engage in civil disobedience. Regardless, whether its Ross, Travis or anyone else, why would or should ideological motivation be relevant to whether or not any given act is legal or how it should be punished? When libertarians, for whatever reason, choose to start businesses in CA, they are explicitly consenting to our government & to obeying our democratically enacted laws. Ideology is not a shield for consequences--and, for both Travis & Ross, using Ayn Rand to justify their behavior only makes them less sympathetic to judges, prosecutors & juries.
- orblivion 10y ago
  Again, just for the sake of fun/discussion. Not trying to make any significant point here. > You would be incorrect. Humans, not companies, engage in civil disobedience. Is this a point of observation ("I've never heard of a company doing this"), law ("Companies have no legal grounds to claim civil disobedience"), or logic ("companies cannot act, only its constituent humans act")? If it's the first, I'm claiming to give you a contradictory observation. If it's the second, you yourself said that civil disobedience has no legal significance anyway (just a possible source of sympathy when it comes time for the judge's discretion) so in this sense I don't see why a human's civil disobedience is any more real than a company's. If it's the third, fair enough, but it wasn't clear to me that this was your point.
  - gotothedoctor 10y ago
    It is relevant for humans in a legal setting; it is not relevant for corporations. I did not say that civil disobedience has no legal significance for humans--I said it has no legal significance for corporations. Nor did I say it was a source of sympathy--I said it could mitigate liability or punishment. While it is not a defense for law-breaking by humans, asserting civil disobedience can mitigate punishment or liability for humans; it cannot be used to do the same for corporations. Jurisdictions, laws and rules make it difficult to generalize (eg some courts accept some mitigating factors but not others), but I've never come across or heard of any case where a corporation could or did claim "civil disobedience" as a mitigating factor for liability or punishment.
    - orblivion 10y ago
      Got it. When you had said that it would mitigate punishment, I assumed you meant in a purely unofficial subjective way. Thanks.
      - gotothedoctor 10y ago
        could, not would. There are many variables. My comments are not intended as official or objective:)
    - raleighm 9y ago
      > "cannot be used to do the same for corporations" What is the basis of that "cannot"? Sentencing guidelines? Inference from cases where it was asserted but rejected because it came from a corporation? Edit: Not asking for a citation. Just want to understand the basis for your view, because the point is an important one (current context aside) and your responses thus far about it feel circular (e.g., doesn't apply because it's irrelevant).
- avar 10y ago
  I was under the impression that Silk Road wasn't a company but a private website run by Ross. Reading over the Wikipedia article and the indictment I can't find any mention of it being incorporated. Although the indictment mentions at one point that he had an employee, but he may have been paying him privately and not as part of a corporate structure. Does that change anything vis-a-vis the argument you're making with regards to civil disobedience? My reading of your comments is that a corporation doesn't have certain rights private individuals have. That makes sense, but does your argument still hold if Silk Road is a purely private website without any corporate structure? 1. https://ia600406.us.archive.org/17/items/gov.uscourts.mdd.238311/gov.uscourts.mdd.238311.4.0.pdf https://ia600406.us.archive.org/17/items/gov.uscourts.mdd.23...
  - gotothedoctor 10y ago
    Aka "I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man." No, it changes literally nothing. Criminal enterprises tend to be lean on corporate structure and paperwork for a variety of reasons. There is also no such thing as a purely private website where everything is legal and there is no liability.
    - avar 10y ago
      Right, but let's say for example that some guy X publishes embarrassing classified information on a protest sign that he's holding in front of the White House, this could be construed as civil disobedience, right? But it couldn't if Google had the same information and published it on its front page, since it's a corporation. 1. But what if guy X publishes it on his personal blog? 2. What if he occasionally sells used goods via his blog? 3. What if the main point of the blog is to sell those used goods, with a small "notes from the author" section where the information is published? 4. What if it's purely a commercial enterprise & isn't incorporated? 5. And then if it's incorporated it should be clear-cut, since as you said "only people [and not corporations] engage in civil disobedience". My question is when civil disobedience stops being a defense. Your original comment points out that Uber can't use that because it falls into #5, but then you're saying it wouldn't apply to Silk Road either which as far as I can tell falls into #4. How about #1-3?
- mtempm 10y ago
  >why would or should ideological motivation be relevant to whether or not any given act is legal or how it should be punished? When libertarians, for whatever reason, choose to start businesses in CA, they are explicitly consenting to our government & to obeying our democratically enacted laws. Ideology is not a shield for consequences--and, for both Travis & Ross, using Ayn Rand to justify their behavior only makes them less sympathetic to judges, prosecutors & juries. I didnt work for the Justice Department, but this appears to not be consistently logical. If ideology doesnt matter, why does valuing liberty negatively influence a judge's or prosecuter's actions towards you? That doesn't seem right. Also, if ideological motivation should not play a role in prosecuting crimes, then why does our justice system sometimes do the opposite (consider hate crimes, or other cases where motivation is considered when prosecuting crimes, i.e. different versions of murder charges.)
  - gotothedoctor 9y ago
