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His sentence was excessive and cruel to make an example out of him. There’s a serial child rapist in the same prison serving less time.

ty6853 2y ago
The state hates more than anything someone who operates on first principles that the empire is wrong. A serial rapist, even one that would happily do it again, will often repent and quickly admit guilt. They have no interest in undermining the philosophical basis of the state. They will posture themselves as bound but imperfect citizens under the law. Ross violated the only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law. He was sentenced for being a heretic.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  > Ross violated the only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law. He was sentenced for being a heretic. Good. Let's keep in mind that the shared faith in this "holy religion, the rule of law" is the only thing holding together your country, my country, everyone's countries, and civilized society in general. Take that away, and everything around us will collapse, regressing the few survivors of that event to the prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other for what little scraps the land has to give.
  - ty6853 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - formerly_proven 2y ago
      Yes, Ross Ulbricht is basically a revolutionary.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - kybernetyk 2y ago
    I'm from Germany. I could tell you something about blindly following the "rule of law". If you throw morality out the window the law can become a very ugly instrument.
    - suddenlybananas 2y ago
      [dead]
      - ty6853 2y ago
        I'd argue more have died from drug regulations than the Nazis, particularly when you factor in how DEA licensing and FDA approval corruption stifles access to medicine, and how prohibition fosters violence without meaningfully curbing harmful drug use.
        suddenlybananas 2y ago
        Can you hear yourself? Are you really saying that "drug regulation" has caused more death than the tens of millions who died in ww2? Not to mention the millions and millions of people whose lives have been saved by drug regulation as they are not exposed to harmful drugs from charlatans.
        gosub100 2y ago
        Slow burn vs all at once. Also helps if you include the casualties from the narco wars in mexico
        kortilla 2y ago
        Yeah, I remember the silk web being exclusively for cancer treatments not yet approved by the FDA. /s
        jaapz 2y ago
        39 million people died on the European theater of WW2 alone. Estimates of Jewish deaths during the holocaust range from 4.9 and 5.9 million people. Are you seriously suggesting drug ~regulation~ caused more deaths? Silk road was not primarily used for "unregulated medicine" but for recreational drugs, weapons and other quite unsavory illegal things.
  - WinstonSmith84 2y ago
    > ... the shared faith in this "holy religion, the rule of law" is the only thing holding together your country, my country ... Let's forget a minute about that holy rule of law, "your" country has elected a convicted criminal, and it's yet to collapse.
    - JBSay 2y ago
      Quite an interesting fact that both committed victimless crimes and both were victims of exceptional prosecution
      - WinstonSmith84 2y ago
        That's comparing apples and oranges. One spent 10 years in a jail for making himself rich (and some others), the other never spent a day in a jail for committing at the highest level election subversion, retention of classified information, hush money payment (and more) - and was caught on the latter, eventually. It was arguably "exceptional prosecution" for that hush payment, like Al Capone was caught on a mere tax fraud
        PinkSheep 2y ago
        Maybe he should've pardoned himself into the past and a little bit into the future too, like that other man did. /jk
        itsoktocry 2y ago
        >One spent 10 years in a jail for making himself rich (and some others), the other never spent a day in a jail for committing at the highest level election subversion, retention of classified information, hush money payment (and more) - and was caught on the latter, eventually. What an interpretation! Another one might be: they tried to throw all kinds of things at Trump, and they all failed because they simply aren't true, until they managed to catch him on some triviality. The fact that you "rule of law" people keep putting out accusations as if they were convictions, and insinuating people should be judged on these accusations is truly horrible for the system.
      - 2y ago
  - JBSay 2y ago
    Grossly excessive sentences for non-victim crimes while letting rapists, murderers and corrupt politicians go free with at best a slap on the wrist, is why people are abandon your "holy religion" in droves
    - jollyllama 2y ago
      Big shades of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas in GP comment
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        Never read it, but I watched its recent adaptation as a Strange New Worlds episode called Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach, and if it's in any way representative of the source material, then I'd say the ethical problems there are nontrivial.
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    Look at every society before the modern state monopoly on violence. Basically none of them were in danger of regressing because of it. The evolution of the modern state is a result of inter society competition for who can apply the most massed violence against a competing state. We've seen what happens when empires fall apart (Rome for example) and things don't revert to "prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other for what little scraps the land has to give". I'm not gonna go too far into this because like you say, it's a religion, and I'm not gonna waste my time trying to convert anyone.
    - vladms 2y ago
      Depends on the time scale. I mean the early middle ages (500 to 1000) could be described as "(smaller) tribes fighting over what is left" (considering all the barbarians from the north pillaging the roman empire while the Arabs conquering it from the south). The evolution of modern society is as much a result of religion (centralizing a purpose and limiting inner fighting) of science (do things more efficient) as it is to violence. Violence might be one way to progress, everybody is entitled to an opinion. I just hope you experienced it yourself if you believe it is the way you prefer personally. I am saying just because I thought some things would be great, only to be quite disappointed when I actually tried them...
