[laarc]

(Trying to figure out how to reply without sounding like I'm challenging an idea or putting someone on the defensive... All I can think of is: Thank you for the reply. Know that I respect everyone's viewpoint, and that we're only trying to chase a mystery.)

If someone who you thought you could trust is now actively threatening your freedom (or access to a substance, which is also a form of freedom), you take action to prevent this.

So I've spent five minutes mentally putting myself in that situation, and... I don't know. Am I just a coward? It's important in the abstract sense to fight for freedoms, and perhaps in the literal sense when one system (i.e. country) is at war with another.

But the idea of taking a bat to someone's head for betraying my trust in them is... Well, that's really the question to explore, right? How could someone actually do that, let alone approve of someone else doing that? The question is far too pointed, though. Just trying to understand.

[FatalLogic]

>But the idea of taking a bat to someone's head for betraying my trust in them is... Well, that's really the question to explore, right? How could someone actually do that, let alone approve of someone else doing that?

But, implicitly, you already do approve of that. Your government commits various forms of violence in your name, as all governments do - most notably in the form of military and police actions, some of which you may not agree with.

[xorcist]

> Your government commits various forms of violence in your name, as all governments do

That's why we have separate systems to keep the violence in check. Granted, it may not always work that well in practice, but it is important to the system that there are checks and balances in place. The question here regarded the moral system where someone can unilaterally decide someone else deserves to be murdered, and what makes people voluntarily choose this system.

[FatalLogic]

A more complex system, with checks and balances, seems far more robust and stable than a dictatorship, such as the Silkroad was, that is a good point. For questions of responsibility or guilt or blame, it shifts this from an issue of individual responsibility to shared responsibility, but that seems like mental trick to evade responsibility by diffusing it so much that nobody feels they are responsible.

Ironically, the operators of the Silkroad probably would have preferred to use that legal system and its checks and balances to deal with threats.

But they were denied access to "legal" methods, mainly because they were operating a market for illegal and dangerous molecules that many people like to ingest (these bad molecules should not be confused with the many legal and dangerous molecules like alcohol, nicotine, saturated fats, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, etc)

[icebraining]

If you are being targeted by the "checked and balanced" system for doing what you believe to be an harmless activity, isn't that enough to lose your faith in it?

[xorcist]

I suspect that much is true. It does not follow that it would make you prefer a completely arbitrary system, where the leader could decide you dead at any time. Murdering people without process also pretty much rules out the "harmless activity" part, by every possible meaning of the word.

[icebraining]

I think this is mixing up the timelines. He was threatened by LE to life imprisonment for the things he did before he allegedly procured murder. So that can't rule out the "harmless activity" part, because it hadn't happened yet.

As for not preferring a system where one person can decide you dead at any time, well: http://www.killedbypolice.net/

[Absentinsomniac]

Well, I don't want to give you the wrong idea. I'm not an authority here. (I'd be a little dumb commenting with this account if I were.) My activity was very minimal, to the point where I doubt law enforcement would find it worth their while even if they knew who I was and the extent of my "involvement". I'm replying because those more involved might not want to share their (more informed) experiences for obvious reasons.

In my experience, at the lower levels I think the vast majority of the community wouldn't have actually done anything. You don't have to do anything to sit behind a keyboard and "support" the idea of an informant getting knocked off or roughed up. How could they justify supporting that kind of violence? In my opinion, the place had kind of a revolutionary appeal. Like the darkmarkets were going to change everything. How could the system maintain these dangerous and harmful laws if we are here, operating in plain sight? I'm sure that would only be bolstered by the extreme convenience and safety the whole thing provided. Nobody really wanted to go back to the old way of buying and selling, for a lot of them online had been their only actual experiences in this area.

Further up the chain, some of those guys had serious amounts of money involved. Some had people under (or worse, over) who depended on access to this site. There was tremendous financial stake involved.

Further, I remember a lot of people felt that there were people in the community who would actually follow through with this sort of thing had there been enough actionable intelligence. I'd be surprised if there weren't. Or they could just hire a hitman. It seemed like a doable thing to have some big-deal drug dealer or one of his guys do something like this. This is literally just speculation though, as there was no public discussion that I ever saw involving anything resembling this. I'm pretty sure at least some of the people would have objected on the grounds that it might draw even more LE attention to the place.

I remember reading some discussion going on about one of the darknet sites that shut down and stole everyones money. A lot of people wanted the stolen coins tracked down so they could go after them and serve them justice. Some people thought it would actually happen. Others thought even if they were found, nobody would do anything. Who really knows.

[fweespeech]

> Am I just a coward? It's important in the abstract sense to fight for freedoms, and perhaps in the literal sense when one system (i.e. country) is at war with another.

You aren't a coward. Violence is an action of last resort and as long as you have the ability to fight politically [i.e. lobbying, protests] it is a tool to be avoided.

I think your reaction is more an unconscious understanding that violence is an extreme action of last resort rather than something to avoid a decade in prison for knowingly violating the law.

[icebraining]

Putting someone in prison for a decade is violence. If you believe there's nothing wrong about what you did, isn't using violence just self-defence? Is no law unfair enough to warrant more than passive submission?