    I did not say that ideology does not matter. I asked why it should be relevant to the definition of a crime or whether or not it ought to be punished. (my words could've been tighter here: ideology, like civil disobedience, may be relevant to mitigation--or it may increase liability & punishment.) I also did not say that "valuing liberty" has a negative influence. That is not how I was using the word "libertarian" Nor did I say ideological motivation should not or does not play a role in prosecuting crimes. Whether it should or not is probably not important--because ideology does play a role prosecution, particularly in jurisdictions where they're elected. As you know, motive (mens rea) is an element of some criminal charges, including murder. Motivation matters basically for public policy reasons--for example, we punish hate crimes more harshly because we, as a society, decided crimes motivated by hate are more damaging to society & harsher punishment is a deterant. Similarly, sometimes "crimes of passion" are punished less harshly, because society has decided that harsher punishment would not be a deterrant or effective. What I said was: ideology is not a defense. And, in Travis's & Ross's cases, such ideology is more likely to increase, rather than mitigate, liability. And, what I meant was: neither Uber nor the Silk Road would, could or should attempt to assert a defense based on not consenting to CA law, democracy, and/or denying the legitimacy of federal courts. Not only will it irritate the humans whose legitimacy is being questioned, but such a defense is not procedurally permissible in any court that I am aware of. Basically, it won't help either of them--its more likely to increase liability than anything else. My sense is that we define words like libertarian quite differently, so I'm going to leave it here.
srbl 10y ago
For what it's worth, Ross Ulbricht also paid to have 5 people killed. (They of course were not killed, because it was part of the larger sting, but that's irrelevant to his repugnant behavior)
- xiphias 10y ago
  No, he didn't pay. It was a fake chatlog created by the investigators to make him look worse than what he did.
  - Jweb_Guru 10y ago
    Do you have any actual proof that it was fake? I wasn't aware of any, and I can't find any, so this just looks like wishful thinking on your part.
  - memmcgee 10y ago
    The investigators scamming him doesn't change the fact that he did it. Additionally, there were two instances where he paid to have someone "killed". While the second case is rather sketchy, the first case is much clearer. They even staged the murder for him.
- orblivion 10y ago
  From the story I've vaguely heard, he considered them ideologically defensible. But, at that point I guess it's not particularly civil. (or maybe I missed the meaning of the word "civil" here)
wordupmaking 10y ago
I see as much connection there as I see between Scooters' "Hyper Hyper" and, say, "some sort of" ancient greek philosophy. Just look at these superfluous! They acquire riches and yet they become poorer. They want power and first of all the crowbar of power, much money – these impotent, impoverished ones! I can't tell you what exactly "Nietzschean" would be, but I think that in this and any neighboring contexts it's like talking about having lit fire underwater; some may have confused some sort of reflection with actual fire, but Nietzsche never set and never will set foot in any of these parts. Having been discerned and discarded by him is the only sort of business Nietzsche and any random shareholder value maximizing CEO will ever have. I don't pretend to know or understand Nietzsche at all, but the "worst" that could happen is that someone proves me wrong with Nietzsche quotes, so I'll just claim it and see what happens.
amyjess 9y ago
The key is not that your motivation is simply ideological but that it's rooted in widely-acknowledged concepts of social justice. And it's not even "are you a corporation or are you human?" but "are you fighting for social justice or to line your pockets with cash?". We can distill that down further to "who benefits more: society or your wallet?". To steal an example from rayiner elsewhere in this thread, let's say you're a restaurant in the segregation-era south in a jurisdiction that requires restaurants to have separate seating areas for white and black people. Let's say you decide to break the law by having a single seating area for everyone. That would be civil disobedience because you're going out of your way to improve conditions for marginalized people at considerable risk, not just of prosecution but of being boycotted by racists. In other words, you breaking the law benefits society more than it benefits you. This isn't what Uber is doing. Sure, let's say that Travis is ideologically motivated because he feels he has a fundamental natural right to make money using any and every means he sees fit. So that means Uber is breaking the law because they feel the law gets in the way of their natural right to line their pockets with as much cash as they can however they can. It's a purely selfish motivation. And moving on to Ross, it's the same thing. He was raking in bitcoins hand over fist from what he was doing. He can say "selling anything should be legal" all he wants, but if the end result of him breaking the law is that he gets rich, then he's ultimately doing himself a favor more than he's doing society a favor. And he really shot himself in the foot with those attempted hits. That took all the wind out of the sails of his "I'm not hurting anyone; I'm just helping connect people to each other". He tried to kill people. Worse, he tried to kill people because they stole money from him. There was no ideological motivation for the attempted hits. It was just "this guy stole from me, he has to pay". There goes his entire defense. And ultimately, "civil disobedience" isn't a defense against conviction. It's an argument for leniency in the sentencing phase. It doesn't exist on paper, either: the only reason the concept exists at all is because judges and juries have broad discretion in sentencing. It's just like how first-time offenders tend to get off easy: there's no law saying "if the convicted has no priors, you have to give them a lesser sentence", it's just based on the logic that someone with no priors is probably someone who made a stupid mistake and not a career criminal. Going back to civil disobedience, the upshot is that if you can convince the judge and/or jury that you breaking the law had a net benefit to society, you might get away with the minimum punishment mandated by law. But if the main consequence of you breaking the law is that you got rich, why would any judge or jury care enough to let you off easily? Edit: Just to make this clear, IANAL & TINLA.
s73ver 9y ago
I would completely disagree. The silk road was motivated by money. That's it. Hence why Ulbricht tried to hire a hit man to kill people when his criminal empire was threatened.

