[aero142]

Morals of being a drug market aside, in what way is SilkRoad a "rent-seeking enterprise" any more than any other transaction facilitating entity? Every transaction has friction and facilitators provide the service of matching buyers and sellers. Maybe not the highest ideal of productivity but hardly deserves to be described as rent-seeking.

[DividesByZero]

You're correct, every business that profits from easing transactional friction is to a greater or lesser extent, rent seeking.

[aero142]

Well, I guess we just disagree on the definition of rent-seeking. Matching willing buyers and sellers creates value by increasing the satisfaction of both the buyer and the seller since both should be better off after the transaction. The facilitator who creates more mutually beneficial trades is increasing the wellbeing of society as a whole. From wikipedia "Rent-seeking behavior is distinguished in theory from profit-seeking behavior, in which entities seek to extract value by engaging in mutually beneficial transactions." SilkRoad is not rent seeking because they are not looking to change or increase the transaction friction and regulatory control of the drug trade for their own benefit. That is why rent-seeking is usually used to describe entities trying to create a government policy which benefits them but hinders mutual exchange of others. To define rent-seeking is such a loose way as to cover all facilitators who don't produce anything directly is to distort it's original meaning and make the word useless to describe true rent-seeking.

[DividesByZero]

Consider that it's very much in Silk Road's interest that the regulations that currently create the transactional frictions on which it makes a profit remain as they are, or perhaps become even more restrictive. It's rent seeking in the same way that smuggling illegal immigrants is rent seeking. This does not require a broadened definition of rent seeking at all.

[lenazegher]

>It's rent seeking in the same way that smuggling illegal immigrants is rent seeking.

Smuggling illegal immigrants is not rent seeking. If an illegal-immigrant-smuggling company lobbied the government to tighten immigration controls, that would be rent seeking.

[DividesByZero]

It's in the interests of the smugglers that tight immigration controls remain in place, just as it's in the interests of Silk Road that regulations on restricted substances remain in place.

They need not lobby directly for these restrictions, they have other organisations that will do that for them.

[revelation]

Who is creating the majority of friction in the drug trade? Nation states and their war on drugs.

Silk Road is using technological advancement to remove as much friction from the process as possible, but it's obviously still non-zero, just like any market in the world.

[omni]

Do you have any points to offer other than useless snark? You have multiple comments challenging your initial claim that Silk Road is rent-seeking and you have yet to offer any sort of defense of your position.