9 ms·

Cyber-libertarianism: Silk Road battleground individualism vs authority

35 points by CPAhem 13y ago

circlefavshape 13y ago
"as long as we've gathered together in groups to organise ourselves into herds and packs and tribes and villages and nations, as opposed to streaming mindlessly through the oceans like shoals of mackerel" What? Mackerel? "Streaming mindlessly through the ocean"? Argument-from-assways-understanding-of-evolution is the new argument from authority, it seems
- VMG 13y ago
  FTA: > Silk Road and its like must not only be defeated, they must be crushed out of existence and deter anyone from attempting anything similar. I'm hoping this is satire Edit: Apparently this is not the opinion of the author. From the comments: Just to be clear, the sentence you're quoting is not my belief. It's my description of the obvious [?] strategic imperative from the viewpoint of centralist forces should they feel a threat from emerging individualist forces.
- lotsofcows 13y ago
  I'm trying to work out the difference between a herd and a shoal. Fish form hierarchies too.
gum_ina_package 13y ago
Is it just me, or does anyone else see not buy into the idea that the Internet is something that's dramatically altering the course of human evolution? The author seems to think that with so many people being online that humans are evolving into something else and thus the way our society organizes itself is also due for a dramatic change. Personally I don't see things that way, instead I just see the Internet as a logical progression of our communication tools. It's existence, to me, doesn't mean anything more than it makes human's true nature more apparent.
- danielweber 13y ago
  Cooking altered human DNA, so it's possible for societal changes to show up in genes. OTOH, that was 10,000 years ago, and it takes many many generations for it to happen.
  - return0 13y ago
    In our times, it takes only an ethical decision to start producing artificially 'evolved' humans.
- mseebach 13y ago
  Evolution, no, society, yes. New means of communications change the dynamics of how groups and alliances are formed which shapes dissent. The internet has radically lowered the cost of friction of communication and coordination in all but the smallest groups - in that it shares a lot with the printing press which did much the same thing for printed material.
- vbuterin 13y ago
  It's not that humans are evolving into something else, it's that the internet dramatically reduces communication costs and allows for levels of cohesion not seen since the village days, except on a global scale. If you try to deeply understand economics (any school), one thing that comes out again and again is that low information is in some sense the root of all evil. This can even be described formally: > Theorem: given perfect information and zero communication cost, any reasonable decision-making method must produce a Pareto-optimal outcome (ie. one that cannot strictly be improved upon). > Proof: suppose otherwise. This means that the decision-making method in question produced outcome X, where outcome Y would have been possible, preferable to at least one person and unpreferable to no one. By the perfect information criterion, everyone should have realized that this would have happened, and by the zero communication cost criterion everyone would have come together and agreed to produce outcome Y instead. Thus, outcome X cannot have happened. Note that the above applies to markets, democracy, Reddit-style karma systems and any other mechanism where every individual has nonzero power (so, maybe not pure dictatorships). And the further we fall from this perfect information / zero communication cost ideal, the more all of the various social problems we are familiar with today arise. Centralized systems tend to historically emerge in low-information environments, as otherwise it's too easy for people to come together and realize that it would be more efficient for them to cut out the middleman. The internet is inherently much more decentralized than the communication media of the 20th century, under which only a few select parties could be broadcasters and everyone else is a passive consumer. Thus, it massively broadens the solution space for methods of decision-making, allowing for the growth of mechanisms that do not rely on central authorities. This is the fundamental insight of so-called "cyber-libertarianism", and applies to governments, large corporations, schools and even families.
Nursie 13y ago
Silk Road did not represent a threat to centralism. If we had legal, government-regulated or government-operated drug sales then SR might have been more in line with what the author thinks. In reality the government took down a large criminal enterprise headed by an individual who seems to have been engaged in other criminal activity (hiring contract killers).
