7 ms·

Not going to comment on the murder part as that’s well discussed here. I would take issue with assuming that it was net positive with ratings. Given the anonym

Not going to comment on the murder part as that’s well discussed here. I would take issue with assuming that it was net positive with ratings. Given the anonymous nature handling bots spamming fake reviews would be even harder to catch here, and you ultimately don’t know who ended up addicted/hooked/DUI’s etc from the easy availability this provided. I’m not sure the total effects could ever be qualified, but it’s not like unadulterated drugs are automatically safe. Just look at how many lives pharma-grade opioids ruined, even though they were “safe”. That’s also not to mention guns and all kinds of other dangerous & illegal parts of it. I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel.

mtoner23 2y ago
i think this points to a bunch of weird crypto people are actually in charge of a lot of this administration
- etc-hosts 2y ago
  Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have significant influence on staffing. Vivek Ramaswamy is a partner at a16z
grayhatter 2y ago
> I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel. why do you believe he's anti-drug or anti-cartel?
- azinman2 2y ago
  Well, he just did an executive order to label cartels as foreign terrorists, and has spoken at length about drugs in many of his speeches. Not sure why you think such a statement is controversial.
  - hedora 2y ago
    He made sure the Sacklers could keep their fortunes and continue to sell opioids.
  - grayhatter 2y ago
    Because I don't think he has a honestly held belief about anything. I think he's happy to do whatever is most expedient for his interests. He wants to be known as a guy who trades favors, so here, he ignored all the previous fear mongering about [scary thing], and is repaying the favor to the "libertarian party" who wanted this, and voted for him. Almost everything he says is just for show, fits his pattern of behavior better than, "he believes [thing he said]" does. I just read another article about how the person who says we need to follow "law and order" and "respect police" just pardoned everybody convicted of violence against police... again, trading favors instead of consistently following something he said.
- nozzlegear 2y ago
  I'm no Trump fan and won't go to bat for him, but being anti-drug and anti-cartel is literally one of his schticks.
  - grayhatter 2y ago
    I replied with more details in a sister thread but calling it a schtick is more accurate that I think you meant. It's exclusively a shtick; he doesn't actually believe it, or care about it.
_yb2s 2y ago
> I would take issue with assuming that it was net positive with ratings. I know this is probably as minority view, but I think if adults consent to buying and using any drug, that should be both fully legal, and their right and responsibility- any negative consequences are 100% their own fault, not the person who sold them. It's probably true that making drugs easier to buy made more people buy them, but I was only considering the ill effects of fraudulently adulterated products. Do the math differently if you don't see it this way. I don't know how Silk Road was designed, and have never actually used it or anything like it- but I imagine it would be possible to eliminate fraudulent reviews with proper design, and they may have done so. eBay, for example, is almost free of fraudulent reviews because posting a single review is very expensive- you'd need to sell an item to yourself for full price, and then pay eBay their full (rather large) cut to post a single fraudulent review. As a buyer, you should be able to take a single high effort review that contains something like mass spec chemical analysis results, and further confirm that the reviewer themselves has a credible history of making purchases and reviews broadly across a lot of different sellers. An impossibly expensive to fake signal. This could also be done automatically by the platform- by making the more credible reviews display first. > I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel. I explained this in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787217 Trump is not an idealist- he will promise anything to anyone if it gets power and attention. Previously, he had attempted a political career as a leftist, and switched to the right because it was getting more traction.
- azinman2 2y ago
  Re-consenting: this is a different argument than saying more lives were saved because the reviews would remove adulterated products. Again, just look at opioid addiction for very clear evidence of the opposite effect. It is very clear from what you’ve said that you haven’t used it :) I have browsed it when it was active and I was very pro tor. You’re making a lot of assumptions that simply don’t hold for silk road.
  - _yb2s 2y ago
    > Again, just look at opioid addiction for very clear evidence of the opposite effect. I was playing devil's advocate, but agree there is more culpability to a seller if the drug overwhelms your ability to make the choice in the first place- however a lot of very illegal drugs do not do this. More so if you're using emotionally manipulative ads and selling methods as the alcohol and pharma industry do.
