[offsign]

"he took it a bridge too far" is a massive trivialization.

The guy operated a marketplace for illegal goods in order to enrich himself. The illegality wasn't just incidental, it was literally his business model -- by flouting the law, he enjoyed massive market benefit (minimal competition, lack of regulation, high margins etc) by exploiting the arbitrage that the rest of us follow the rules.

Said a different way, he knowingly pursued enormous risk in order to achieve outsized benefits, and ultimately his bet blew up on him -- we shouldn't have bailed him out.

[silver_silver]

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]

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]

> 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.

[kybernetyk]

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.

[omnibrain]

No, "Rule of Law" means "Rechtsstaatlichkeit". What you mean is "It's law, so it's always right" i.e. "Rechtspositivismus".

[kybernetyk]

Yes, Rechtsstaatlichkeit only means that the state and its organs have to follow the law themselves. It doesn't say anything about the moral quality of the laws.

The Nazi state had to follow its own laws. They just had such laws that enabled the total lunacy that the 3rd Reich was.

All I'm saying is: If you decouple laws from morality you get a really bad time.

[lo_zamoyski]

Ah, but legal positivism is the norm in liberal societies, and not by accident. This follows directly from the demands of liberalism which privatizes discussion of the objective real and relegates it to individual sentiment. One of the paradoxes of liberalism is that the maximization of individual liberty necessarily demotes authority and elevates power, leading to tyranny.

So any appeals to the contrary are rooted in appeals to beliefs held in parallel with the liberal doctrines of the state. When Protestants ruled the US, that means some residual (often warped) Christian sensibility, because they were able to attain that consensus. But with greater competition today, that old consensus is no longer possible. Liberalism ensures that.

[vkou]

The Nazis did anything but blindly followed the rule of law. They did the opposite - they used law as a cudgel to beat their enemies with, while somehow magically, not being held responsible for any of their own violations of it. It's how they rose to power, and it's how they liquidated all of their internal opposition in the pre-war years.

We are seeing this play out again. The brownshirts have all been pardoned (with a clear message to the ones who will be involved in the next act - that as long as they break the law in support of the regime, they'll get bailed out), while everyone else is getting in line to kowtow and kiss the ring - because if they don't, they might be targeted.

It's actual insanity that people are looking at this and saying it is fine.

Then again, the whole country has gone insane, it looks at a video of the richest main in the world giving a fascist salute, and insist that he's just giving a confused wave, or that it's the same thing as a still of some other person with an outstretched arm.

[GTP]

But now, let's get back to the case in point. Who threw morality out of the window, Ross Ulbricht or the state?

[LadyCailin]

Both?

[orwin]

I thought everybody knew the first thing the Nazis did was eroding the rule of law, with the help of Hans Frank, before even taking power.

The fact that everybody is equal in front of justice and that justice should be independent, two of the basics tenet of the rule of law, were hated by the Nazis and called 'jewish law', and were targeted. Lawyers and judges were increasingly close to the Nazi party. The same crime by a party member didn't had the same consequence.

I think the Nazis pamphlet said that 'roman law follow the materialistic world order, and should be replaced by German law'. Where materialistic was a dogwhistle for Marxism, and world order for Judaism.

What did help Nazis was that older judges and lawyers were often aristocrats who didn't really love the republic, and new one were petty bourgeoisie where Nazism had a lot of supporters. They helped put a staunch conservative (who later joined the Nazis) at the head of the German supreme court before 1933. The man blocked socdems appointments, and changed how the German law was interpreted (basically pushing intent of the law vs letter of the law, where intent weirdly always aligned with Nazi ideology).

Then, once they had power, the first thing they did after the conservative Hindenburg (may he be remembered as Hitler first collaborator) declared a 'state of emergency was to suspend judiciary oversight over arrest and imprisonment.

[Gravityloss]

I learned so much from reading this, thank you. Is there more of this same style dense history writing somewhere? (Of course there are caveats and narratives etc., I hope people understand that...)

[simonh]

Nobody here is advocating blindly following the rules. We can follow the rules with our eyes open, and while advocating for the rules being reformed.