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      > Look at every society before the modern state monopoly on violence. Basically none of them were in danger of regressing because of it. They were too small. But they had their own social orders of equivalent importance, and breaking those would break them apart. There's a reason religion and tradition played bigger role in a distant past, and going against them was severely punished. It's not just out of spite or "us vs. them"; people take threats to stability of their group personally. It's definitely in part a survival mechanism. > The evolution of the modern state is a result of inter society competition for who can apply the most massed violence against a competing state. Yes. More specifically, it's the result of growth. It's the same thing as small tribes fighting each other over some small areas of land, except scaled up. Bigger groups have a competitive advantage over smaller groups, but there's a limit to the size of a group beyond which it ends up splitting apart; increasing that limit requires stacking more layers of hierarchy and associated social technologies. "Rule of law" and the legal system in general is one of such technologies, and it looks like it does today, at scales of groups we have today. A group of dozens can just work on instinct alone. A group of hundreds requires some rules and specialization and designated authority. Scale that 100x, and you need another level of leadership hierarchy just to keep sub-group leaders coordinated and aligned. Scale that 100x further, and you kind of have to get something looking like a modern nation state, as anything else would either break apart or be defeated by another group that is more like a modern nation state. See also: Dunbar's number. > We've seen what happens when empires fall apart (Rome for example) and things don't revert to "prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other for what little scraps the land has to give". Europe would disagree.
  - ETH_start 2y ago
    Ironically, by sentencing him more harshly on the basis of ideology as opposed to on the basis of the criminal code, you are undermining the rule of law, which requires sentences to be based only on statutory law.
  - uludag 2y ago
    I think you may be overstating this. The archeological evidence is pretty clear that prehistorical lifestyles weren't just small tribes slaughtering each other, and that there was a lot of variety and complexity in the way prehistoric societies organized themselves. Also, there are some societies that exist in 2025 which proved scary enough examples of what's possible. There are also societies which have blatant arbitrary authoritarian rule which seem to be well in the 21st century. I doubt that faith in the rule of law is the only thing keeping our societies together.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Ray20 2y ago
      > pretty clear that prehistorical lifestyles weren't just small tribes slaughtering each other, Well, that's sounds quite logical. When you kill people, they usually fight back. Very strongly fight back. So you have to expect something big to make it worth it. But small very undeveloped tribes had nothing of such, so they have no incentives to slaughter each other.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        > But small very undeveloped tribes had nothing of such, so they have no incentives to slaughter each other. With neither size nor technology to make a lasting impact, the ones that got slaughtered didn't exactly leave much in archeological evidence behind for us to find. As for GP's point, obviously those people weren't bred for battle with others. All the tiny tribes would happily frolic in the forest or whatever small prehistoric tribes did when they weren't starving, but eventually they'd grow in size, hit a size limit leading to a new tribe splitting off, etc.; over time, the number of tribes grew to the point that they started to bump into each other and contest the same resources, leading to the obvious outcome.
        uludag 2y ago
        I'm genuinely convinced that prehistoric humans, being literally the same species as us, were just as capable as us in the ability to thoughtfully construct their societies. Like, why, when they bumped into each other, couldn't they have formed a confederation? I think instead of labeling them as children of nature or starving savages warring with everything in their vicinity, it makes most sense to see them as more or less similar to ourselves.
  - kerkeslager 2y ago
    Nonsense. "The rule of law" isn't one cohesive thing--sure, some parts of it are important for holding together a country/society, but in a sufficiently complex legal system (like the US') there exists a plethora of laws which are irrelevant to holding together society. Every such society has laws which are on the books but are not enforced, weakly enforced, or unevenly enforced. In fact, an implicit part of British Prime Minister Harold Wilson's theory of government was explicitly having laws which only existed to be broken, to allow citizens to exercise their rebellious impulses without causing harm--Wilson believed that turning a blind eye to the breaking of a certain subset of laws actually minimized the harm of unlawful action. An example of this is rules against walking on the grass in many public areas in London, which is enforced by security guards whose only recourse is to tell you to stop. The US also has laws which we don't care if you break, and the laws we place in this category say a lot about our society. For example, it's widely accepted that people can drive up to 10 MPH above the speed limit and consequences will be rare. Even more severe moving violations are met with a slap on the wrist which primarily effects the poor (fines). Drug laws were already within this category before Ullbricht started the Silk Road. The was on drugs was explicitly started by Nixon as a war on the antiwar left and black people, and if you didn't fall into one of those categories, you were/are largely above drug laws, since enforcement generally targets those categories, while the social acceptability of popular drugs means that crimes of this nature are rarely reported. Ullbricht's primary offense was breaking a law that was already broken ubiquitously. Society did not collapse before Ullbricht when these laws were broken, it did not collapse when Ullbricht broke them, and it does not collapse because of the myriad of darknet sites which immediately filled the void left by the Silk Road's closure. Ullbricht's arrest didn't end the blatant disregard for drug laws on the darknet, and yet somehow in the 11 years since his arrest, society still hasn't devolved into small tribes slaughtering each other. In short, if people breaking drug laws was a real threat to society, then society would have devolved into tribes slaughtering each other already. We have had over 50 years of people ubiquitously breaking drug laws without societal collapse. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      I'm not talking about any particular law, I'm talking about the general idea of laws as things that apply to everyone, that everyone should obey, and that everyone expects everyone else will obey, and that everyone knows they're expected by others to obey. That's the self-reinforcing structure of intersubjectivity, that allows us to invent and maintain imaginary entities such as "dollar", "law", "justice system", "contract", or "limited liability corporation", etc. Underlying all such entities is the set of shared beliefs about how others will behave. This structure is self-reinforcing and very resilient: few people here and there rejecting faith in rule of law, or authority of the courts, or money, don't make a difference - we write such people off as weirdos and carry on with our days, secure in knowledge our world will continue to work as it worked the day before. But if sufficient amount of people have their faith falter, that's where the trouble starts. For example, if enough people stop trusting in the justice system to deliver something resembling justice most of the time, you'll see people ignoring courts and laws and taking justice into their own hands[0]. People start lynching and killing each other, others see them getting away with it, which quickly destroys their trust in the system, and now you're at the precipice. If shooting a (person accused of being) thief is fine, if shooting a billionaire is fine, then why uphold a contract? Might as well get your own at gunpoint, etc. At this point everything stops working - banks, healthcare, fire services, stores. Your country collapses. You probably die. That is why threats to our shared belief system are so dangerous, and need to be dealt with swiftly and aggressively. It's not about elites in power wanting to stay in power (though it's no doubt part of it for them) - it's because should we all start thinking our social structures don't work, and that everyone else thinks this too, and start acting on this expectation, they'll all collapse in an instant. -- [0] - No, whatever it is that America has with its police is still far from that point.