hedora 2y ago
Historically, many anti-drug / anti-cartel leaders are actually members of a rival cartel, and want to use law enforcement to fight their wars for them. The Mexican government has a long history of this. The LAPD’s (well documented for over 50 years) do the same thing. Trump is a convicted felon with lots of ties to organized crime. Nothing about him pardoning members of some criminal organizations but not others is surprising. In related news, he signed an executive order forcing prosecutors to seek the death penalty when police are killed, and in the same day pardoned 132 of his supporters that were convicted of assaulting police officers during an event where officers were killed.
- azinman2 2y ago
  You think Trump is involved with drug selling organized crime, and this guy somehow was on “his side”?
- reverendsteveii 2y ago
  >he signed an executive order forcing prosecutors to seek the death penalty when police are killed He also pardoned a drug dealing cop killer at the end of his last term. Said cop killer has since been arrested for attempting to strangle his wife to death. https://www.wesh.com/article/cop-killer-pardoned-by-trump-commits-new-crime-in-florida/62073373 https://www.wesh.com/article/cop-killer-pardoned-by-trump-co...
- motorest 2y ago
  > Historically, many anti-drug / anti-cartel leaders are actually members of a rival cartel, and want to use law enforcement to fight their wars for them. For reference, Rudy Giuliani was lauded as the anti-organized mayor that brought down the Italian mob in New York, but ultimately was flagged as actually being an upper echelon of Russian organized crime who worked to establish it by eliminating competiton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani
  - Maxatar 2y ago
    The Wikipedia article does not flag Giuliani as being a member of Russian organized crime, but someone who Giuliani's law firm represents, an individual by the name of Dmytry Firtash. Furthermore the timeline for this is over a decade after Giuliani was mayor of New York.
rmah 2y ago
Well, now you probably understand that Trump is not really anti-drug/anti-cartel. Nor do I think he's pro-drug/pro-cartel. I think he doesn't actually care except in how those issues affect his political career and public profile. Many of Trump's more ... let's call them "random" seeming statements and actions make much more sense if you look at them through the lens of "he doesn't actually care one way or the other".
- Slava_Propanei 2y ago
  [dead]
- kmeisthax 2y ago
  Trump is pro-Trump. That's it.
  - markhahn 2y ago
    Well, also pro-publicity and pro-distraction (firehose). Of course those are ultimately self-benefiting too.
diggan 2y ago
> That’s also not to mention guns and all kinds of other dangerous & illegal parts of it. I think it isn't mentioned because Silk Road didn't actually facilitate any selling/buying of weapons or any items "whose purpose was to "harm or defraud."" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)#Products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)#Produc... > I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel. He's the candidate that was preferred by Christians, yet probably he was the least Christian-like candidate. Just today/yesterday he criticized a Bishop for values that are clearly Christian, people seem to swallow it. I'm pretty sure trying to add logic/reasoning to the choices he makes is a lost cause.
- zombiwoof 2y ago
  Facebook doesn’t make the comments that will kill people
  - banku_brougham 2y ago
    Probably the first social media genocide was organized on Facebook, the Rohingya genocide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide
    - diggan 2y ago
      Similarly, the first social media revolutions were also organized on Facebook (and Twitter): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
  - toasterlovin 2y ago
    "Facebook is a communication tool for friends and family that is sometimes used for illegal activity" is categorically different than "Silk Road is a tool created to facilitate illegal activity."
- azinman2 2y ago
  I saw guns on it when I joined years ago.
napkin 2y ago
(SWIM’s experience with Silk Road): For LSD there existed a third-party forum, where a group of (supposedly) vendor-neutral, unaffiliated individuals would purchase samples from vendors, send them to private or state-sponsored labs around the world and publish/discuss the results (often with online links to lab results). Yes, of course vendors could have also attempted to infiltrate these forums. But as enough of these functions were provided by/for the community, the profit incentive tilts. If you ran a vendor account on the Silk Road, your effort was better spent maintaining/improving good infosec and mail/postal security. Some techniques they developed were quite innovative, the professionalism was evident. Ross’s story is fascinating and tragic- as everything that’s said for and against his character is generally true. Silk Road was built on naive yet admirable ideals. It fostered a special community, some of which really did reflect those ideals. He got in over his head, and really did try to have someone killed. Though, the details on that latter point are a bit more complicated- authorities had infiltrated Ross’s inner circle- the motive and the ‘hitman’ himself were fictional. Ross still took the bait though, which is pretty damning. Until that point, they weren’t sure they had a sufficient case on him.
