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Ross Ulbricht was not a good person. Full stop. He organized and operated a global criminal drug ring and conspired to have people killed. The only differenc

Ross Ulbricht was not a good person. Full stop. He organized and operated a global criminal drug ring and conspired to have people killed. The only difference between DPR and Pabla Escobar is that DPR was running his drug business in the 2010s instead of the 1980s.

dogmatism 2y ago
wait what? Escobar was responsible for conservatively 4,000 people killed, some at his own hand DPR conspired but didn't actually directly kill anyone Not saying DPR was a good person, but a little perspective is in order
- adastra22 2y ago
  He did order (and pay for) at least one murder. It just happens that both the victim and the would-be hit man were both informants so they staged the murder. Ross’ argument is that he knew it was fake, but that makes no sense in context. It was right that they dropped the charge because it was quite obviously entrapment. But none of it reflects well on Ross Ulbricht’s character.
  - echoangle 2y ago
    There’s still a difference between ordering a hit and killing 4000 people, some of them yourself.
    - adastra22 2y ago
      A difference in scale. I really don't see a meaningful moral difference between murder for hire and doing it yourself.
      - echoangle 2y ago
        Ok, but the difference between 4 and 4000 murders is still not insignificant in my opinion.
rajamaka 2y ago
Was he ever convicted on conspiracy to murder? Because in my opinion the ethics of operating a drug ring is not as black as white as you state. The existence of drug rings is an inevitable outcome from the war on drugs and I would argue the blame lands on the politicians who maintain the status quo that incentivises the creation of the black market for drugs.
ekianjo 2y ago
> The only difference between DPR and Pabla Escobar The only difference?
mrandish 2y ago
> The only difference between DPR and Pabla Escobar is that DPR was running his drug business in the 2010s instead of the 1980s. Asserting moral equivalence between someone who ordered dozens of innocent women and children not just killed but dismembered - solely as a lesson for others. Orders which were actually carried out multiple times and DPR who was never charged, tried or convicted of conspiring with a supposed online hitman to kill a competitor (who both were actually FBI informants - clearly making it entrapment). Yeah, that's quite a reach. Sure, DPR was no saint but why push for the absolute maximally extreme interpretation? Even asserting he "organized and operated a global criminal drug ring" is a stretch. My understanding is he ran an online marketplace which drug dealers used to sell to their customers. I'm not aware that Ross ever bought or sold drugs as a business or hired others to do so. There is more than a little nuance between 1) buying drugs from distributors, delivering drugs to buyers and collecting the money, and 2) running online forums and messaging for people who do those things. At most, #2 is being an accessory to #1.
- VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
  > My understanding is he ran an online marketplace which drug dealers used to sell to their customers. I'm not aware that Ross ever bought or sold drugs as a business or hired others to do so. Ah yes, he accumulated over $5 billion in Bitcoins by entirely legal means. He didn't facilitate the wholesale distribution of illegal (and dangerous) drugs at all. He never contributed to the massive distribution of Fentanyle-laced dopes to the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. He was just the online guy!
  - mrandish 2y ago
    You've mischaracterized what I said. > he accumulated over $5 billion in Bitcoins by entirely legal means. I never claimed he didn't break the law. I said the opposite, that he's guilty of being an accessory to drug dealing. > He didn't facilitate the wholesale distribution of illegal (and dangerous) drugs at all. I said "he ran an online marketplace which drug dealers used to sell to their customers." > He was just the online guy! I said he's "no saint" and in an earlier post in this thread I also said he deserved a jail sentence and that "ten years was enough" for what he was charged with and convicted of as a first-time offender. I challenged your assertion of "no difference" between DPR and Pablo Escobar as extreme and your response is to mischaracterize my position as DPR committing no crime instead of responding to my actual position that he's a criminal who is guilty and deserved ten years in jail but not two life sentences plus 40 years without parole. There is a middle ground between "completely innocent of anything" and "no different than Pablo Escobar." I don't understand why you can't acknowledge such a middle ground might exist - and that it is my position.
vunderba 2y ago
I don't think anyone in here is making the case that Ulbricht is a "good person", but comparing Escobar to Ulbricht is next-level delusional. One of these people attempted to place hits on 3-4 individuals, the other one planted a bomb on a passenger plane that resulted in the deaths of over a hundred people. Get some perspective and/or learn your history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_203 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_203
- jMyles 2y ago
  > I don't think anyone in here is making the case that Ulbricht is a "good person", I am. He built a tool that allowed people to circumvent a wantonly unjust legal framework by an aging, decreasingly relevant state. We need more of that.
K0balt 2y ago
DPR dabbled with the idea of violence. Pablo Escobar revelled in it. PE put bombed newspapers and killed hundreds, if not thousands of people unrelated to any criminal enterprise or to arresting him. I mean, actual innocent, minding their own business civilians. Over 4000 murders have been directly attributed to the actions and orders of Escobar. Estimates to the actual count range closer to 8000. DPR went over to the dark side a bit in that entrapment racket, or at least it seems so. Thinking that someone needs to be murdered isn’t necessarily a character flaw, imho. It depends on what DPR was led to believe about this fictional person. It is reasonable to imagine that the FBI took every possible measure to make their fake victim seem as murder worthy as possible. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that the “victim” may have been painted as a purveyor of child trafficking, CSAM, or other things repugnant. My point is we don’t know. And if we don’t know, we should reserve judgment.
- thruway516 2y ago
  >DPR went over to the dark side a bit in that entrapment racket It has to start somewhere
  - K0balt 2y ago
    True enough, but if every first step taken meant committing to that path, the world would be a much, much darker place, I would think. I know at least for me, it would.
    - thruway516 2y ago
      I think if you've committed to having someone killed to the point that you have pulled the trigger so to speak, you have crossed a line that most humans do not. I sure hope you have not crossed that line before
      - K0balt 2y ago
        A lot of very good people have crossed that line, and they did so -because- they were good people. They may have done it in defense of loved ones or strangers. They may have done it in service to the nation or community that they were born in. When having these conversations, it’s easy to stand on the moral high ground and forget that we also live among monsters, and alongside organizations that turn regular people into the instruments of monsters. There are a lot of people in this world that have chosen to be incompatible with coexistence in civil society, or to be part of an organization that has chosen to be so. These people actively do grave harm to other people. Sometimes, the only way to prevent more harm to innocent people is to remove those individuals from the world. That said, I don’t know anything of the veracity or motivations behind the allegations brought against DPR in this regard, and for whatever reason, his legal circumstances were crafted so as to make sure that the public would also remain ignorant of the details of those circumstances. While I do not know any of the details involved, I am deeply suspicious of the manipulations of the FBI in cases such as this, having been in proximity to some of their other shenanigans. It’s definitely inside the realm of reasonable speculation to imagine that they may have created a situation where not only was it convenient for DPR to eliminate his “competitor”, but he would be doing a noble thing in the process. As an example , one of their “successful anti terrorist operations” a few years back involved a mentally challenged person was manipulated by the FBI into a “terrorist” plot where he thought he was “saving the world”…. So they -definitely-do that kind of thing. The Walmart judiciously wouldn’t sell him a gun (he is obviously and apparently challenged) so they sent him back to buy a bb-gun and arrested him coming out of the store. Because of this and many other examples of behavior with depraved impunity, I am inclined to give DPR the benefit of the doubt on this, in the absence of much more specific and reliable information.

