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Comment by jstanley | Hacker News Reader

OpenBazaar isn't a darknet market. It's a decentralised peer-to-peer market.

If people are getting crack from it, does it matter what type of market it is? People are saying this is where the drug trade might migrate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14828864

I think it's scary that (a) these markets are here to stay, and (b) anyone with a computer and the most basic technology skills will be able to get any hard drug they can imagine delivered right to their doorstep.

Again, there's nothing to be done, really. That's just the way the world is now. But it's unfortunate.

Firstly, there are absolutely no illegal drugs currently being sold on OpenBazaar. It's almost exclusively novelty items at the moment.

Secondly, if Alice wants to sell crack, and Bob wants to buy it, I don't see why you or I or anybody else has the right to stand in the middle and say that's not allowed.

I accept that you think it's not good for Alice and Bob to be able to transact however they like, but you must accept that lots of people do not agree.

No one is arguing that Alice and Bob should be prevented from engaging in good ol' American trade.

We're arguing that when drugs are ubiquitous -- as easy to access as pushing a button -- you'll spawn far more addicts than would have otherwise been created.

When an addict's life is destroyed by these horrific tools of pleasure we've created, are they going to take solace in the fact that they were able to use technology to enable their habit?

People become addicts for many reasons. One of the main ways is by being at a party among friends. No one expects to be addicted to this stuff, so they try a bit.

In the old days, they had one option: Get more from their friend, which may not work forever. In modern times, they can get as much as they want from the darknet markets. Bitcoin ATMs make it trivial, too. You don't even need to be vetted by Coinbase.

It's not just theoretical. People have witnessed the markets causing this.

Doesn't that mean we should also shut down casinos, for example?

I don't think the answer has ever been "make it so people can't buy the stuff", because that can't work. Instead, I believe that education, quality control, and help towards addicts would work much better.

Education, quality control and help towards addicts implies the need for regulation and taxation of profits. For instance, gambling and casinos tend to be permitted but tightly controlled by law in many countries, for exactly this reason. An entirely anonymous market will have trouble enabling regulation and taxation to offset the damage done.

So legalize, tightly regulate, and tax drugs? The solution seems obvious, if it works for casinos...

I thought it was known today that drugs aren't a problem, but people to whom drugs are the only relieve and the criminalisation of those.

Absolutely. It's well established that drugs aren't a problem. I mean, it's only the leading death cause of young Americans. Nothing to see here folks.

Leading cause of death in a group with an ultra-low death rate? You could make the case that it's a problem, but that's not enough by itself.

Does the same logic apply if Alice wants to sell Bob a human being?

That's somewhat of a strawman argument: if you think dealing crack is the same as dealing human beings, where do you even draw the line? Is it not OK to deal in anything, on the basis that it could be a human being if you changed it to a human being?

The difference when dealing a human being is it's no longer a transaction between only Alice and Bob. There's now a third person involved who has every right to object to the transaction. Decentralised marketplace or not.

Law enforcement needs the same set of tools to solve both of these problems. You are proposing that these tools should go away, right?

"Both" of these problems? The problem is dealing in human beings, right? What's the other problem?

Am I proposing that the tools to solve human trafficking go away? I wouldn't put it that way. Lots of societal progress comes with trade-offs. There will certainly be challenges for law enforcement but I'm confident they'll solve them.

The world isn't going to descend into a chaotic state of everyone buying and selling everyone else just because free-trade becomes ubiquitous.

The OP said "Can we find a way to help law enforcement police at the very least the really, really bad stuff," I think you're eliding his entire concern when you just say "I'm confident they'll solve them"

These tools will go away. You can't put that genie back in the bottle.

You can't sell something you don't own.

Does the same logic apply if Bob is your 11 YO son?

Yes. It's a parent's responsibility to teach their kids about the risks of drugs.

It's not everyone-else-in-the-world's responsibility to avoid building marketplaces where anyone can transact freely with anyone else.

Most 11yos don't have access to hard drugs. This significantly lowers the barriers to access for a tech savvy child or teenager, who is not equipped to properly evaluate the various risks in either the transaction or the drug itself. Many parents will not understand these markets and their kids will. It is obviously not directly responsible for anyone's actions but it changes the landscape considerably, and puts a finger on the scale of underage drug use.

No, what is unfortunate is that we are living in a world where you can be persecuted for handling your own body and mind as you, and not some bureaucrat, see fit. What is unfortunate is that people are put daily in jail for actions where there is no victim. What is unfortunate is that people who create safe environment for drug users to buy clean hihq quality drugs from rated sellers, are serving double life or committing suicides. What is unfortunate is that majority of society thinks like you do.

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