- _yb2s 2y ago
  Is that why they never prosecuted the attempted murder? It sounds like entrapment. That's the point people don't seem to be getting about anonymous reviews- if the review is more costly than the value it provides the seller, they won't do it, and it's fairly easy to make that the case. A separate enthusiast forum where the reviews are from people with a long history of high effort engagement is a good example of that. That's basically the idea behind crypto as well- making false transactions is more expensive than the value it could return.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    Entrapment requires some coercive/persuasive force by the government to push you to commit the crime, the government is allowed to setup entirely fake scenarios and let you choose to do a crime.
    - 2y ago
armandososa 2y ago
he is just anti-mexico.
hinkley 2y ago
Something anyone with an addict in their life needs to know: While substances can efficiently help someone destroy their life, keeping them away from drugs won’t stop them from destroying their lives. There’s something already broken in these people that they need to fix before it’s too late. There are perfectly legal alternatives that can be just as effective with a little more effort. Putting heroin in your arm is just quicker than downing a fifth of vodka, or chasing dopamine at the dog track.
- Willish42 2y ago
  I think you're advocating for better mental health care and rehabilitation of addicts, which I agree with. However, the idea that addicts will destroy their lives regardless of whether they stop using, or are forced to stop using, their drug of choice is an extremely dangerous statement. Many addicts get better by changing their environment and quitting/going to rehab/etc. Furthermore, heroin != vodka in terms of how addictive it is for the average user, and that's partly why only one of them is legal for recreational use. Controversies about decriminalization aside, harm reduction exists as a studied component in addiction, public health, and psychology circles for a reason.
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    Alcohol destroys many, many more lives than heroin. Isn’t even close.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      The important question isn't raw numbers, it's which destroys a greater percentage of lives out of those who consume it. If heroin were as widespread as alcohol, would it still be true that alcohol destroys more lives? We obviously can't know for sure without trying it, but preliminary results aren't promising.
- snailmailstare 2y ago
  Yeah, I don't know. There's certainly people that are just broken, but reading other examples, I think there are plenty of people who just happen on to a perfect addiction(, or maybe an imperfect one that fills the spot). The manifest destiny stuff is kind of a mix that soothes a lot of people with various motives whether or not it is representative of the median case.
sweeter 2y ago
Its purely transactional. The Libertarians gave him their endorsement and one of the things they wanted in return was this pardon and deregulation.
- azinman2 2y ago
  The libertarian party or a bunch of crypto bros? I don’t get why “libertarians” would care about this one guy?
  - etc-hosts 2y ago
    Ulbricht's career represents many core values of a certain wing of today's Libertarians. * unfettered and unregulated and anonymous weapons sales. * willful ignorance and rejection of any of the social costs of buying and selling hard drugs. * commerce that operates in a world that is difficult to be taxes by government entities, and ideally anonymously (even though bitcoin is the least anonymous thing in the world)
    - azinman2 2y ago
      So are libertarians fighting for complete legalization of drugs? If so, why aren’t they pressing on Trump for that? Why wasn’t that an executive order vs pardoning this guy?
      - etc-hosts 2y ago
        I don't think Trump actually has a lot of Core Beliefs besides do stuff that appears strong on tv. A large portion of people at the Libertarian convention that Trump gave a speech at would prefer complete legalization of all drugs. I think it's a belief that a lot of us arrive at early in our lives, many eventually grow out of it.
        azinman2 2y ago
        > I think it's a belief that a lot of us arrive at early in our lives, many eventually grow out of it. Very astute. What’s interesting to me is the ability for youth to discount this potential change, mostly because they just see the end result vs the journey. I know I was like that.
Beijinger 2y ago
It was a promise to his libertarian voters....
dutchbookmaker 2y ago
I can only go off what I read in American Kingpin but from that book, to pardon Ulbricht is absolutely insane. Not to mention lets compare what Ulbricht did to say Snowden? Are you kidding me? It is like we live in some idiot version of the Twilight Zone.