  - littlestymaar 2y ago
    It makes me very sad when people act as if the rule of law wasn't important, or worse in case like this they do as if the rule of law was only a limitation of freedom. One cannot be more wrong: there cannot be freedom without the rule of law and without the existence of a state that enforces it.
  - aaa_aaa 2y ago
    Current state of your religion sucks big time then.
  - mannerheim 2y ago
    Selectively punishing someone with a grossly disproportionate sentence on the grounds of their political beliefs seems contrary to the rule of law.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      He was punished for his visible actions, not his private beliefs. Also, I was focusing less on Ulbricht, and more on what 'ty6853 wrote in the comment I replied to. Quoting another part of it: > The state hates more than anything someone who operates on first principles that the empire is wrong. My point is: the state is absolutely right to hate such people. This is true regardless of whether the "empire" is North Korea or the United Federation of Planets - it's not an ethics issue, it's a structural property of stable social organizations. As for people living today, unless you really suffer under the yoke of an evil empire, it's worth remembering that, were the state to suddenly break down, things will get much, much worse for everyone in it, yourself included. It's too easy for all of us to take our daily lives for granted.
      - mannerheim 2y ago
        Many were convicted of the same acts and received far lighter sentences. They specifically sought to make an example out of him. That is contrary to the rule of law.
  - throw7 2y ago
    The law can't save us.
  - jolmg 2y ago
    > the rule of law" is the only thing holding together your country, my country, everyone's countries, and civilized society in general. Take that away, and everything around us will collapse, regressing the few survivors of that event to the prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other I've seen this sentiment expressed before, including with the movie "The Purge" (that I admittedly haven't seen, but I understood the concept as law becomes suspended for a day and everyone becomes violent). That idea that the only thing keeping people safe is the rule of law seems absurd to me. There's a sense of empathy, there's religion (e.g. desire of heaven and fear of hell), there are family values (keeping extended family ties together which can induce pressure to do what's considered right), a concern over reputation, a sense of unity with one's culture and wanting the betterment of one's people, collectivism (the psychological/social tendency to put others before oneself), stuff like not wanting to bring shame to one's parents and extended family, a hate for hypocrisy, a simple lack of any desire to be violent, etc. etc. I like to believe that between most people and their potential for violence, there's a lot of things besides the rule of law. Law enforcement is for outliers that have a desire for violence and nothing else to stop them. If law enforcement would disappear from one day to the next, people would be less safe, but I don't think to the point that you'd have "few survivors of that event", especially if you consider just a single country/culture going through that experiment, since this probably depends somewhat on culture and its particular values. I'm more inclined to think that life would mostly just go on as normal, carried by habit/convention and the values we instill in offspring.
  - butlike 2y ago
    Maybe. Or maybe the arbitrary lines drawn and maintained that define "country" and "society" are the only things allowing hate to prosper. Get rid of the lines and become one people.
- pixelsort 2y ago
  Also his opsec was sloppy. If you want to believe that the spooks were doing full ipv4 scans to DDoS all his legit exit nodes that would make a better movie. But really, he was just in over his head. Predictably, dark web market operators adapted afterward. The state got lucky and they knew it, so that also factored in to their sentencing recommendations. Glad he's getting out.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law Uhm... Really? Is that present tense? If rule-of-law was a national holy religion, the last 10 years of US politics would have played out very very differently.
  - dns_snek 2y ago
    Like any religion, the rules usually don't apply to the leaders, only the followers.
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      Except that's fundamentally incompatible with "rule of law." So whatever real-world thing being described would need a different term.
      - arcfour 2y ago
        By that logic, nobody has lived under the rule of law ever, because it's only achievable in an ideal dream world.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        Terr_ 2y ago
        * ty6853: "The car is reliable." * Terr_: "No, there have been too many serious breakdowns." * dns_snek: "It's reliably unreliable, so it still counts." * Terr_: "No, that's literally the opposite of what it means to describe a car as reliable." * arcfour: "Terr_! Stop demanding perfection! The universe is imperfect therefore true reliability is impossible!" * Terr_: "No, goddamnit! That's not what I said! FFS, it's as if [RECURSION EXCEEDED]"
    - mcv 2y ago
      But that's what "rule of law" means: that the rules also apply to the leaders. The fact that leaders in the US aren't held accountable for their crimes means the US does not have the rule of law, but the rule of power. Or the rule of money, probably. The rich are above the law and can buy the government. Rule of law would prevent all of that. Or should.
- mcv 2y ago
  > Ross violated the only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law. He was sentenced for being a heretic. That's a weird way of talking about that. The rule of law is what keeps rampant corruption and government abuse at bay. It means the law also holds for the ruler, and not just for the subjects. The rule of law has already been significantly weakened in recent years by openly corrupt judges and politicians, and traitor being elected in defiance of the 14th amendment. None of this is a good thing. Without the rule of law, it's the people that lose, because then you get the rule of those in power, who will be above the law.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
  This is a really excellent analysis and you will see it in a lot of prosecutions once you learn about it
- scottLobster 2y ago
  Yep, and now the "heretics" are running the show, or at least a large piece of it, so they pardoned him. The law means less than it used to.
jajko 2y ago