In this case the person throwing morality out of the window was Ulbricht.

[sillyfluke]

Certain discourse in other languages sometimes like to underline the difference between "rules" and "law" as in "we must aspire to be a state built on law, not a state built on rules." (not necessarily claiming English is such a language either)

[ben_w]

Everything done without consideration is very quickly evil. Free tragedy of the commons with every free market; equivalents of Malthus for poverty wages and zero profit margins in the economy; Nash games where all parties want to defect and want the other not to; AI optimising for paperclips.

Rule of law is a pillar, but not the only one — in an ideal case the laws themselves are bound by constitutional requirements, and the constitutional requirements are bound by democratic will, and the democratic will by freedom of speech, and the freedom of speech by a requirement for at least attempting to be honest.

[andrepd]

Well you need to study history more x) If there's one thing Hitler did was precisely to ignore rule of law and rule by decree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Führerprinzip

[immibis]

In Germany it is currently illegal to criticise Israel. You'll pardon me for being a bit skeptical about rule of law. Rule of good law is good, but rule of bad law is bad.

[sources_please]

> In Germany it is currently illegal to criticise Israel.

Got any sources for this claim? Like an actual law?

[JBSay]

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]

Big shades of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas in GP comment

[TeMPOraL]

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.

[ETH_start]

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.

[littlestymaar]

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.

[WinstonSmith84]

> ... 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.

[cbsmith]

> and it's yet to collapse

This will age well.

[mcv]

Yeah, it's pretty clear that the rule of law is not particularly strong in the US. The past few years have made it clear that some people really are above the law.

[JBSay]

Quite an interesting fact that both committed victimless crimes and both were victims of exceptional prosecution

[WinstonSmith84]

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

[mcv]

Are you calling Trump's crimes "victimless"? And he's barely been prosecuted. Everything was postponed indefinitely or blocked by corrupt judges.

[jolmg]

> 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.

[aaa_aaa]

Current state of your religion sucks big time then.

[butlike]

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.

[mannerheim]

Selectively punishing someone with a grossly disproportionate sentence on the grounds of their political beliefs seems contrary to the rule of law.

[TeMPOraL]

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]

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.

[uludag]

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.

[Ray20]

> 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]

> 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.

[throw7]

The law can't save us.

[potato3732842]

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]

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]

> 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.

[flerchin]

LOL I thought the time after the fall of the Roman empire were colloquially termed "The dark ages"

[kerkeslager]

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

[TeMPOraL]

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.

[kerkeslager]

> 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.

You can talk about whatever you want, but you don't get to limit what other people talk about.

If you think there's anything like "everyone should obey, everyone expects everyone else will obey, and everyone knows they're expected by others to obey" around drug laws, you're living in a fantasy. You can talk about that concept if you want, but I'm saying that concept doesn't apply to drug law, which is, in case you noticed, the primary group of laws Ullbricht was convicted of breaking.

> 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.

You're picking unrelated examples and ignoring the issue at hand.

If selling drugs is fine, why uphold a contract? If driving faster than the speed limit is fine, why not get your own at gunpoint?

Sure, generally people agree murder is bad, but that's very little to do with the law or any sort of trust in the law. Your ivory-tower ideals have nothing to do with it: as it turns out, people don't want to be murdered, so we're all pretty happy when the cops enforce that law, whether we trust them or not.

I'll further add: banks, healthcare, fire services, stores, all only work for a segment of our population in the US. By your definition of collapse, large portions of the U.S. collapsed decades ago.

> 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.

"Our shared belief system"?

Let's be clear, this is your belief system, and what you're trying to do is justify ramming it down other people's throats with the physical violence performed by police. Your belief system is probably the majority opinion within the upper-middle-class and richer demographic of Hacker News, and might even be the majority opinion nationally, but it's not unanimous or even close to unanimous. Drug use is well within the mainstream in 2025.

[mcv]

> 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.

[pixelsort]

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_]

> 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.

[eadmund]

> the last 10 years of US politics

Ten? Oh man. Have you read about the FALN commutation? Iran-Contra? Watergate? The 1960 presidential election? Roosevelt (both of them)? Wilson? Lincoln? Those are just a very few of the instances of disrespect for the rule of law that come to mind immediately.