dogmatism 2y ago

wait what? Escobar was responsible for conservatively 4,000 people killed, some at his own hand DPR conspired but didn't actually directly kill anyone Not saying DPR was a good person, but a little perspective is in order

adastra22 2y ago
He did order (and pay for) at least one murder. It just happens that both the victim and the would-be hit man were both informants so they staged the murder. Ross’ argument is that he knew it was fake, but that makes no sense in context. It was right that they dropped the charge because it was quite obviously entrapment. But none of it reflects well on Ross Ulbricht’s character.
- echoangle 2y ago
  There’s still a difference between ordering a hit and killing 4000 people, some of them yourself.
  - adastra22 2y ago
    A difference in scale. I really don't see a meaningful moral difference between murder for hire and doing it yourself.
    - echoangle 2y ago
      Ok, but the difference between 4 and 4000 murders is still not insignificant in my opinion.

rajamaka 2y ago

Was he ever convicted on conspiracy to murder? Because in my opinion the ethics of operating a drug ring is not as black as white as you state. The existence of drug rings is an inevitable outcome from the war on drugs and I would argue the blame lands on the politicians who maintain the status quo that incentivises the creation of the black market for drugs.

ekianjo 2y ago

> The only difference between DPR and Pabla Escobar The only difference?

mrandish 2y ago

> The only difference between DPR and Pabla Escobar is that DPR was running his drug business in the 2010s instead of the 1980s. Asserting moral equivalence between someone who ordered dozens of innocent women and children not just killed but dismembered - solely as a lesson for others. Orders which were actually carried out multiple times and DPR who was never charged, tried or convicted of conspiring with a supposed online hitman to kill a competitor (who both were actually FBI informants - clearly making it entrapment). Yeah, that's quite a reach. Sure, DPR was no saint but why push for the absolute maximally extreme interpretation? Even asserting he "organized and operated a global criminal drug ring" is a stretch. My understanding is he ran an online marketplace which drug dealers used to sell to their customers. I'm not aware that Ross ever bought or sold drugs as a business or hired others to do so. There is more than a little nuance between 1) buying drugs from distributors, delivering drugs to buyers and collecting the money, and 2) running online forums and messaging for people who do those things. At most, #2 is being an accessory to #1.

VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
> My understanding is he ran an online marketplace which drug dealers used to sell to their customers. I'm not aware that Ross ever bought or sold drugs as a business or hired others to do so. Ah yes, he accumulated over $5 billion in Bitcoins by entirely legal means. He didn't facilitate the wholesale distribution of illegal (and dangerous) drugs at all. He never contributed to the massive distribution of Fentanyle-laced dopes to the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. He was just the online guy!
- mrandish 2y ago
  You've mischaracterized what I said. > he accumulated over $5 billion in Bitcoins by entirely legal means. I never claimed he didn't break the law. I said the opposite, that he's guilty of being an accessory to drug dealing. > He didn't facilitate the wholesale distribution of illegal (and dangerous) drugs at all. I said "he ran an online marketplace which drug dealers used to sell to their customers." > He was just the online guy! I said he's "no saint" and in an earlier post in this thread I also said he deserved a jail sentence and that "ten years was enough" for what he was charged with and convicted of as a first-time offender. I challenged your assertion of "no difference" between DPR and Pablo Escobar as extreme and your response is to mischaracterize my position as DPR committing no crime instead of responding to my actual position that he's a criminal who is guilty and deserved ten years in jail but not two life sentences plus 40 years without parole. There is a middle ground between "completely innocent of anything" and "no different than Pablo Escobar." I don't understand why you can't acknowledge such a middle ground might exist - and that it is my position.

vunderba 2y ago

I don't think anyone in here is making the case that Ulbricht is a "good person", but comparing Escobar to Ulbricht is next-level delusional. One of these people attempted to place hits on 3-4 individuals, the other one planted a bomb on a passenger plane that resulted in the deaths of over a hundred people. Get some perspective and/or learn your history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_203 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_203

jMyles 2y ago
> I don't think anyone in here is making the case that Ulbricht is a "good person", I am. He built a tool that allowed people to circumvent a wantonly unjust legal framework by an aging, decreasingly relevant state. We need more of that.

K0balt 2y ago

DPR dabbled with the idea of violence. Pablo Escobar revelled in it. PE put bombed newspapers and killed hundreds, if not thousands of people unrelated to any criminal enterprise or to arresting him. I mean, actual innocent, minding their own business civilians. Over 4000 murders have been directly attributed to the actions and orders of Escobar. Estimates to the actual count range closer to 8000. DPR went over to the dark side a bit in that entrapment racket, or at least it seems so. Thinking that someone needs to be murdered isn’t necessarily a character flaw, imho. It depends on what DPR was led to believe about this fictional person. It is reasonable to imagine that the FBI took every possible measure to make their fake victim seem as murder worthy as possible. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that the “victim” may have been painted as a purveyor of child trafficking, CSAM, or other things repugnant. My point is we don’t know. And if we don’t know, we should reserve judgment.

thruway516 2y ago
>DPR went over to the dark side a bit in that entrapment racket It has to start somewhere
- K0balt 2y ago
  True enough, but if every first step taken meant committing to that path, the world would be a much, much darker place, I would think. I know at least for me, it would.
  - thruway516 2y ago
    I think if you've committed to having someone killed to the point that you have pulled the trigger so to speak, you have crossed a line that most humans do not. I sure hope you have not crossed that line before
    - K0balt 2y ago
      A lot of very good people have crossed that line, and they did so -because- they were good people. They may have done it in defense of loved ones or strangers. They may have done it in service to the nation or community that they were born in. When having these conversations, it’s easy to stand on the moral high ground and forget that we also live among monsters, and alongside organizations that turn regular people into the instruments of monsters. There are a lot of people in this world that have chosen to be incompatible with coexistence in civil society, or to be part of an organization that has chosen to be so. These people actively do grave harm to other people. Sometimes, the only way to prevent more harm to innocent people is to remove those individuals from the world. That said, I don’t know anything of the veracity or motivations behind the allegations brought against DPR in this regard, and for whatever reason, his legal circumstances were crafted so as to make sure that the public would also remain ignorant of the details of those circumstances. While I do not know any of the details involved, I am deeply suspicious of the manipulations of the FBI in cases such as this, having been in proximity to some of their other shenanigans. It’s definitely inside the realm of reasonable speculation to imagine that they may have created a situation where not only was it convenient for DPR to eliminate his “competitor”, but he would be doing a noble thing in the process. As an example , one of their “successful anti terrorist operations” a few years back involved a mentally challenged person was manipulated by the FBI into a “terrorist” plot where he thought he was “saving the world”…. So they -definitely-do that kind of thing. The Walmart judiciously wouldn’t sell him a gun (he is obviously and apparently challenged) so they sent him back to buy a bb-gun and arrested him coming out of the store. Because of this and many other examples of behavior with depraved impunity, I am inclined to give DPR the benefit of the doubt on this, in the absence of much more specific and reliable information.