tim333 10y ago

It didn't work out well for Ross but then drug trafficking is a whole different thing from providing a taxi service.

gotothedoctor 10y ago

You would be incorrect. Humans, not companies, engage in civil disobedience. Regardless, whether its Ross, Travis or anyone else, why would or should ideological motivation be relevant to whether or not any given act is legal or how it should be punished? When libertarians, for whatever reason, choose to start businesses in CA, they are explicitly consenting to our government & to obeying our democratically enacted laws. Ideology is not a shield for consequences--and, for both Travis & Ross, using Ayn Rand to justify their behavior only makes them less sympathetic to judges, prosecutors & juries.

orblivion 10y ago
Again, just for the sake of fun/discussion. Not trying to make any significant point here. > You would be incorrect. Humans, not companies, engage in civil disobedience. Is this a point of observation ("I've never heard of a company doing this"), law ("Companies have no legal grounds to claim civil disobedience"), or logic ("companies cannot act, only its constituent humans act")? If it's the first, I'm claiming to give you a contradictory observation. If it's the second, you yourself said that civil disobedience has no legal significance anyway (just a possible source of sympathy when it comes time for the judge's discretion) so in this sense I don't see why a human's civil disobedience is any more real than a company's. If it's the third, fair enough, but it wasn't clear to me that this was your point.
- gotothedoctor 10y ago
  It is relevant for humans in a legal setting; it is not relevant for corporations. I did not say that civil disobedience has no legal significance for humans--I said it has no legal significance for corporations. Nor did I say it was a source of sympathy--I said it could mitigate liability or punishment. While it is not a defense for law-breaking by humans, asserting civil disobedience can mitigate punishment or liability for humans; it cannot be used to do the same for corporations. Jurisdictions, laws and rules make it difficult to generalize (eg some courts accept some mitigating factors but not others), but I've never come across or heard of any case where a corporation could or did claim "civil disobedience" as a mitigating factor for liability or punishment.
  - orblivion 10y ago
    Got it. When you had said that it would mitigate punishment, I assumed you meant in a purely unofficial subjective way. Thanks.
    - gotothedoctor 10y ago
      could, not would. There are many variables. My comments are not intended as official or objective:)
  - raleighm 9y ago
    > "cannot be used to do the same for corporations" What is the basis of that "cannot"? Sentencing guidelines? Inference from cases where it was asserted but rejected because it came from a corporation? Edit: Not asking for a citation. Just want to understand the basis for your view, because the point is an important one (current context aside) and your responses thus far about it feel circular (e.g., doesn't apply because it's irrelevant).
avar 10y ago
I was under the impression that Silk Road wasn't a company but a private website run by Ross. Reading over the Wikipedia article and the indictment I can't find any mention of it being incorporated. Although the indictment mentions at one point that he had an employee, but he may have been paying him privately and not as part of a corporate structure. Does that change anything vis-a-vis the argument you're making with regards to civil disobedience? My reading of your comments is that a corporation doesn't have certain rights private individuals have. That makes sense, but does your argument still hold if Silk Road is a purely private website without any corporate structure? 1. https://ia600406.us.archive.org/17/items/gov.uscourts.mdd.238311/gov.uscourts.mdd.238311.4.0.pdf https://ia600406.us.archive.org/17/items/gov.uscourts.mdd.23...
- gotothedoctor 10y ago