[Terr_]

> Ten? Oh man. Have you read about [list of older historical events I suggest you were foolish to ignore]

Slow down there cowboy, it's "ten" because the other poster is referencing a conviction which occurred on February 5th 2015, uncannily close to exactly ten years ago.

[dns_snek]

Like any religion, the rules usually don't apply to the leaders, only the followers.

[mcv]

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.

[Terr_]

Except that's fundamentally incompatible with "rule of law."

So whatever real-world thing being described would need a different term.

[arcfour]

By that logic, nobody has lived under the rule of law ever, because it's only achievable in an ideal dream world.

[scottLobster]

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.

[ahmeneeroe-v2]

This is a really excellent analysis and you will see it in a lot of prosecutions once you learn about it

[mrpopo]

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

[silver_silver]

> 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)#Produc...

[sweettea]

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?

[mardifoufs]

What do you mean? Did it actually allow selling anything related to pedophilia? Like CSAM?

[namlem]

Nope. Such content was banned.

[mcv]

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.

[victorbjorklund]

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]

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/

[npoc]

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

[dani__german]

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-sh...

[npoc]

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]

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.

[dani__german]

Indeed, Britain should have known this and realized that the only way forward was complete and total separation from the post colonial states. Any sort of immigration or pseudo integration was bound to lead to this. Other countries, such as the US, should look to what has become of Britain as an example of what not to do, what ideas do NOT work, and what ideologies lead to such betrayals.

[npoc]

Looking past the one-sidedness of your point of view, what does any of that have to do with the people of today?

[sim7c00]

in my country it depend on thr color of your skin and your bank account to what charge you get. =) wonderful world!

[kerhackernews]

He operated a site that allowed you to hire hitmen.

[Deutschland314]

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]

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.

[jajko]

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]

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]

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]

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]

The US government does not have profit margins. It hasn’t run a balanced budget in decades. What are you even trying to say?

[rbanffy]

They might be alluding to regulatory capture by groups such as the NRA, big pharma, and the defense industry, which, for all purposes, are an unelected part of the government.

[15155]

I love how the NRA - which is almost entirely member-funded - gets lumped in with actual industries with eye watering margins.

[silver_silver]

He was serving 2 life sentences + 40 years, not one. Even the prosecutors only asked for 20. What he did was wrong, but the sentence was disproportionate. The judge intended to throw away his life to make a point.

[pixelsort]

Fitting then, that his release is happening to make a point with respect to judicial overreach in New York.

[tgv]

> for Europe, China starts to look like a great not only business but also military partner

Speak for yourself. China is still worse than the USA, and Xi isn't bound to any term limit, and has built up quite a following.

[rbanffy]

China seems to understand the concept of soft power, something the US has been neglecting for many decades in favor of less subtle military intervention.

[tgv]

You mean: bribery and economic pressure? It surely isn't cultural power.

[rbanffy]

It could start helping finance infrastructure projects, schools, hospitals, universities, and so on. Along that comes the opportunity to exercise cultural influence and develop consumers and suppliers for your own industry.

It’s far less nasty than invading, freeing the people from their government and installing a puppet in its place. Also a lot cheaper. Any missile could pay for a school.

[monadINtop]

Which countries has china invaded, illegally or otherwise? Which governments have they toppled, covertly or openly?

[CrazyStat]

Tibet

[lkbm]

Perhaps more impressively: India, after India had been early to recognize PRC and worked to get them recognized internationally.

[tgv]

The next country that recognizes Taiwan as a state will find out.

[monadINtop]

Ah ok, so in other words we have to consider hypotheticals in order to even try and draw a comparison to the other state in question.

[potato3732842]

>minimal competition, lack of regulation, high margins etc

Those benefits don't come from nowhere. You're basically getting compensated to take on the risk, same as any other business. The difference in this case is that the risk is that a bunch of thugs with guns will show up and either kill you or put you in a cage in addition to the usual financial ruin.