- noarchy 13y ago
  Silk Road was criminal because the drug warriors decided that it was. I don't think the only alternative to the punitive system of fines & jails should be a bureaucracy of regulation. The latter is the likely outcome, of course, since legislators have a tough time making changes that don't keep them firmly in charge (or...pretending to be, in the case of the drug war).
  - Nursie 13y ago
    That's not really the argument I was making but it is one I will make. Where drugs are concerned, hell yes we want regulation and bureaucracy. I want to buy from a store (maybe even a pharmacist) who sells products from a well known, traceable and accountable chemical/pharmaceutical company. I want guarantees from the manufacturer that any contaminants are known, non-toxic and biologically inert. I want someone to sue if it's not the case. I don't buy alcohol from some forum member with half a dozen good reviews, who claims there's no methanol in his moonshine. I buy it from a store that's well run and well regulated. Edit: tl;dr - SR, to me, is not even close to a good model for legalised drug sales.
    - marknutter 13y ago
      All of those guarantees and checks can be facilitated by a private third party, and probably more efficiently.
      - Nursie 13y ago
        Yay! Libertarian talking points! I don't want to get into this, suffice to say I disagree.
MarcusVorenus 13y ago
I'm not an individualist and I'm a strong supporter of the Silk Road. Drug prohibition is just dumb policy; it doesn't work, it's expensive, it makes drugs more desirable for teenagers and it ends up causing more suffering than if they were completely legal. I'm hoping these anonymous marketplaces go mainstream to force politicians to start thinking about better ways to reduce drug use, such as education and rehab.
- atmosx 13y ago
  It's still an illegal non-taxed market-place. The fact that we don't agree with a set laws, doesn't make ethical overnight to overstep, break or elude them. Of course his applies to the financial market also, regulating Wall Street would be a far better good (morally and financially) for the US than any SR clone out there. The right way to go, is to fight for your policies and vote for them when time comes. Not evading the law or hoping that illegality will reach a scale where the government will be forced to accept it. On a positive note though, in countries like Netherlands iirc where many drugs are legal, people don't die on the street and drug (as in heroin) addicts have proper med-care if they chose to do so.
  - a3voices 13y ago
    >The fact that we don't agree with a set laws, doesn't make ethical overnight to overstep, break or elude them. That's a very controversial opinion. Do you disagree with Martin Luther King Jr.'s tactics in the civil rights movement? "King was arrested and jailed early in the campaign—his 13th arrest[74] out of 29.[75]" - Wikipedia
  - noarchy 13y ago
    Breaking/disregarding bad laws has sometimes been a very good way to see said laws changed or abandoned. It is probably a safe bet that millions in North America are disregarding drug laws, possibly every day. The black market in controlled substances is a thriving one, showing that many will accept the risks imposed by the State, and participate in that economy regardless. Since those in power are still to some extent at the mercy of needing the consent of those they rule, the people can make a powerful statement by refusing to comply.
otikik 13y ago
Words don't make libertarians – actions do. The Dread Pirate Roberts may have talked like a libertarian, but he acted like a thug. Don't call it "Cyber-libertarianism" when it's only "cyber-drug-dealing".
- lmm 13y ago
  A group is judged by the actions of its members. You don't get to say that a libertarian who does bad things must have been "not a real libertarian", any more than e.g. a $religion can say their terrorists must've been "not real $religionists".
  - blahbl4hblah 13y ago
    word.
  - flycaliguy 13y ago
    Yeah, but isn't taking a hit out on somebody considered an initiation of force? Which if I remember correctly is a distinctly non-libertarian thing to do.
    - Nursie 13y ago
      It's an interesting debate I suppose. Most 'communist' regimes don't really end up being anything like communist philosophy, yet we still call them communist and draw the conclusion that practical communism degenerates quickly from the ideal to totalitarian dystopia. I'm not saying libertarianism has the same flaw (though personally I think it's a recipe for neo-feudalism) but it does rather complicate the idea of a strict definition for a political group.
- EthanHeilman 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
  - eksith 13y ago