mtoner23 2y ago

i think this points to a bunch of weird crypto people are actually in charge of a lot of this administration

etc-hosts 2y ago
Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have significant influence on staffing. Vivek Ramaswamy is a partner at a16z

grayhatter 2y ago

> I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel. why do you believe he's anti-drug or anti-cartel?

azinman2 2y ago
Well, he just did an executive order to label cartels as foreign terrorists, and has spoken at length about drugs in many of his speeches. Not sure why you think such a statement is controversial.
- hedora 2y ago
  He made sure the Sacklers could keep their fortunes and continue to sell opioids.
- grayhatter 2y ago
  Because I don't think he has a honestly held belief about anything. I think he's happy to do whatever is most expedient for his interests. He wants to be known as a guy who trades favors, so here, he ignored all the previous fear mongering about [scary thing], and is repaying the favor to the "libertarian party" who wanted this, and voted for him. Almost everything he says is just for show, fits his pattern of behavior better than, "he believes [thing he said]" does. I just read another article about how the person who says we need to follow "law and order" and "respect police" just pardoned everybody convicted of violence against police... again, trading favors instead of consistently following something he said.
nozzlegear 2y ago
I'm no Trump fan and won't go to bat for him, but being anti-drug and anti-cartel is literally one of his schticks.
- grayhatter 2y ago
  I replied with more details in a sister thread but calling it a schtick is more accurate that I think you meant. It's exclusively a shtick; he doesn't actually believe it, or care about it.

_yb2s 2y ago

> I would take issue with assuming that it was net positive with ratings. I know this is probably as minority view, but I think if adults consent to buying and using any drug, that should be both fully legal, and their right and responsibility- any negative consequences are 100% their own fault, not the person who sold them. It's probably true that making drugs easier to buy made more people buy them, but I was only considering the ill effects of fraudulently adulterated products. Do the math differently if you don't see it this way. I don't know how Silk Road was designed, and have never actually used it or anything like it- but I imagine it would be possible to eliminate fraudulent reviews with proper design, and they may have done so. eBay, for example, is almost free of fraudulent reviews because posting a single review is very expensive- you'd need to sell an item to yourself for full price, and then pay eBay their full (rather large) cut to post a single fraudulent review. As a buyer, you should be able to take a single high effort review that contains something like mass spec chemical analysis results, and further confirm that the reviewer themselves has a credible history of making purchases and reviews broadly across a lot of different sellers. An impossibly expensive to fake signal. This could also be done automatically by the platform- by making the more credible reviews display first. > I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel. I explained this in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787217 Trump is not an idealist- he will promise anything to anyone if it gets power and attention. Previously, he had attempted a political career as a leftist, and switched to the right because it was getting more traction.

azinman2 2y ago
Re-consenting: this is a different argument than saying more lives were saved because the reviews would remove adulterated products. Again, just look at opioid addiction for very clear evidence of the opposite effect. It is very clear from what you’ve said that you haven’t used it :) I have browsed it when it was active and I was very pro tor. You’re making a lot of assumptions that simply don’t hold for silk road.
- _yb2s 2y ago
  > Again, just look at opioid addiction for very clear evidence of the opposite effect. I was playing devil's advocate, but agree there is more culpability to a seller if the drug overwhelms your ability to make the choice in the first place- however a lot of very illegal drugs do not do this. More so if you're using emotionally manipulative ads and selling methods as the alcohol and pharma industry do.

hedora 2y ago

Historically, many anti-drug / anti-cartel leaders are actually members of a rival cartel, and want to use law enforcement to fight their wars for them. The Mexican government has a long history of this. The LAPD’s (well documented for over 50 years) do the same thing. Trump is a convicted felon with lots of ties to organized crime. Nothing about him pardoning members of some criminal organizations but not others is surprising. In related news, he signed an executive order forcing prosecutors to seek the death penalty when police are killed, and in the same day pardoned 132 of his supporters that were convicted of assaulting police officers during an event where officers were killed.