Selling say drugs that kill people (kids including) and illegal weapons that are often used for murders. Such activity is by western standards one of worst crimes, especially in massive scale and run for profit. Even ignoring all other criminal activity, 25 to life seems like a adequate sentence. It seems that from day 1 US is moving quite far from the place it was and projected itself to others for past decades. More ruthless, money above all, not much fairness in international dealings. Maybe US will be richer after those 4 years, but at current trajectory it will lose a lot of friends and partners. Please realize this - for Europe, China starts to look like a great not only business but also military partner, much more reliable long term. This is how much such moves can fuck up things.
- ty6853 2y ago
  That's mainly because it cuts into the US government profit margins. They and their favored contractors have been selling arms for profit and love drug running when it suits their aims as they showed with eg support for the Contras. It is important drugs stay illegal so powerful connected interests can maintain high profit and control. Without that, simple cocaine/meth/marijuana is just an agricultural or chemical commodity with essentially the margin of generic OTC drugs.
  - jajko 2y ago
    Yeah I meant more like some shady fentanyl that overdoses people en masse, not some rather harmless and sometimes even beneficial weed. The worst part are weapons, there is no way to spin it as something benign. Victor Bout for example got 25 years and there was no drug smuggling nor contract murders.
    - ty6853 2y ago
      Victor Bout is free and selling weapons again with the blessing and release of the US government. Always was about profiting off of weapons. Don't believe what the US really got from it was one ditzy WNBA player.
  - kortilla 2y ago
victorbjorklund 2y ago
Pretty much all criminal laws are like that since only a fraction of crimes will ever lead to an arrest we make examples out of those are caught to make others less likely to commit crimes in the future when they see the punishment. The deterrence effect is basically "risk of getting caught" * "punishment if you get caught".
- dsego 2y ago
  It's not just the deterrence but to publicly condemn the act. Condemnation needs to have teeth and the perpetrator needs to feel the burden, otherwise it's just empty words on paper. The burden is necessary to establish social balance. The punishment can't be enjoyable, it needs to take away the unfair advantage gained by the criminal act, it provides a way to repay moral debt back to society. > A fourth feature of punishment, widely acknowledged at least since the publication of Joel Feinberg’s seminal 1965 article “The Expressive Function of Punishment” is that it serves to express condemnation, or censure, of the offender for her offense. As Feinberg discusses, it is this condemning element that distinguishes punishment from what he calls “nonpunitive penalties” such as parking tickets, demotions, flunkings, and so forth. (Feinberg, 1965: 398-401). https://iep.utm.edu/m-p-puni/ https://iep.utm.edu/m-p-puni/
mirzap 2y ago
[flagged]
- silver_silver 2y ago
  I’ve never heard this claim before, where are you getting this?
- razakel 2y ago
  Child abuse was the one thing that was never allowed on Silk Road.
- cultofmetatron 2y ago
  > He literally made a marketplace for people who sold, tortured, and killed children, even babies. cp was explicitly not allowed on Silk road. the man was a lot of things but he wasn't a monster.
- fbfactchecker 2y ago
  [flagged]
- torified 2y ago
  None of that is true.
mrpopo 2y ago
Pretty sure Silk Road enabled loads of pedophiles to go about their activities. This is a false equivalence
- rossjailed4less 2y ago
  [dead]
- mardifoufs 2y ago
  What do you mean? Did it actually allow selling anything related to pedophilia? Like CSAM?
  - namlem 2y ago
    Nope. Such content was banned.
- sweettea 2y ago
  Despite Silk Road explicitly banning CSAM, and the feds not charging Ulbricht with it when you know they would love the positive PR if they could?
- silver_silver 2y ago
  > The site's terms of service prohibited the sale of certain items. When the Silk Road marketplace first began, the creator and administrators instituted terms of service that prohibited the sale of anything whose purpose was to "harm or defraud." This included child pornography, stolen credit cards, assassinations, and weapons of any type https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)#Products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)#Produc...
Deutschland314 2y ago
Snoop you compare apples with oranges. People don't really care about child rapists see the Christian churches. Also you were able to buy everything on silk road including guns. The multiplication effect of this is potentially more worth. Nonetheless it's still a straw man argument. I personally would not mind at all increasing prison sentences for child rapists.
- eckmLJE 2y ago
  Silk road had a policy against selling items with intent to harm like guns. While occasionally some weapon listings would slip through, they would be taken down. The focus was drugs (and a lot of legal media). There were plenty of other black market sites on the dark web that sold everything, but that's not what the silk road in particular was about.
  - Deutschland314 2y ago
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bugdout 2y ago
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npoc 2y ago
In the UK, serial child rapists are being given 3 year sentences
- rossjailed4less 2y ago
  [dead]
- dani__german 2y ago
  In the UK, the police helped hide the crimes of non-british child rapists. The axiom of their "rule of law" was that racism is the worst possible sin, and that anything done to appease people calling you racist was mandatory. The below link MASSIVLEY understated the number of victims. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/rotherham-sex-abuse-shock-report-4110194 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/rotherham-sex-abuse-sh...
  - npoc 2y ago
    Enoch Powell explained all this nearly 60 years ago, and was sacked the next day by Edward Heath. The term "racist" is at best useless and at worst dangerous. It doesn't differentiate between judging people based on their physiology and judging them on their culture and values. By going out of their way to avoid appearing to judge by physiology, people allowed into their society millions of people with cultures and values fundamentally opposed to their own (e.g. Christians using the British common law vs Muslims using Sharia law). The result is a slow destruction of society that Enoch Powell predicted so long ago in his 1968 speech.
    - rafram 2y ago
      Well, maybe Britain shouldn't have colonized large areas of the globe and exploited them for resources while keeping the indigenous inhabitants oppressed for centuries, all while preaching the absolute supremacy of British civilization and culture. Hardly seems surprising that some of the people you colonized might want to see what all the fuss is about.
      - 2y ago
mcv 2y ago
Yes, but so are a lot of sentences in the US. I've heard of people being put away for decades for mere drug possession. That said, rapists surprisingly often get just a slap on the wrist, or not even that. The US absolutely needs some balance and consistency in its sentencing, but pardoning this one guy sends a really weird message in that regard. At the very least, just commute the sentence so at least the conviction still stands.
kerhackernews 2y ago
He operated a site that allowed you to hire hitmen.

