Blake had been working for SpaceX, and left to work on Silk Road. This is his HN account: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=blakeeb
Demand and supply people. The answer is very simple. No matter what amount of wishful thinking you may undertake, if you don't satisfy that simple principle of demand and supply, it just won't matter.
I'm unsure if ironic is the right word but it's bizarre to see yourself "progressing humanity" while working on something completely opposite..
I'm very ambivalent about sites like the Silk Road, but I'm sure some people view them as progressing humanity.
If you see it as a platform that enables "evil" activities, like illegal gun purchases, then it might be regressing humanity.
Alternatively you can view Silk-Road-like websites as disrupting existing illegal markets by moving them from the street to the internet. This enables these services to be offered with less violence, more competition, better "regulation" (banning frauds, community checking quality etc.), etc. With the primary market apparently being drugs, it seems likely that these online platforms save more lives than they cost.
Then again, more readily available drugs likely decrease humanities overall productivity. Depending on what "progressing humanity" means to you, that's bad.
It's a complicated subject, but as far as startups go it has some very compelling arguments why it is progressing humanity (even though the counter arguments are surely not without merrit).
There's probably a reason no-one came to his defense the way they did with Ross.
And buying a Tesla with Bitcoin? He was begging to get caught. And he complains about greed.
He should have watched Breaking Bad and learned the basic lesson of not buying a flashy car when you're trying to keep a low profile.
You can make anyone want to kill you (and attempt it) by threatening them appropriately.
But also, there's a big difference between giving someone an absolute 100% pass and simply being able to empathize.
Our silly laws, and the greed of the blackmailer, created this situation. The person attempting to pull the trigger is nearly blameless.
lmao. OK dude
Your whole argument is "law enforcement is good", with as much proof as you'd supply for the existence of Santa. That's a stupidly naive view to have. Yes, kidnapping is bad and stopping kidnappers is good. But very little of what law enforcement does is in our best interests, as individuals or as a society.
Clearly the rightness of evading law enforcement and shooting blackmailers depends on the rightness of the law the enforcers are enforcing. With bad law backing them up...
> Clearly the rightness of evading law enforcement and shooting blackmailers depends on the rightness of the law the enforcers are enforcing. With bad law backing them up...
That's not exactly clear, no. In fact it's less than clear, to me, that hiring a hitman is anywhere near the same moral level as "evading law enforcement."
No, unjustifiably murdering people is wrong. Killing someone for the "right" reasons, either by yourself or by proxy, is morally right.
> > Clearly the rightness of evading law enforcement and shooting blackmailers depends on the rightness of the law the enforcers are enforcing.
> That's not exactly clear, no.
Sure it is. You never taken a history class, or watched current events on TV, if you think all laws are equal and that all rulers have a right to be obeyed. Without recognizing a bad law you can't recognize good law.
> In fact it's less than clear, to me, that hiring a hitman is anywhere near the same moral level as "evading law enforcement."
Soldiers are hit men. Sending them some places results in war crimes, sending them other places prevents war crimes. Overall, I'd rather have and use soldiers than not.
For a meaningful comparison with "law enforcement", first specify which legal system and which laws.
Avoiding the consequences for running your large criminal enterprise, through which you are enriching yourself, doesn't strike me as a good case for justifiable homicide.
Red Herring.
> Avoiding the consequences
The invented consequences, yes. But the consequences of the crime itself (ie hitting someone while drunk driving) have to be bad in and of themselves for the concept of crime to be distinct from angering the king.
> doesn't strike me as a good case for justifiable homicide.
Being threatened with having your life ruined for actions that don't hurt anyone actually seems like the only reasonable justification for killing someone. Especially in the case of a blackmailer where they aren't attempting to right any (theoretical) wrongs.
The fact is that our law. (You and me. We paid for it.) Doesn't help us, and was used to hurt (blackmail) someone. You might not think the hit was "Fair" or in proportion but it was a consequence of our useless law - making someone defend themselves. As long as we have bad law we'll have its unintended consequences.
Silk Road was the best public-safety advancement in drugs in the last millennium. It was impossible for someone to stumble into unaware, it wasn't near a school, church, rehab clinic, etc. And our useless laws treated it like he was shoving crack cocaine into a toddler's mouth, and denied him the protection of the police.
And useless isn't just a term of dislike, it's that our drug laws don't increase safety for anyone, dealers, users, or bystanders.
Not a martyr, that's a silly religious concept. He's just not served by the law and neither are we. He was denied protection despite not hurting people, and yet we are no safer because of the actions of law enforcement.
Anyways, as long as we create this class of people (criminals whose crimes don't hurt anyone) and deny them protection, they will protect themselves. That's not further criminality, it's humanity. You would defend yourself, and so do they. We can stick our heads in the sand and say "It's wrong, they're criminal" or we can stop with the ridiculous laws.
No, that's a really imbecilic interpretation of what I said. If you're making yourself rich you can't turn around and plead that your act was selfless public service. Ulbricht was no different than any other violent drug lord and you won't convince me otherwise by repeating arguments about how drug laws should be reformed -- that's not a notion I disagree with but I think it has zero bearing on this case.
If the public willingly partook of his services, by definition they were a public service. Stores profit from me and yet I also profit from them.
But you're trying to twist out some strange moralistic meaning, as if he should run his business as a non-profit despite how you and I both expect to profit from our work. And even if he could just give his products away, you'd condemn him for that as well. Nobody needs to be selflessly service the public just to deserve protection (or the right to protect themselves).
> you won't convince me otherwise by repeating arguments about how drug laws should be reformed
I'm not arguing that they should, but mainly because I think that's obvious. I'm arguing that because these are our laws, we created this situation. That as long as we have these laws, we create this exact scenario.
> I think it has zero bearing on this case.
Well, other than being 100% the cause of this case. Because you can't blackmail someone for something legal, and this is the very model of a consensual. Nobody was forced to shop Silk Road.
If we don't need to justify the law then we could just as well make abortion illegal and apply the same logic to escaped abortionists.
The law on its own is a worthless artifact, not justification.
> Ulbricht was no different than any other violent drug lord and
Wrong, considering his attempted violence was defensive in nature. But also, boring blame centric thinking.
Drug lords are no different than spice merchants; protecting their wares until they get to market. If you want safer streets, protect the merchants.
In the time since he was arrested, I've moved from coding to fraud investigations, and my time with him is a constant reminder to trust my observations over anything I am told.
I disagree that he was more hateable than Ulbricht. He never tried to have people tortured/murdered.
Good point. He really screwed himself with that stuff anonymous hitman stuff.
An argument can be made for SR's value to humanity. But he was a megalomaniacal asshole with shitty opsec, and he got what he deserved. Running a large "enterprise" doesn't give you the right to play dice with people's lives.
I was contacted by Blake (as a SpaceX employee) when he worked for SpaceX saying how much he appreciated my work (related to reddit.com/r/spacex).