azinman2 2y ago
You think Trump is involved with drug selling organized crime, and this guy somehow was on “his side”?
reverendsteveii 2y ago
>he signed an executive order forcing prosecutors to seek the death penalty when police are killed He also pardoned a drug dealing cop killer at the end of his last term. Said cop killer has since been arrested for attempting to strangle his wife to death. https://www.wesh.com/article/cop-killer-pardoned-by-trump-commits-new-crime-in-florida/62073373 https://www.wesh.com/article/cop-killer-pardoned-by-trump-co...
motorest 2y ago
> Historically, many anti-drug / anti-cartel leaders are actually members of a rival cartel, and want to use law enforcement to fight their wars for them. For reference, Rudy Giuliani was lauded as the anti-organized mayor that brought down the Italian mob in New York, but ultimately was flagged as actually being an upper echelon of Russian organized crime who worked to establish it by eliminating competiton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani
- Maxatar 2y ago
  The Wikipedia article does not flag Giuliani as being a member of Russian organized crime, but someone who Giuliani's law firm represents, an individual by the name of Dmytry Firtash. Furthermore the timeline for this is over a decade after Giuliani was mayor of New York.

rmah 2y ago

Well, now you probably understand that Trump is not really anti-drug/anti-cartel. Nor do I think he's pro-drug/pro-cartel. I think he doesn't actually care except in how those issues affect his political career and public profile. Many of Trump's more ... let's call them "random" seeming statements and actions make much more sense if you look at them through the lens of "he doesn't actually care one way or the other".

Slava_Propanei 2y ago
[dead]
kmeisthax 2y ago
Trump is pro-Trump. That's it.
- markhahn 2y ago
  Well, also pro-publicity and pro-distraction (firehose). Of course those are ultimately self-benefiting too.

diggan 2y ago

> That’s also not to mention guns and all kinds of other dangerous & illegal parts of it. I think it isn't mentioned because Silk Road didn't actually facilitate any selling/buying of weapons or any items "whose purpose was to "harm or defraud."" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)#Products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)#Produc... > I do not understand why he pardoned this guy when he’s supposedly anti-drug and anti-cartel. He's the candidate that was preferred by Christians, yet probably he was the least Christian-like candidate. Just today/yesterday he criticized a Bishop for values that are clearly Christian, people seem to swallow it. I'm pretty sure trying to add logic/reasoning to the choices he makes is a lost cause.

zombiwoof 2y ago
Facebook doesn’t make the comments that will kill people
- banku_brougham 2y ago
  Probably the first social media genocide was organized on Facebook, the Rohingya genocide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide
  - diggan 2y ago
    Similarly, the first social media revolutions were also organized on Facebook (and Twitter): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
- toasterlovin 2y ago
  "Facebook is a communication tool for friends and family that is sometimes used for illegal activity" is categorically different than "Silk Road is a tool created to facilitate illegal activity."
azinman2 2y ago
I saw guns on it when I joined years ago.

napkin 2y ago

(SWIM’s experience with Silk Road): For LSD there existed a third-party forum, where a group of (supposedly) vendor-neutral, unaffiliated individuals would purchase samples from vendors, send them to private or state-sponsored labs around the world and publish/discuss the results (often with online links to lab results). Yes, of course vendors could have also attempted to infiltrate these forums. But as enough of these functions were provided by/for the community, the profit incentive tilts. If you ran a vendor account on the Silk Road, your effort was better spent maintaining/improving good infosec and mail/postal security. Some techniques they developed were quite innovative, the professionalism was evident. Ross’s story is fascinating and tragic- as everything that’s said for and against his character is generally true. Silk Road was built on naive yet admirable ideals. It fostered a special community, some of which really did reflect those ideals. He got in over his head, and really did try to have someone killed. Though, the details on that latter point are a bit more complicated- authorities had infiltrated Ross’s inner circle- the motive and the ‘hitman’ himself were fictional. Ross still took the bait though, which is pretty damning. Until that point, they weren’t sure they had a sufficient case on him.