[cluckindan]

Many criminal gangs from biker groups to foreign cartels are doing the same thing and reaping profits in the $100Bs scale annually.

Your argument is not an argument for incarceration, it is an argument for abolition of prohibition and regulating the sales of some psychoactives.

The same stone would hit the fentanyl epidemic, it would hit the pushers of ”zombie drug” laced cocktails, it would hit cross-border trafficking, to name only a few. Society would massively benefit. So would the economy.

[sobellian]

> Many criminal gangs from biker groups to foreign cartels are doing the same thing and reaping profits in the $100Bs scale annually.

That comparison does not flatter Ross Ulbricht.

[krupan]

"Society would massively benefit"

Yes. Just like San Francisco and Seattle did when they legalized drugs

[cluckindan]

”Legalized drugs” as in ”buy and use whatever legally” is not what is being suggested here.

[glerk]

> he knowingly pursued enormous risk in order to achieve outsized benefits

Like it or not, this makes him a heroic figure in the eyes of many people.

> we shouldn't have bailed him out

Bailing him out comes at no cost. Letting him rot in prison provides no benefit to anyone.

[sirbutters]

Bailing him out comes at no cost? That's one way to see it. In my opinion, it sends a message that as long as you can provide value to this new administration, you get preferential treatment - no matter how shady and unethical your business ventures are.

[agumonkey]

I'm afraid that the current administration is fond on this business model. Borderline criminal business models behind curtains.

[celticninja]

Not sure it was high margin as much as it was low fees on a large number of transactions, coupled with bitcoin appreciation this meant he made a lot of money.

[rbanffy]

It was a very high RoI. The cost to run it was negligible compared to the income it generated.

[gloosx]

>The illegality wasn't just incidental

The illegality of drugs is a government reaction, since governance failed to do anything with the problem by action. No-one deserves a life-long sentence in prison for that. This market, as well as minimal competition, lack of regulation, and high margins was created by the same power which sends people to jail.

[paulddraper]

"Exploiting arbitrage" is not high on my list of concerns.

The rest of it is.

[ty6853]

Trump is a bit of an agorist is well. It's part of the American wild west mythical psyche, to the point America made a sport from moonshine running cars. Not hard for me to see how he half won and walked away with an unconditional pardon.

[ssl232]

> to the point America made a sport from moonshine running cars

Huh, is that NASCAR?

[paulgb]

TIL!

> In the 1920s, moonshine runners during the Prohibition era would often have to outrun the authorities. To do so, they had to upgrade their vehicles—while leaving them looking ordinary, so as not to attract attention. Eventually, runners started getting together with fellow runners and making runs together. They would challenge one another and eventually progressed to organized events in the early 1930s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_car_racing

[kortilla]

Yes, but the moonshine part wasn’t part of the sport or its celebration. It was about racing cars regular people could buy: “stock cars”.

[ty6853]

I believe so

[pixxel]

> he enjoyed massive market benefit

Life imprisonment, no parole.

You have to be a complete and utter wanker to think his punishment was justified.

[pooper]

》 we shouldn't have bailed him out.

I don't have a horse in this race but the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear "we shouldn't have bailed him out" is silicon valley bank and its depositors. That to me was the biggest show of hypocrisy by silicon valley.

[sneak]

There were no victims of his conduct.

The idea that possession of drugs is or should be illegal is purely arbitrary, and is used thus to justify massive violations of human rights. It is literally insane that the state claims authority over what you are allowed to do to your own body.

No victim, no crime.

[mirpa]

While you might argue which drug is dangerous and which isn't, ban on drugs is not arbitrary decision. You can't do whatever you want with your body, because you might loose control and hurt others. Drug abuse affects others as well (financially, mentally, physically...). I am victim of someone's drug abuse. I never took any drugs. So if you are looking for victims of drug abuse, here I am.

[tallanvor]

Some of the decisions were rather arbitrary at best, and racist at worst, though. The sentence disparities regarding, for example, cocaine depending on how you are using it was designed to punish black people more harshly. Opium bans had as much to do with anti-Chinese sentiment than anything.

I'm not arguing that drugs should be legal, but we do have to be clear that the reasons for banning them and the punishment are not necessarily rational.