35 points by CPAhem 13y ago

"as long as we've gathered together in groups to organise ourselves into herds and packs and tribes and villages and nations, as opposed to streaming mindlessly through the oceans like shoals of mackerel" What? Mackerel? "Streaming mindlessly through the ocean"? Argument-from-assways-understanding-of-evolution is the new argument from authority, it seems

VMG 13y ago
FTA: > Silk Road and its like must not only be defeated, they must be crushed out of existence and deter anyone from attempting anything similar. I'm hoping this is satire Edit: Apparently this is not the opinion of the author. From the comments: Just to be clear, the sentence you're quoting is not my belief. It's my description of the obvious [?] strategic imperative from the viewpoint of centralist forces should they feel a threat from emerging individualist forces.
lotsofcows 13y ago
I'm trying to work out the difference between a herd and a shoal. Fish form hierarchies too.

gum_ina_package 13y ago

Is it just me, or does anyone else see not buy into the idea that the Internet is something that's dramatically altering the course of human evolution? The author seems to think that with so many people being online that humans are evolving into something else and thus the way our society organizes itself is also due for a dramatic change. Personally I don't see things that way, instead I just see the Internet as a logical progression of our communication tools. It's existence, to me, doesn't mean anything more than it makes human's true nature more apparent.

danielweber 13y ago
Cooking altered human DNA, so it's possible for societal changes to show up in genes. OTOH, that was 10,000 years ago, and it takes many many generations for it to happen.
- return0 13y ago
  In our times, it takes only an ethical decision to start producing artificially 'evolved' humans.
mseebach 13y ago
Evolution, no, society, yes. New means of communications change the dynamics of how groups and alliances are formed which shapes dissent. The internet has radically lowered the cost of friction of communication and coordination in all but the smallest groups - in that it shares a lot with the printing press which did much the same thing for printed material.
vbuterin 13y ago
It's not that humans are evolving into something else, it's that the internet dramatically reduces communication costs and allows for levels of cohesion not seen since the village days, except on a global scale. If you try to deeply understand economics (any school), one thing that comes out again and again is that low information is in some sense the root of all evil. This can even be described formally: > Theorem: given perfect information and zero communication cost, any reasonable decision-making method must produce a Pareto-optimal outcome (ie. one that cannot strictly be improved upon). > Proof: suppose otherwise. This means that the decision-making method in question produced outcome X, where outcome Y would have been possible, preferable to at least one person and unpreferable to no one. By the perfect information criterion, everyone should have realized that this would have happened, and by the zero communication cost criterion everyone would have come together and agreed to produce outcome Y instead. Thus, outcome X cannot have happened. Note that the above applies to markets, democracy, Reddit-style karma systems and any other mechanism where every individual has nonzero power (so, maybe not pure dictatorships). And the further we fall from this perfect information / zero communication cost ideal, the more all of the various social problems we are familiar with today arise. Centralized systems tend to historically emerge in low-information environments, as otherwise it's too easy for people to come together and realize that it would be more efficient for them to cut out the middleman. The internet is inherently much more decentralized than the communication media of the 20th century, under which only a few select parties could be broadcasters and everyone else is a passive consumer. Thus, it massively broadens the solution space for methods of decision-making, allowing for the growth of mechanisms that do not rely on central authorities. This is the fundamental insight of so-called "cyber-libertarianism", and applies to governments, large corporations, schools and even families.