_yb2s 2y ago
Is that why they never prosecuted the attempted murder? It sounds like entrapment. That's the point people don't seem to be getting about anonymous reviews- if the review is more costly than the value it provides the seller, they won't do it, and it's fairly easy to make that the case. A separate enthusiast forum where the reviews are from people with a long history of high effort engagement is a good example of that. That's basically the idea behind crypto as well- making false transactions is more expensive than the value it could return.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  Entrapment requires some coercive/persuasive force by the government to push you to commit the crime, the government is allowed to setup entirely fake scenarios and let you choose to do a crime.
  - 2y ago

armandososa 2y ago

he is just anti-mexico.

hinkley 2y ago

Something anyone with an addict in their life needs to know: While substances can efficiently help someone destroy their life, keeping them away from drugs won’t stop them from destroying their lives. There’s something already broken in these people that they need to fix before it’s too late. There are perfectly legal alternatives that can be just as effective with a little more effort. Putting heroin in your arm is just quicker than downing a fifth of vodka, or chasing dopamine at the dog track.

Willish42 2y ago
I think you're advocating for better mental health care and rehabilitation of addicts, which I agree with. However, the idea that addicts will destroy their lives regardless of whether they stop using, or are forced to stop using, their drug of choice is an extremely dangerous statement. Many addicts get better by changing their environment and quitting/going to rehab/etc. Furthermore, heroin != vodka in terms of how addictive it is for the average user, and that's partly why only one of them is legal for recreational use. Controversies about decriminalization aside, harm reduction exists as a studied component in addiction, public health, and psychology circles for a reason.
- dgfitz 2y ago
  Alcohol destroys many, many more lives than heroin. Isn’t even close.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    The important question isn't raw numbers, it's which destroys a greater percentage of lives out of those who consume it. If heroin were as widespread as alcohol, would it still be true that alcohol destroys more lives? We obviously can't know for sure without trying it, but preliminary results aren't promising.
snailmailstare 2y ago
Yeah, I don't know. There's certainly people that are just broken, but reading other examples, I think there are plenty of people who just happen on to a perfect addiction(, or maybe an imperfect one that fills the spot). The manifest destiny stuff is kind of a mix that soothes a lot of people with various motives whether or not it is representative of the median case.

sweeter 2y ago

Its purely transactional. The Libertarians gave him their endorsement and one of the things they wanted in return was this pardon and deregulation.

azinman2 2y ago
The libertarian party or a bunch of crypto bros? I don’t get why “libertarians” would care about this one guy?
- etc-hosts 2y ago
  Ulbricht's career represents many core values of a certain wing of today's Libertarians. * unfettered and unregulated and anonymous weapons sales. * willful ignorance and rejection of any of the social costs of buying and selling hard drugs. * commerce that operates in a world that is difficult to be taxes by government entities, and ideally anonymously (even though bitcoin is the least anonymous thing in the world)
  - azinman2 2y ago
    So are libertarians fighting for complete legalization of drugs? If so, why aren’t they pressing on Trump for that? Why wasn’t that an executive order vs pardoning this guy?
    - etc-hosts 2y ago
      I don't think Trump actually has a lot of Core Beliefs besides do stuff that appears strong on tv. A large portion of people at the Libertarian convention that Trump gave a speech at would prefer complete legalization of all drugs. I think it's a belief that a lot of us arrive at early in our lives, many eventually grow out of it.
      - azinman2 2y ago
        > I think it's a belief that a lot of us arrive at early in our lives, many eventually grow out of it. Very astute. What’s interesting to me is the ability for youth to discount this potential change, mostly because they just see the end result vs the journey. I know I was like that.

Beijinger 2y ago

It was a promise to his libertarian voters....

dutchbookmaker 2y ago

I can only go off what I read in American Kingpin but from that book, to pardon Ulbricht is absolutely insane. Not to mention lets compare what Ulbricht did to say Snowden? Are you kidding me? It is like we live in some idiot version of the Twilight Zone.