[rayiner]

That’s pure historical revision. The sentencing difference was created in 1986 based on the belief that it was more addictive. It wasn’t until a decade later that research showed the causation had been reversed (more addicted people were more likely to use crack). If you look at the timing, there was a huge increase in drug crime that occurred as a result of the crack epidemic: https://www.nber.org/digest/oct18/lingering-lethal-toll-amer....

The recent change in policy simply reflects the prevailing trend of reducing disparities in sentencing for criminals while increasing disparities in crime victimization by failing to enforce the law.

[oneeyedpigeon]

> You can't do whatever you want with your body, because you might loose control and hurt others.

Why is it legal to drive a car, then?

[GTP]

It is legal if you're in good shape and therefore the risk of that happening is minimal. It is illegal to drive a car under an altered state that makes it more likely to happen. It is a balance between the benefits of permitting something and the likelihood of something bad happens. In normal conditions, the benefits are believed to outweigh the risks, so it is generally permitted to drive a car. But it is not permitted to drive it if you're under the effect of some substance that can alter your perception of reality.

[oneeyedpigeon]

OK, that's fair. So I agree that:

> You can't do whatever you want with your body

is pretty reasonable, but how about we rephrase it as something like:

> You can't do something with your body that significantly increases the risk of harming others

?

[GTP]

Yes, I would agree with this principle, with the caveat that there could be always be corner cases that deserve a special treatment.

[krupan]

Honestly, if cars were only invented in the last few years, it probably wouldn't be legal without extensive training and licensing

[jeffhuys]

Then why the distinction with alcohol though?

[simonh]

Alcohol is in fact heavily regulated and controlled in most countries, and we have cultural practices in place that largely manage the risks for the vast majority of people that consume it.

Personally I'm in favour of further narcotics legalisation, but with regulation to manage it's social effects and taxation to fund the expensive mitigation measures it would require.

[mightyham]

It's clear you don't personally know anyone who has been affected by a serious drug addiction. It is devastating not just for them, but their family and everyone that cares about them. It's unbelievable to me anyone could claim that dealing drugs is a victimless crime.

[sneak]

Almost everyone I know has been personally affected by serious drug addiction. Alcohol, opiates, cocaine, marijuana, cigarettes, even gambling if you count such things.

I still support the abolition of all bans and controls on access to drugs.

Destroying one’s own self has no victims, any more than bodybuilding does. If we should be free to build ourselves, we should be free to destroy ourselves.

Please don’t assume anyone who disagrees with your philosophy is naive or lacks empathy.

[mightyham]

I'm not assuming. Your position on this issue simply lacks empathy.

If you've known anyone addicted to the list of things you mention, you should know that at some point, they are no longer "free to destroy themselves". They are continuing to destroy themselves out of a chemical or phycological necessity. The people who deal drugs or own casinos are running predatory businesses and it should be illegal, just like other predatory business practices are.

[carlosjobim]

Those kind of drugs are bought by traditional street criminals. Darknet it's mostly about psychedelics and such.

[richwater]

A lack of personal responsibility is tragic, but hardly the fault of Mcdonalds when someone has a heart attack.

[mightyham]

Chemical addiction is not comparable to overeating/lack of exercise. You could theoretically be "addicted" to McDonalds and still live a fairly healthy and balanced life in other respects. It's really not possible to be addicted to heroine and live a balanced lifestyle. Even though drug addicts are largely personally responsible for their actions, that doesn't make it less true that drug dealers are knowingly profiting off of vulnerable individuals and actively encourage them to ruin their lives.

[15155]

How are liquor stores functionally different?

[GTP]

Drugs weren't the only items sold there, there were also weapons. If you illegally sell weapons in a country where it is already much easier to legally get a weapon than most other countries, you can be sure that those weapons aren't going to be purchased by a layperson trying to defend themself but by criminals going to use those to harm other people.

[rbanffy]

The crime being not selling the weapons, but failing to keep appropriate records that ensured the use of the weapons was responsible and that users would be held accountable for their use.

On my book, this is pretty serious.