  Aka "I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man." No, it changes literally nothing. Criminal enterprises tend to be lean on corporate structure and paperwork for a variety of reasons. There is also no such thing as a purely private website where everything is legal and there is no liability.
  - avar 10y ago
    Right, but let's say for example that some guy X publishes embarrassing classified information on a protest sign that he's holding in front of the White House, this could be construed as civil disobedience, right? But it couldn't if Google had the same information and published it on its front page, since it's a corporation. 1. But what if guy X publishes it on his personal blog? 2. What if he occasionally sells used goods via his blog? 3. What if the main point of the blog is to sell those used goods, with a small "notes from the author" section where the information is published? 4. What if it's purely a commercial enterprise & isn't incorporated? 5. And then if it's incorporated it should be clear-cut, since as you said "only people [and not corporations] engage in civil disobedience". My question is when civil disobedience stops being a defense. Your original comment points out that Uber can't use that because it falls into #5, but then you're saying it wouldn't apply to Silk Road either which as far as I can tell falls into #4. How about #1-3?
mtempm 10y ago
>why would or should ideological motivation be relevant to whether or not any given act is legal or how it should be punished? When libertarians, for whatever reason, choose to start businesses in CA, they are explicitly consenting to our government & to obeying our democratically enacted laws. Ideology is not a shield for consequences--and, for both Travis & Ross, using Ayn Rand to justify their behavior only makes them less sympathetic to judges, prosecutors & juries. I didnt work for the Justice Department, but this appears to not be consistently logical. If ideology doesnt matter, why does valuing liberty negatively influence a judge's or prosecuter's actions towards you? That doesn't seem right. Also, if ideological motivation should not play a role in prosecuting crimes, then why does our justice system sometimes do the opposite (consider hate crimes, or other cases where motivation is considered when prosecuting crimes, i.e. different versions of murder charges.)
- gotothedoctor 9y ago
  I did not say that ideology does not matter. I asked why it should be relevant to the definition of a crime or whether or not it ought to be punished. (my words could've been tighter here: ideology, like civil disobedience, may be relevant to mitigation--or it may increase liability & punishment.) I also did not say that "valuing liberty" has a negative influence. That is not how I was using the word "libertarian" Nor did I say ideological motivation should not or does not play a role in prosecuting crimes. Whether it should or not is probably not important--because ideology does play a role prosecution, particularly in jurisdictions where they're elected. As you know, motive (mens rea) is an element of some criminal charges, including murder. Motivation matters basically for public policy reasons--for example, we punish hate crimes more harshly because we, as a society, decided crimes motivated by hate are more damaging to society & harsher punishment is a deterant. Similarly, sometimes "crimes of passion" are punished less harshly, because society has decided that harsher punishment would not be a deterrant or effective. What I said was: ideology is not a defense. And, in Travis's & Ross's cases, such ideology is more likely to increase, rather than mitigate, liability. And, what I meant was: neither Uber nor the Silk Road would, could or should attempt to assert a defense based on not consenting to CA law, democracy, and/or denying the legitimacy of federal courts. Not only will it irritate the humans whose legitimacy is being questioned, but such a defense is not procedurally permissible in any court that I am aware of. Basically, it won't help either of them--its more likely to increase liability than anything else. My sense is that we define words like libertarian quite differently, so I'm going to leave it here.