Nursie 13y ago

Silk Road did not represent a threat to centralism. If we had legal, government-regulated or government-operated drug sales then SR might have been more in line with what the author thinks. In reality the government took down a large criminal enterprise headed by an individual who seems to have been engaged in other criminal activity (hiring contract killers).

noarchy 13y ago
Silk Road was criminal because the drug warriors decided that it was. I don't think the only alternative to the punitive system of fines & jails should be a bureaucracy of regulation. The latter is the likely outcome, of course, since legislators have a tough time making changes that don't keep them firmly in charge (or...pretending to be, in the case of the drug war).
- Nursie 13y ago
  That's not really the argument I was making but it is one I will make. Where drugs are concerned, hell yes we want regulation and bureaucracy. I want to buy from a store (maybe even a pharmacist) who sells products from a well known, traceable and accountable chemical/pharmaceutical company. I want guarantees from the manufacturer that any contaminants are known, non-toxic and biologically inert. I want someone to sue if it's not the case. I don't buy alcohol from some forum member with half a dozen good reviews, who claims there's no methanol in his moonshine. I buy it from a store that's well run and well regulated. Edit: tl;dr - SR, to me, is not even close to a good model for legalised drug sales.
  - marknutter 13y ago
    All of those guarantees and checks can be facilitated by a private third party, and probably more efficiently.
    - Nursie 13y ago
      Yay! Libertarian talking points! I don't want to get into this, suffice to say I disagree.

MarcusVorenus 13y ago

I'm not an individualist and I'm a strong supporter of the Silk Road. Drug prohibition is just dumb policy; it doesn't work, it's expensive, it makes drugs more desirable for teenagers and it ends up causing more suffering than if they were completely legal. I'm hoping these anonymous marketplaces go mainstream to force politicians to start thinking about better ways to reduce drug use, such as education and rehab.

atmosx 13y ago
It's still an illegal non-taxed market-place. The fact that we don't agree with a set laws, doesn't make ethical overnight to overstep, break or elude them. Of course his applies to the financial market also, regulating Wall Street would be a far better good (morally and financially) for the US than any SR clone out there. The right way to go, is to fight for your policies and vote for them when time comes. Not evading the law or hoping that illegality will reach a scale where the government will be forced to accept it. On a positive note though, in countries like Netherlands iirc where many drugs are legal, people don't die on the street and drug (as in heroin) addicts have proper med-care if they chose to do so.
- a3voices 13y ago
  >The fact that we don't agree with a set laws, doesn't make ethical overnight to overstep, break or elude them. That's a very controversial opinion. Do you disagree with Martin Luther King Jr.'s tactics in the civil rights movement? "King was arrested and jailed early in the campaign—his 13th arrest[74] out of 29.[75]" - Wikipedia
- noarchy 13y ago
  Breaking/disregarding bad laws has sometimes been a very good way to see said laws changed or abandoned. It is probably a safe bet that millions in North America are disregarding drug laws, possibly every day. The black market in controlled substances is a thriving one, showing that many will accept the risks imposed by the State, and participate in that economy regardless. Since those in power are still to some extent at the mercy of needing the consent of those they rule, the people can make a powerful statement by refusing to comply.

otikik 13y ago

Words don't make libertarians – actions do. The Dread Pirate Roberts may have talked like a libertarian, but he acted like a thug. Don't call it "Cyber-libertarianism" when it's only "cyber-drug-dealing".

lmm 13y ago
A group is judged by the actions of its members. You don't get to say that a libertarian who does bad things must have been "not a real libertarian", any more than e.g. a $religion can say their terrorists must've been "not real $religionists".
- blahbl4hblah 13y ago
  word.
- flycaliguy 13y ago
  Yeah, but isn't taking a hit out on somebody considered an initiation of force? Which if I remember correctly is a distinctly non-libertarian thing to do.
  - Nursie 13y ago
    It's an interesting debate I suppose. Most 'communist' regimes don't really end up being anything like communist philosophy, yet we still call them communist and draw the conclusion that practical communism degenerates quickly from the ideal to totalitarian dystopia. I'm not saying libertarianism has the same flaw (though personally I think it's a recipe for neo-feudalism) but it does rather complicate the idea of a strict definition for a political group.
EthanHeilman 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
- eksith 13y ago