ty6853 2y ago

The state hates more than anything someone who operates on first principles that the empire is wrong. A serial rapist, even one that would happily do it again, will often repent and quickly admit guilt. They have no interest in undermining the philosophical basis of the state. They will posture themselves as bound but imperfect citizens under the law. Ross violated the only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law. He was sentenced for being a heretic.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
> Ross violated the only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law. He was sentenced for being a heretic. Good. Let's keep in mind that the shared faith in this "holy religion, the rule of law" is the only thing holding together your country, my country, everyone's countries, and civilized society in general. Take that away, and everything around us will collapse, regressing the few survivors of that event to the prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other for what little scraps the land has to give.
- ty6853 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - formerly_proven 2y ago
    Yes, Ross Ulbricht is basically a revolutionary.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- kybernetyk 2y ago
  I'm from Germany. I could tell you something about blindly following the "rule of law". If you throw morality out the window the law can become a very ugly instrument.
  - suddenlybananas 2y ago
    [dead]
    - ty6853 2y ago
      I'd argue more have died from drug regulations than the Nazis, particularly when you factor in how DEA licensing and FDA approval corruption stifles access to medicine, and how prohibition fosters violence without meaningfully curbing harmful drug use.
      - suddenlybananas 2y ago
        Can you hear yourself? Are you really saying that "drug regulation" has caused more death than the tens of millions who died in ww2? Not to mention the millions and millions of people whose lives have been saved by drug regulation as they are not exposed to harmful drugs from charlatans.
        gosub100 2y ago
        Slow burn vs all at once. Also helps if you include the casualties from the narco wars in mexico
      - kortilla 2y ago
        Yeah, I remember the silk web being exclusively for cancer treatments not yet approved by the FDA. /s
      - jaapz 2y ago
        39 million people died on the European theater of WW2 alone. Estimates of Jewish deaths during the holocaust range from 4.9 and 5.9 million people. Are you seriously suggesting drug ~regulation~ caused more deaths? Silk road was not primarily used for "unregulated medicine" but for recreational drugs, weapons and other quite unsavory illegal things.
- WinstonSmith84 2y ago
  > ... the shared faith in this "holy religion, the rule of law" is the only thing holding together your country, my country ... Let's forget a minute about that holy rule of law, "your" country has elected a convicted criminal, and it's yet to collapse.
  - JBSay 2y ago
    Quite an interesting fact that both committed victimless crimes and both were victims of exceptional prosecution
    - WinstonSmith84 2y ago
      That's comparing apples and oranges. One spent 10 years in a jail for making himself rich (and some others), the other never spent a day in a jail for committing at the highest level election subversion, retention of classified information, hush money payment (and more) - and was caught on the latter, eventually. It was arguably "exceptional prosecution" for that hush payment, like Al Capone was caught on a mere tax fraud
      - PinkSheep 2y ago
        Maybe he should've pardoned himself into the past and a little bit into the future too, like that other man did. /jk
      - itsoktocry 2y ago
        >One spent 10 years in a jail for making himself rich (and some others), the other never spent a day in a jail for committing at the highest level election subversion, retention of classified information, hush money payment (and more) - and was caught on the latter, eventually. What an interpretation! Another one might be: they tried to throw all kinds of things at Trump, and they all failed because they simply aren't true, until they managed to catch him on some triviality. The fact that you "rule of law" people keep putting out accusations as if they were convictions, and insinuating people should be judged on these accusations is truly horrible for the system.
    - 2y ago
- JBSay 2y ago
  Grossly excessive sentences for non-victim crimes while letting rapists, murderers and corrupt politicians go free with at best a slap on the wrist, is why people are abandon your "holy religion" in droves
  - jollyllama 2y ago
    Big shades of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas in GP comment
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      Never read it, but I watched its recent adaptation as a Strange New Worlds episode called Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach, and if it's in any way representative of the source material, then I'd say the ethical problems there are nontrivial.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  Look at every society before the modern state monopoly on violence. Basically none of them were in danger of regressing because of it. The evolution of the modern state is a result of inter society competition for who can apply the most massed violence against a competing state. We've seen what happens when empires fall apart (Rome for example) and things don't revert to "prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other for what little scraps the land has to give". I'm not gonna go too far into this because like you say, it's a religion, and I'm not gonna waste my time trying to convert anyone.
  - vladms 2y ago
    Depends on the time scale. I mean the early middle ages (500 to 1000) could be described as "(smaller) tribes fighting over what is left" (considering all the barbarians from the north pillaging the roman empire while the Arabs conquering it from the south). The evolution of modern society is as much a result of religion (centralizing a purpose and limiting inner fighting) of science (do things more efficient) as it is to violence. Violence might be one way to progress, everybody is entitled to an opinion. I just hope you experienced it yourself if you believe it is the way you prefer personally. I am saying just because I thought some things would be great, only to be quite disappointed when I actually tried them...