srbl 10y ago

For what it's worth, Ross Ulbricht also paid to have 5 people killed. (They of course were not killed, because it was part of the larger sting, but that's irrelevant to his repugnant behavior)

xiphias 10y ago
No, he didn't pay. It was a fake chatlog created by the investigators to make him look worse than what he did.
- Jweb_Guru 10y ago
  Do you have any actual proof that it was fake? I wasn't aware of any, and I can't find any, so this just looks like wishful thinking on your part.
- memmcgee 10y ago
  The investigators scamming him doesn't change the fact that he did it. Additionally, there were two instances where he paid to have someone "killed". While the second case is rather sketchy, the first case is much clearer. They even staged the murder for him.
orblivion 10y ago
From the story I've vaguely heard, he considered them ideologically defensible. But, at that point I guess it's not particularly civil. (or maybe I missed the meaning of the word "civil" here)

wordupmaking 10y ago

I see as much connection there as I see between Scooters' "Hyper Hyper" and, say, "some sort of" ancient greek philosophy. Just look at these superfluous! They acquire riches and yet they become poorer. They want power and first of all the crowbar of power, much money – these impotent, impoverished ones! I can't tell you what exactly "Nietzschean" would be, but I think that in this and any neighboring contexts it's like talking about having lit fire underwater; some may have confused some sort of reflection with actual fire, but Nietzsche never set and never will set foot in any of these parts. Having been discerned and discarded by him is the only sort of business Nietzsche and any random shareholder value maximizing CEO will ever have. I don't pretend to know or understand Nietzsche at all, but the "worst" that could happen is that someone proves me wrong with Nietzsche quotes, so I'll just claim it and see what happens.

amyjess 9y ago

The key is not that your motivation is simply ideological but that it's rooted in widely-acknowledged concepts of social justice. And it's not even "are you a corporation or are you human?" but "are you fighting for social justice or to line your pockets with cash?". We can distill that down further to "who benefits more: society or your wallet?". To steal an example from rayiner elsewhere in this thread, let's say you're a restaurant in the segregation-era south in a jurisdiction that requires restaurants to have separate seating areas for white and black people. Let's say you decide to break the law by having a single seating area for everyone. That would be civil disobedience because you're going out of your way to improve conditions for marginalized people at considerable risk, not just of prosecution but of being boycotted by racists. In other words, you breaking the law benefits society more than it benefits you. This isn't what Uber is doing. Sure, let's say that Travis is ideologically motivated because he feels he has a fundamental natural right to make money using any and every means he sees fit. So that means Uber is breaking the law because they feel the law gets in the way of their natural right to line their pockets with as much cash as they can however they can. It's a purely selfish motivation. And moving on to Ross, it's the same thing. He was raking in bitcoins hand over fist from what he was doing. He can say "selling anything should be legal" all he wants, but if the end result of him breaking the law is that he gets rich, then he's ultimately doing himself a favor more than he's doing society a favor. And he really shot himself in the foot with those attempted hits. That took all the wind out of the sails of his "I'm not hurting anyone; I'm just helping connect people to each other". He tried to kill people. Worse, he tried to kill people because they stole money from him. There was no ideological motivation for the attempted hits. It was just "this guy stole from me, he has to pay". There goes his entire defense. And ultimately, "civil disobedience" isn't a defense against conviction. It's an argument for leniency in the sentencing phase. It doesn't exist on paper, either: the only reason the concept exists at all is because judges and juries have broad discretion in sentencing. It's just like how first-time offenders tend to get off easy: there's no law saying "if the convicted has no priors, you have to give them a lesser sentence", it's just based on the logic that someone with no priors is probably someone who made a stupid mistake and not a career criminal. Going back to civil disobedience, the upshot is that if you can convince the judge and/or jury that you breaking the law had a net benefit to society, you might get away with the minimum punishment mandated by law. But if the main consequence of you breaking the law is that you got rich, why would any judge or jury care enough to let you off easily? Edit: Just to make this clear, IANAL & TINLA.

s73ver 9y ago

I would completely disagree. The silk road was motivated by money. That's it. Hence why Ulbricht tried to hire a hit man to kill people when his criminal empire was threatened.