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"(Bloomberg) -- The founder of the Silk Road website faces life in prison ... " Yes.
by rl3 12y ago
"(Bloomberg) -- The founder of the Silk Road website faces life in prison ... "
Yes.
- venomsnake 12y agoI find it absurd that a person that has not committed any violence could face a life in prison. And probably the silk road decreased by some degree gang violence.
- sp332 12y agoDealing meth and other hard drugs can seriously damage people, physically. Edit: Methamphetamine is a neurotoxin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#Neurotoxicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#Neurotoxicity
- tedks 12y agoDealing McDonald's food is more addictive (look at all the people it hooks compared to meth) and far more physically damaging.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- sp332 12y agoWho's hooked on McDonald's food? And I'm pretty sure McD's isn't that bad.
- kibibu 12y agoI'm old enough to remember when arcade cabinets used to start with "Winners Don't Use McDonalds" before the intro screen.
- ulisesrmzroche 12y agomcdonalds is far more physically damaging than meth? Why do I get the feeling you've never been around either?
- tedks 12y agoI guess the total cost of meth would be hard to calculate, but I'm totally confident that the health costs tied to obesity are far more damaging than meth. Meth just isn't as common as obesity.
- ulisesrmzroche 12y agoPeople do crazy shit on meth though, add that to your calculations. Don't think anyone's really killed anyone for a cheeseburger.
- tedks 12y agoYes, this is precisely the indirect cost I alluded to in my immediately previous comment. That said, far more (several orders of magnitude more) people die from cheeseburgers than (directly or indirectly) from meth. In human lives, McDonald's is by far the greater risk. We need a War on Food.
- DanBC 12y agoPeople are not "addicted" in any meaningful sense of that word to McDonalds. Misuse of language harms the works that people do to tackle obesogenic companies like McDonalds.
- venomsnake 12y agoHe was not dealing IIRC. Also the people bought the stuff on their own free will. So he made a website. I would have preferred to see him convicted on the stuff he was not charged with - trying to organize hits.
- sp332 12y agoPeople who are addicted have limited free will.
- icebraining 12y agoJust like everyone else.
- spacemanmatt 12y agoUsing is a self-harm. Why is this legislated?
- FireBeyond 12y agoUsing may be a self-harm. Acquisition is often not. And once use makes acquisition a problem, violence ensues. And even when it doesn't, the ability to defend oneself from the medical ravages against the body diminishes and the cost is places upon society. The society that chose, one way or another, to cut that off at the source. Or attempt to. Personally? I don't have much issue with the use of many (though not all) drugs, in and of themselves. But they aren't used in an isolated vacuum.
- icebraining 12y agothe ability to defend oneself from the medical ravages against the body diminishes and the cost is places upon society The problem with that argument is that, not only is limiting it to drugs is arbitrary (why not convict the guy who becomes morbidly obese or extremely anorexic?), but I think it often is simply wrong, because it ignores the real alternative. The medical bills of an heroin addict may be expensive, but a guy who dies in his 60s from drug use is probably much cheaper if he had died in his 90s, possibly with some chronic condition. Besides, imprisoning him is probably more expensive still, so it's cutting your nose to spite the face anyway.
- digler990 12y ago> convict the guy who becomes morbidly obese or extremely anorexic Show me a "moridly obese"/anorexic who committed violent crime for his/her habit.
- JohnBooty 12y agoTry taking my dessert away from me sometime!
- icebraining 12y ago
- FireBeyond 12y agoYeah, I'm inclined to be skeptical about that claim. I'm more inclined to believe that the union of "drug dealers regularly involved in violence" and "drug dealers who reign in their violent ways to instead spend time on the computer filling SR orders" is near zero.
- venomsnake 12y agoOf course it is near zero. But when demand dries up, so do the margins. And with profitability down violence just does not make sense from cost/benefit analysis.
- _pius 12y agoAnd probably the silk road decreased by some degree gang violence. Sure, so did Walter White.
- ars 12y agoIt certainly happens. The high profile case of Sholom Rubashkin for example: Various forms of financial fraud and an effective (due to age) life sentence.
- res0nat0r 12y agoShould Bernie Madoff be let free? He's ruined more lives than many drug dealers, but never killed anyone.
- nacs 12y agoAlthough Madoff may not have directly killed anyone, his defrauding people did lead to a number of suicides, including his son: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5503929/Bernard-Madoff-fraud-victim-committed-suicide-to-avoid-bankruptcy-shame.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5503929/Bernard-Madof...
- gojock 12y agoMadoff had victims. Ulbricht did not.
- res0nat0r 12y agoDebatable. Also if he wasn't talking to an undercover FBI hit man there would have been, so there's that....
- serve_yay 12y agoHe tried to put a hit out on somebody. (I realize that that wasn't part of the charges he was convicted on here.)
- brotoss 12y agoYea, I got that buddy. The point of my question was whether life is in the realm of possibility when news outlets often report the absolute statutory max that the offender could theoretically receive yet they end being sentenced for less.