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    > Look at every society before the modern state monopoly on violence. Basically none of them were in danger of regressing because of it. They were too small. But they had their own social orders of equivalent importance, and breaking those would break them apart. There's a reason religion and tradition played bigger role in a distant past, and going against them was severely punished. It's not just out of spite or "us vs. them"; people take threats to stability of their group personally. It's definitely in part a survival mechanism. > The evolution of the modern state is a result of inter society competition for who can apply the most massed violence against a competing state. Yes. More specifically, it's the result of growth. It's the same thing as small tribes fighting each other over some small areas of land, except scaled up. Bigger groups have a competitive advantage over smaller groups, but there's a limit to the size of a group beyond which it ends up splitting apart; increasing that limit requires stacking more layers of hierarchy and associated social technologies. "Rule of law" and the legal system in general is one of such technologies, and it looks like it does today, at scales of groups we have today. A group of dozens can just work on instinct alone. A group of hundreds requires some rules and specialization and designated authority. Scale that 100x, and you need another level of leadership hierarchy just to keep sub-group leaders coordinated and aligned. Scale that 100x further, and you kind of have to get something looking like a modern nation state, as anything else would either break apart or be defeated by another group that is more like a modern nation state. See also: Dunbar's number. > We've seen what happens when empires fall apart (Rome for example) and things don't revert to "prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other for what little scraps the land has to give". Europe would disagree.
- ETH_start 2y ago
  Ironically, by sentencing him more harshly on the basis of ideology as opposed to on the basis of the criminal code, you are undermining the rule of law, which requires sentences to be based only on statutory law.
- uludag 2y ago
  I think you may be overstating this. The archeological evidence is pretty clear that prehistorical lifestyles weren't just small tribes slaughtering each other, and that there was a lot of variety and complexity in the way prehistoric societies organized themselves. Also, there are some societies that exist in 2025 which proved scary enough examples of what's possible. There are also societies which have blatant arbitrary authoritarian rule which seem to be well in the 21st century. I doubt that faith in the rule of law is the only thing keeping our societies together.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Ray20 2y ago
    > pretty clear that prehistorical lifestyles weren't just small tribes slaughtering each other, Well, that's sounds quite logical. When you kill people, they usually fight back. Very strongly fight back. So you have to expect something big to make it worth it. But small very undeveloped tribes had nothing of such, so they have no incentives to slaughter each other.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      > But small very undeveloped tribes had nothing of such, so they have no incentives to slaughter each other. With neither size nor technology to make a lasting impact, the ones that got slaughtered didn't exactly leave much in archeological evidence behind for us to find. As for GP's point, obviously those people weren't bred for battle with others. All the tiny tribes would happily frolic in the forest or whatever small prehistoric tribes did when they weren't starving, but eventually they'd grow in size, hit a size limit leading to a new tribe splitting off, etc.; over time, the number of tribes grew to the point that they started to bump into each other and contest the same resources, leading to the obvious outcome.
      - uludag 2y ago
        I'm genuinely convinced that prehistoric humans, being literally the same species as us, were just as capable as us in the ability to thoughtfully construct their societies. Like, why, when they bumped into each other, couldn't they have formed a confederation? I think instead of labeling them as children of nature or starving savages warring with everything in their vicinity, it makes most sense to see them as more or less similar to ourselves.
- kerkeslager 2y ago
  Nonsense. "The rule of law" isn't one cohesive thing--sure, some parts of it are important for holding together a country/society, but in a sufficiently complex legal system (like the US') there exists a plethora of laws which are irrelevant to holding together society. Every such society has laws which are on the books but are not enforced, weakly enforced, or unevenly enforced. In fact, an implicit part of British Prime Minister Harold Wilson's theory of government was explicitly having laws which only existed to be broken, to allow citizens to exercise their rebellious impulses without causing harm--Wilson believed that turning a blind eye to the breaking of a certain subset of laws actually minimized the harm of unlawful action. An example of this is rules against walking on the grass in many public areas in London, which is enforced by security guards whose only recourse is to tell you to stop. The US also has laws which we don't care if you break, and the laws we place in this category say a lot about our society. For example, it's widely accepted that people can drive up to 10 MPH above the speed limit and consequences will be rare. Even more severe moving violations are met with a slap on the wrist which primarily effects the poor (fines). Drug laws were already within this category before Ullbricht started the Silk Road. The was on drugs was explicitly started by Nixon as a war on the antiwar left and black people, and if you didn't fall into one of those categories, you were/are largely above drug laws, since enforcement generally targets those categories, while the social acceptability of popular drugs means that crimes of this nature are rarely reported. Ullbricht's primary offense was breaking a law that was already broken ubiquitously. Society did not collapse before Ullbricht when these laws were broken, it did not collapse when Ullbricht broke them, and it does not collapse because of the myriad of darknet sites which immediately filled the void left by the Silk Road's closure. Ullbricht's arrest didn't end the blatant disregard for drug laws on the darknet, and yet somehow in the 11 years since his arrest, society still hasn't devolved into small tribes slaughtering each other. In short, if people breaking drug laws was a real threat to society, then society would have devolved into tribes slaughtering each other already. We have had over 50 years of people ubiquitously breaking drug laws without societal collapse. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    I'm not talking about any particular law, I'm talking about the general idea of laws as things that apply to everyone, that everyone should obey, and that everyone expects everyone else will obey, and that everyone knows they're expected by others to obey. That's the self-reinforcing structure of intersubjectivity, that allows us to invent and maintain imaginary entities such as "dollar", "law", "justice system", "contract", or "limited liability corporation", etc. Underlying all such entities is the set of shared beliefs about how others will behave. This structure is self-reinforcing and very resilient: few people here and there rejecting faith in rule of law, or authority of the courts, or money, don't make a difference - we write such people off as weirdos and carry on with our days, secure in knowledge our world will continue to work as it worked the day before. But if sufficient amount of people have their faith falter, that's where the trouble starts. For example, if enough people stop trusting in the justice system to deliver something resembling justice most of the time, you'll see people ignoring courts and laws and taking justice into their own hands[0]. People start lynching and killing each other, others see them getting away with it, which quickly destroys their trust in the system, and now you're at the precipice. If shooting a (person accused of being) thief is fine, if shooting a billionaire is fine, then why uphold a contract? Might as well get your own at gunpoint, etc. At this point everything stops working - banks, healthcare, fire services, stores. Your country collapses. You probably die. That is why threats to our shared belief system are so dangerous, and need to be dealt with swiftly and aggressively. It's not about elites in power wanting to stay in power (though it's no doubt part of it for them) - it's because should we all start thinking our social structures don't work, and that everyone else thinks this too, and start acting on this expectation, they'll all collapse in an instant. -- [0] - No, whatever it is that America has with its police is still far from that point.
