[benihana]

Also let's not forget:

5. Apples are red

6. Oranges are orange

You're comparing facts: "Ulbricht ran The Silk Road," with your own conjecture: "Banks encouraged 'questionable' risk taking." You're making a lot of extraordinary claims that are very very difficult to prove with no evidence to back them up.

And you're using this conjecture as evidence of... something? You don't really make a point. You just repeat popular internet tropes.

[brandon272]

There's plenty of evidence that banks intentionally mislead consumers through predatory lending schemes, signing them for (and misrepresenting the terms of) loans that they knew that the borrower would not be able to pay back. They did so under the explicit premise that the bad mortgages would be lumped in with other investment products and then sold off.

A lot of people were defrauded. The economy is still trying to recover. I don't think people who lost homes or are struggling to find work and make ends meet would consider any of this to be an internet trope.

[tomelders]

I think the deeper point is that people feel there's a disconnect from the perceived damage an action incurs and the punishment assigned to it. Rightly or wrongly that's how people feel, and what is the law for in the end?

[pdkl95]

It's called "Rule Of Law". Why the hell should anybody else bother respecting the law, when it is patently clear that the law as written is not actually what the "law" that is used.

When people that have clearly violated the law - like certain people in the CIA, for example - are not even prosecuted, it is hard agree with people that think it is "just" to give someone life in prison for allegedly committing as far lesser crime.

At worst, Ross Ulbricht is accused of an attempted conspiracy of murder. People in the CIA actually killed people, in ways that are always illegal.