- littlestymaar 2y ago
  It makes me very sad when people act as if the rule of law wasn't important, or worse in case like this they do as if the rule of law was only a limitation of freedom. One cannot be more wrong: there cannot be freedom without the rule of law and without the existence of a state that enforces it.
- aaa_aaa 2y ago
  Current state of your religion sucks big time then.
- mannerheim 2y ago
  Selectively punishing someone with a grossly disproportionate sentence on the grounds of their political beliefs seems contrary to the rule of law.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    He was punished for his visible actions, not his private beliefs. Also, I was focusing less on Ulbricht, and more on what 'ty6853 wrote in the comment I replied to. Quoting another part of it: > The state hates more than anything someone who operates on first principles that the empire is wrong. My point is: the state is absolutely right to hate such people. This is true regardless of whether the "empire" is North Korea or the United Federation of Planets - it's not an ethics issue, it's a structural property of stable social organizations. As for people living today, unless you really suffer under the yoke of an evil empire, it's worth remembering that, were the state to suddenly break down, things will get much, much worse for everyone in it, yourself included. It's too easy for all of us to take our daily lives for granted.
    - mannerheim 2y ago
      Many were convicted of the same acts and received far lighter sentences. They specifically sought to make an example out of him. That is contrary to the rule of law.
- throw7 2y ago
  The law can't save us.
- jolmg 2y ago
  > the rule of law" is the only thing holding together your country, my country, everyone's countries, and civilized society in general. Take that away, and everything around us will collapse, regressing the few survivors of that event to the prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other I've seen this sentiment expressed before, including with the movie "The Purge" (that I admittedly haven't seen, but I understood the concept as law becomes suspended for a day and everyone becomes violent). That idea that the only thing keeping people safe is the rule of law seems absurd to me. There's a sense of empathy, there's religion (e.g. desire of heaven and fear of hell), there are family values (keeping extended family ties together which can induce pressure to do what's considered right), a concern over reputation, a sense of unity with one's culture and wanting the betterment of one's people, collectivism (the psychological/social tendency to put others before oneself), stuff like not wanting to bring shame to one's parents and extended family, a hate for hypocrisy, a simple lack of any desire to be violent, etc. etc. I like to believe that between most people and their potential for violence, there's a lot of things besides the rule of law. Law enforcement is for outliers that have a desire for violence and nothing else to stop them. If law enforcement would disappear from one day to the next, people would be less safe, but I don't think to the point that you'd have "few survivors of that event", especially if you consider just a single country/culture going through that experiment, since this probably depends somewhat on culture and its particular values. I'm more inclined to think that life would mostly just go on as normal, carried by habit/convention and the values we instill in offspring.
- butlike 2y ago
  Maybe. Or maybe the arbitrary lines drawn and maintained that define "country" and "society" are the only things allowing hate to prosper. Get rid of the lines and become one people.
pixelsort 2y ago
Also his opsec was sloppy. If you want to believe that the spooks were doing full ipv4 scans to DDoS all his legit exit nodes that would make a better movie. But really, he was just in over his head. Predictably, dark web market operators adapted afterward. The state got lucky and they knew it, so that also factored in to their sentencing recommendations. Glad he's getting out.
Terr_ 2y ago
> only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law Uhm... Really? Is that present tense? If rule-of-law was a national holy religion, the last 10 years of US politics would have played out very very differently.
- dns_snek 2y ago
  Like any religion, the rules usually don't apply to the leaders, only the followers.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    Except that's fundamentally incompatible with "rule of law." So whatever real-world thing being described would need a different term.
    - arcfour 2y ago
      By that logic, nobody has lived under the rule of law ever, because it's only achievable in an ideal dream world.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - Terr_ 2y ago
        * ty6853: "The car is reliable." * Terr_: "No, there have been too many serious breakdowns." * dns_snek: "It's reliably unreliable, so it still counts." * Terr_: "No, that's literally the opposite of what it means to describe a car as reliable." * arcfour: "Terr_! Stop demanding perfection! The universe is imperfect therefore true reliability is impossible!" * Terr_: "No, goddamnit! That's not what I said! FFS, it's as if [RECURSION EXCEEDED]"
  - mcv 2y ago
    But that's what "rule of law" means: that the rules also apply to the leaders. The fact that leaders in the US aren't held accountable for their crimes means the US does not have the rule of law, but the rule of power. Or the rule of money, probably. The rich are above the law and can buy the government. Rule of law would prevent all of that. Or should.
mcv 2y ago
> Ross violated the only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law. He was sentenced for being a heretic. That's a weird way of talking about that. The rule of law is what keeps rampant corruption and government abuse at bay. It means the law also holds for the ruler, and not just for the subjects. The rule of law has already been significantly weakened in recent years by openly corrupt judges and politicians, and traitor being elected in defiance of the 14th amendment. None of this is a good thing. Without the rule of law, it's the people that lose, because then you get the rule of those in power, who will be above the law.
ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
This is a really excellent analysis and you will see it in a lot of prosecutions once you learn about it
scottLobster 2y ago
Yep, and now the "heretics" are running the show, or at least a large piece of it, so they pardoned him. The law means less than it used to.

jajko 2y ago

Selling say drugs that kill people (kids including) and illegal weapons that are often used for murders. Such activity is by western standards one of worst crimes, especially in massive scale and run for profit. Even ignoring all other criminal activity, 25 to life seems like a adequate sentence. It seems that from day 1 US is moving quite far from the place it was and projected itself to others for past decades. More ruthless, money above all, not much fairness in international dealings. Maybe US will be richer after those 4 years, but at current trajectory it will lose a lot of friends and partners. Please realize this - for Europe, China starts to look like a great not only business but also military partner, much more reliable long term. This is how much such moves can fuck up things.

ty6853 2y ago
That's mainly because it cuts into the US government profit margins. They and their favored contractors have been selling arms for profit and love drug running when it suits their aims as they showed with eg support for the Contras. It is important drugs stay illegal so powerful connected interests can maintain high profit and control. Without that, simple cocaine/meth/marijuana is just an agricultural or chemical commodity with essentially the margin of generic OTC drugs.
- jajko 2y ago
  Yeah I meant more like some shady fentanyl that overdoses people en masse, not some rather harmless and sometimes even beneficial weed. The worst part are weapons, there is no way to spin it as something benign. Victor Bout for example got 25 years and there was no drug smuggling nor contract murders.
  - ty6853 2y ago
    Victor Bout is free and selling weapons again with the blessing and release of the US government. Always was about profiting off of weapons. Don't believe what the US really got from it was one ditzy WNBA player.
- kortilla 2y ago

victorbjorklund 2y ago

Pretty much all criminal laws are like that since only a fraction of crimes will ever lead to an arrest we make examples out of those are caught to make others less likely to commit crimes in the future when they see the punishment. The deterrence effect is basically "risk of getting caught" * "punishment if you get caught".

dsego 2y ago
It's not just the deterrence but to publicly condemn the act. Condemnation needs to have teeth and the perpetrator needs to feel the burden, otherwise it's just empty words on paper. The burden is necessary to establish social balance. The punishment can't be enjoyable, it needs to take away the unfair advantage gained by the criminal act, it provides a way to repay moral debt back to society. > A fourth feature of punishment, widely acknowledged at least since the publication of Joel Feinberg’s seminal 1965 article “The Expressive Function of Punishment” is that it serves to express condemnation, or censure, of the offender for her offense. As Feinberg discusses, it is this condemning element that distinguishes punishment from what he calls “nonpunitive penalties” such as parking tickets, demotions, flunkings, and so forth. (Feinberg, 1965: 398-401). https://iep.utm.edu/m-p-puni/ https://iep.utm.edu/m-p-puni/

mirzap 2y ago

[flagged]

silver_silver 2y ago
I’ve never heard this claim before, where are you getting this?
razakel 2y ago
Child abuse was the one thing that was never allowed on Silk Road.
cultofmetatron 2y ago
> He literally made a marketplace for people who sold, tortured, and killed children, even babies. cp was explicitly not allowed on Silk road. the man was a lot of things but he wasn't a monster.
fbfactchecker 2y ago
[flagged]
torified 2y ago
None of that is true.

mrpopo 2y ago

Pretty sure Silk Road enabled loads of pedophiles to go about their activities. This is a false equivalence

rossjailed4less 2y ago
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mardifoufs 2y ago
What do you mean? Did it actually allow selling anything related to pedophilia? Like CSAM?
- namlem 2y ago
  Nope. Such content was banned.
sweettea 2y ago
Despite Silk Road explicitly banning CSAM, and the feds not charging Ulbricht with it when you know they would love the positive PR if they could?
silver_silver 2y ago
> The site's terms of service prohibited the sale of certain items. When the Silk Road marketplace first began, the creator and administrators instituted terms of service that prohibited the sale of anything whose purpose was to "harm or defraud." This included child pornography, stolen credit cards, assassinations, and weapons of any type https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)#Products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)#Produc...

Deutschland314 2y ago

Snoop you compare apples with oranges. People don't really care about child rapists see the Christian churches. Also you were able to buy everything on silk road including guns. The multiplication effect of this is potentially more worth. Nonetheless it's still a straw man argument. I personally would not mind at all increasing prison sentences for child rapists.

eckmLJE 2y ago
Silk road had a policy against selling items with intent to harm like guns. While occasionally some weapon listings would slip through, they would be taken down. The focus was drugs (and a lot of legal media). There were plenty of other black market sites on the dark web that sold everything, but that's not what the silk road in particular was about.
- Deutschland314 2y ago
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bugdout 2y ago

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npoc 2y ago

In the UK, serial child rapists are being given 3 year sentences

rossjailed4less 2y ago
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dani__german 2y ago
In the UK, the police helped hide the crimes of non-british child rapists. The axiom of their "rule of law" was that racism is the worst possible sin, and that anything done to appease people calling you racist was mandatory. The below link MASSIVLEY understated the number of victims. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/rotherham-sex-abuse-shock-report-4110194 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/rotherham-sex-abuse-sh...
- npoc 2y ago
  Enoch Powell explained all this nearly 60 years ago, and was sacked the next day by Edward Heath. The term "racist" is at best useless and at worst dangerous. It doesn't differentiate between judging people based on their physiology and judging them on their culture and values. By going out of their way to avoid appearing to judge by physiology, people allowed into their society millions of people with cultures and values fundamentally opposed to their own (e.g. Christians using the British common law vs Muslims using Sharia law). The result is a slow destruction of society that Enoch Powell predicted so long ago in his 1968 speech.
  - rafram 2y ago
    Well, maybe Britain shouldn't have colonized large areas of the globe and exploited them for resources while keeping the indigenous inhabitants oppressed for centuries, all while preaching the absolute supremacy of British civilization and culture. Hardly seems surprising that some of the people you colonized might want to see what all the fuss is about.
    - 2y ago

mcv 2y ago

Yes, but so are a lot of sentences in the US. I've heard of people being put away for decades for mere drug possession. That said, rapists surprisingly often get just a slap on the wrist, or not even that. The US absolutely needs some balance and consistency in its sentencing, but pardoning this one guy sends a really weird message in that regard. At the very least, just commute the sentence so at least the conviction still stands.

kerhackernews 2y ago

He operated a site that allowed you to hire hitmen.